“Not much.”

“I understand the motive here,” Wax said, glancing back toward the kitchen with the body. “But I don’t yet have one for Winsting’s murder. Or… well, I know of too many possibilities. I don’t have the right motive.”

“What did you find in the stiff’s pockets?”

Wax hesitated.

“You didn’t rifle through the pockets?” Wayne asked, aghast. “Wax, you’re a terrible grave robber!”

“I was distracted by the manner of death,” Wax said, rising. “I’d have gotten to it.”

The word “distracted” didn’t really do justice to his emotions—to the profound shock, the numbness. For months that book had been only an object of study, but now its contents had abruptly ceased being mere words on a page and had become a motive for murder.

We’re out of our depth, Wax thought, returning to the kitchen. We’ve crept into the realm of the gods. Harmony, Ironeyes, the Lord Mistborn…

Wayne pulled back the sheet, exposing that gaping hole in the woman’s chest—right at the sternum. Who would know how to do something like this? Who would Harmony let know how to do something like this?

“Here,” Wayne said, fishing in the woman’s skirt pockets. He came out with a folded-up piece of paper. He unfolded it, then grunted. “Huh. It’s for you.”

Wax’s stomach plummeted. Wayne slowly turned the paper around. It was a sheet ripped from a ledger, filled with numbers and sums. Scrawled across it in a different hand was a single sentence—a familiar sentence. The very words Bloody Tan had said before jerking Lessie right into the path of Wax’s bullet, making him kill the woman he loved.

Someone else moves us, lawman.

7

“Look, Wax,” Wayne said as the two of them entered Ladrian Mansion, “I saw Tan’s body. You shot him square in the head. That bloke was deader than a stuffed lion in a hunting lodge. It ain’t him.”

“What if he was secretly Metalborn?” Wax asked. “Miles could have survived a shot to the head.”

“Doesn’t work that way, mate,” Wayne said, shutting the door and tossing his coat at Darriance. It hit the butler in the face. “If you’re a Bloodmaker, you’ve got to heal a head wound right as it’s happening. Once a bloke is actually dead, no power—Allomantic or Feruchemical—is bringin’ ’im back.”

“I saw him, Wayne. Twice.” Once while chasing the Marksman, and then just earlier today.

“Master,” Darriance said, folding Wayne’s coat. “New equipment has arrived for you from Miss Ranette. She asked if you’d be willing to test it.”

“Aw, Ruin!” Wayne said. “I missed her? What did she leave for me?”

“She… said I was to slap you,” Darriance admitted.

“Aw. She does care. See that, Wax, she cares!”