Chapter Text
Ever since the incident with the Bands, Marasi hadn’t been acting quite right around Wayne, and he couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong. First, he thought it might’ve been the fact that she had a new boyfriend, and had to come to terms with her irresistible attraction to him, Wayne. That’d cause some confusion, more like than not. Next, he thought it was jealousy of his hat. He’d never seen her in a hat, after all, at least that he could recall. Whatever it was, something had shifted, and Wayne wouldn’t rest until he knew what.
(He’d had a lot of time to himself since Wax got all preoccupied with being a married man and all, and it had to be spent somehow.)
The fact remained that whenever Marasi was around him, she just wasn’t the way she had been. He’d noticed it after the botched wedding attempt, sure, but she’d been right pleasant to him after that and it ended right quick. After the firefight on the train, though?
He’d seen raging lions he’d’ve rather gotten close to. Lions, at least, were decent folk what wouldn’t shoot you in the head halfway through tea.
“You know, Wayne,” Marasi said, real conversational-like as she glared at him over the rim of her teacup. The way her teeth bit down on every word, she could’ve chewed her way through bullets. “I don’t recall inviting you to tea.”
“Aw, mate,” Wayne said, serious as the grave. “Don’t tell me you’re losing your memory, too. ’S bad enough with Wax getting older.”
On the mantlepiece, a clock ticked, the only thing breaking the silence as they stared at each other—Wayne grinning, Marasi looking five seconds away from hurling her fancy teacup at him.
Slowly, he reached out and took one of the frosted cakes from the plate in front of him and shoved the whole thing in his mouth.
In the quiet room, his chewing was painfully loud. Marasi’s gaze could have skewered him and made hemalurgic spikes of his remains.
“I really can’t blame him,” said Elanor the seamstress, sitting in between the two of them and sipping leisurely at her tea. “If I heard you had made cakes and I wasn’t invited, I’d’ve crashed your tea party, too.”
Wayne gestured as if to say ‘See, she knows what she’s talking about.’ “Besides,” Elanor continued, “I’m curious to know what he thought about the last novel we read in book club.”
Seeing the sudden shock of alarm on Marasi’s face just about made Wayne choke on his cake.
“You knew the entire time?” Marasi demanded shrilly as Wayne pounded his chest to dislodge cake crumbs from his throat, fighting back tears.
“Oh, yes. I’d know those measurements anywhere.” Elanor winked at Wayne, which only served to make him cough harder and Marasi turn redder. When he finally recovered from his thrice-daily brush with death, Elanor had already smoothly moved on to book discussion. Marasi admitted, sheepishly, that she hadn’t finished the book.
“C’mon,” Wayne chastised. “Savin’ the world’s no excuse for ignoring the pursuit of knowledge.”
“That is so rich, coming from you.”
“And that ain’t an insult,” Wayne retorted with a grin.
“Well,” said Elanor, “at least you have a good reason to it. Stuck in a shop all day, there’s not much time for adventures.”
“It ain’t all it’s made out to be,” Wayne said, leaning back and clutching his hat—which had been on his lap, because he was in the presence of ladies and not at all because Marasi’d called him out on it ten minutes earlier—to his chest. “It’s a real thankless job, it is, and it’s mostly just lotsa people shooting at your lucky hat.”
“That just won’t do,” Elanor said with a mock gasp, as Marasi said, “They’re going for your head.”
“’S What I keep sayin’!” Wayne ignored Marasi. “A man’s just not a man without his lucky hat.”
Afternoon tea lasted for another half hour or so until Elanor excused herself to return to her shop, and Wayne stayed to help tidy up. He thought it was a right gentlemanly thing of him to do, but Marasi was largely silent as Wayne carried dishes to the kitchen and patiently began washing them.
“Alright, Wayne,” she said eventually. “I’ll bite. What are you doing?”
“Dishes. What’s it look like I’m doin’, a jig? A bloke’s gotta pull his weight!”
“Since when has that ever been your philosophy?”
Wayne’s jaw dropped open in self-righteous indignation. “Ma’am, it’s always been my philanthropy to help people. Even ones what are real rude.” He pointed a condemnatory fork in her direction. Her expression pulled into a subtle frown that told him he’d poked the lion. Again. Best play dead, in that case. Wayne shrugged. “Wax’s busy bein’ married ’n all that.”
