Bands of Mourning

by Brandon Sanderson

  “The diversions?”

  “He’s not biting.”

  “You’re not trying hard enough then,” Suit said. “Kidnap one of his friends and leave a letter, purportedly from one of his old enemies. Challenge his wits, draw him into an investigation. Waxillium cannot resist a personal grudge. It will work.”

  “The train robbery didn’t,” Kelesina said. “What of that, Suit? We wasted vital resources, important connections I had spent years cultivating, on that attack. You promised that if we attacked while he was on board, he wouldn’t be able to resist investigating. Yet he ignored it. Left Ironstand that same night.”

  Wax felt a chill as a whole set of assumptions shifted within him. The train robbery … had it been a distraction, intended to draw his attention away from pursuing the Set?

  “Recovering the device,” Suit said, “was worth the risk.”

  “You mean the device Irich immediately lost?” Kelesina demanded. “That one shouldn’t be trusted with important missions. He’s too eager. You should have let me recover the item once Waxillium was off the train.”

  “There was a good chance he’d take the bait,” Edwarn said. “I know my nephew; he’s probably still itching to go after those bandits. If he’s at your party instead, then you aren’t doing your duty properly. I haven’t time to hold your hand on this, Kelesina. I need to be off to the second site.”

  Wax frowned. The train hadn’t been just a distraction, it seemed. But the words left him with a deeper sense of worry. He’d chased half a dozen leads during the last year, anticipating that he was close on the heels of his uncle. How many of those had been plants? And how many of his other cases had been intentional distractions? And Ape Manton? Was he really even in New Seran? Likely not.

  Edwarn spoke a truth. He knew Wax well. Too well, for a man he’d barely seen in the last twenty years.

  “Well,” Suit said, “you have your chance now to recover the device, as you promised you could. How is that going?”

  “It wasn’t in the things he checked at the party,” Kelesina said. “We snuck a spy among the hotel staff, and she will search for it in his rooms. I’m telling you, Irich—”

  “Irich was punished,” Suit said. Why did his voice sound so much smaller than Kelesina’s? “That is all you need know. Recover it for me, and other mistakes might be forgiven. It is only a matter of time before they accidentally use Allomancy near it.”

  “And then will we see this ‘miracle’ you keep promising, Suit?” she demanded. “A few more speeches like this one, and Severington will have the entirety of the Basin whipped into a frenzy. Completely ignoring that Elendel has us outmanned and outgunned.”

  “Patience!” Suit said, sounding amused.

  “You try to be patient. They’re bleeding us dry. You promised to crush that city, provide an army, and—”

  “Patience,” Suit repeated softly. “Stop Waxillium. That is your part of the bargain now. Keep him in the city; keep him distracted.”

  “That’s not going to work, Suit,” Kelesina said. “He knows too much already. That damn shapeshifter must have told him—”

  “You let it escape?”

  Kelesina was silent.

  “I thought,” Suit said, voice growing cold, “that you had disposed of the creature. You presented its spike to me, claiming the other had been destroyed.”

  “We … may have assumed too quickly.”

  “I see,” Suit said.

  The two did not speak for a protracted moment. Wax raised his gun beside his head, sweat trickling down his brow in the dark room. He toyed with breaking in right then. He had evidence on Kelesina in the form of the wounded kandra and his own testimony. Several people died in that blast. Murder.

  But did he have enough against Edwarn? Would his uncle just slip away again? Rusts, an army? They spoke of destroying Elendel. Dared he wait? If he took her and Suit right now, she might break, testify against him—

  Footsteps.

  They came from the hallway outside. As they approached the door, he made a snap decision, dropping a coin—it wasn’t the special one, he had that in a different pocket—and Pushing.

  Light from the hallway poured into the room as the door opened, revealing the steward from before. She crossed the room in a rush, and blessedly didn’t turn on the room’s lights—instead walking straight to the doorway that Wax had been listening at.

  She didn’t look up and see Wax pressed to the ceiling above her, Pushing against a coin she walked right over in her haste to knock on the door. Kelesina called for her to enter.

