Waxillium breathed out in relief. “Oh, Harmony. I thought you were going to shoot me for sure.”
“Should have,” she grumbled. “I can’t believe—”
She cut off as the stairs clattered, the troop of miscreants from above having finally gathered the nerve to rush down the stairwell. A good half dozen of them burst into the room with weapons drawn.
Lessie dove for the fallen bodyguard’s gun.
Waxillium thought quickly, then did what came most naturally. He struck a dramatic pose in the rubble, one foot up, Granite Joe dead beside him, both bodyguards felled. Dust from the broken ceiling still sprinkled down, illuminated in sunlight pouring through a window above.
The thugs pulled to a stop. They looked down at the fallen corpse of their boss, then gaped toward Waxillium.
Finally, looking like children who had been caught in the pantry trying to get at the cookies, they lowered their weapons. The ones at the front tried to push through the ones at the back to get away, and the whole clamorous mess of them swarmed back up the steps, leaving the forlorn barkeep, who fled last of all.
Waxillium turned and offered his hand to Lessie, who let him pull her to her feet. She looked after the retreating group of bandits, whose boots thumped on wood in their haste to escape. In moments the building was silent.
“Huh,” she said. “You’re as surprising as a donkey who can dance, Mister Cravat.”
“It helps to have a thing,” Waxillium noted.
“Yeah. You think I should get a thing?”
“Getting a thing has been one of the most important choices I made in coming up to the Roughs.”
Lessie nodded slowly. “I have no idea what we’re talking about, but it sounds kinda dirty.” She glanced past him toward Granite Joe’s corpse, which stared lifelessly, lying in a pool of his own blood.
“Thanks,” Waxillium said. “For not murdering me.”
“Eh. I was gonna kill him eventually anyway and turn him in for the bounty.”
“Yes, well, I doubt you were planning to do it in front of his entire gang, while trapped in a basement with no escape.”
“True. Right stupid of me, that was.”
“So why do it?”
She kept looking at the body. “I’ve done plenty of things in Joe’s name I wish I hadn’t, but as far as I know, I never shot a man who didn’t deserve it. Killing you … well, seems like it would have been killing what you stood for too. Ya know?”
“I think I can grasp the concept.”
She rubbed at a bleeding scratch on her neck, where she’d brushed broken wood during their fall. “Next time, though, I hope it won’t involve making quite so big a mess. I liked this saloon.”
“I’ll do my best,” Waxillium said. “I intend to change things out here. If not the whole Roughs, then at least this town.”
“Well,” Lessie said, walking over to Granite Joe’s corpse, “I’m sure that if any evil pianos were thinking of attacking the city, they’ll have second thoughts now, considering your prowess with that pistol.”
Waxillium winced. “You … saw that, did you?”
“Rarely seen such a feat,” she said, kneeling and going through Joe’s pockets. “Three shots, three different notes, not a single bandit down. That takes skill. Maybe you should spend a little less time with your thing and more with your gun.”
“Now that sounded dirty.”
“Good. I hate being crass by accident.” She came out with Joe’s pocketbook and smiled, tossing it up and catching it. Above, in the hole Waxillium had made, an equine head poked out, followed by a smaller, teenage one in an oversized bowler hat. Where had he gotten that?
Destroyer blustered in greeting.
“Sure, now you come,” Waxillium said. “Stupid horse.”
“Actually,” Lessie said, “seems to me like staying away from you during a gunfight makes her a pretty damn smart horse.”
Waxillium smiled and held out his hand to Lessie. She took it, and he pulled her close. Then he lifted them out of the wreckage on a line of blue light.
PART ONE
1
SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER
Winsting smiled to himself as he watched the setting sun. It was an ideal evening to auction himself off.
“We have my saferoom ready?” Winsting asked, lightly gripping the balcony banister. “Just in case?”
“Yes, my lord.” Flog wore his silly Roughs hat along with a duster, though he’d never been outside of the Elendel Basin. The man was an excellent bodyguard, despite his terrible fashion sense, but Winsting made certain to Pull on the man’s emotions anyway, subtly enhancing Flog’s sense of loyalty. One could never