That symbol. Impossible. FARTHING MANSION HIT, the headline read. He fished out a few clips for the girl. “Farthing Mansion? Where is it?”

“Just up Blossom Way,” the girl said, pointing with her chin and making the coins in his palm disappear.

“Come on,” he said, interrupting Marasi as she started saying something.

People did make way for him, which was convenient. He could have taken to the sky, but he found the mansion without difficulty, partially because of the people crowded outside and pointing. The symbol was painted in red, exactly like the one he’d known back in the Roughs, but this time it marred the wall of a fine, three-story stone mansion instead of a stagecoach.

“Waxillium, for the love of sanity,” Marasi said, catching up to him. “What has gotten into you?”

He pointed at the symbol.

“I recognize that,” Marasi said. “Why would I recognize that?”

“You read the accounts of my time in the Roughs,” Wax said. “It’s in there—that’s the symbol of Ape Manton, one of my old nemeses.”

“Ape Manton!” Marasi said. “Didn’t he—”

“Yes,” Wax said, remembering the nights of torture. “He hunts Allomancers.”

But why would he be here? Wax had put him away, and not just in some minor village. He’d been locked up in True Madil, biggest town in the Northern Roughs, with a jail like a vise. How in Harmony’s True Name had he gotten all the way down to New Seran?

Robbery wouldn’t be the end of Manton’s activities here. He always had a motive behind the thefts, a goal. I have to figure out what he took, and why he—

No.

No, not right now. “Let’s get to the hotel,” Wax said, ripping himself away from the sight of that red symbol.

“Rusts,” Marasi said, hurrying after him. “Could he be involved somehow?”

“With the Set? Not a chance. He hates Allomancers.”

“Enemy of my enemy…”

“Not the Ape,” Wax said. “He wouldn’t take the hand of a Metalborn trying to save him from slipping to his death.”

“So…”

“So he’s not part of this,” Wax said. “We ignore him. I’m here for my uncle.”

Marasi nodded, but seemed disturbed. They passed a Lurcher juggler, dropping balls and tugging them back up into the air—along with the occasional object from among the amused crowd of watchers. A waste of Allomantic abilities. And all these people. Suffocating. He had hoped that in leaving Elendel, he would escape crowded streets. He nearly pulled out his gun and fired a shot to clear them all away.

“Wax…” Marasi said, taking his arm.

“What.”

“What? Rusts, your stare could nail a person’s head to the wall right now!”

“I’m fine,” he said, pulling his arm away from her.

“This vendetta against your uncle is—”

“It’s not a vendetta.” Wax picked up his pace, striding through the crowd, mistcoat tassels flaring behind him. “You know what he’s doing.”

“No, and neither do you,” Marasi said.

“He’s breeding Allomancers,” Wax said. “Maybe Feruchemists. I don’t need to know his exact plan to know how bad that is. What if he’s making an army of Thugs and Coinshots? Twinborn. Compounders.”