  “My lady,” the steward said in an urgent tone. “Burl sent me word while watching the party for Allomancers. He sensed someone using metals in this direction.”

  “Where is Waxillium?”

  “His fiancée was sick,” the steward said. “We brought her to a guest room to recover.”

  “Curious,” Uncle Edwarn said. “And where is he now?”

  Wax dropped to the floor with a thump, leveling his gun at the people inside the room. “He’s right here.”

  The steward spun, gasping. Kelesina rose from her seat, eyes wide. And Uncle Edwarn …

  Uncle Edwarn wasn’t in the room. The only thing there was a boxy device on the table in front of Kelesina.

  16

  “Why, Waxillium!” the box said, projecting his uncle’s voice. “So good to hear your dulcet tones. I presume your entrance was properly dramatic?”

  “It’s a telegraph for voices,” Wax said, stepping forward. He kept his gun on Kelesina, who backed up to the wall of the small room. She’d gone completely pale.

  “Something like that,” Edwarn said, his voice sounding small. The electric mechanism didn’t reproduce it exactly. “How is Lady Harms? I hope her ailment was nothing too distressing.”

  “She’s fine,” Wax snapped, “no thanks to the fact that you tried to have us all killed on that train.”

  “Now, now,” Edwarn said. “That wasn’t the point. Why, killing you was an afterthought. Tell me, did you look into the casualties on the train? One passenger killed, I believe. Who was he?”

  “You’re trying to distract me,” Wax said.

  “Yes, I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m lying. In fact, I’ve found that telling you the truth is a far better method in general. You should look into the dead man. You’ll be impressed by what you find.”

  No. Stay focused. “Where are you?” Wax demanded.

  “Away,” Suit said, “on matters of great import. I do apologize for not being able to meet you in person. I offer up Lady Kelesina as a measure of my condolences.”

  “Kelesina can go to hell,” Wax said, grabbing the box and lifting it, nearly yanking the wires in the back from the wall. “Where is my sister!”

  “So many impatient people in the world,” Edwarn’s voice said. “You really should have focused on your own city, Nephew, and kept your attention on the little crimes fed to you. I’ve tried being reasonable. I fear I’m going to have to do something drastic. Something that will be certain to divert you.”

  Wax felt cold. “What are you going to do, Suit?”

  “It’s not about what I’m going to do, Nephew. It’s about what I’m doing.”

  Wax glanced toward Kelesina, who had been reaching for the pocket of her dress. She raised her hands, frightened, right as something enormous smashed into Wax. He stumbled against the table, overturning it.

  Wax blinked in shock. The steward! She’d grown to incredible strength, arms bulging beneath her robes, neck thick as a man’s thigh. Wax cursed, raising his gun, which the steward immediately slapped from his hand.

  His wrist screamed in pain and he winced, Pushing on the nails in the wall to throw himself in a roll across the floor away from the steward. He came up fishing in his pocket for coins, but the steward wasn’t focused on him. She grabbed Wax’s gun off the floor, then turned toward Kelesina, who screamed.

  Oh no …

  The shot left his ears
ringing. Kelesina fell limp to the floor, blood dribbling from the hole in her forehead.

  “He killed her!” a voice screamed from the doorway outside. Wax spun to find the maid he’d seen earlier standing there, hands to her face. “Lord Ladrian killed our lady!” The woman ran away screaming the words over and over, although she’d obviously had a clear view of the room.

  “You bastard!” Wax shouted toward the box.

  “Now, now,” the box said. “That’s patently false, Waxillium. You have a very clear understanding of my parentage.”

  The steward walked over to Kelesina, fishing at something on Kelesina’s body. Then, for some reason, the steward shot the dead woman again.

  Either way, this gave Wax a chance to seize the box, which had fallen from the table near him.

  “You’d better be careful, Nephew,” the box said. “I’ve told them to kill you if they can. In this case, a dead scapegoat will work as well as a living one.”

