Wax turned slowly about the room, watching those lines. Bleeder wouldn’t have any metal on her. People who were metallically aware were more careful about things like that. The governor’s guards, for example. Half of them carried guns, but the other half only dueling canes.

How do you stand it, Wax? Bleeder asked. Dwelling among them. Like living up to your knees in sewage.

“Why did you kill Winsting?” Wax asked out loud.

I killed him because he had to die. I killed him because nobody else would.

“So you’re a hero,” Wax said, turning about. She’s close by, he thought. Watching me. Who? Which one?

And if he thought he’d figured it out… did he dare fire first?

The strike of lightning is not a hero, Bleeder said. The earthquake is not a hero. These things simply exist.

Wax started walking through the room. Perhaps Bleeder would try to move along with him. He kept his hands to the sides, a coin in each fist. No guns yet. That would provoke a panic. “Why the governor?” Wax asked. “He is a good man.”

There are no good men, Bleeder said. Choice is an illusion, lawman. There are those created to be selfish and there are those created to be selfless. This does not make them good or evil, any more than the ravaging lion is evil when compared to the placid rabbit.

“You called them sewage.”

Sewage is not evil. That does not make it desirable.

Bleeder’s voice in his mind seemed to take on more personality as she spoke. Soft, haunting, morose. Like Bloody Tan had been.

Someone else moves us…

“And you?” Wax asked. “Which are you? Wolf or rabbit?”

I am the surgeon.

The woman, the beauty in red, followed him. She tried to be surreptitious about it, walking over to a group to meet them and chat—but she moved parallel to Wax. There was another person following too. A short man in a server’s outfit carrying a tray of food. He made his rounds, but the other servers moved clockwise. Wax was going counterclockwise.

Were they close enough to hear him speaking? Not with natural ears. Perhaps Bleeder could burn tin. If that was the power she’d chosen for the evening.

You are a surgeon too, Bleeder said. They call you lord, they smile at you, but you aren’t one of them. If only you could be truly free. If only…

“I follow the law,” Wax whispered. “What do you follow?”

Bleeder gave no reply to that. The whisper, perhaps, had kept her from hearing.

The governor is corrupt, Bleeder said. He spent years covering for his brother, but in truth he would have done better covering for himself.

Wax looked to the side. He’d circled the room at this point, almost back to where he’d started. That server had followed all the way.