“Curious,” Suit said. “I’m also one of them, you know.”

“I work with what I have. And besides, you have… other things recommending you. Especially since you did renounce your claim to privilege.”

“Not to privilege,” Suit said. “Merely to title. And I still think you intended to provoke Waxillium. That’s why you shot Peterus.”

“I shot Peterus because he was an impostor,” Miles snapped. “He pretended to seek justice, and everyone praised him for it, but all the while he was pandering to the elite and the corrupt. In the end, they let him come play at their parties, like a favored dog. I put him down.”

Mister Suit nodded slowly. “Very well.”

“I will clean this city up, Suit. Even if I have to rip out its blackened heart with my fingernails, I’ll do it. But you’re going to need to get me more aluminum.”

“I am setting things in motion,” Suit said. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a rolled sheet of paper. He set it in front of Miles.

Miles took off the string and unrolled the paper. Schematics. “Tekiel’s new ‘unrobbable’ freight car?”

Suit nodded.

“It will take time to—” Miles began.

“I’ve had people working on this for some time now. Your job is not the planning, Miles. Your job is the execution. I will see that you have the resources you need.”

Miles looked over the blueprint. Suit was connected. Powerful. Miles couldn’t help feeling that he’d gotten himself entangled in something far beyond his control. “My men are still holding the latest captive,” he said. “What do you want done with her?”

“That will be arranged,” Suit said. He took a sip of his tea. “If I had been paying closer attention, I would have removed that one from the list. Waxillium will not stop seeking her. It would have been so much easier if the explosion had worked. Now we must contemplate more direct action.”

“I’ll deal with him personally,” Miles said. “Today.”

“Miles Dagouter is Twinborn,” Waxillium said, leaning forward in their train car. “A particularly dangerous variety of Twinborn.”

“Double gold,” Wayne said with a nod, reclining on the cushioned bench opposite Waxillium. Outside, the outer suburbs of Elendel passed in a blur.

Marasi sat on the bench near Wayne. “Gold Allomancers aren’t particularly dangerous, from what I’ve read.”

“No,” Waxillium said. “They aren’t. But it’s the Compounding that makes Miles so powerful. If your Allomancy and Feruchemy share a metal, you can access its power tenfold. It’s complicated. You store an attribute inside the metal, then burn it to release the power. It’s called Compounding. By the legends, it’s the way the Sliver gained immortality.”

Marasi frowned. “I’d assumed stories of Miles’s extraordinary healing abilities to be exaggerations. I assumed he was just a Bloodmaker, like Wayne.”

“Oh, he’s a Bloodmaker all right,” Wayne said, spinning a dueling cane around his wrist and catching it again. “Except he doesn’t ever run out of health.”