  Wax roared, ripping the box free of the wall and Pushing it out the doorway, into the next room. He brought his hand up and Pushed back on the gun in the steward’s hand as she tried to aim it at him.

  She cursed in Terris. Wax turned and scrambled from the smaller room into the one beyond, where he’d first hidden from the steward. He kicked the door shut to give himself some cover, then Pushed on his coin from before and leaped over a couch, soaring through the room. He scooped up the box communication device and skidded out into the hallway.

  Half a dozen men in black coats and white gloves were advancing down the hallway toward him. They froze in place, then leveled their weapons.

  Rusts!

  Wax Pushed on the frames of the windows and reentered the room as the men opened fire. The inner door into the room that had held the telegraph opened, and Wax Allomantically shoved it back, cracking it into the steward’s face.

  Another way out. Servants’ corridors? Blue lines pointed all around him and he looked for one out of place … there! He Pushed on it, opening a hidden door in the wall which led into a small passage, lit with dangling lightbulbs, that servants used. Still carting the telegraph box, he leaped through it as men piled into the sitting room behind him.

  The weaving maze of passages let him keep ahead of them, though he did have to spend a coin taking one of them out as they got too close. That drove the others back, but notably, he couldn’t sense any metal on their bodies. Aluminum weapons. This was one of Suit’s kill squads, likely contacted and sent into action the moment Kelesina had telegraphed him.

  Wax burst out of the passageways into a room that he hoped would let him circle back toward the atrium. If they’d found Steris …

  He dashed through a conservatory, lit by several dim electric lights and lined with maps on the walls, and entered one of the hallways he’d explored earlier. Excellent. He charged toward the central atrium, but as soon as he reached the balcony’s stairway down, something leaped from the shadows and blindsided him.

  The Terriswoman, face bleeding from where the slammed door had broken her nose, growled and grabbed him around the neck. He Pushed a coin up at her, but it didn’t have time to gain momentum. It hit her in the chest, then stayed there as he Pushed on it, trying to push her off. He strained, his vision growing dark, until a fist punched the Terriswoman across the face.

  She let go, stumbling back and shaking. Wax gasped for breath, looking up at MeLaan looming over him.

  “Rusts!” she said with a deep bass voice. “You did start without me.”

  The Terriswoman came charging in again, and Wax rolled to the side, fishing for coins. He brought up his last three in a handful as the steward punched MeLaan across the face. Something cracked audibly, and Wax hesitated as the steward stumbled back, clutching her mangled hand, the knuckles apparently shattered, the thumb ripped almost free.

  MeLaan grinned. Her face had split where she’d been struck, revealing a gleaming metal skull underneath. “You really should be careful what you punch.”

  The Terriswoman lurched to her feet, and MeLaan casually grabbed her own left forearm in her right hand and ripped it off, revealing a long, thin metal blade attached to the arm at the stump. As the Terriswoman came for her, MeLaan thrust the weapon through the woman’s chest. The steward gasped and collapsed to her knees, then deflated like a punctured wineskin.

  “Harmony, I love this body,” MeLaan said, glancing toward Wax with a goofy grin on her face. “How did I ever consider wearing another?”

  “Is that whole thing aluminum?” Wax asked.

  “Yup!”

  “It must be worth a fortune,” Wax said, standing and putting his back to the wall. The balcony was in front of him, the hallway he’d come down to his left. The kill squad would be following soon.

  “Conveniently, I’ve had a few hundred years to save up,” MeLaan said. “It—”

  Wax pulled her to cover beside the wall with him; she was actually lighter than he had anticipated, considering that she had metal bones.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  Wax raised a coin, listening for footfalls. On the balcony before him, the Terriswoman twitched. When he heard the footstep he increased his weight a fraction, then spun around the corner and grabbed the first man’s gun in one hand, twisting it toward the floor. It fired ineffectively, and Wax pressed his other hand against the man’s chest and Pushed on the coin there.

  Man and coin went flying back down the hallway toward his fellows, who leaped to the side. Wax was left with the aluminum gun, which he flipped in the air and caught, squeezing off four shots. The first pulled a little left, hitting the enemy in the arm, but he was able to place the next shots right in their chests.

