The floorboards were warped and there were nails sticking out in places. She had images of prying one up and finding some stash of hidden clues, but as she felt across the floor, she realized she could see between the boards to the floor below. There wasn’t really any space for hiding things.

Wayne poked through some cupboards built into the wall, checking for explosives, then knocking for hidden compartments. Marasi looked around, but quickly determined that there wasn’t anything to find here. Other than, perhaps, the explosives.

Explosives.

“Wayne, what kind of explosives are those?”

“Hum? Oh, ordinary stuff. They call it dynamite, used for blowing holes in rock out in the Roughs. Pretty easy to get, even in the city. These are smaller sticks than I’ve seen, but basically the same stuff.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Were they in anything?”

He hesitated, then looked back at the trunk. “Huh.” He reached in and held up something. “They weren’t in anything, but someone used this to prop up the fuse and the detonator.”

“What is it?” she asked, hurrying over.

“Cigar box,” he said, letting her see it. “Citizen Magistrates. Expensive brand. Very expensive.”

She looked over the box. The top was painted gold and red, with the brand splayed across in large letters. There weren’t any cigars left, though it did look like some numbers had been scribbled across the inside of the lid in pencil. The sequence didn’t make any sense to her.

“We’ll show it to Wax,” Wayne said. “This is just the sort of thing he likes. It’ll probably lead him to some grand theory about how our boss smokes cigars, and that’ll somehow let him pick the guy out of a crowd. He’s always doing stuff like that, ever since we started working together.” Wayne smiled, taking the cigar box back, then returned to poking around the cupboards.

“Wayne,” Marasi said. “How did you end up with Waxillium, anyway?”

“That wasn’t in your reports?” he asked, knocking at the side of a cupboard.

“No. It’s considered a bit of a mystery.”

“We don’t talk about it much,” Wayne said, voice muffled, head inside the cupboard. “He saved my life.”

She smiled, sitting down on the floor, resting her back against the wall. “That’s probably a good story.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said, pulling his head out. “I was to be hanged over in Far Dorest, by the lawkeeper there.”

“Wrongfully, I assume?”

“Depends on your definition of that particular word and all,” Wayne said. “I shot a man. Innocent one.”

“Was it an accident?”

“Yeah,” Wayne said. “I only meant to rob him.” He paused, looking at the cupboard, seeming distant. He shook his head, then crawled inside, pushing hard and breaking in the back wall.

That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. She sat back, hands around her legs. “You were a criminal?”

“Not a very capable one,” Wayne said from inside the cupboard. “I’ve always had a problem not taking things. I just grab stuff, you know? And then it’s there, in my fingers. Anyway, I was getting good at it, and I had some friends… they convinced me that I should go a little farther. Really take hold of my destiny, they said. Start going for coin, get into robbing with guns and the like. So I tried it out. Left a man dead. Father of three.”