"Are you certain you're all right, my lord?" Wax asked, helping Lord Drapen, constable-general of the Sixth Octant, down the steps toward his carriage. Water trickled beside them in little streams, joining a small river in the gutters.

"Ruined my best pistol, you realize," Drapen said. "I'll have to send the thing to be cleaned and oiled!"

"Bill me the expense, my lord," Wax said, ignoring the fact that a good pistol would hardly be ruined by a little - or, well, a lot of - water. Wax turned the aging gentleman over to his coachman, sharing a resigned look, before turning and climbing back up the steps into the church. The carpet squished when he stepped on it. Or maybe that was his shoes.

He passed the priest bickering with the Erikell insurance assessor - come to do an initial report for when the church demanded payment on their policy - and entered the main dome. The one open section of glass still swung on its hinges up above, and the tipped water tower - its legs on the other side had kept it from crashing down completely - still blocked out much of the sky.

He passed overturned benches, discarded Marewill petals, and general refuse. Water dripped, the room's only sound other than the echoing voice of the priest. Wax squished his way up to the dais. Steris sat on its edge, wet dress plastered to her body, strands of hair that had escaped from her wedding braids sticking to the sides of her face. She sat with arms crossed on her knees, staring at the floor.

Wax sat down next to her. "So, next time a flood is dumped on our heads, I'll try to remember that jumping upward is a bad idea." He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and squeezed it out.

"You tried to get us backward too. It merely wasn't fast enough, Lord Waxillium."

He grunted. "Looks like simple structural failure. If it was instead some kind of assassination attempt … well, it was an incompetent one. There wasn't enough water in there to be truly dangerous. The worst injury was to Lord Steming, who fell and knocked his head when scrambling off his seat."

"No more than an accident then," Steris said. She flopped backward onto the dais, the carpet letting out a soft squish.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." She sighed. "Do you ever wonder if perhaps the cosmere is out to overwhelm you, Lord Waxillium?"