Bands of Mourning

by Brandon Sanderson

  Something wonderful. She gobbled up the second one as it was dropped, and began to undulate, frantic. It came back. Memory. Knowledge. Rationality.

  Self.

  She exulted in it, ignoring the little holes that were now poked in her memory. She remembered most of the trip here, but something had happened in the room with the Bands.… No, the Bands hadn’t been there, and …

  She formed eyes first, and she knew what she would see when she opened them. She’d already tasted him on the air, and knew his flavor.

  “Welcome back,” Wayne said, grinning. “I think we won.”

  30

  Marasi accepted the canteen from Allik. It steamed from the top although it was only lukewarm to the touch. She sat on the steps up to the temple, swathed in about forty blankets. She’d surrendered her medallion to one of the Malwish people until more could be secured from the airship.

  And its recovery was an interesting sight to say the least. Waxillium stood on the rocky section before the plateau, heaving with two hands and Pulling on nothing visible. Up ahead, the rogue airship slowly sank through the snow-filled sky, drawn toward Waxillium on an invisible tether.

  “Will it break apart?” Allik asked.

  She looked at him with surprise, then down at his language medallion.

  “Warm choc and a blanket will do me for a minute,” he said, settling down and pulling his blanket around him. “Others are in greater need, yah? The ship. Will it break?”

  Marasi looked up toward it. She could imagine Suit’s people aboard, trying desperately to make the engines work harder, the fans blow more powerfully. It sank anyway. Waxillium Ladrian—bearing the Bands of Mourning and supremely annoyed—was like a force of nature.

  She smiled and sipped her drink.

  “Rusts!” she said, looking at it. “What is this?” It was sweet, thick, warm, chocolaty, and wonderful.

  “Choc,” he said. “Sometimes it is a man’s only succor in this frozen, lonely world, yah?”

  “You drink chocolate?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?”

  She never had. Plus, this was far sweeter than the chocolate she was used to. Not bitter at all. She took a long, soothing draught. “Allik, this is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced. And I just held the powers of creation themselves.”

  He smiled.

  “I don’t think your ship is in danger,” Marasi said. “He’s Pulling on it evenly, and slowly. He’s a careful man, Waxillium is.”

  “Careful? It seems to me he is very proficient at breaking things. That doesn’t sound particularly careful, yah?”

  “Well,” Marasi said, sipping her drink, “he does it with amazing precision.”

  Indeed, it wasn’t long before the airship settled down onto the rocks, still in one piece. Waxillium held it in place, then raised the Bands of Mourning in one hand, winds, snows, and even traces of mist swirling around him.

  The fans slowly powered down. A short time later, soldiers exited with hands up. Wayne and MeLaan scurried up to them, gathering weapons while Allik’s people boarded the ship to secure it and search for anyone lurking inside.

  Marasi waited through it all, sipping her melted chocolate and thinking. ReLuur’s spike lay safely wrapped in a handkerchief, tucked into her pocket. In her mind’s eye, she saw Wayne again as he had been, trudging through the snow, gun to his shoulder, a pattern of frozen blood flaking his skin. Alongside this image was the glee with which Waxillium had launched into the sky to chase down his uncle.

  There was a darkness to these men that the stories hadn’t conveyed. Marasi was glad for it, but she had stepped to that ledge, then turned back. Proud though she was of having fulfilled her mission for the kandra, she had decided that things would be different for her in the future. She was all right with that.

  It was what she had chosen.

  “Frosts,” Allik said after some time. “We’d better go do something, yah?”

  She looked up from her now-empty canteen of chocolate to follow Allik’s gesture. The Malwish airship crew had returned from their inspection, and the enemy soldiers had been led away—to be safely locked in the ship’s brig, Marasi believed.

  Suit was still where Waxillium had put him: tied to the top of the Lord Ruler’s spear, feet dangling. He’d been gagged, he’d had his metalminds removed, and Waxillium had used Allomancy to leech away his metals. And this still seemed like it might not be cautious enough. He still had his spikes, as they weren’t sure how to remove them without killing him. He shouldn’t be able to do anything without metals, but she couldn’t help being worried.

