“If there is war,” she said, “Suit will have started it. Not you.”

“I might be able to prevent it,” Wax said. “Governor Aradel needs to know, MeLaan. If the outer cities are going to claim assassination—use it as the brand to start a bonfire—I can’t just vanish. I have to get to Elendel. That way, I can claim I knew the New Seran justice system was corrupt, and so I fled to safety. I can make my case in the broadsheets before news spreads; I can convince Aradel I didn’t kill the woman. If I do anything else, it will look like I’m hiding.”

“Like I said,” MeLaan said. “He’s set it up so that you have no choice—so far as you see it.”

“You see it differently?”

“I’ve been a lot of people, Ladrian. Seen through a lot of eyes. There’s always another perspective, if you look hard enough.”

He pulled on his cigar and held the smoke a long moment before letting it out in a slow dribble. MeLaan crept away. Did her kind need sleep? She’d implied they didn’t, but he couldn’t say for certain.

Alone with his cigar, he tried to sort through what he wanted to do. Go back to Elendel, as forced upon him by Suit’s minions, or chase after the mystery—as forced upon him by Harmony’s minions. He rolled the earring in his fingers, and confronted the hatred simmering inside of him.

He’d never hated God before. After Lessie’s supposed death the first time, he hadn’t blamed Harmony. Rusts, even after Bleeder had raised the question of why Harmony hadn’t helped, Wax hadn’t responded with hatred.

But now… yes, that hatred was there. You could take knocks, out in the Roughs. You lost friends. You sometimes had to kill a man you didn’t want to kill. But one thing you never did: You never betrayed a companion. Friends were too rare a privilege out in those wilds, where everything seemed to want you dead.

By hiding the truth from him, Harmony had stabbed him square in the back. Wax could forgive a lot of things. He wasn’t sure this was one of them.

His cigar eventually ran out. His questions lingered. By the time he hiked back toward their campsite, the mist was retreating for the night. He fed the horses—six of them, purchased at the New Seran bottom terrace shipping yards, along with a full-sized stagecoach used to do runs to the Southern Roughs.

They’d narrowly escaped New Seran. Galloping their carriage, they’d managed to descend the ramps before the police, but only after Wax had been forced to bring down a gondola line.

The police hadn’t given chase after that, as if realizing they didn’t have the resources to hunt someone like Waxillium Dawnshot, at least not without a lot of backup. Wax still wanted to be moving. Though he was tired to the bones, he couldn’t let himself—or anyone else—rest long. Just in case.

As the others groggily piled into the vehicle, MeLaan took the reins from him and climbed up to the driver’s seat. Wayne hopped into the spotter’s seat beside her, and she gave him a grin.