Eventually the gravekeeper led them to a freshly filled grave tucked away behind a few larger mausoleums. It was unmarked save for the sign of the spear, carved in stone and set into the dirt. Nearby, a few other new graves—these open—awaited corpses.

“You might want to grab a seat,” Dechamp said, hefting his shovel. “This’ll go fast, since the grave is upturned, but not that fast. And you might tell the lady to watch the other way. There’s no tellin’ what bits I might toss up.”

“Grab a seat…” Wayne said, looking around at the field of tombstones. “Where, my good man?”

“Anywhere,” Dechamp said, starting to dig. “They don’t care none. That’s the motto of the gravekeeper, you know. Just remember, they don’t care none…”

And he set to it.

13

I have to accept their rules, Wax thought, crossing the room to the informant. They’re different, no matter what Steris says. But I do know them.

He’d decided to stay in the Basin and do what he could here. He’d seen the dangers on the streets of Elendel, and had worked to fight them. But those were a lesser wound—it was like patching the cut while the rot festered up the arm.

Chasing down the Set’s lesser minions… they probably wanted him doing those things. If he was going to protect the people, he was going to have to gun for more important targets. That meant keeping his temper, and it meant dancing and playing nice. It meant doing all the things his parents, and even his uncle, had tried to teach him.

Wax stopped near the alcove the informant, Devlin, occupied. The man was watching the nearby fish tank, which stood beneath a depiction of Tindwyl, Mother of Terris, perched on the walls during her last stand against the darkness. In the tank, tiny octopuses moved across the glass.

After a moment’s waiting, the informant nodded toward him. Wax approached and rested his arm against the glass of the tank beside Devlin, a short, handsome man with a hint of hair on his upper lip and chin.

“I expected you to be arrogant,” Devlin noted.

“What makes you think that I’m not?”

“You waited,” Devlin said.

“An arrogant man can still be polite,” Wax said.

Devlin smiled. “I suppose he can be, Lord Waxillium.” One of the little octopuses seized a passing fish in its tentacles and dropped from the side of the tank, holding the squirming fish and pulling it up toward its beak.

“They don’t feed them,” Devlin noted, “for a week or so before a party. They like the show they provide.”

“Brutal,” Wax said.

“Lady Kelesina imagines herself the predator,” he said, “and we all her fish, invited in to swim and perhaps be consumed.” Devlin smiled. “Of course, she doesn’t see that she’s in a cage as well.”

“You know something about that cage?” Wax asked.

“It’s the cage we’re all in, Lord Waxillium! This Basin that Harmony created for us. So perfect, so lush. Nobody leaves.”