  Steris had joined Waxillium on the field, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders. Marasi smiled. Now that was an image she’d never thought she’d find comforting. But they would do well together.

  Unfortunately, trouble approached Waxillium and Steris in the form of Allik’s captain and some of her airmen. The two groups faced one another, MeLaan and Wayne falling in beside Waxillium—Wayne casually carrying that shotgun, MeLaan standing a good two inches taller than anyone else, arms folded, her posture unyielding.

  Right. “Let’s go,” Marasi said to Allik.

  Allik’s captain, Jordis, wore one of the translation medallions—and she didn’t flinch before the gust of wind that accompanied Marasi as she arrived.

  “We thank you for your help,” Jordis was saying, her voice touched by the same accent Allik had. “But our appreciation does not allow us to ignore thievery. We expect that our property will be returned.”

  “I don’t see any of your property here,” Waxillium replied coldly. “I see only an artifact we recovered. Well, that and my airship.”

  “Your—” Jordis sputtered. She stepped forward. “Since crashing in your lands, my crew has been incarcerated, tortured, and murdered. You seem to be itching for a war, Allomancer.”

  Drat. Marasi had been hoping she’d share Allik’s reverence for Waxillium. Indeed, much of the crew seemed nervous about him, but the captain obviously didn’t mean to back down.

  “If there is to be war,” Waxillium said, “giving you a powerful weapon does not seem the method to save my people. I cannot help what Suit and his people did to you—they are outlaws, and what they did was deplorable. I will see them brought to justice.”

  “And yet you steal from us.”

  “Do you deny,” Waxillium asked, “that this temple was empty upon my arrival? Do you deny that this airship was from nation other than your own? I cannot steal what was not owned, Captain. By right of salvage, I claim this relic and that ship. You may—”

  Marasi was about to step between them when, curiously, Steris spoke up, interrupting Wax.

  “Lord Waxillium,” she said. “I think it prudent to let them take the ship.”

  “What? Like hell I’m going to—”

  “Waxillium,” Steris said softly. “They’re tired, miserable, and a long way from home. How do you suggest, otherwise, that they are to return to those they love? Is that justice?”

  His lips tightened. “The Set has one of these ships to study, Steris.”

  “Then,” Steris said, looking to Jordis, “we will beg—in return for the generosity of this gift—that the Malwish people open trade with us. I suspect we can purchase ships from them more quickly than the Set can build their own.”

  Marasi nodded. Not bad, Steris.

  “If they’ll sell,” Waxillium said.

  “I think that they will,” Steris said, looking to Jordis. “Because the good captain will persuade them that access to our Allomancers is worth relinquishing a technological monopoly.”

  “That’s true,” Marasi said, stepping up to the rest, Allik with her. “We’re rare among you, aren’t we?”

  “We?” Allik asked as the captain looked to her.

  “I’m an Allomancer too,” she said, amused. “You didn’t see me charging the cube device back in the warehouse?”

  “I was … a little distracted.…” he said, sounding w
oozy. “Oh dear. Um. Great One.”

  Marasi sighed, looking to Jordis.

  “I can promise you nothing,” the captain said to Steris, sounding reluctant. “The Malwish are but one of many. Another nation among us may see you up here as weak and decide to strike.”

  “Then,” Steris said, “you might want to inform them that the Bands of Mourning are here, ready to punish those who attack.”

  Jordis hissed. Marasi couldn’t see her features behind the mask, but the hand swipe she made did not look pleased. “Impossible. You give me the lesser prize to distract me from the greater, yah? We will not give you the Sovereign’s weapon.”

  “You’re not giving it to us,” Steris said. She looked to MeLaan, who watched with crossed arms. “Allik. Your people have stories of creatures like her, do you not?”

  “Tell the others,” Marasi said to Allik. “Please.”

