“Oh!” Marasi said, snatching a biscuit. “My favorite.”
Wax took one too. He was accustomed to biscuits that could block a bullet in a pinch. It was the Basin way. Yet these were moist, even gooey. It was odd, but not unwelcome.
Marasi in particular seemed to be infatuated by the way Allik put sweetened chocolate in everything. “They’re best when warm,” she said, munching as Allik sat across from her. Wax had wiped off that lab table, hadn’t he? “You know, you look more handsome when I’m eating choc. How curious.”
“You just say that,” Allik replied, “because you want me to make more.”
“Of course that’s why I say it,” she replied, seizing a second biscuit.
Wax sat back on his stool, enjoying his biscuit, thinking about the metals laid out on the table in front of him. Harmonium and trellium. They repelled each other. More and more violently, the closer together they were …
I wonder …
He gathered up the materials and was setting up a new experiment in the safe box as another set of footsteps started down the steps. This made them all pause. Wax carefully slipped some bullets from his pouch, ready to Push them. Though when the door opened, it revealed a prim man in a brown suit. He had stark blond hair — perfectly styled — and spectacles with wire frames. The type of person whose entire bearing screamed, “I fact-check people’s jokes.”
“VenDell?” Wax guessed, putting his bullets away. The kandra was wearing a new body, but the creature’s air was distinctive.
“Indeed, Lord Ladrian,” VenDell said, entering the room and undoing his satchel. “You’ll forgive me for letting myself in.” He set a piece of paper on the table beside Marasi. “This is for you, Miss Colms.”
“What is it?” she asked, wiping her fingers on a napkin that Steris materialized as if from nowhere.
“A note recovered from the site of your engagement with the Set,” VenDell said. “LeeMar recovered it before the other investigating constables could notice it.”
“Wait,” Marasi said. “You have kandra among the constables I don’t know about?”
“Several,” VenDell said.
“Who?”
“Cassileux, for one. LeeMar took over her life about sixteen months ago, after the real woman died in that raid on the Nomad Gang.”
Marasi’s jaw dropped. “But … Cassileux and I had lunch last week!”
“Yes, she keeps an eye on you,” VenDell said.
“She didn’t tell me!”
“Should she have?” he asked absently, then sniffed at the biscuits that Allik offered him. “How horrible.”
“Aw,” Allik said, his shoulders slumping.
“I’ve told you, Master Allik,” VenDell said. “I am a carrion feeder, and strictly carnivorous. These … creations … would not suit me. But if you are interested, I’ve been considering putting up good money for one of your masks.”
“What?” Allik said, hand going to his mask, which was still up on the top of his head. “My mask?”
“There has been discussion among the kandra lately,” he said, “about your masks. Many of us think they are as integral to your natures as hair or nails — virtually a part of your skeleton. As such, I have decided to start collecting them for future bodies. Do you have any for sale?”
“Uh…” Allik said. “You’re an odd man, yah?”
“I’m not a man at all,” VenDell said. “I’ll leave you with an offer; let me know if you’d entertain some negotiations. I would only require the mask after your death, of course. If you persist in spending time with this group of people, that might not be far off.”
He walked toward Wax next, then held out his hand. “May I see it, please?”
Wax sighed, then turned to the safe box where he’d been setting up his experiment. He took out the trellium spike and presented it to VenDell, who held it up toward the light.
“I thought you couldn’t touch those,” Steris said from the table beside Marasi.
“You are mistaken, Lady Ladrian,” VenDell said. “This is not a kandra’s spike, so touching it is not taboo.”
“I’m not going to let you take this one,” Wax warned. “It needs to be studied.”
“Unfortunately,” VenDell said, “I have no intention of recovering it, so we won’t get to see if you could actually prevent me or not.”
“You don’t want it,” Wax said, “because it’s not a kandra spike? Unlike the ones that belonged to Lessie, which you stole from us.”
“You gave those up willingly.”
“I was not in an emotional state to do anything willingly,” Wax said. “I still want to know how much that metal — trellium — had to do with what happened to her.”
“The way Paalm … acted was a direct result of her decision to remove one of her spikes,” VenDell said. “The trellium spikes may have exacerbated her ailment, but were not the root cause.”
“Harmony implied otherwise to me.”
VenDell turned the spike over in his fingers and didn’t reply. Instead he nodded toward the safe box. “What are you doing here?”
“Electric current to soften some harmonium,” Wax said, pointing at the equipment he’d set up: a system to deliver a powerful current through a tiny nugget of harmonium held at the center, coated in oil to prevent it from corroding. “That’s the closest we ever came to dividing it.”
“It cannot be divided,” VenDell said. “Not so long as Harmony remains Harmony. I’ve explained this.”
Steris trailed over with her clipboard, and they shared a look. It was true; harmonium wasn’t actually an alloy. Yet Harmony held both Ruin and Preservation — so somehow this metal was both atium and lerasium, blended in a way that defied ordinary scientific explanation.
It seemed reasonable there would be a way to split it. Yet, acids for selective dissolution had failed. Different heating methods to get the components to self-separate while fluid had failed. Electrolysis had failed.
A dozen other ideas had failed as well. There was a reason he’d lost momentum on the project. But of all they’d tried, electric currents seemed to have come the closest. He activated the machine, and didn’t bother closing the front of the safe box. He’d run this experiment often enough that he was comfortable doing it in the open.
The tiny bit of harmonium heated up. Marasi and Allik walked over, watching it glow with a powerful internal light. Then Wax activated the other component of the machine — which pulled the nugget apart.
Harmonium was pliable, more so when heated. When softened like this, it seemed to react differently to the air — no longer as volatile. As if … as if it were becoming something else.
This specialized machine continued to deliver electric current through the grips at the sides — but now those moved apart and stretched the metal. If he continued, he could divide it cleanly, making two pieces of harmonium. That itself wasn’t remarkable. But the machine was set to pull only a few sixteenths of an inch, then stop. The result was two globs of harmonium at the sides, with a narrower stringy bit between.
“What is this supposed to do?” VenDell asked.
“Watch,” Wax said. With his tinted goggles, it was probably easier to see — but after a few moments the metals started to rearrange. The glob of harmonium on the left side began to glow a blue-white. The one on the right adopted a stranger air, growing silvery and reflective. It almost seemed liquid, like mercury — the surface incredibly smooth.
“Is that…?” Marasi asked.
“No,” Wax said. “If you cut it in half right now, when the metals cool you’ll just have two bits of harmonium. Yet in this state, the metals almost separate. You can see the left bit taking on aspects of lerasium. The bead on the right … that’s how atium was described.”