“You can hear my thoughts?” Wax asked.
When you have the earring in, yes. I gain the ability to hear you from Preservation, and the ability to speak to you from Ruin. Each had only one half. I always found it puzzling.
Regardless, I know you have been reading young Lestibournes’s book. I am not pleased that he made it, but I could not forbid him. I will trust that Marsh was wise in giving it to you. Bleeder can use Hemalurgy, but in a way she should not be able to. Kandra do not have Allomantic or Feruchemical powers. She has learned to take these, and to use them to maintain her kandra form.
Fortunately, she is limited. She can only use one spike at a time, otherwise she will open herself to my control. If she trades spikes, she must do it by ripping out her single one and then falling onto another, digesting it and returning her to sapience.
I do not know her game with this city, but I’m alarmed by it. She has spent centuries studying human behavior. She is planning something.
“I’ll have to stop her, then.”
I will send you help.
“I assume, considering the source, it will be spectacular.”
Harmony sighed softly. In Wax’s mind’s eye, he had a sudden image of a being standing with hands clasped behind Him, eternity extending into darkness before Him. Tall, robed, back to Wax, almost visible and distinct yet somehow completely unknowable at the same time.
Waxillium, Harmony said, I have tried to explain this to you, but I did not do a good job, I think. My hands are tied, and I am bounded.
“Who ties God’s hands?”
I tied them myself.
Wax frowned.
I hold both Ruin and Preservation, Harmony said. The danger in carrying these opposed powers is that I can see both sides—the need for life, the need for death. I am balance. And, to an extent, I am neutrality.
“But Bleeder used to be one of Your own, and now she’s acting against You.”
She used to be of Preservation. She has moved to being of Ruin. Both are needed.
“Murderers are needed,” Wax said flatly.
Yes. No. The potential for murderers is needed. Waxillium, I—the personality you speak to—agree with your indignation. But the powers that I am, the essence of my self, cannot allow me to take sides.
Already I fear that I have made things too easy for men. This city, the perfect climate, the ground that renews … You were to have had the radio a century ago, but you didn’t need it, so you didn’t strive for it. You ignore aviation, and cannot tame the wilds because you don’t care to study proper irrigation or fertilization.
“The … radio? What is that?”
You don’t explore, Harmony continued, ignoring Wax’s confusion. Why would you? You have everything you want here. You’ve barely progressed technologically from what I gave you in the books. Yet others, who were nearly destroyed …
I made a mistake with you, I now see. I still make many. Does that ruin your faith, Waxillium? Does it worry you that your God is fallible?
“You never claimed to be infallible, so far as I remember.”
No. I did not.
Wax felt a warmth, a fire, as if the inside of the carriage were heating to incredible temperatures.
I loathe suffering, Waxillium. I hate that people like Bleeder must be allowed to do what they do. I cannot stop them. You can. I beg you to do so.
“I will try.”
Good. Oh, and Waxillium?
“Yes, Lord?”
Do be less harsh with Marasi Colms. You aren’t my only agent in the affairs of men; I worked quite hard to maneuver Marasi into a position where she could do good in this city. It is taxing to have you continue to dismiss her because her admiration makes you uncomfortable.
Wax swallowed. “Yes, Lord.”
I will send you help.
The voice vanished. The temperature returned to normal. Wax leaned back, sweating, feeling drained.
A rapping came at his window. Hesitant, Wax pulled aside the shade. Wayne’s face hung there, upside down, his hand holding his hat onto his head. “You done talking to yourself, Wax?” he asked.
“I … Yes, I am.”
“I heard voices in my head once too, you know.”
“You did?”
“Sure. Gave me a fright. I banged my head against the wall until I went unconscious. Never heard them again! Ha. Showed ’em good, I did. If rats move in, best thing to do is to burn the nest and send ’em packing.”
“And the nest … was your head.”
“Yup.”
The sad thing was, Wayne probably wasn’t lying. Being unkillable, so long as one had some healing power stored up, could do strange things to a person’s sense of self-preservation. Of course, Wayne had probably been drunk at the time. That also tended to do strange things to a person’s sense of self-preservation.
“Well, anyway,” Wayne said. “We’re almost to the precinct headquarters. Time to go back to being dirty conners. At least they’ll probably have scones inside.”
Marasi stood in the precinct station with arms folded, partially to hide the fact that her hands were still trembling. That was unfair. She’d been in firefights numerous times now. She should be accustomed to this … but still, after the jolt of it all wore off—the moment of thrill and action—she occasionally found herself feeling drained. Surely she’d get past it eventually.
“He was wearing these, sir,” Reddi said, placing a pair of bracers onto the table with a thump. “No other metal on his body save for the gun and a pocketful of rounds. We’ve called in the First Octant precinct’s Leecher to make sure he doesn’t have any metal swallowed, but we can’t be certain until she arrives.”
Aradel picked up one of the bracers, turning it over in his hands. The dim room was a kind of balcony, overlooking the interrogation chamber below, where the assassin Marasi had stopped sat slumped in a chair. His name was Rian; no house, though they’d located his family. He was tied with ropes to a large stone behind his chair. No metal in the room, to make it safe to stow Coinshots or Lurchers. Stone floor, walls made of thick wood joined with wooden pegs. Almost primitive in feel. The balcony had glass walls, letting them look down upon him without being heard.
“So he’s Metalborn,” said Lieutenant Caberel, the only other person in the room. The stout woman picked up the other bracer. “Why didn’t he use his abilities in the assassination? If he killed Winsting with Feruchemical speed, like old Waxillium Dawnshot says, he should have done the same today.”
“Maybe he didn’t kill Winsting,” Aradel said. “The attacks could be unrelated.”
“He fits the profile though, sir,” Reddi said. “Winsting’s bodyguards probably would have trusted a member of the governor’s personal guard. He could have talked his way past them and done the deed.”
“Hard to imagine Winsting’s guards letting even someone like that in alone with their charge, Captain,” Aradel said. “After a firefight where others were being killed? They’d be tense. Suspicious.”