The party scene in SoS: what happened?

[king of nowhere]

I thought back about it, and I realized there were a lot of strange things happening in retrospect whose answer is not clear.

At first glance, it appeared that the waiter was paalm, that she had a coinshot spike to escape and she listened to wax by enhancing her ears with normal kandra body skill. nothing is thought about it anymore. Then at the end of the book we learn that paalm had been impersonating the governor for some time. And the governor was at the party. So

- paalm could listen to what wax was saying. yet she was on the other side of a large, crowded room, way too far even for tin. how did she do it?

- the waiter was clearly a minion of paalm. he jumped from the window and they didn't find assorted gore in the road, so he was spiked with either asteel or firon. Still, the servant, when escaping wayne and the constables, showed cospicuous fighting skill. notice that this debunks the idea that the waiter was listening with thin and somehow reporting to paalm; he already must have had a spike for a power other than tin.

- the servant could still intimidate a random cab driver in a way that made it seem like a kandra had revealed itself.

now that i write my thoughts in an organized manner, it doesn't seem as strange as it did, but still the question of how paalm could hear wax talking stands.

[Alfa he/him]

9 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

now that i write my thoughts in an organized manner, it doesn't seem as strange as it did, but still the question of how paalm could hear wax talking stands.

Alomantic/feruchemical tin spike? She had quite the collection.

[king of nowhere]

yeah, but she was on the other side of a large room full of people talking. I'm not sure spook-savant could have listened to a man talking softly in those conditions.

[Pathfinder]

Wasn't he wearing the pathian earring from harmony at that point which was a hemalurgic spike? I thought it was accepted on the boards she had some ability from her foreign spike to be able to communicate through it to another person spiked. 

[king of nowhere]

she implanted thoughts in wax head with the spike. but she could not listen with it. wax was actually talking to answer her, and he was speaking softly to try to lure her close and recognize her.

[WayneSpren he/him]

So...on the subject of the waiter...we later learn that the Set is helping, or not interfering, with Bleeder. So maybe the waiter was one of Suit's men?

[Windrunner he/him]

8 hours ago, WayneSpren said:

So...on the subject of the waiter...we later learn that the Set is helping, or not interfering, with Bleeder. So maybe the waiter was one of Suit's men?

I tend to agree with this, particularly since Wax's pursuit of him leads him straight into a Set ambush.

[king of nowhere]

right, could be. and in that case, he may have been an allomancer all along.

[happyman he/him]

The party scene is one of the most difficult in Shadows of Self.  Personally, I think it was a combination of two things that allowed it to go down as it did:
 

1. Cooperation from the Set, as WayneSpren said.  He was a deliberate decoy.
2. The fact that the "governor" managed to quietly take off pretty much as soon as Wax left.  Paalm knew what Wax was going to do, and was deliberately taunting him.

It was all a very deliberate shell games designed to lead him in entirely the wrong direction.  Think of it a magic trick, where Wax was completely distracted by the hand which had nothing in it.