Shadows of Self (4 page)

The first one to approach him was Dowser, who ran most of the smuggling operations into the Fifth Octant. The three days of scrub on his cheeks was shadowed by a bowler that, conspicuously, he had not left in the cloakroom. A pretty woman on his arm and a sharp suit did little to clean up a man like Dowser. Winsting wrinkled his nose. Most everyone in the room was a despicable piece of trash, but the others had the decency not to
look
like it.

“It’s ugly as sin,” Dowser said, looking over the painting. “I can’t believe this is what you’re having us ‘bid’ on. A little cheeky, isn’t it?”

“And you’d rather I was completely forthright, Mister Dowser?” Winsting said. “You’d have me proclaim it far and wide? ‘Pay me, and in exchange you get my vote in the Senate for the next year’?”

Dowser glanced to the sides, as if expecting the constables to burst into the room at any moment.

Winsting smiled. “You’ll notice the shades of grey on her cheeks. A representation of the ashen nature of life in a pre-Catacendric world, hmmm? My finest work yet. Do you have an offer? To get the bidding started?”

Dowser said nothing. He would eventually make a bid. Each person in this room had spent weeks posturing before agreeing to this meeting. Half were crime lords like Dowser. The others were Winsting’s own counterparts, high lords and ladies from prominent noble houses, though no less corrupt than the crime lords.

“Aren’t you frightened, Winsting?” asked the woman on Dowser’s arm.

Winsting frowned. He didn’t recognize her. Slender, with short golden hair and a doe-eyed expression, she was uncommonly tall.

“Frightened, my dear?” Winsting asked. “Of the people in this room?”

“No,” she said. “That your brother will find out … what you do.”

“I assure you,” Winsting said. “Replar knows exactly what I am.”

“The governor’s own brother,” the woman said. “Asking for bribes.”

“If that truly surprises you, my dear,” Winsting said, “then you have lived too sheltered a life. Far bigger fish than I have been sold on this market. When the next catch arrives, perhaps you will see.”

That comment caught Dowser’s attention. Winsting smiled as he saw the gears clicking behind Dowser’s eyes.
Yes,
Winsting thought,
I did just imply that my brother himself might be open to your bribery.
Perhaps that would up the man’s offer.

Winsting moved over to select some shrimp and quiche from a server’s tray. “The woman with Dowser is a spy,” Winsting said softly to Flog, who was always at his elbow. “Perhaps in constabulary employ.”

Flog started. “My lord! We checked and double-checked each person attending.”

“Well you missed one,” Winsting whispered. “I’d bet my fortune on it. Follow her after the meeting. If she splits from Dowser for any reason, see that she meets with an accident.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And Flog,” Winsting said, “do be straightforward about it. I won’t have you trying to find a place where the mists won’t be watching. Understand?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Excellent,” Winsting said, smiling broadly as he strolled over to Lord Hughes Entrone, cousin and confidant to the head of House Entrone.

Winsting spent an hour mingling, and slowly the bids started to come in. Some of the attendees were reluctant. They would rather have met him one-on-one, making their covert offers, then slipping back into Elendel’s underbelly. Crime lords and nobles alike, these all preferred to dance around a topic, not discuss it openly. But they did bid, and bid well. By the end of his first circuit of the room, Winsting had to forcibly contain his excitement. No longer would he have to limit his spending. If his brother could—

The gunshot was so unexpected, he at first assumed that one of the servers had broken something. But no. That crack was so sharp, so earsplitting. He’d never heard a gun fired indoors before; he hadn’t known just how stunning it could be.

He gaped, the drink tumbling from his fingers as he tried to find the source of the shot. Another followed, then another. It became a storm, various sides firing at one another in a cacophony of death.

Before he could cry for help, Flog had him by the arm, towing him toward the stairs down to the saferoom. One of his other bodyguards stumbled against the doorway, looking with wide eyes at the blood on his shirt. Winsting stared for too long at the dying man before Flog was able to tear him away and shove him into the stairwell.

