It felt calming to realize these things. He’d … finally stopped grieving, hadn’t he?
With a grin of his own, he scooped Max up and gave the child a powerful hug — though Max had been too wiggly, even as a baby, to stand that sort of thing for long. Soon, at the boy’s urging, they were playing a game of fetch, a variety Max had invented a few months back. Max tossed a wicker ball with a tiny metal weight at its center, then Wax tried to launch it onto the top of a nearby building. The wicker would keep it from doing damage if it fell, but the metal let him aim it. Once it was in place on a roof, they would jump over and retrieve it.
Max threw, but Wax struggled to get the ball to go far enough. “Toss it higher,” he suggested to Max once they’d recovered it.
“If I throw it up,” Max complained, “it will come down on our heads. I want to go onto that building over there.”
“Height first,” Wax said. “Trust me. The higher you throw it, the farther I can get it to fly.”
Max tried again. With more height to the throw, Wax was able to land the ball on the rooftop Max wanted. Then they leaped after it. He wondered what the people in the neighboring skyscrapers thought of the frequent sight of a senator shooting past their windows with a child strapped to his back.
Unfortunately, the fun of the game could only distract him for so long. They’d been playing for half an hour when he topped a building and was confronted by an awesome sight. The Malwish ship he’d seen earlier had come closer.
The wooden construction, moved by giant fans, loomed in the air over Elendel. Wax had seen Basin attempts to design their own airships using helium or hot air. But the size of the cabin those ships could lift — in the most optimistic of projections — was nothing compared to what the Malwish could field. Their ship soared, a fortress in the sky.
This was no trade ship as he’d thought earlier. It was a warship. A show of force, though not an overtly hostile one — as it was approaching slowly and low in the sky. It was meant to make a statement, not a threat.
So, with Max strapped securely back into place, Wax launched them into the air toward the vessel, intent on finding out what was going on.
8
Marasi eventually managed to find a service ladder to get her down into the chasm and back up the other side. Worn out, she approached the main chamber, shaken by what she’d heard and been forced to do. But she carried a small book of numbers and shipping dates she’d found on the corpse, and that looked promising.
She also carried something more dangerous. Four spikes. Curiously, the red-spotted one did not like touching the others — it pulled away from them if brought close. So she’d wrapped it in a bundle of cloth and kept them in separate pockets.
She stumbled through the reinforced metal door and found a scene of utter chaos. A large blast had set off several other explosions, judging by the scars on the ground. The cavern was littered with shrapnel, pieces of equipment, and an alarming number of bodies.
Wayne squatted in the center of it all, his clothes ripped, playing cards with a whole group of tied-up gangsters. He had their cards laid out on the floor in front of them — though their hands were tied behind their backs.
“You sure you want to lead with that one, mate?” Wayne asked, nodding at the card one of the men had tapped with his toe.
“It’s the high card,” the fellow said.
“Yeah, but are you sure,” Wayne said, eyeing his own hand.
“Um … I think so.”
“Damn,” Wayne said, laying down his hand. “I play three eights on the back of the nines. You win.”
“But…” another of the men said, “you know our hands … Why would you play it that way?”
“Gotta pretend I can’t see your cards, friends,” Wayne said. “Otherwise, where’s the sport in it? Cheatin’s one thing, but if I can just see what you’re going to do, then … well, might as well be playin’ with myself. And there are much funner ways to do that.”
Marasi stumbled up. He had fifteen of them in various states of captivity. Exactly as he’d said, he’d been able to use his speed bubble to counteract her slowness bubble and grab them one at a time. His control over his powers was increasingly impressive.
She wasn’t surprised he’d taken so many captive — Wayne preferred not to kill. It was something they agreed on. As for the card game, well … at this point his antics barely shocked her. She settled down on the remnant of a broken crate. “Wayne, I could have used your help.”
“By the time I had these chaps all trussed up,” Wayne said, “you already had that fellow in the suit down. I saw you restin’, and it seemed best to give you some time.”
She hadn’t even noticed. Rusts, her shoulder still hurt. She grimaced, looking around the room.
“So, uh,” Wayne said, “damn. Did you turn to cannibalism or something?”
Marasi looked down at her uniform, which was covered in blood. “Cannibalism? That’s where your mind went?”
“One sees a lady covered in blood,” Wayne said, “and it goes to a natural place: wonderin’ if maybe she feasts on the livers of the people what she defeated. Not that I’m judging.”
“Not judging?” Marasi said. “Wayne, that’s absolutely something you should judge someone for.”
“Right. Shame on you, then.”
She sighed. “Here I was thinking that I was finally used to your Wayne-ness.” She proffered the spikes, each six inches long with a thick head — save for the smallest, most interesting one, which was narrow and thin, barely four inches long. “I dug these out of the Cycle’s body. He would have come back to life, healing himself, if I’d left them in.”
“How?” he said. “It don’t work that way.”
“Did for him. This other spike might be why.”
“Is that…”
“Trellium?” she said. “Yes. It has to be.”
Wayne whistled softly. “We should celebrate. You save any liver for me?”
She gave him a flat stare, at which he just grinned. “We don’t eat people,” she said to the captives. “He’s just joking.”
“Aw, Marasi,” Wayne said. “I’ve been workin’ on my reputation with these blokes.”
“We broke into their cavern,” she said, “defeated their leader, blew up most of their goods, killed half of them and captured the rest. I think your reputation is fine.” She narrowed her eyes, noticing that all of the captives were barefoot. “Dare I ask why you took off their shoes?”
“Shoelaces,” Wayne said, and she glanced at their bound hands. “Old Roughs trick when you don’t have enough rope.” He nodded to the side, and the two of them stepped away to talk in private. “That’s a lot of captives, Marasi, and shoelaces aren’t going to hold them real well. Any moment now, one of them will pop out a knife I missed — or worse, a gun. So…”
“Instant Backup?” she asked.
“Rusts, I love that code name.”
“As long as it gets me to a bath sooner, I’m for it. There should be a way up to the city through the door I used — and there’s a ladder to the right, inside the chasm.” She paused. “Check on the body for me? I have this terrible premonition that I missed a spike and he’ll come looking for me.”
“Got it,” Wayne said. He surveyed the room. “Nice work.”
“We blew the place up and killed the guy who had the most information.”