The Terriswoman took this off Kelesina, Wax thought, turning it over in his fingers as he remembered the moment earlier, when the murderer had knelt beside Kelesina’s body.

He burned steel, and his hunch proved correct. While he could sense the bracelet, the line was much thinner than it should have been. This was a metalmind, and one heavily Invested with healing power.

“Was Kelesina Terris?”

“How should I know?” MeLaan asked.

He pocketed the bracelet and grabbed the box telegraph device—which he wanted to send to Elendel for inspection—and tossed it to MeLaan. “Bring that, if you don’t mind, and meet us at the hotel. Be ready to leave the city. I doubt we’re staying the night.”

“And you were so certain we’d be out of here without a fight.”

“I never said that. I said it wouldn’t get so bad that I needed Wayne. And it didn’t.”

“A semantic technicality.”

“I’m a nobleman. Might as well learn something from my peers.” He saluted her with the small gun, then dropped off the balcony and used a coin to slow himself. “Steris?”

She crawled from a nearby shrub. “How did it go?”

“Poorly,” Wax said, looking up toward the ceiling, then removing his dinner jacket. “I may have accidentally let them implicate us in Lady Kelesina’s murder.”

“Bother,” Steris said.

“Their evidence will depend on whether they can trace the bullets back to me,” Wax said, “and whether they recover any of my prints from the area. Either way, they’ll be producing fake witnesses to try to make it look like I came down here specifically to assassinate Kelesina. Grab on.”

Steris grabbed him with, he noted, no small amount of eagerness. She really did enjoy this part. He took the bullets from his .22 and held them in one hand, then launched off the coin below to shoot them toward the ceiling. He flung the bullets toward the skylights and Pushed them in a spray to weaken a window, then raised his arm—wrapped in his jacket—over his head and crashed them through the glass and out into the swirling mists.

They landed on the roof as Wax got his bearings. Out in the mists, he felt better almost immediately, and his hand—which had been smarting where the Terriswoman smacked his gun away—stopped throbbing.

“Did you learn anything useful?” Steris asked.

“Not sure,” Wax said. “Most of what I overheard was about a rebellion against Elendel. I know Edwarn is heading somewhere important. He called it the second site? And he said something about what I think is that little cube Marasi found.”

He pulled her tight again, then sent them in a Push upward through the mists in the direction of their hotel. She held to him tightly, but watched the lights of the city beneath with awe.

“He had Kelesina murdered,” Wax said. “I should have seen it. Should have anticipated.”

“At least,” Steris said over the sound of the passing wind, “the mists are out. They’ll have trouble tracking us.”