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They both turned around as the bells of the fire brigade sounded from above.

“So…” Wayne said. “Calendar and letters, was it?”

Wax nodded. “Gave has been visiting a place called the lab, though he also left for two weeks for some kind of trajectory test a couple months ago. Disguised as a vacation.”

“Huh,” Wayne said, pointing ahead. “And the lab is this way, you think?”

“Seems likely,” Wax said. He dug in his pocket a moment, then passed the calendar to Wayne.

Who whistled softly. “No appointments after today?”

“I noticed that too.”

“‘They arrive’…” Wayne said, reading.

Wax nodded, giving Wayne a moment with the calendar pages while he pulled out the letters. The light wasn’t great down here, but he could make out enough in the sunlight coming through the grates. Reading the two letters again, one extremely incriminating, the other full of pleasantries. What…

Oh, rusts.“Wayne,” he said, holding up the incriminating letter they’dgotten from the newspaper editor. “This is a forgery.”

“What? Really?” Wayne took it. “How do you know?”

“Before all this started,” Wax said, “I spent a good amount of time onan operation that implicated Vennis Hasting—who supposedly wrote that letter—in a scandal. I proved that he had been bribing other senators. In order to make our case, Steris and I authenticated letters we’dacquired from him. Rusts. I visited three separate handwriting analysts, and they talked specifically about the distinctive turn of Vennis’s strokes. Which aren’t right in this one.” He felt his eyes widen. “That’s what it means…that’swhat she’s doing…”

“Mate,” Wayne said. “You’ve gotta be more clear. ’Cuz I sure ain’t following.”

“My sister,” Wax explained. “She needs a way to seize control of the Basin, and prove to Autonomy she can rule here. I’ve been wondering how blowing up Elendel achieves that.”

“It would remove a whole lot of barriers.”

“Yes, but surely the other cities would never follow someone who committed such an atrocity.” Wax held up the fake letter. “Unless Telsin could claim shedidn’tblow up Elendel. Unless she had proof—in the form of forged letters—that thesenators inside Elendelwere the ones developing the bomb. With the right evidence, she could make it look like they mistakenly blew themselves up.”

“Oooh, that’s devious,” Wayne said. “She can ‘recover’ some of the details of that weapon too, so Bilming will ‘reluctantly’ have access to the technology to protect the Basin from the Malwish. Hell… that would work. Remove Elendel. Unite the Basin. Achieve dominance on the planet.”

A piece locked into place. Even Gave’s letters—the real ones from Vennis Hasting—made sense now. They’dneeded handwriting samples, hence the cordial letters between mayor and senator.

“And the lack of appointments after today?” Wayne asked. “Seems like our deadline’s even tighter than we feared.”

“We need to find this lab,” Wax said, starting along the storm drain again. “And hope the bomb is there.”

Wayne nodded, joining him. Gave had scheduled fifteen minutes on either side of his appointments for travel to the lab—so it wouldn’t be too far.

As they walked, Wax found himself increasingly worried. About what Telsin was doing. About the implications of it all. So he was a little relieved when Wayne broke the silence.

“Sooooo…” Wayne said. “When you were in the mayor’s office… did you notice if he had a nice desk?”

“He had a rather nice one,” Wax said. “Why?”

“Did you…” He nodded back in the direction of the Silver House. “You know…”

“Fart in his chair?”

“Yup.”

“Wayne. OfcourseI didn’t.”

They walked a little farther through the muck, finding a place where kids had obviously snuck down, judging by the graffiti painted on the walls: giant sweeping Terris patterns of V’s.

“Okay,” Wax finally said, unable to let it go despite trying quite forcefully, “whywould you eventhinkthat I would do that to his chair? You explicitly said not to, and beyond that… what the hell? Who does that?”