“Perhaps,” she said, “the reason I didn’t come to you had no connection to Harmony at all. I knew this would hurt you. I’m sorry.”

No, Wax thought.

“I’m going to have to do something about you,” she said. “Keep you safe, somehow, but out of the way. Might have to hurt you, Wax. For your own good.”

No, this isn’t real.

“Still don’t know what to do about Wayne,” she said. “Couldn’t bring myself to kill him, poor fool. He followed you here, to help you in the city. For that I love him. But he’s still Harmony’s, and so he’s probably better dead than the way he is now.”

NO!

Wax shoved her back, lifting Vindication again. The gun, however, leaped from his fingers—Pushed by Bleeder. It tumbled into the mists.

Wax growled, ramming his shoulder into Bleeder, trying to toss her off the tower. She seized him as he hit, throwing them both off balance.

As they fell together, she raised her aluminum gun and shot him in the leg.

He cried out as they fell from the tower, dropping through the mists. A frantic Push on the bridge below slowed Wax, but when he hit, his leg gave out and he screamed, dropping to one knee.

Gun. Find the gun.

It had fallen this way. Rusts. Would it even work after dropping so far? He hadn’t heard it hit. Did that mean it had plunged into the waters?

Bleeder landed hard nearby. She spun on him, lit now by the garish electric lights that lined the roadway of the bridge. It was empty of carriages and motorcars, and behind her, a greater light hovered over the city. Red, violent light, seeming to burn the mists.

Looking out of the city, he saw darkness and peace. But inward, Elendel burned.

Marasi edged along the outside of a battlefield.

It was a very small battlefield, true, but the ferocity of the conflict stunned her. She felt she could—for the first time—imagine what it had been like to live during the War of Ash, so long ago.

But surely wars back then had been more thought-out, more deliberate. Not this mixed jumble of figures beating on one another, breaking bones, cursing, stepping on the fallen. Watching it made her sick, anxious. Those men were her colleagues, struggling frantically to push through the Set’s thugs. All night they’d been forced to stand and watch the city decompose around them, the situation growing worse and worse as they felt helpless.

This was something they could fight, so fight they did, cracking heads, shoving down enemies, grunting in the dirty, dark alleyway in an effort to reach the carriage. Thankfully, the Set troops here didn’t appear to include any Coinshots or Pewterarms.