The butler gestured for her to enter. The room beyond was much more cluttered than she’d anticipated. The shutters were closed and the shades drawn, and the large desk that dominated the far wall had been set up with tubes, burners, and other scientific-looking apparatus.

Waxillium stood to the side, holding something up with a pair of tongs and studying it intently. He wore a pair of black goggles, and had on a white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. His suit coat lay draped over a chair at the side of the room, bowler hat topping it, leaving him in a diagonally checkered vest of black and gray. The room smelled of smoke and, oddly, sulfur.

“My lord?” the butler said.

Waxillium turned, goggles still on. “Ah! My lady Marasi. Come in, come in. Tillaume, you may leave us.”

“Yes, my lord,” the butler said with a suffering tone.

Marasi stepped into the room, glancing to the side where a large sheet of paper lay on the floor, folded upon itself and covered with cramped writing. Waxillium twisted a dial, and a small metal tube on the desk shot out a thin tongue of intense flame. He briefly held his tongs in the fire, then pulled them back out and dropped their contents into a small ceramic cup. He eyed it, then grabbed a glass tube from a rack on the desk and shook it.

“Here,” he said, holding it up for her to study. There was a clear liquid in it. “Does this look blue to you?”

“Er… no? Should it?”

“Apparently not,” he said. He shook the tube again. “Huh.” He set the tube aside.

She stood silently. It was so hard not to recall the sight of him breaking through the line of tables, gun in hand as he expertly felled two of the men trying to haul her out into the night. Or the sight of him soaring through the air—gunshots exploding up from beneath, the chandeliers shattering and crystal spraying light around him—as he shot a man from midair and dropped to rescue his friend.

She was talking to a legend. And he was wearing a pair of very silly goggles.

Waxillium raised them to his forehead. “I’m trying to figure out what alloy they used in those guns.”

“The aluminum ones?” she asked, curious.

“Yes, but they’re not pure aluminum. They’re something stronger, and the grain is wrong. I’ve never seen this alloy before. And the bullets must be yet another new alloy; I’ll need to test those next. As a side note, I’m not certain if you appreciate the advantages you possess living in the City.”

“Oh, I’d say I’m aware of many of them.”

He grinned. Oddly, he looked younger today than he had on their previous meetings. “I suppose that perhaps you do. I was referring specifically to the ease of shopping you enjoy here.”

“Shopping?”

“Yes, shopping! Marvelous convenience. Out in Weathering, if I wanted a gas burner that could reach the high temperatures required for testing alloys, I had to special-order it and wait for the right railway cars to come. Then I had to hope the equipment arrived without being damaged or broken.