“What’s happening?” Winsting finally demanded as a guard slammed the door behind them and locked it. The bodyguards hurried him down the dim stairway, which was weakly lit by periodic electric lights. “Who fired? What
happened
?”

“No way of knowing,” Flog said. Gunfire still sounded above. “Happened too fast.”

“Someone just started firing,” another guard said. “Might have been Dowser.”

“No, it was Darm,” another said. “I heard the first shot from his group.”

Either way, it was a disaster. Winsting saw his fortune dying a bloody death on the floor above them, and he felt sick as they finally reached the bottom of the stairs and a vaultlike door, which Flog pushed him through.

“I’m going to go back up,” Flog said, “see what I can salvage. Find out who caused this.”

Winsting nodded and shut the door, locking it from the inside. He settled into a chair to wait, fretting. The small bunker of a room had wine and other amenities, but he couldn’t be bothered. He wrung his hands. What would his brother say? Rusts! What would the papers say? He’d have to keep this quiet somehow.

Eventually a knock came at the door, and Winsting glanced through the peephole to see Flog. Behind him, a small force of bodyguards watched the stairwell. It seemed the gunfire had stopped, though from down here it had sounded only like faint popping.

Winsting opened the door. “Well?”

“They’re all dead.”

“
All
of them?”

“Every last one,” Flog said, walking into the room.

Winsting sat heavily in his chair. “Maybe that’s good,” he said, searching for some glimmer of light in this dark disaster. “Nobody can implicate us. Maybe we can just slip away. Cover our tracks somehow?”

A daunting task. He owned this building. He’d be connected to these deaths. He’d need an alibi. Hell, he was going to
have
to go to his brother. This could cost him his seat, even if the general public never discovered what had happened. He slumped in his chair, frustrated. “Well?” he demanded. “What do you think?”

In response, a pair of hands grabbed Winsting by the hair, pulled his head back, and efficiently slit his exposed throat.

2

I
figure I should write one of these things,
the small book read.
To tell my side. Not the side the historians will tell for me. I doubt they’ll get it right. I don’t know that I’d like them to anyhow.

Wax tapped the book with the end of his pencil, then scribbled down a note to himself on a loose sheet.

“I’m thinking of inviting the Boris brothers to the wedding,” Steris said from the couch opposite the one Wax sat upon.

He grunted, still reading.

I know Saze doesn’t approve of what I’ve done,
the book continued.
But what did he expect me to do? Knowing what I know …

“The Boris brothers,” Steris continued. “They’re acquaintances of yours, aren’t they?”

“I shot their father,” Wax said, not looking up. “Twice.”

I couldn’t let it die,
the book read.
It’s not right. Hemalurgy is good now, I figure. Saze is both sides now, right? Ruin isn’t around anymore.

“Are they likely to try to kill you?” Steris asked.

“Boris Junior swore to drink my blood,” Wax said. “Boris the Third—and yes, he’s the brother of Boris Junior; don’t ask—swore to … what was it? Eat my toes? He’s not a clever man.”

We can use it. We should. Shouldn’t we?

“I’ll just put them on the list, then,” Steris said.

Wax sighed, looking up from the book. “You’re going to invite my mortal enemies,” he said dryly, “to our wedding.”

“We have to invite
someone
,” Steris said. She sat with her blonde hair up in a bun, her stacks of papers for the wedding arrangements settled around her like subjects at court. Her blue flowered dress was fashionable without being the least bit daring, and her prim hat clung to her hair so tightly it might as well have been nailed in place.

“I’m certain there are better choices for invitations than people who want me dead,” Wax said. “I hear family members are traditional.”

“As a point of fact,” Steris said, “I believe your remaining family members actually do want you dead.”

She had him there. “Well, yours don’t. Not that I’ve heard anyway. If you need to fill out the wedding party, invite more of them.”

