Wax decreased his weight, oriented himself and Steris at the correct angle to the bullet, and Pushed. They shot into the air at a slant, soaring over the coaches in a line. He landed them on one of the skyscraper’s decorative outcroppings a few stories up. Steris clung to him with the grip of a cat hanging above an ocean, her eyes wide. Then, cautiously, she released him and stepped up to the edge of the stonework, leaned out, and peered through the misty depths. Lights bobbed below: coaches, streetlamps, lanterns held high by footmen. In the mist, most were just bubbles and shadows.

“I feel like I’m afloat in a sea of smoke and fog,” she said. The mists twisted and churned as if alive. Eddies and swirls seemed to move against the currents of air, always in motion.

Wax opened Ranette’s package, getting out the length of tightly twined rope inside. He looked upward. Ranette’s note said she wanted him to experiment with using a tether as he jumped with Allomancy, then provide her with feedback.

“You were eager to come tonight,” Steris said. “It’s more than wanting to meet the governor. You’re working. I can see it in you.”

Wax hefted the rope—which was weighted at one end with a hooked steel spike—getting a feel for what throwing it would be like.

“I can tell, you see,” she said, “because you are fully awake. You are a predator, Waxillium Ladrian.”

“I hunt predators.”

“You are one too.” She looked at him through the translucent mists dancing between them. Her eyes were alight, reflecting the glow from the sea of fog below. “You are like a lion. Most days you’re only partially present, with me. Lounging, half asleep. You do what you must, you fulfill the needs of the house, but you don’t thrive. Then the prey appears. You wake. The burst of speed, the fury and power; the pounding, pulsing, rush of the hunt. This is the real you, Waxillium Ladrian.”

“If what you say is true, then all lawmen are predators.”

“True lawmen, perhaps. I don’t know that I’ve met another.” She followed his gaze as he looked upward. “So, my question. What do you hunt tonight?”

“Bleeder will be here.”

“The murderer? How do you know?”

“She is going to try to kill the governor again,” Wax said. “She’ll want to test me, to see if she can get close, judge how I’ll react.”

“You act as if it’s personal, between the two of you.”

“I wish it were.” Someone else moves us. “I wish I knew Bleeder well enough for it to be personal, as that would give me an edge. But she certainly is interested in me, and that means I can’t skip this party. Otherwise she might take it as a sign that she should strike.”