“I…” she said. “Well, there really wasn’t a good opportunity…” She blushed more furiously.

“I’m surprised, and a little disappointed,” Wayne said.

“Well,” she said quickly, “I—”

“Oh, not at you,” Wayne said. “At Wax. I’d have expected that he’d put this sort of thing together on your first meeting.”

“I’m growing slow in my old age,” Waxillium said dryly.

“It’s not really very useful,” she said, looking down. “When I saw Wayne using his Slider ability, I started to get self-conscious. You see, I’m a Pulser.”

As he’d suspected. “I think that could be very useful.”

“Not really,” she said. “Speeding up time… that is amazing. But what can one do with slowing it down, and only for myself? It’s useless in a fight. Everyone else would move with great speed around me. My father was ashamed of the power. Told me to keep it quiet, much like my parentage.”

“Your father,” Waxillium said, “is someone that I’m increasingly certain is a fool. You have access to something useful. No, it won’t fit every situation, but no tool does.”

“If you say so,” she said.

A merchant came down the train aisle, selling pretzels, and Wayne all but leaped out of his chair to get one. Waxillium settled back, looking out the window, thinking.

Miles. No, he couldn’t be sure it was him. When Waxillium had shot the Vanisher boss in the face and dropped him, he’d assumed that he’d mistaken the voice. Miles wouldn’t drop to a gunshot.

Unless he’d known that he had to feign a wound, lest Waxillium recognize him. Miles was crafty enough for something like that.

It is him, Waxillium thought. He’d known it from the first time the Vanisher boss had spoken. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

This complicated things immensely. And, oddly, Waxillium found himself feeling overwhelmed. Twenty years as a lawkeeper, and this situation was already messier than any he’d investigated. He’d assumed that the Roughs made him strong, but there’d also been a simplicity to life out there, a simplicity he’d gotten used to.

Now he came charging in, guns raised, assuming he could handle a problem built on Elendel’s scale. He assumed he could take down a team that was so well funded it could field men with guns made of something so expensive it might as well have been gold.

Maybe we should take it to the constables, Marasi had said. But could he?

He fingered the earring in his pocket. He’d felt that Harmony wanted him to do this, to investigate. But what was Harmony but an impression in Waxillium’s mind? Confirmation bias, they called it. He felt what he expected to. That was what his logical brain said.

I wish I could feel the mists, he thought. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to go out in them. He always felt stronger in the mists. He felt like someone was watching, when he was out in them.

I have to continue with this, he told himself. He’d tried abstaining, and it had led to Lord Peterus being shot. Waxillium’s usual method was to just take command and do what needed to be done. It was the way a lawman learned to work, out in the Roughs. We aren’t so different, Miles and I, he thought. Perhaps that was what had always frightened him so much about the man.