“I’ve invited all of my family as would be proper,” Steris said. “And all of my acquaintances that merit the regard.” She reached to the side, taking out a sheet of paper. “You, however, have given me only
two
names of people to invite. Wayne and a woman named Ranette—who, you noted,
probably
wouldn’t try to shoot you at your own wedding.”

“Very unlikely,” Wax agreed. “She hasn’t tried to kill me in years. Not seriously, at least.”

Steris sighed, setting down the sheet.

“Steris…” Wax said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be flippant. Ranette will be fine. We joke about her, but she’s a good friend. She won’t ruin the wedding. I promise.”

“Then who will?”

“Excuse me?”

“I have known you for an entire year now, Lord Waxillium,” Steris said. “I can accept you for who you are, but I am under no illusions.
Something
will happen at our wedding. A villain will burst in, guns firing. Or we’ll discover explosives in the altar. Or Father Bin will inexplicably turn out to be an old enemy and attempt to murder you instead of performing the ceremony. It
will
happen. I’m merely trying to prepare for it.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Wax asked, smiling. “You’re actually thinking of inviting one of my enemies so you can
plan
for a disruption.”

“I’ve sorted them by threat level and ease of access,” Steris said, shuffling through her papers.

“Wait,” Wax said, rising and walking over. He leaned down next to her, looking over her shoulder at her papers. Each sheet contained a detailed biography. “Ape Manton … The Dashir boys … Rusts! Rick Stranger. I’d forgotten about him. Where did you get these?”

“Your exploits are a matter of public record,” Steris said. “One that is of increasing interest to society.”

“How long did you spend on this?” Wax asked, flipping through the pages in the stack.

“I wanted to be thorough. This sort of thing helps me think. Besides, I wanted to know what you had spent your life doing.”

That was actually kind of sweet. In a bizarre, Steris sort of way.

“Invite Douglas Venture,” he said. “He’s kind of a friend, but he can’t hold his liquor. You can count on him making a disturbance at the after-party.”

“Excellent,” Steris said. “And the other thirty-seven seats in your section?”

“Invite leaders among the seamstresses and forgeworkers of my house,” Wax said. “And the constables-general of the various octants. It will be a nice gesture.”

“Very well.”

“If you want me to help more with the wedding planning—”

“No, the formal request to perform the ceremony that you sent to Father Bin was the only task required of you by protocol. Otherwise I can handle it; this is the perfect sort of thing to occupy me. That said, someday I
would
like to know what is in that little book you peruse so often.”

“I—”

The front door to the mansion slammed open down below, and booted feet thumped up the steps. A moment later, the door to the study burst open and Wayne all but tumbled in. Darriance—the house butler—stood apologetically just behind him.

Wiry and of medium height, Wayne had a round clean-shaven face and—as usual—wore his old Roughs clothing, though Steris had pointedly supplied him with new clothing on at least three occasions.

“Wayne, you could try the doorbell sometime,” Wax said.

“Nah, that warns the butler,” Wayne said.

“Which
is
kind of the point.”

“Beady little buggers,” Wayne said, shutting the door on Darriance. “Can’t trust them. Look, Wax. We’ve got to go! The Marksman has made his move!”

Finally!
Wax thought. “Let me grab my coat.”

Wayne glanced toward Steris. “’Ello, Crazy,” he said, nodding to her.

“Hello, Idiot,” she said, nodding back.

Wax buckled on his gunbelt over his fine city suit, with vest and cravat, then threw on his mistcoat duster. “Let’s go,” he said, checking his ammunition.

Wayne pushed his way out the door and barreled down the stairs. Wax paused by Steris’s couch. “I…”

“A man must have his hobbies,” she said, raising another sheet of paper and inspecting it. “I accept yours, Lord Waxillium—but
do
try to avoid being shot in the face, as we have wedding portraits to sit for this evening.”