Difference between revisions of "Summary:Shadows of Self"

* [[Dowser Maline]]

[[Winsting Innate]] prepares to auction off his senate vote to various crime lords and nobles in [[Elendel]]. The ostensible item for sale is his latest painting. After an introductory speech, he begins to mingle. His bodyguard [[Flog]] follows nearby. Winsting is quite disappointed that [[Edwarn Ladrian]] is not there. He is approached first by a smuggler named [[Dowser Maline]], who is accompanied by a tall, slender [[Paalm|woman]] with short golden hair. After the conversation, Winsting identifies the woman as a spy--possibly from the constabulary--to his bodyguard Flog and orders her watched. He continues to mingle for the next hour, but then a gunshot rings out, with several more quickly following from different parts of the room. Flog drags him out and takes him to his saferoom. No one is certain who started the gunfight, but Flog decides to go back up to the room to investigate. Winsting locks the door from the inside after he leaves. Eventually Flog returns, and Winsting lets him in. He tells them that everyone upstairs is dead. As Winsting considers what to do, someone grabs his hair and slits his throat.

Wax arrives at a Pathian church with a mob outside. He shows himself with [[Vindication]] drawn, and the group scatters, although one person stays hidden nearby. He tells the Pathian missionary what happened to Father Bin. He suggests she flee to the Village and get her colleagues to go with her. He then seeks out person hiding, who reveals that the trouble started when two people dressed in Pathian robes came into a pub and started cursing the Survivor. Wax next goes to [[Ashweather Carriage and Coach]] because some silver paint scraped off on the bricks in the alleyway behind the [[Church of the Survivor|Survivorist]] church looks like it came from one of their carriages. He asks the proprietor who has retained a carriage that night, and he seems totoo eager to please, raising Wax's suspicions. He narrows it down to coach sixteen as the one Bleeder might have used to make her getaway. Cett's Coinshot employee shows up to report on the drivers, and she lets slip that they also employ a [[zinc|Rioter]] to drum up business, a serious crime.

Innate is meeting with his staff, trying to decide what to do about the looting and unrest. The various ministers seem more concerned about political ramifications. He dismisses them and gives Marasi a written order declaring martial law and naming Aradel lord high constable over all of the precincts. He decides to allow the people to congregate at the mansion so he can speak to them, but looters elsewhere in the city are to be dealt with withusing force. Marasi requests a carriage to deliver the writ, but there are none available at the moment because of everyone else sending messages. She wanders about and decides to visit the saferoom, where she notices that some of the books on the shelves are scuffed while the others are pristine. She finds a key in one of them and unlocks a safe under a rug. Inside is a wad of cash and various letters proving the governor's corruption. She takes the evidence with her and heads back upstairs.

TenSoon has told Harmony to call off the other kandra, but it may be too late. They are running for the exit when they suddenly hear a strange howl that neither of them recognizes. They run the other direction, and Wax struggles to keep up. He finally finds a corridor that he can Push down, and he glimpses human-like forms running on all fours. TenSoon figures they are some kind of [[Hemalurgic chimera|Hemalurgic construct]] that Paalm came up with. TenSoon has led them to his collection of bones, and he quickly transforms into a superhuman form. They hunker down and fight, killing all five of the creatures. They are built to defeat Wax, but he kills them anyway by shooting them up close and using his extra weight to crush them. TenSoon fishes out a spike from one of them that has a red cast to it. He leads Wax to another way out.

Reddi's men are outnumbered and losing, and MeLaan's speech isn't going very well. Marasi manages to sneak up to the carriage, where she finds two guards. She puts up a few speedslowness bubbles for a fraction of a second each, making it look like there are Metalborn among the fighters. They run to warn their guys, clearing the way for Marasi to enter the carriage. She finds the Soother and Rioter in there, and she pulls a gun on them.

Wax limps over to Bleeder to make sure she's neutralized. She starts convulsing and thrashing about and tells Wax that she's killing herself. He takes pity on her and holds her as she dies. She repeats somethingthe thatfirst onlywords Lessie wouldever knowsaid to him, and Wax finally realizes that Bleeder ''is'' Lessie. After she dies, he howls, driving back the mists. An hour later, TenSoon arrives and explains that Lessie was sent by Harmony to be Wax's bodyguard out in the Roughs. He didn't tell Wax because he foresaw disaster if Wax had known whom he was hunting. Wax hates Harmony for forcing him to kill Lessie again.