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Wax moved the small bead of harmonium—suspended in a vial of oil—toward the trellium. It again rolled away.

“Curious,” Wax said. Then, on a hunch, he burned a little steel inside of him.

The trellium spike rolled away from him again. “I didn’t Push,” he said. “It responded to meburningsteel.”

“That’s a result!” Steris said, scribbling furiously. “Wax, that’s actuallyuseful.”

And… yes, it was, wasn’t it? A way to test if someone was burning their metals? Seekers could do that, but having a mechanical way to accomplish it…

“Oh!” Marasi said. “I should have mentioned. That spike had a similar reaction to the other spikes I harvested.”

“It’s like Allomancy,” Steris said. “Like the trellium spike isusingAllomancy to Push.”

“No,” Wax said. “It’s more like magnetism. The trellium spike responds to other sources of Investiture in the way one magnet responds to another one.”

“It wants to stay apart from them,” Steris said.

“More like it has the same charge,” Wax said. “I doubt that it ‘wants’ anything.” Though, as this was part of a god, who knew? Particularly since, so far as he was aware, other Invested items with a similar charge didn’t repel one another.

A little experimenting showed him that the two metals—harmonium and trellium—repelled each other with increasing strength the more he tried to push them together. Again, like magnets. The response to harmonium was stronger than the response to him burning his metals.

Wax consulted a large chart on the wall; it displayed an extrapolation from a notebook that Death had given Marasi. Once upon a time, that event had been one of the most surreal Wax had ever heard described. These days it seemed almost commonplace.

The book detailed how to use Hemalurgy. He’dstudied the notes in depth, and had created a chart of all the points on the body where spikes could be placed. A detailed list of the ways they worked, requiring linchpin spikes to coordinate and keep the network functioning.

The Set was experimenting further with Hemalurgy. And his sister, Telsin, was out there somewhere, high up in the leadership of the Set. Seven years ago, he’dthought she’dbeen kidnapped… but he should have seen. Telsin’s incredible ambition fit perfectly with the Set’s goals.

It had led her to spiking herself. Pinning pieces of souls to her own. It nauseated him to think of the people murdered for that purpose—to realize what Telsin and the Set were doing. In his fingers, he held not only a relic from a long-forgotten god; he held a tattered symbol of his sister’s rejected humanity.

Rusts. He really was going to have to talk to Harmony, wasn’t he? As little as Wax liked it, he was a part of this. He needed to finish what he’dbegun all those years ago, when he’dfled Elendel—leaving his house to the machinations of his sister and uncle.

Footsteps on the stairs announced Allik, arriving with refreshments. Wax wasn’t certain if the former airman did that so assiduously because he thought of this mansion as his home and wanted to entertain, or if he just enjoyed having people around to try his baking. Nevertheless, the sight of him—mask up, grinning widely and bearing two plates of chocolate biscuits—did lighten Wax’s mood.

“You are being careful,” Allik said to Wax, “never to put too much ettmetal in one place, yah?”

“I don’t think I have enough to worry about.”

“Still, always good to remember,” Allik said. “One of the basic rules of handling it.”

They had all kinds of odd rules about the metal, and Wax had trouble separating the superstitions from the science. Supposedly, you couldn’t put a large concentration of ettmetal in one place, otherwise it caused strange reactions—though Allik didn’t know specifics.

The perky Southerner marched up to Marasi with his offerings and held them out.

“Oh!” Marasi said, snatching a biscuit. “My favorite.”

Wax took one too. He was accustomed to biscuits that could block a bullet in a pinch. It was the Basin way. Yet these were moist, even gooey. It was odd, but not unwelcome.

Marasi in particular seemed to be infatuated by the way Allik put sweetened chocolate in everything. “They’re best when warm,” she said, munching as Allik sat across from her. Waxhadwiped off that lab table, hadn’t he? “You know, you look more handsome when I’m eating choc. How curious.”

“You just say that,” Allik replied, “because you want me to make more.”

“Ofcoursethat’s why I say it,” she replied, seizing a second biscuit.

Wax sat back on his stool, enjoying his biscuit, thinking about the metals laid out on the table in front of him. Harmonium and trellium. They repelled each other. More and more violently, the closer together they were…

I wonder…

He gathered up the materials and was setting up a new experiment in the safe box as another set of footsteps started down the steps. This made them all pause. Wax carefully slipped some bullets from his pouch, ready to Push them. Though when the door opened, it revealed a prim man in a brown suit. He had stark blond hair—perfectly styled—and spectacles with wire frames. The type of person whose entire bearing screamed, “I fact-check people’s jokes.”