She blushed. Then she got a conspiratorial look on her face. “I cheated, if you must know.”
“… Cheated?”
“I know you enjoy witty conversation,” she said, “so I prepared earlier, writing myself a list of things I could say that you would find engaging.”
Wax laughed. “You have plans for everything, don’t you?”
“I like to be thorough,” she said. “Though admittedly, sometimes I can be so thorough that I end up needing to plan how to best make my plans. My life ends up feeling like a beautiful ship in dry dock, built with eighteen rudders pointing in different directions to be extra certain that a steering mechanism is in place.” She hesitated, then blushed again. “Yes. That quip was on my list.”
Wax laughed anyway. “Steris, I think this is the most genuine I’ve ever seen you.”
“But I’m being fake. I prepared the lines ahead of time. I’m not actually being diverting.”
“You’d be surprised at how many people do the same thing,” Wax said. “Besides, this is you. So it’s genuine.”
“Then I’m always genuine.”
“I guess so. I just didn’t realize it before.”
They stepped toward Innate, putting them close enough that the governor would notice them waiting. Nearby, other couples and groups shot them covert looks. As the lord of a major house, Wax outranked almost everyone in the room. Old noble titles were coming to matter less and less, but with Steris’s money backing him, he’d been able to dig himself out of many of his debts. That in turn had allowed him to avoid foreclosures, and he’d been able to hold out until other investments came through. House Ladrian was again one of the wealthiest in the city. Increasingly, that was more important than a noble pedigree.
He found it unfortunate, though not surprising, how often noble birth aligned with economic and political power. The Lord Mistborn’s laws, based upon the Last Emperor’s ideal, were supposed to put power into the hands of common men. And yet the same groups just kept on ruling. Wax was one of them. How guilty should he feel?
Already I fear that I have made things too easy for men.…
Drim, the governor’s chief bodyguard and head of security, stepped up to Wax. “I suppose you’ll be next,” the thick-necked man growled. “My men at the doors let you keep your guns, I hear.”
“Let me tell you, Drim,” Wax said, “if the governor is in the slightest bit of danger, you want a gun in my hands.”
“I suppose. A gun doesn’t mean much to you anyway, does it? You could kill with the spare change in your pocket.”
“Or a pair of cuff links. Or the tacks holding the carpet to the floor.”
Drim grunted. “Too bad about your deputy.”
Wax snapped his attention on Drim. “Wayne. What about him?”
“He’s a security threat,” Drim said. “Had to turn him away down below.”
Wax relaxed. “Oh. All right, then.”
Drim smiled, obviously feeling he’d won something from the conversation. He backed up to take his place by the wall, watching those who came to speak with the governor.
“You’re not concerned about Wayne?” Steris asked softly.
“Not anymore. I worried he’d find the party so boring, he would wander off. Instead, the good man there kindly gave Wayne a challenge.”
“So … you’re saying he’ll sneak in?”
“If Wayne isn’t in here somewhere already,” Wax said, “I’ll eat your handbag and try to burn it for Allomantic power.”
They continued to wait. The governor’s current interlocutor, Lady Shayna, was a long-winded blowhard, but after the political and financial support she’d given him, even the governor couldn’t turn her away. Wax looked around, wondering where Wayne would be.
“Lord Waxillium Ladrian,” a feminine voice said. “I’ve heard about you. You’re more handsome than the stories say.”
He raised his eyebrows toward the speaker, a tall woman waiting to see the governor. Very tall—she had a few inches on him at least. With luscious lips and a large chest, she had creamy skin and hair the color of gunpowder, and she was wearing a red dress missing most of its top half.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Steris said, her voice cool.
“I’m called Milan,” the woman said. She didn’t bother to look at Steris, but inspected Wax up and down, then smiled in a mysterious way. “Lord Waxillium, you wear sidearms and a Roughs-style mistcoat to a cocktail party. Bold.”
“There is nothing bold about doing what one has always done,” Wax said. Flirting with a man while his fiancée stands beside him, however …