“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’d needed 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 the right people.”
“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 his cravat, 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 it had made 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 Wax did question where he had earned all those medals. So far as Wax knew, the newly formed army hadn’t seen any actual engagements.
The second problem was far closer to home. It was the parts of the Basin that were outside the capital, the people in what were collectively known as the Outer Cities. For years, maybe decades, tensions had been building between the city of Elendel and everyone else.
It was bad enough to be facing threats from another continent. But to Wax, that was a more distant danger. The immediate one, the one that gave him the most stress, was the prospect of a civil war among his own people. He and Steris had been working for years to prevent that.
Varlance finally nodded to his vice governor, a Terriswoman. She had curly dark hair and a traditional robe; Wax thought he’d known her in the Village, but it could have been her sister, and he’d never come up with a good way to ask. Regardless, it looked respectable to have a Terris person on staff. Most governors appointed one to a high position in their cabinet—almost as if the Terris were another medal to display.
Adawathwyn stood up and announced to the room, “The governor recognizes the senator from House Ladrian.”
Though he’d been waiting for this, Wax took his time sauntering up onto the podium, which was lit from above by a massive electric spotlight. He made a slow rotation, inspecting the circular chamber. One side held the elected officials: senators who were voted into office to represent a guild, profession, or historical group. The other held the lords: senators who held their positions by benefit of birth.
“This bill,” Wax declared to the room, loud and firm, his voice echoing, “is a fantastically stupid idea.”
Once, earlier in his political career, talking so bluntly had earned him ire. Now he caught multiple members of the Senate smiling. They expected this from him—even appreciated it. They knew how many problems there were in the Basin and were glad someone among them was willing to call them out.
“Tensions with the Malwish are at an all-time high,” Wax said. “This is a time for the Basin to unite, not a time to drive wedges between our cities!”
“This is about uniting!” another voice called. The dockworkers’ senator, Melstrom. He was mostly a puppet for Hasting and Erikell, nobles who had consistently been a painful spike in Wax’s side. “We need a single leader for the whole Basin. Officially!”
“Agreed,” Wax said. “But how is elevating the Elendel governor— a position no one outside the city can vote on—going to unite people?”
“It will give them someone to look toward. A strong, capable leader.”
And that, Wax thought, glancing at Varlance, is a capable leader? We’re lucky he pays attention in these meetings rather than going over his publicity schedule. Varlance had, so far in the first two years of his tenure, rededicated seventeen parks in the city. He liked the flowers.
Wax kept to the plan, getting out his medallion and flipping it into the air. “Six years ago,” he said, “I had a little adventure. You all know about it. Finding a wrecked Malwish airship, and thwarting a plot by the Outer Cities to use its secrets against Elendel. I stopped that. I brought the Bands of Mourning back to be stored safely.”
“And almost started a war,” someone muttered in the reaches of the room.