“He’s yours,” Mistress Halex said to Wax. “Get him out of here. He’s disturbing my people.”

Wax crossed the room to kneel beside Chapaou. The short man shivered, holding his legs. “Chapaou,” Wax said. “Look at me.”

Chapaou turned toward him.

“What’s the name of your dog?” Wax asked.

“My… I don’t have a dog. He died a few years back.”

Good enough. This wasn’t Bleeder in disguise, unless she’d thought to interrogate a random cabdriver about his pets before killing him and taking his shape.

“What’s wrong?” Wax said. “Why are you here?”

“To forget what I saw.”

“Soothing doesn’t work like that,” Wax said. “It doesn’t take your memories.”

“But it should make me feel better, right?”

“Depends on the emotions you’re feeling,” Wax said, “and the skill of the Soother.” He held the man by the shoulder. “What did you see, Chapaou?”

The man blinked reddened eyes. “I saw… myself.”

Aradel wasn’t in his office, of course. That place was there, as he put it, “for giving house lords somewhere to sit when they come to complain at me.”

Marasi found him on the roof of the constabulary offices listening to reports from the two precinct Coinshots who had been scouting the city. Marasi politely waited with MeLaan and several constable lieutenants standing nearby, and was able to hear most of the latest report. Thousands still on the streets, my lord. They’re congregating at pubs. Not going home…

Aradel stood with one booted foot up on the short wall around the rooftop as he took the reports. Mist curled around each Coinshot in a distinct vortex; it responded to the use of Allomancy. Finally, Aradel dismissed the two. They weren’t true constables—more contractors. Their loyalties would be to their houses. Or in some cases to their pocketbooks.

As they left—jumping off the building—the constable-general turned to the waiting lieutenants. “Get the men ready to clear out the pubs,” he said softly.

“Sir?” one of the women asked.

“We’re going to close them down,” Aradel said, pointing. “First on the promenades, then work down the smaller streets. We can’t start until I get authority from the governor to institute martial law in the octant, but I want the constables ready to move as soon as we have word.”

The lieutenants ran to obey. Aradel glanced toward Marasi, and she thought she saw something of his ancestor in him, a soldier who had died a martyr during the days of the Ascendant Warrior. In another era, would this man have been a field general rather than a policeman?

“What do you have for me, Lieutenant Colms?” he said, waving her forward. MeLaan lingered by the stairwell down, hands in her trouser pockets.

“Our assassin, sir,” Marasi said, proffering the folder. “She dug her way out of her own grave after being executed for causing the floods in the east. They found the bones nearby a few days later, and called it desecration of the grave. After all, why would they guess that one of the holy Faceless Immortals had been inhabiting the body of a murderer and criminal?”