Waxillium smiled broadly.

“What?” she asked.

“You realize I spent all night coming to those conclusions? You just reached them in all of… what? Ten minutes?”

She sniffed. “I had some modest help from you.”

“It might be said that I had modest help from myself, technically.”

“The voices whispering to you as a result of sleep deprivation do not count, my lord.”

His smile grew, and then he stood. “Come. Tell me what you make of this.”

Curious, she followed him to the front of the room, where she’d noticed the heap of paper. He pulled it straight, revealing a long—perhaps five-foot—piece of paper that was several feet wide. Waxillium knelt on the ground, but she had a harder time, being in skirts. So she just bent down, looking over his shoulder.

“Genealogies?” she asked, surprised. It appeared that he’d traced each of the kidnapped women back to the Origin, starting with their names at the left of the long sheet, then working backward. It didn’t list every relative, but it included the direct ancestors and a few notable names in each generation for each hostage.

“Well?” he asked.

“I’m beginning to suspect that you are an odd man, my lord,” she said. “You spent all night doing this?”

“It did take a great deal of my time, though Wayne’s paper gave me a good head start. Fortunately, my uncle’s library had extensive genealogical resources. It was a hobby of his. But what do you think?”

“That it is a good thing you’re soon to be engaged, for a good wife would have seen that you got your rest, rather than writing all night by candlelight. That’s bad for your eyes, you know.”

“We have electricity,” he said, waving upward. “Besides, I doubt Steris will care about my sleeping habits. It’s not in the contract, you see.” There was a touch of bitterness in his tone—faint, but recognizable.

She’d said most of that to stall him for a few moments so she could read more of the names. “Allomancers,” she said. “You analyzed the family lines for Allomantic powers in their heritage. They all converge on the Lord Mistborn. Didn’t Wayne speak of this?”

“Yes,” he said. “I believe that the one behind all this is looking for Allomancers. He’s building an army. He picks the people he does because he suspects that they’re secretly Allomancers. The fact that they aren’t open about it makes it harder to recognize what he’s doing.”

“But Steris isn’t an Allomancer. I promise it.”

“That worried me for a time,” he said. “But it’s not a large issue. See, he’s picking people he thinks are probably Allomancers, but he’s bound to get it wrong a few times.” Waxillium tapped the paper. “That does make me worry for her. Once the backer discovers that she’s not what he thought she was, she’ll be in greater danger.”

Hence why you stayed up all night, she realized. You think there isn’t time.

All of this, for a woman he obviously didn’t love. It was difficult not to be jealous.