“So you decide to bother me. What’s MeLaan up to? She clearly tolerates your presence.”
Wayne winced. Right. He’d forgotten that lionesses were the ones what went for the kill when they saw vulnerable animals. No sense of honour there, no sir. “She usually has other things goin’ on, too. What with bein’ a demigod and all.” He put a clean saucer aside, and Marasi snatched a tea towel, beginning to dry dishes with an agitation Wayne didn’t know was possible. “I ain’t seen much of anybody in a while,” he ventured carefully, knowing it was unwise to keep prodding, “and you did say I could visit whenever I wanted.”
At that, she faltered. Wayne had either tamed the wild lion or he had shoved his entire head in its mouth. He decided to say his prayers, anyway, just in case it was the latter.
“Alright,” she conceded, sounding for all the world like a mother scolding an unruly child. “But I would prefer some notice. I’m busy, too, you know.”
Of course, there was a part of Wayne that knew, acutely. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Everyone else had their lives, their own worlds. Wax was married, now, and he was learning how to play the cards he’d been dealt—even enjoying it. MeLaan was a demigod, at the mercy of a god’s whims, an enigma at the best of times.
And Marasi?
Well, she’d grown into her own skin a long time ago, and now, that meant outgrowing Wayne.
Not that it was a bad thing, really. Wayne supposed he hadn’t made it easy for her to feel like there was anything left in common with him. Hurt less, that way. Marasi could go her own way, annoyed and righteous and burning her own path through the world without anyone as dead weight. Besides, Wayne’d always been able to take a hit better than most folk.
“Wayne?”
With a little shake, Wayne realised he’d lapsed into silence. He put on a grin. ‘Course, it didn’t make much sense that he stuck around if he was trying to get her used to the idea of him not being a part of her life anymore, but he’d never been good at logic. Rolled off him like water, it did. “Will do. So you heard anythin’ from that Colt fellow lately?”
She shook her head, that vaguely distant expression in her eyes once again. She was thinking hard about something, far away from him even though she was standing right there.
“I haven’t heard anything,” she said finally. “And that concerns me.”
“Been checking the news lately, and I ain’t seen much that sounds like it could be his group.”
Marasi nodded, her face clouding in concentration as she started putting dishes away. All the fury bled out of her, and now, she just looked thoughtful. “That’s what concerns me.”
The string of arsons had died down in the months between Martenn Belvar’s death and the Bands making their reappearance. On one hand, it was a good thing—the only fires seemed to be isolated incidents, not part of a larger problem. Wayne’d even infiltrated the fire department once to see if he could find anything else, but he’d talked one time too many about being set on fire and didn’t know he’d be welcome there again. In any case, he hadn’t found much of anything there. Whatever the True Survivorists had been up to, now it was a total blackout.
“Could always check their headquarters, see if they’re still there.”
Marasi shook her head. “Too risky. They have a full arsenal beneath the church, and I’m not inclined to see what’s happened to it. All you’d need to do is light a match down there and the whole thing would blow—not even you could survive something like that."
Wayne supposed she had a point there. But how to get involved again? Something was clearly nefarious about that group, but they would be wandering straight into the lion’s den if they tried anything too cheeky.
Lots of lion analogies lately. Seemed to be the order of the day.
“So what’re you suggesting we do?”
“I’m not sure there’s anything we can do,” Marasi replied, finishing up with the last of the dishes. She crossed her arms and frowned in his general direction—not at him, this time, but at the general circumstances she could envision around her—and she sighed. “It’s far too dangerous to get involved on our own, and we don’t even have any solid evidence that could back us up if we needed the help of the constabulary.”
“Aw, mate, you say that like Wax ’n I ever go through the constabulary.”
Marasi glared. This time, at him. “We’d damn well better be going through the constabulary, Wayne, or we’re not going through with anything at all. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.” There really was no arguing with her on things if she got that look about her.
“We’d be poking a hornet’s nest”—now there was a good idiom—“and I’m not terribly keen on a nest of fanatics bearing down on us. Especially now that everything’s settled down and we need to get to the bottom of this Trell business.”
