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Wayne eyed him.

“It’s the oddest thing,” Wax said. “Can’t rightly say what causes it. Instinct, I guess.”

“I wear a coachman’s hat,” Wayne grumbled, shaking his hand—which had a handcuff on it. “It’sdifferent.” He took a deep breath, then pointed toward the sky, where Dumad was hiding in the mists. “I need to draw him back down. Shall we?”

Wax nodded, and as the speed bubble dropped they both made for the woman. This drew the Coinshot’s attention, as he couldn’t afford to let his ally be double-teamed. He landed back on the carpet, then released a barrage of Pushed bullets. As he did, Wax tossed Wayne a chunk of metal, then used a careful Push to separate the two of them. The bullets soared through the space between them.

Wax turned back to the woman, as his Push had put him closest to her. She had healed from the hits she’dreceived, but she appeared to be slowing, gasping for breath, covered in sweat. He knew that feeling. He ached in a dozen places, and even the adrenaline from the fight was fading before the exhaustion of an entire day spent racing a deadline.

He raised Vindication, hazekiller round chambered.

“Can you at least tell me why?” he said. “Why are you so fixated on imitating him? This goes further than trying to know your enemy.”

She drew in a ragged breath. “You ever been nothin’, Dawnshot?” Before he could reply, she shook her head. “No. You’ve always been somebody. Had two names. Even when you ran, you still had the money… the knowledge… a life spent knowin’ that you were in charge of yourself. Running away was a luxury for someone like you.” She paused, flipping one of her dueling canes and catching it. “Well, we don’t all have that. Some of us, we take the chances we’re given. And becoming someone we’re not? Well, that’s temptin’.”

Wax kept the gun on her. “Walk away. I don’t know you, but I canpromise you this: They’ve lied to you. Trell, the Set. They’velied.You are somebody. And someone out there misses you.”

She grinned. “They said you’dget into our heads. They said it! But see, I’m smarter than you think. I got into your heads first.”

She came running at him. Wax turned Vindication a fraction of a degree and pulled the trigger—delivering the hazekiller round into her right shoulder. The secondary blast came a moment later.

Ripping her arm clean off.

She lurched to a stop, gaping at the wound. It didn’t heal, as that arm had held the metalmind that stored her healing. She might have another metalmind elsewhere—having several was smart—but if so, he’dforced her to use enough healing to drain it. Because the arm didn’t heal.

The wound was gruesome, but not as bad as one might imagine. Head wounds bled a ton, but if you separated a limb… well, it was awful. Yet there was always less blood than he expected.

She looked to him, almost pleading, but kept running at him. So, with a sigh, he tossed a bullet in the air and delivered it into her head with a surgical Push.

Her body dropped. Wax sighed, feeling wrung out. Now… where had Wayne run off to?

***

The Coinshot raised his hand toward Wayne, preparing to do his trick with the super-Push again.

Wayne braced himself, then got pushed back into a heap, barely raising a speed bubble in time. He glanced up and saw a bullet inching through the air about a finger’s width from the edge of the bubble. He rolled aside as it broke through the barrier, deflecting in the process, and went zipping past him.

Right. Okay. He gritted his teeth and launched forward, dropping the speed bubble and charging the fellow. Not-Wax was expecting this, of course. Wayne had pulled this trick multiple times. The guy flung out some bullets, which Wayne dodged.

Resigned, not-Wax raised a hand to begin grappling Wayne.

Who hit him square in the face with a dueling cane instead, smashing his nose. The man cursed and backed up, bloodied.

“Yeah,” Wayne said, “that’s better. Not so pretty anymore.”

The man howled, raising his gun.

Wayne slapped the free side of the handcuffs down on the man’s wrist. The Coinshot, bleeding from both face and arm, gaped at this. Then, after letting out a howl of rage and frustration, hePushedthem into the air with a powerful force. Exactly as Wayne had hoped, though the force of the launch nearly ripped his arm out of its socket.

He dangled off the fellow, then grabbed on and climbed his body, holding his coat as they shot high, high, high into the air. Up through the mists in an incredible Steelpush, going many times the height Wax could have managed with the same metal. That super-metal—duralumin, it had been called?—was really something.

“You know,” Wayne said over the howling wind, “your problem is that you specialized too much!”

The man grabbed Wayne by the throat, no longer bothering with the guns. They continued to rise, then exploded from the top of the mists into a land bathed in starlight.

“You did everything you could to learn to fight Wax,” Wayne said, “but you didn’t train to defeat me. That says you’ve been too single-minded. You should pick up a hobby or somethin’!”

They finally crested the height of the Push and began to drop. As they hit the mists again, the man shoved Wayne free, leaving him to dangle by the handcuff. With his other hand, not-Wax reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.