  He removed his medallion and launched into a furious explanation in his language, waving his hands, then gesturing at MeLaan. She cocked an eyebrow, then made her skin translucent—displaying a skeleton that was so cracked and mangled, Marasi was left momentarily stunned. How was MeLaan still standing?

  The captain took this in.

  “We,” Steris said, “will give the Bands to the immortal kandra. They are wise and impartial, tasked with serving all people. They will promise not to let us use the Bands unless we are attacked by your kind.”

  There was no way to tell what Captain Jordis thought, her expression hidden behind that mask. When she did speak, she made a few curt gestures—but those could be faked far more easily than facial expressions, Marasi figured. What did one make of a society where everyone hid their true feelings behind a mask, only letting out calculated reactions?

  “This is an unpleasant accommodation,” Jordis said. “It means I will limp back to my people, half my crew dead and my ship exchanged for one decades out of date.”

  “True,” Steris continued at Waxillium’s side—he merely stood there with arms folded, looming, as he was so good at doing. “But Captain, you will return with something more valuable than an old relic or even your fallen ship. You’ll have new trading partners in a land brimming with Metalborn. Has it been mentioned that my lord Waxillium holds an important seat in our government? That he has a dramatic influence over trade, tariffs, and taxation? Those among your people who secure favorable treaties with us could become very rich indeed.”

  Jordis regarded them, then folded her arms, facing Waxillium directly. “It is still unpleasant.” Jordis was much shorter, but she managed to loom pretty well herself. In fact, Marasi got the distinct impression that the woman wanted to shout at them, attack in a rage, seek retribution for what had been done to her and hers. Anything but just simply trade.

  Perhaps some emotions were too strong to be hidden even by a mask.

  Jordis finally nodded. “Very well. Let it be done. But I will not leave without a draft agreement—a promise of intentions, if nothing else.”

  Marasi breathed a sigh of relief, shooting Steris a nod of appreciation. Still, she did not miss the stiffness in Jordis’s posture as she and Waxillium shook hands. The Basin had not made a friend this day. Hopefully some last-minute scrambling had prevented them from making an enemy.

  “I have one further request,” Waxillium said to her.

  “What?” Jordis asked, suspicious.

  “Nothing terrible or costly,” Waxillium said. “Honestly, I’d just like a ride.”

  * * *

  The Southerners agreed, fortunately. They didn’t particularly want to carry a brigful of enemy soldiers all the way south. Wax had to make it very clear they couldn’t keep Suit himself, and the captain relented with minimal argument. She seemed to realize that her best chance of seeing justice done to all of those who had brutalized her crew lay in letting Wax do some thorough interrogations.

  He kept his relationship to the man quiet.

  As the Malwish crew prepared the ship for travel, Wax stood before the statue of the Lord Ruler, with that single spike in his eye. He’d checked the belt, which was aluminum. No kind of charge. If there had ever been two bracers, he had to assume they’d been made into this one spearhead.

  Marasi passed behind him. “I’m going to go check our skimmer for supplies we might have left behind.”

  Wax nodded. I held your power, he thought toward the statue, if only a tiny bit of it. Rusts … I think I understand.

  He’d given the Bands to MeLaan, and she had made them vanish into her flesh. He was glad to know that they were effectively out of his reach. Too much power.

  He raised his finger in farewell to the Lord Ruler, then jogged off after Marasi.

  “Aradel and the Senate won’t like this deal,” Wax noted as he reached her. “Particularly the part about us giving away the Bands.”

  “I know,” Marasi said.

  “As long as I can tell him it wasn’t my idea.”

  She glanced at him. “You don’t seem too broken up about losing the Bands.”

  “I’m not,” he admitted. “I was worried, honestly. The Bands are drained, mostly, but we could probably recharge them by compounding. The power they offer is something…”

  “… Sublime and devastating at once?” Marasi asked. “Dangerous because of what it could do in the wrong hands, yet somehow more dangerous in your own?”

  “Yes.”

  They shared something in that moment, swept by winds. Something they’d touched, something—hopefully—only they would know.

