“As a side note,” Steris said softly as she steered them toward where the governor was speaking with the lord of House Erikell, “if you do find the murderer, steer me in her direction. I shall endeavor to fascinate her with details of our house finances. With luck, she’ll fall asleep in her drink and drown, and I shall have my first kill.”

“Steris! That was actually amusing.”

She blushed. Then she got a conspiratorial look on her face. “I cheated, if you must know.”

“… Cheated?”

“I know you enjoy witty conversation,” she said, “so I prepared earlier, writing myself a list of things I could say that you would find engaging.”

Wax laughed. “You have plans for everything, don’t you?”

“I like to be thorough,” she said. “Though admittedly, sometimes I can be so thorough that I end up needing to plan how to best make my plans. My life ends up feeling like a beautiful ship in dry dock, built with eighteen rudders pointing in different directions to be extra certain that a steering mechanism is in place.” She hesitated, then blushed again. “Yes. That quip was on my list.”

Wax laughed anyway. “Steris, I think this is the most genuine I’ve ever seen you.”

“But I’m being fake. I prepared the lines ahead of time. I’m not actually being diverting.”

“You’d be surprised at how many people do the same thing,” Wax said. “Besides, this is you. So it’s genuine.”

“Then I’m always genuine.”

“I guess so. I just didn’t realize it before.”

They stepped toward Innate, putting them close enough that the governor would notice them waiting. Nearby, other couples and groups shot them covert looks. As the lord of a major house, Wax outranked almost everyone in the room. Old noble titles were coming to matter less and less, but with Steris’s money backing him, he’d been able to dig himself out of many of his debts. That in turn had allowed him to avoid foreclosures, and he’d been able to hold out until other investments came through. House Ladrian was again one of the wealthiest in the city. Increasingly, that was more important than a noble pedigree.

He found it unfortunate, though not surprising, how often noble birth aligned with economic and political power. The Lord Mistborn’s laws, based upon the Last Emperor’s ideal, were supposed to put power into the hands of common men. And yet the same groups just kept on ruling. Wax was one of them. How guilty should he feel?

Already I fear that I have made things too easy for men…

Drim, the governor’s chief bodyguard and head of security, stepped up to Wax. “I suppose you’ll be next,” the thick-necked man growled. “My men at the doors let you keep your guns, I hear.”