“Which is why I don’t like coming to the parties.” He held up his hand, cutting her off. “I know. It’s important that we be here. Let’s go chat with the partygoers you’ve planned for us to approach.”

She always had a list, carefully prepared. Steris was the only person he’d ever heard of who brought an agenda to a cocktail party.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“That is what we commonly do,” Steris said, giving a specific smile—she practiced different ones—to Lady Mulgrave as they passed. “Tonight’s purpose is yours. Let us be about it and find that killer.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she said, waving to another couple. “It behooves a wife to be interested in, if not involved in, the passions of her spouse.”

“You don’t need to do that, Steris. I—”

“Please,” she said softly. “I do.”

Wax let the argument drop. Truth was, he was pleased. With the possibility that Bleeder was here somewhere, Wax wouldn’t be able to relax anyway.

So how to find the creature? More importantly, how would he beat someone who could move in a blur? Unlike Allomancy—which burned at a few standard rates—Feruchemical powers could be used up all at once. Bleeder could drain her metalminds in a single burst of speed—and could probably take down dozens of people in an eyeblink. Maybe even hundreds. And Wax wouldn’t be able to do a thing.

But perhaps she wouldn’t have enough left for that. She couldn’t just pop more metal in, like an Allomancer, and refill her reserves. She’d have to rely on what speed she had been able to store up, and she’d only stolen her spike recently. Killing the people at Winsting’s party would have expended a large amount of what she’d theoretically been able to save up over the last few weeks.

So he had two options. Kill her before she moved, or somehow get her to waste her Feruchemical reserve without hurting anyone.

He stepped up to the bar, ordering drinks, then turned to scan the crowd. It had been two decades since he’d been a part of high society, and his two years back in Elendel hadn’t yet polished off all the rust. Everyone here had the same counterfeit way about them—they chatted with a studied air of merriment while secretly pursuing their own agendas. There was no better place for a murderer to blend in than this.

Drinks in hand, Wax stepped down from the bar and turned on his steel bubble.