  They turned together without a word, seeking the skimmer. Jordis would want to load it on the ship, but first there was a corpse Wax needed to see. He didn’t blame Wayne for what he’d done to Telsin. Yes, taking her to Elendel for justice—and interrogation—would have been better. And yes, he found that he’d rather have pulled the trigger himself. Harmony was right about that.

  But either way, Telsin was dealt with. That meant—

  Blood on the snow.

  No skimmer.

  More importantly, no body.

  Marasi froze in place as they drew near, but Wax approached the empty patch of ground. She had slipped away, again. He found he was not surprised, though he was impressed. She’d gotten the skimmer aloft and away during the fighting, escaping during the chaos.

  Wayne should have known she might be able to heal herself, Wax thought, going down on one knee beside the eerie pattern of blood drops that seemed to outline a body.

  “It’s not done, then,” Marasi said.

  Wax brushed the drops of blood, frozen to the ground. He’d spent the last eighteen months trying to save this woman. And when he finally had, she’d killed him.

  “It’s not done,” he said. “But in some ways, that’s better.”

  “Because your sister isn’t dead?”

  He turned toward Marasi. It seemed that despite hours in this frozen place, the cold had only just reached inside of him.

  “No,” he said. “Because now I have someone to hunt.”

  31

  “Wax, you gotta see this!”

  Wax tipped his head back, bleary-eyed. These bunks were not particularly pleasant, but at least the airship flew in a calm, smooth manner. That was nice, as the skimmer had always felt as if it were one gust of wind away from plowing nose-first into a hillside.

  Wayne hung halfway out of the room’s large window.

  “That window opens?” Wax asked, surprised.

  “Any window opens,” Wayne said, “if you push hard enough. Look, you’ve gotta see this.”

  Wax sighed, climbing up and leaning out of the window beside Wayne. Beneath them, Elendel spread out as a vast sea of lights.

  “Like rivers of fire,” Wayne mumbled. “Look how it follows patterns. Rich areas more lit, roads all in lines. Beautiful.”

  Wax grunted.

  “That’s all you can say, mate?”

  “Wayne, I see this basically every night.”

  “Now, that there, that ain’t
fair. You should feel guilty.”

  “For being a Coinshot?”

  “For cheatin’ at life, Wax.”

  “How about I feel appreciative instead?”

  “Suppose that’ll do.”

  Wax settled down on his bunk, then pulled on his boots, doing the laces. He ached like a man beaten senseless. He wished he could blame the strain of the last few days, but he’d held the Bands of Mourning and had been healed completely.

  That meant these aches came merely from sleeping a few hours on this bunk. Rusts. He was getting old. Upon considering that, however, he found that mortality didn’t frighten him as it once had.

  “We should get up to the bridge,” he suggested, standing. It had been a full day since they’d left the mountains. They’d stopped at a town to telegraph ahead at Wax’s insistence, then waited until the next night to fly the rest of the way. He had had no intention of bringing a massive flying warship anywhere near the city without at least giving warning first.

  Jordis had been amenable, once he’d promised her supplies for their trip home in repayment. Marasi worried about the captain, he knew, but he had looked into the woman’s eyes behind the mask. She was a soldier, a killer, despite her claims of hers being a simple trading vessel.

  She knew. Wax had held the Bands. He could have swept the Malwish away and stolen their ship without a second thought. Instead, he’d given in to Steris’s compromise. Strong words notwithstanding, Jordis realized she’d gotten more out of this deal than she had any reason to expect.

  Wayne joined him outside their room, and they stepped aside as a few wearied airmen passed. He couldn’t see their faces, but could read a world of emotions from their hunched backs and subdued speech.

  “They’ve been broken,” Wayne whispered, looking over his shoulder as the airmen continued on. “Ain’t fair what happened to these folks, Wax.”

  “Is life ever fair?”

  “It has been to me,” Wayne said. “More than fair, I reckon. Considering what I deserve.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Wax asked.