“Sure,” Wayne said, although he had only listened with about half an ear last time she went on one of her Trell rants. It had been half an ear literally, due to a right unfortunate accident with Ranette’s inventing equipment. Why did she have all those levers and buttons and things if they weren’t for touching, anyway?
Marasi seemed to sense he had no idea what she was referring to, so she shook her head slightly and changed gears again. “Are you going to make it to reading club again next week?”
Something about that itched at his head. Something he was supposed to remember. “What day’s that again?”
“Mar—”
“Nah, the date.”
“Oh. It’s the first of the month, I believe. Why? Do you have a prior engagement?” The way she said prior engagement, it rolled off her tongue a bit like acid. He didn’t know why it stung.
“Yeah,” he answered, shifting on his feet with slight unease. “Somewhere I need to be on the first.”
Normally, Marasi wasn’t the prying sort, but this time, her eyes glimmered with something Wayne had a hard time placing. Normally with her, it was curiosity, but this time, it was something totally different. Softer, maybe, and more guarded.
“I hesitate to ask—”
“You ain’t never hesitated to ask anything before,” Wayne cut in. Marasi gave him a warning look.
“—But just what is it you do on the first? It’s every month, right?”
She was right enough about that, though Wayne couldn’t say it was very surprising she’d picked up on it. Marasi was smart like that. He scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck and busied himself with lining up the ceramic jars on Marasi’s kitchen counter. “You remember that time I told you about the bookkeeper I shot?” Shot. The word itself left his mouth like a bullet, leaving the bitter taste of gunpowder on his lips.
Marasi nodded, making a quiet sound of affirmation. Wayne could feel his mouth go dry as he relived that moment again, the loud bang of gunfire, the sound of the man’s body hitting the hard-packed dirt, the gasp of his last rattling breaths. Shuddering, Wayne forced the memory away and gathered what was left of his wits.
“I told you I send half of whatever I make to the bloke’s family, right? The older daughter is goin’ to school here at the University now. Her ma wrote me back once sayin’ I should send the money to her, seeing as she needs it more, what with being a student ’n all.” Wayne didn’t tell many folks about this part of his history, but the ones he had—Ranette and Wax, mostly—usually cut him off at this point, making the connection from point A to point B. It was an uncomfortable subject, as he understood it, and most people just wanted to skip the details and move on to a cheerier topic.
Marasi wasn’t most people, something he knew but that always surprised him for some reason. She stayed perfectly silent, her dark eyes riveted on him with her usual warm curiosity. Wayne swallowed, feeling his mouth go dry again. He pushed the agitation down and shrugged. “The first is when I bring the money to her at the university. It’s a real ordeal, see, on account of how much the headmistress there hates me. I don’t rightly know why, but it might have something to do with the fact that she knows all the girls’d be swooning over me given the chance. They’d have a right riot on their hands.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s the reason, and not that you’re breaking into an all-girls dorm.”
To be completely fair, it wasn’t exactly that, either. “And the fact I shot her daddy dead. That don't sit well with most folk.”
“So why do you go there in person if it upsets both of you? It seems unnecessarily cruel.”
She’d dropped into interrogation mode now, settling into her questions like it was second nature. Wayne felt uncomfortably scrutinized under her gaze, but there was nowhere he could run to—Wax was busy, always busy, Ranette only tolerated him on the best of days, and MeLaan didn't really talk, not about anything important, simply because she couldn’t. Marasi, though? Even though there were moments when he was convinced she hated him, there she would be with her big brown eyes, so intelligent and kind.
Wayne shifted under her scrutiny.
“I just… feel like I gotta.”
“Both you and Wax are such masochists.” Marasi sighed, pressing her palms together as if in prayer and holding them close to her face. Her gaze plucked him into little pieces, and again, he wondered what she was seeing. She saw the big picture, and from there, broke it down into the details, restructured it into something that made sense.
He didn’t think even Marasi could piece this mess back together. She was bright and capable, but not even she could conduct miracles.
“This isn’t healthy, you know,” she continued. “You could probably have a monthly stipend sent to the University, and it would be less traumatizing for both of you. If it’s that bad for you, imagine how she feels.”