  All three dropped. The fourth man groaned from the floor where Wax had Pushed him.

  “Damn,” MeLaan said.

  “Says the woman who just ripped half her arm off.”

  “It goes back on,” MeLaan said, picking up her forearm, which she slid back over the blade. Blood dribbled from where she’d broken the skin. “See? Good as new.”

  Wax snorted, tucking the stolen aluminum gun into his waistband. “You can get out on your own?”

  She nodded. “Want me to recover the guns you checked?”

  “Can you?”

  “Probably.”

  “That would be wonderful.” Wax walked to the Terriswoman and checked to see that she was dead, then fished in her pockets until he came up with the gun she’d used to kill Kelesina. There was something else in her pocket as well. A metal bracelet of pure gold.

  The Terriswoman took this off Kelesina, Wax thought, turning it over in his fingers as he remembered the moment earlier, when the murderer had knelt beside Kelesina’s body.

  He burned steel, and his hunch proved correct. While he could sense the bracelet, the line was much thinner than it should have been. This was a metalmind, and one heavily Invested with healing power.

  “Was Kelesina Terris?”

  “How should I know?” MeLaan asked.

  He pocketed the bracelet and grabbed the box telegraph device—which he wanted to send to Elendel for inspection—and tossed it to MeLaan. “Bring that, if you don’t mind, and meet us at the hotel. Be ready to leave the city. I doubt we’re staying the night.”

  “And you were so certain we’d be out of here without a fight.”

  “I never said that. I said it wouldn’t get so bad that I needed Wayne. And it didn’t.”

  “A semantic technicality.”

  “I’m a nobleman. Might as well learn something from my peers.” He saluted her with the small gun, then dropped off the balcony and used a coin to slow himself. “Steris?”

  She crawled from a nearby shrub. “How did it go?”

  “Poorly,” Wax said, looking up toward the ceiling, then removing his dinner jacket. “I may have accidentally let them implicate us in Lady Kelesina’s murder.”

  “Bother,” Steris said.

  “Their evidence will depend on whether they can tra
ce the bullets back to me,” Wax said, “and whether they recover any of my prints from the area. Either way, they’ll be producing fake witnesses to try to make it look like I came down here specifically to assassinate Kelesina. Grab on.”

  Steris grabbed him with, he noted, no small amount of eagerness. She really did enjoy this part. He took the bullets from his .22 and held them in one hand, then launched off the coin below to shoot them toward the ceiling. He flung the bullets toward the skylights and Pushed them in a spray to weaken a window, then raised his arm—wrapped in his jacket—over his head and crashed them through the glass and out into the swirling mists.

  They landed on the roof as Wax got his bearings. Out in the mists, he felt better almost immediately, and his hand—which had been smarting where the Terriswoman smacked his gun away—stopped throbbing.

  “Did you learn anything useful?” Steris asked.

  “Not sure,” Wax said. “Most of what I overheard was about a rebellion against Elendel. I know Edwarn is heading somewhere important. He called it the second site? And he said something about what I think is that little cube Marasi found.”

  He pulled her tight again, then sent them in a Push upward through the mists in the direction of their hotel. She held to him tightly, but watched the lights of the city beneath with awe.

  “He had Kelesina murdered,” Wax said. “I should have seen it. Should have anticipated.”

  “At least,” Steris said over the sound of the passing wind, “the mists are out. They’ll have trouble tracking us.”

  “You did well tonight, Steris. Very well. Thank you.”

  “It was engaging,” she said as he dropped them onto a rooftop. Her smile, which she let out readily, warmed him. She was proof that, despite his dislike of the politics in the Basin, it had good people. Genuine people. Strikingly, he had been forced to realize something almost exactly like that about the Roughs after first moving there.

  She was gorgeous. Like an uncut emerald sitting in the middle of a pile of fakes cut to sparkle, but really just glass. Her enthusiasm balanced, somewhat, his concern over what had happened. Missing Suit. Being implicated. Lessie would say …