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“The rich one,” Waxillium said. “Assuming he’s not lying or acting somehow.”

“No, Nikolin is legitimately wealthy,” Uncle Edwarn said. “He has banked with us numerous times in the past, and he never misses his payments.”

“So you’ll loan money to him and not the other.”

“Wrong,” Uncle Edwarn said. “We’ll lend to both.”

“You’ll use the good credit of the rich man to underwrite the risk of helping the poor man?”

Uncle Edwarn seemed surprised. “Your tutors have been diligent.”

Waxillium shrugged, but inwardly he found himself growing interested. Perhaps this was a way to become a hero. Maybe Uncle Edwarn was right and the frontier was shrinking, the need for men of action vanishing. Maybe this new world wasn’t at all like the one that the Ascendant Warrior and the Survivor had lived in.

Waxillium could carefully balance risks, and give money to those who needed it. If men in suits would someday run the world, couldn’t they also make it a better place?

“Your assessment is correct on one hand,” Uncle Edwarn said, oblivious to the direction Waxillium had been thinking, “but flawed on the other. Yes, we will lend to the poor man—but we will not accept risk to do so.”

“But—”

“The papers our banker is now presenting will tie the laborer in debt that is impossible to escape. If he fails to meet payments, his signature on that paper will allow us to go directly to his employer and take a percentage of his wages. If that isn’t enough, we can do the same for his sons. The rich man has banked with us many times, and his house negotiated favorable terms. We will earn barely three percent on what we lend him. But the laborer is desperate, and no other bank will consider him. He’ll pay us twelve percent.”

Uncle Edwarn leaned in. “The other banks don’t see it yet. They lend safely, and safely only. They have not changed as the world has. Workers earn more now than they ever did, and they’re hungry to pay for things once outside their reach. In the last six months we have pushed aggressively to lend to the common people of the city. They flock to us, and will soon make us very, very wealthy.”

“You’ll make slaves of them,” Waxillium said, horrified.

His uncle took out the error coin and set it on the counter beside Waxillium. “This coin is a mistake. An embarrassment. Now it is worth more than thousands of its companions combined. Value created where none once existed. I will take the poor of this city and make of them the same thing. As I said, a revolution.”

Waxillium felt sick.

“The coin is for you,” Uncle Edwarn said, standing. “I wish it to be a reminder. The gift that will—”

Waxillium snatched the coin off the counter, then bolted out the door.

“Waxillium!” his uncle called.

The bank was a labyrinth, but Waxillium found his way. He burst into the small room where the poor man sat in consultation with the loan officer. The laborer looked up from the stack of papers; he’d be barely literate. He wouldn’t even know what he was signing.

Waxillium set the coin down on the desk before him. “This is a misprinted coin, something that collectors covet. Take it, sell it at a curiosities shop—don’t take less than two thousand for it—and use the money to move your family out of the slum. Don’t sign those documents. They’ll be like a chain around your neck.”

*   *   *

Wax paused in his story. He held the coin in front of him, studying it as he and Steris rode toward the party.

“Well?” Steris asked, sitting across from him in the carriage. “What did your uncle do?”

“He was livid, of course,” Wax said. “The laborer signed the papers; he couldn’t believe that I’d actually give him something so valuable. My uncle came in, wove lies in the air like pretty puffs of colored smoke, and got his documents.”

Wax turned the coin over, looking at the image of the Lord Mistborn pressed into the front. “The laborer—his name was Jendel—killed himself by jumping off a bridge eight years later. His sons are still in debt to the bank, though House Ladrian no longer owns an interest in the First Central Bank; my uncle sold it off for capital before gutting the house and faking his death.”

“I’m sorry,” Steris said softly.

“It’s part of what drove me away,” Wax said. “Events like that—and what happened in the Village, of course. I told myself I was setting out to find adventure; I never intended to be a lawman. I think I knew, deep down, that I couldn’t change anything in Elendel. It was too big, the men in suits too crafty. Out in the Roughs, one man with a gun meant something. Here, it’s hard to see him as anything other than a relic.”

Steris pursed her lips, and obviously didn’t know what to say. Wax didn’t blame her. He’d thought often of the events in that bank, and he still didn’t know what—if anything—he could have done differently.

He flipped the coin over in his fingers. Scratched onto the back, in tiny letters, were the words Why did you leave, Wax?

“How did Bleeder get the coin?” Steris asked.