the latest. You need to hear what we’re dealing with.”
“I will schedule it.” From Innate, that was a promise. Wax would have his meeting. “Lady Harms, might I ask after your cousin? I’ve yet to thank her for what she did today, even if the man’s aim was off, and I would have been safe anyway.”
“Marasi is well,” Steris said. “She should be coming up here tonight to—”
Look at them.
The thought forced its way into Wax’s head. Steris and the governor continued to speak, but he froze.
They dress in painted sequins. They drink wine. They laugh, and smile, and play, and dance, and eat, and quietly kill. All part of Harmony’s plan. All actors on a stage. That’s what you are too, Waxillium Ladrian. It’s what all men are.
A chill moved over Wax, like ants running across his skin. The thoughts in his head were a voice, like Harmony’s, but rasping and crude. Brutal. A terrible whisper.
Wax was still wearing his earring. Bleeder had found out how to communicate with someone wearing a Hemalurgic spike.
The murderer was in his head.
10
Wayne turned as the sausage lady passed. He intended to reach for another handful. Instead he got slapped.
He blinked, at first assuming that the servers had finally gotten tired of him outthinking them. But the slapper hadn’t been one of them. It was a child. He fixed his stare on the young girl as Marasi hurried back to his side. Why, this child couldn’t be more than fifteen. And she’d slapped him!
“You,” the girl said, “are a monster.”
“I—”
“Remmingtel Tarcsel!” the girl said. “Do you think anyone in this party has heard that name before?”
“Well—”
“No, they haven’t. I’ve asked. They all stand here using my father’s incandescent lights—which he toiled for years to create—and nobody knows his name. Do you know why, Mister Hanlanaze?”
“I suspect I don’t—”
“Because you stole his designs, and with them his life. My father died clipless, destitute and depressed, because of men like you. You aren’t a scientist, Mister Hanlanaze, whatever you claim. You’re not an inventor. You’re a thief.”
“That part’s right. I—”
“I’ll have the better of you,” the girl hissed, stepping up to him and poking him right in the gut, almost where he’d hidden his dueling canes. “I have plans. And unlike my father, I know that this world isn’t just about who has the best ideas. It’s about the people who can market those ideas. I’m going to find investors and change this city. And when you’re crying, destitute and discredited, you remember my father’s name and what you did.”
She spun on her heel—long, straight blonde hair slapping him in the face—and stalked away.
“What the hell was that?” Wayne whispered.
“The price of wearing someone else’s likeness, I guess,” Marasi said. Rusting woman sounded amused!
“Her daddy,” Wayne said. “She said … I killed her daddy…”
“Yeah. Sounds like Hanlanaze has some dirt in his past.”
Hanlanaze. Right. Hanlanaze. The professor.
“I’ve read broadsheet columns by that girl,” Marasi said. “It’s a real shame, if it’s true those inventions were stolen.”
“Yeah,” Wayne said, rubbing his cheek. “Shame.” He eyed the plate of little sausages as it passed, but couldn’t find the will to chase it down. The fun was gone, for some reason.
Instead he went looking for Wax.
* * *
“Excuse me,” Wax said to the governor and Steris.
Both turned astonished eyes on him as he walked away. A rude move. He didn’t let himself care. He stepped into the center of the room, instincts screaming at him.
Guns out!
Firefight coming!
Find cover!
Run.
He did none of those things, but he couldn’t keep his eye from twitching. With his steel burning, a spray of small, translucent blue lines connected him to nearby sources of metal. He was in the habit of ignoring those.
Now he watched them. Quivering, shifting, the rhythm and pulse of a hundred people in a room. Trays for food, jewelry, spectacles. Metal parts in the tables and chairs. So much metal that made the framework for the lives of men and women. They were the flesh of civilization, and steel was now its skeleton.
So, you realize what I am, the voice said in his mind. Feminine, but rasping.
No, what are you? Wax sent back. A test.
Harmony spoke to you. I know that he did.
You’re a koloss, Wax said, using the wrong word on purpose.
You dance for Harmony, the voice replied. You bend and move at his direction. You don’t care how poor an excuse for a god he is.
Wax wasn’t certain—there was no way to be certain—but it seemed that Bleeder