Would he bring down Bleeder only to find her victorious in a city destroyed?

He couldn’t worry about that at the moment. Instead he sought signs, clues, a story. Nobody passed, even at night, without leaving a trail. Perhaps it would be too faint for him to locate, but it would exist.

There. A group of people pulling away from the mansion, instead of crowding toward it. Wax landed in a storm, mistcoat flaring. This was the mansion’s garden, near a large workers’ shed. Wax studied the pattern of people moving away.

The gunfire just a moment ago, he thought. It wasn’t to shoot someone, but to clear the crowd. She was out of Feruchemical speed and fleeing frantically, and had opened fire into the air to clear this pocket of people. As he listened he picked out cries of confusion, some people claiming the constables had opened fire on the crowd. Others claimed they’d seen the governor himself running, trying to escape the mansion.

Wax loaded Vindication with the single bullet Ranette had sent, placing it in one of the special chambers he could quickly spin to at will. Then he inched open the door to the shed, crouching beside the doorway so as to not present a profile. The mists were bright with torchlight this night, but that light didn’t penetrate to the dark shed. Wax searched through the shadows, until he saw something.

A bone? Yes, and draped over it cloth. He picked out a fallen cravat, a white buttoning shirt… the governor’s clothing. Bleeder had stashed another body in here, and had fled to swap into it. How fast was she? MeLaan had said that Bleeder could change faster than she could, but that nobody was as quick as TenSoon.

That didn’t tell him much. MeLaan had taken minutes, TenSoon seconds. Wax held Vindication beside his head and slipped through the doorway. If he could find Bleeder in midtransformation…

“I can still free you,” a voice whispered from the darkness inside. “Perhaps I have lost the city, but I didn’t come here for them. Not at first. I came for you.”

“Why me?” Wax asked, searching furiously through the darkness, palm sweating as he held Vindication. “Damn it, creature, why me?”

“I have deafened him,” Bleeder whispered. “I have cut out his tongue, pierced his eyes, but still he can act. You are his hands, Waxillium Ladrian. He may be deaf, blind, and mute… but still, with you, he can move his pawns.”

“I’m my own man, Bleeder,” Wax said, finally spotting what he thought was her silhouette, crouched at the back of the dusty chamber, beside a rack of shovels. “Perhaps I serve Harmony, but I do so because I wish it.”