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Right in the back,Wax thought, turning around.

He didn’t respond immediately. You wanted to aim return fire carefully. He’dmade these arguments before—mostly in private—to many of the senators in this room. He was making headway, but he needed more time. With these letters, he could return to each senator, the ones on the fence, and share the words. The ideas. Persuade.

His gut said that if the vote happened today, the bill would pass. So, he hadn’t come here to repeat his arguments. He’dcome with a bullet loaded in the chamber, ready to fire.

He folded up the letters and tucked them snugly into his pocket. Then he took the smaller stack—two sheets—from his other pocket. The onesthat Steris had brought spares of in case he forgot. She’dprobably made copies of the other stack too. And seven other things she knew he wouldn’t need—but it made her feel better to have them in her bag just in case. Rusts, that woman was delightful.

Wax held up the sheets and made a show of getting just the right light to read. “‘Dear Melstrom,’” he read out loud, “‘we are pleased by your willingness to see reason and continue to enforce Elendel trade superiority in the Basin. This is a wise choice. We will deliver half a percent of our shipping revenues for the next three years in exchange for your personal support of this bill. From Houses Hasting and Erikell.’”

The room erupted into chaos. Wax settled in, hooking his finger into his gunbelt, waiting for the cries of outrage to run their course. He met Melstrom’s eyes as the man sank back into his seat. The rusting idiot had just learned an important lesson: Don’t leave a paper trail detailing your corruption when your political opponent is a trained detective. Idiot.

As the shouts finally died down, Wax spoke again, louder this time. “Idemandwe hold impropriety hearings to investigate Senator Melstrom’s apparent sale of his vote inblatantviolation of anti-corruption laws.”

“And by so doing,” the governor said, “delay the Elendel Supremacy Bill vote?”

“How could we vote on it,” Wax said, “if we aren’t sure the votes are being cast in good faith?”

More outrage. Wax weathered it as the governor consulted with his vice governor. She was a smart one. Anything Varlance accomplished that didn’t involve cutting a ribbon or kissing a baby was probably her doing.

As the chamber calmed, the governor looked to Wax. “I trust you have proof of this letter’s authenticity, Ladrian.”

“I have affidavits from three separate handwriting experts to prove it’s not a forgery,” Wax said. “And you’ll find my wife’s detailed account of the letter’s acquisition exhaustive and unimpugnable.”

“Then I suggest impropriety hearings follow,” the governor said. “Afterthe vote on the Supremacy Bill.”

“But—” Wax said.

“We will,” the governor interrupted, “require Melstrom, Hasting, and Erikell to sit out the vote.Assuringthat the vote is not corrupted.”

Damn.

Damn, damn,damn.

Before he could counter that, the vice governor slammed her gavel. “Votes in favor of continuing?”

Most of the hands on the Senate floor went up. For a simple vote like this, a more straw poll method would do—unless the vote turned out to be very close. It wasn’t.

The real vote, on the bill, would proceed.

“Have you any more explosions to detonate, Ladrian?” the governor said. “Or can we get on with this?”

“No more explosions, Your Honor,” Wax said with a sigh. “They were my old partner’s specialty anyway. Instead, I have a final plea to the chamber.” His maneuver had failed. Now he had one last card to play. A request not from Waxillium Ladrian.

But one from Dawnshot, the lawman.

“You all know me,” he said, turning around in a circle, meeting their eyes. “I’m a simple man from the Roughs. I don’t do politics right, but Idounderstand angry people and the hard lives of working women and men.

“If we’re going to take the role of parent, we should treat our children well. Give them a chance to speak for themselves. If we keep pretending they’re toddlers, they’re merely going to start ignoring us—at best. You want to send a message? Send the message that we care and are willing to listen.”

He took his seat finally, next to Yancey Yaceczko, a good-natured and patient fellow—and one of the senators who’dactually listened to Wax.

“Good show, Wax,” the man whispered, leaning in. “Good show indeed. It’s always a pleasure.”

Yancey would vote with him. In fact, a decent number of the nobles empathized with Wax. While a lot of the things Marasi had been saying recently made Wax uncomfortable about his hereditary position, in this instance the lords might turn out to beslightlyless corrupt than their counterparts. The elected senators had to retain their seats, and voting for this bill was likely to improve the lives of their constituents.

That was the problem. According to the latest census, more people now livedoutsidethe city thaninsideit. Most of the laws dated back to when there had been one city and a bunch of farming villages. Now that those villages had grown up into cities, their people wanted a stronger voice in Basin politics.

Elendel was no longer a scrappy settlement rebuilding after an apocalypse. They were a nation; even the Roughs were changing, growing, being modernized. Rusts, with all the land in the Roughs, he could imagine a time when more people lived there than in the Basin proper.