25

Upon seeing Lessie’s face, Wax growled in a guttural, primal sound. The sound of a man getting hit straight in the stomach with a well-driven punch. He held the gun on Bleeder, but his hand wavered, and his vision shook.

It’s not her. It’s not her.

“Again with the guns,” Bleeder said softly. Rusts! It was Lessie’s voice. “You lean on them too much, Wax. You’re a Coinshot. How often do I have to point that out?”

“You dug up her corpse?” Wax asked in a pleading voice. He was having trouble seeing straight. “You monster. You dug up her corpse?”

“I wish I hadn’t been forced to do this,” Les—Bleeder said. “But strong emotion frees us from him, Wax. It’s the only way.”

She stared down that gun. Of course she would. She was a kandra. He had to remind himself of that forcibly. The gun meant nothing to her.

Lessie… How often had he dreamed of hearing that voice again? He’d wept for the wish to tell her one last time of his love. To explain the hole, gaping like the wound from a shotgun blast, left in him by her death.

To apologize.

Harmony. I can’t shoot her again.

Bleeder had outthought him after all.

“I worried about using Tan’s body,” Lessie said, stepping toward him. “Worried it would make you figure out who I really was.”

“You’re not Lessie.”

She grimaced. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. I was never Lessie. Always Paalm the kandra. But I wanted to be Lessie. Does that count for anything?”

Rusts… she had Lessie’s mannerisms down exactly. MeLaan had said she was good, but this was so real, so believable. He found himself lowering his gun, wishing. Wishing…

Harmony? he begged.

But he didn’t have his earring in.

Marasi and Reddi wrapped around, moving over a block before coming back in behind the suspicious carriage. They hadn’t been able to gather as large a force as she’d wanted—not only did they worry about the Soother noticing the motion, Reddi was concerned about leaving too few people watching the crowd.

MeLaan’s voice carried through the voice projectors, audible even as Marasi and her team of eleven men set up near the far end of the alleyway containing the carriage. How long before the Set noticed they’d been had? Probably not long. Marasi had left in some of the beginning part of the speech, in order to not sound too different from Innate, but the speech would take a turn very soon.

Reddi pulled off his constable’s helmet—Marasi’s own pressed against her hair, an uncomfortable weight—then nodded to the rest of them in the darkness. With his aluminum-lined helmet off, he could feel the Soother’s touch more powerfully here than he had out in the crowd. That carriage really was the source of it.

He put the helmet back on. The precinct owned only a dozen of these, all donated by Waxillium. Reddi had just enough clout to requisition the task force that had them. He secured his helmet, then reached to his side, taking out a thick dueling cane like a long baton with a knob on the end. The others did the same. There would be no gunplay this close to a crowd of civilians.