Wayne knew, partially. But part of him still felt like he needed her vitriol. “Yeah,” he said quietly, not really knowing what else to say.
“May I come with you?” Marasi asked. He glanced up in shock.
“What?”
“May I come with you, next time?” She barrelled on while Wayne floundered. “You’re well within your right to say no. It’s just, they know me at the university and I should be able to get you in without your usual… subterfuge. If you think it would be all right, I could also talk to the daughter.” Marasi gave him a sort of lopsided look. “If she can be reasoned with, it might do both of you good to have some actual dialogue. Not just this… masochistic back and forth you have right now.”
No-one had really ever taken interest in his struggles like this, except for Wax.
“I dunno, Mara…” His voice came out a little quieter than he’d been expecting. He didn’t like that. As a Bloodmaker, as Wayne, he was used to being nearly invulnerable. Whatever Marasi had done, she’d found a weak spot in the nearly bulletproof facade he usually constructed. “I shot her daddy when she was a little girl. She’s got every reason to hate me, and I deserve everything she can throw my way.”
“Do you really want to keep feeling like this?”
Wayne stayed silent.
Marasi sighed, and her eyes softened. “All right. Let me put it this way: do you want her to keep feeling like this? If you don’t think you deserve to move on, doesn’t she deserve that chance?”
Rusts. When she had a point, she had a point.
“I know you’re right, my brain just don’t like that you’re right.”
“You’d best get used to it,” she said with a cheeky confidence that brought a shadow of his usual smile back to his face.
Wayne left shortly after—he had mostly managed to muster his usual humour when he was saying his goodbyes, but then found that he’d just left himself alone with his thoughts, and that was right unpleasant. Only one cure to that.
The bar was called The Grinning Kandra, and it was a right dump. Some folks had tried to get it shut down a handful of years ago when it opened. Something about sacrilege and ‘profaning the name of the Faceless Immortals’, but those folks’d clearly never actually met a kandra, ‘cause the one that he knew had started a couple of fights in that very bar and was pretty fond of the place in general.
Wayne greeted the bartender by name—Errol, a right excellent bloke—and asked how the kids were.
“Don’t got none and you know it,” Errol said, which was a rustin’ lie. He had two real pretty daughters and had been convinced he needed to keep Wayne away from them for months. Seein’ as Wayne was back on the market and a very eligible gentleman, Errol knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his daughters off of Wayne. Or. Well. At least, Wayne was somewhat back on the market. Maybe.
It was complicated.
Wayne ordered two fingers of whiskey and slumped against the bar, tipping his hat over his face. He wasn’t really looking forward to Marasi joining him for his monthly meeting with Allriandre. It was nice that she was worried, after a fashion. And, it was sort of nice that someone was taking interest in his problems.
Just, did it have to be Marasi?
“—Colt starting to move again.”
A low murmur caught Wayne’s attention, and he quietly turned his attention over to his left, where Errol was wiping down the bar. Someone was sitting at the far end, their head hanging low as their finger traced the rim of their glass.
“Know when?” Now that voice, Wayne recognised. Errol had turned his head a little to hide the movement of his mouth, but it was his voice, clear as copper.
“Soon,” the other person at the bar said. They had a gravelly sort of voice, sort of tenor.
They kept talking. Wayne perked up in interest. “He’ll call you when it’s time.” The accent was what really stood out to him; it definitely had a bit of the Roughs cadence. A little bit of drawl over the vowels, but a clipped quality to the consonants that was very Elendel. It was the kind of voice he heard in folks who had moved out to the Basin from the Roughs a couple of years ago, on someone who had learned enough of the city accent to fake fitting in, but hadn’t been around long enough to fool everyone.
The person tipped their hat to Errol. A Roughs-style hat, too, but city clothes. Real clean and nicely tailored. Not Roughs at all. Then, they stood and left the bar.
Wayne tried to catch sight of them, but their face was shadowed under the brim of the hat. Quickly, he slid out of his chair and elbowed his way back out of the bar.
He got outside fast enough to see the individual shrug on a tasseled coat and lurch into the air, disappearing into the mists.
Rusts.