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He pulled a small folded stack of papers from his pocket. “Right here.”

“Third piece of evidence?”

Wax checked another pocket, then paused, looking around the small office—his senator’s chamber in the House of Proceedings. Had he left them… “On the desk back home,” he said, smacking his head.

“I brought a spare,” Steris said, digging in her bag.

Wax grinned. “Of course you did.”

“Two, actually,” Steris said, handing over a sheet of paper, which he tucked away. Then she consulted her list again.

Little Maxillium stepped up beside his mother, looking very serious as he scanned his own list of scribbles. At five years old he knew his letters, but preferred to make up his own.

“Dog picture,” Max said, as if reading from his list.

“I might need one of those,” Wax said. “Quite useful.”

Max solemnly presented it, then said, “Cat picture.”

“Need one of those too.”

“I’m bad at cats,” Max said, handing him another sheet. “So it looks like a squirrel.”

Wax hugged his son, then put the sheets away reverently with the others. The boy’s sister—Tindwyl, as Steris liked traditional names—babbled in the corner, where Kath, the governess, was watching her.

Finally, Steris handed him his pistols one at a time. Long-barreled and weighty, they had been designed by Ranette to look menacing—but they had two safeties and were unloaded. It had been a while since he’dneeded to shoot anyone, but he continued to make good use of his reputation as the “Lawman Senator of the Roughs.” City folk, particularly politicians, were intimidated by small arms. They preferred to kill people with more modern weapons, like poverty and despair.

“Is a kiss for my wife on that list?” Wax asked.

“Actually, no,” she said, surprised.

“A rare oversight,” he said, then gave her a lingering kiss. “You should be the one going out there today, Steris. You did more preparation than I.”

“You’re the house lord.”

“I could appoint you as a representative to speak for us.”

“Please, no,” she said. “You know how I am with people.”

“You’re good with therightpeople.”

“And are politicians ever right about anything?”

“I hope so,” he said, straightening his suit coat and turning toward the door. “Since I am one.”

He pushed out of his chambers and walked down to the Senate floor. Steris would watch from her seat in the observation balcony—by now, everyone knew how particular she was about getting the same one.

As Wax stepped into the vast chamber—which buzzed with activity as senators returned from the short recess—he didn’t go to his seat. Over the last few days, senators had debated the current bill, and his was the last speech in line. He had secured this spot with many promises and much trading, as he hoped it would give his arguments the advantage, give him the best chance to avert a terrible decision.

He stood to one side of the speakers’ platform and waited for everyone to sit, his thumb hooked into his gunbelt, looming. You learned to put on a good loom in the Roughs when interrogating prisoners—and he was still shocked by how many of those skills worked here.

Governor Varlance didn’t look at him. Instead the man adjusted hiscravat, then checked his face powder—ghostly pale skin was fashionable these days, for some arcane reason. Then he laid out his medals on the desk, one at a time.

Rusts, I miss Aradel,Wax thought. It had been novel to have a competent governor. Like… eating hotel food and finding it wasn’t awful, or spending time with Wayne and then discovering you still had a pocket watch.

However, the governor’s job was the type that chewed up the good people but let the bad ones float blissfully along. Aradel had stepped down two years back. And ithadmade sense to choose a military man as the next governor, considering the tensions with the Southern Continent. Many people among the newly discovered countries there—with their airships and strange masks—were upset about how things had gone down six years ago. Specifically, that the Elendel Basin had kept the Bands of Mourning.

Right now, Elendel faced two primary problems. The first was the people on the Southern Continent, the foremost nation of which was known as the Malwish. They made constant noise about how small and weak the Basin was. Aggressive, militaristic posturing. Varlance had been a hedge against that, though Waxdidquestion where he had earned all those medals. So far as Wax knew, the newly formed army hadn’t seen any actual engagements.