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“You ready for this?” Wax asked.

“Let’s do it,” Wayne replied.

59

Armal and her nervous little collection of townspeople insisted on taking Marasi together. They hurried along a “back road” of Wayfarer—a path lined with fake trees, simulating a park.

It worked. The Set’s “tranquility officers” started a door-to-door search behind them—along the main road—but had to maintain the illusion of being a friendly neighborhood watch. This promenade gave Marasi cover, letting her slip past.

Entrone’s home—constructed over the last year—was so large that she sensed resentment from the others. He should have been smart enough to keep it modest; he likely didn’t spend much time in it. But the man’s ego apparently demanded something ostentatious—including a third floor with large picture windows on all sides. As they approached, Marasi decided it was probably just another observation center. Maybe with a few false rooms at the front to keep up appearances.

“All right,” Marasi said to Armal and the others, “think about what I’ve said. Please.”

They huddled among the fake trees and bushes. Rusts. Marasi wasn’t certain they’dbe of much help. All the same, she hurried to the building—which was on a small stone hill.

She was spotted by people gathering outside their townhomes, in deliberate defiance of Entrone’s orders. Some pointed. Well, the time for sneaking was gone anyway. Feeling alone, Marasi used Moonlight’spicks to undo the lock on the mansion’s back door, then slipped in. She passed through a kitchen that seemed a little too clean and quickly found another door, held shut with several deadbolts. Right, then. She wasn’t getting through that with picks.

She took a deep breath. There was so much that could go wrong with her plan. But she was out of resources and out of time; once in a while you just had to do things Wayne’s way.

She attached one of Moonlight’s explosives to the door, took cover behind a cabinet, then blasted the thing off. A second later she burst through the smoking doorway, pistol ready. The two people in here had ducked to the floor at the explosion, though the small charge—intended for this kind of use—hadn’t done much damage to the room. They had been monitoring some radio equipment. A closed door on the other side of the room led farther into the building, and a strange glowing light came from beneath it.

“Down,” Marasi said, her gun trained on the radio operators. The two didn’t look armed, and they hastened to comply.

Radio equipment.Marasi crossed the room, hauled the woman to her feet, then gestured to the equipment. “This broadcasts to the town? Through these microphones?”

“Y-yes,” the woman said.

“Turn them on,” Marasi ordered.

The woman hurriedly flicked some switches. Then Marasi sent the two technicians outside and trapped them in a slowness bubble from a charged grenade. She didn’t have time to do more.

When she returned to the radio room, the door on the far end had opened and people were entering to see what the ruckus was about. And rusts, one of them was Entrone himself, appearing weary, bags under his eyes, wan complexion making him look like a corpse dressed for a funeral in his fine suit and formal hat.

The room behind him glowed with a white light. Marasi glimpsed a large chamber with a white floor—the source of the light—but she didn’t have time to study it now. Instead she leveled her gun at Entrone, but his bodyguards immediately stepped in front of him.

“I told you, gentlemen,” Entrone said from behind them. “The rat we’ve been hunting doesn’t hide in the dark. Wait long enough, and it will come to you.”

“By the authority of the Elendel Constabulary,” Marasi said, “I order you to lay down arms and metals, then submit to arrest.”

Entrone sighed in a long-suffering way, like a man who had just been given a bedtime ultimatum by his three-year-old. So Marasi fired. She dropped one of the bodyguards, but the other returned fire.

Marasi ducked back into the kitchen, narrowly avoiding the shots. “Think about this, Entrone!” Marasi called into the room. “Are you really prepared to kill so many? Can anything beworthsuch a terrible act?”

He didn’t respond. Rusts. She’dhoped to get him talking. She exchanged a few more shots with the remaining bodyguard, then reloaded.

As she did, she heard footsteps. Dodging back by reflex, she narrowly escaped getting caught in a slowness bubble. Not made by her, but one that had extended through the wall. She could pick it out by the faint shimmering of the air.

She peeked through and saw the bodyguard frozen in a slowness bubble just inside the doorway. Entrone was safely beyond it. But how…?

That bodyguard shares my Allomantic power,she realized.He was trying to catch me in the bubble, but put it up a hair too slowly.If she hadn’t dodged, she’dbe trapped in that bubble with him while time sped up around them. Giving Entrone plenty of time to get reinforcements.

It was a tactic she had employed herself on several occasions. It chilled her to realize she’dnearly been caught in it. The slowness bubble took up a chunk of the kitchen and most of the doorway into the radio room.

Entrone paced, separated from her by that slowed time. Gunfire would be useless; they could only glare at one another. She didn’t have a good angle to see into the room beyond him, but that glow… it reminded her of something.

Entrone settled down in a nearby chair.

“Why, Entrone?” Marasi asked. “Why lock all these people away like this? Why pretend the world has ended?” With that corner of the doorway not caught in the bubble, her voice should be able to reach him. Unfortunately, he refused to take the bait, instead simply leaning back in his chair.