“Lady Marasi,” Waxillium asked, checking the sights on his revolver, “would you be terribly offended if I suggested you wait in the carriage while we reconnoiter? The place is likely abandoned, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few traps left behind.”
“No,” she said, shivering. “I wouldn’t mind. I think that would be just fine.”
“I’ll wave when we’re certain the place is clear,” he said, then raised his handgun and nodded to Wayne. They ducked out of the carriage, running in a low squat to the side of the building. They didn’t go to the door. Instead, Wayne jumped—and Waxillium must have Pushed him, for the wiry man leaped a good twelve feet and landed on the roof. Waxillium followed, jumping more gracefully, landing without a sound. They moved over to the far corner, where Wayne swung down and kicked in a window. Waxillium swung in after him.
She waited a few tense minutes. The coachman didn’t say a word about any of it, though she heard him muttering “none of my business” to himself. Waxillium had paid him enough that he’d better stay quiet.
No gunshots sounded. Eventually, Waxillium opened the door to the building and waved. She hurriedly climbed from the carriage and approached.
“Well?” she asked.
“Two tripwires,” Waxillium said, “rigged with explosives. Nothing else dangerous we could find. Other than Wayne’s body odor.”
“That’s the smell of incredibleness,” Wayne called from inside.
“Come on,” Waxillium said, holding the door open for her.
She stepped in, then hesitated in the doorway. “It’s empty.”
She’d expected forges and equipment. Instead, the cavernous room was vacant, like a classroom during winter holiday. Light shone in through windows, though it was very dim. The chamber smelled of coal and fire, and there were blackened areas on the floor.
“Sleeping quarters up there,” Waxillium said, pointing at the other side of the foundry. “The main chamber here is double height for half the building, but the other side has a second story. Looked like they could house some fifty men in there, men who could act like foundry workers during the days to maintain the front.”
“Aha!” Wayne said from the darkness on the left side of the chamber. She heard a rattling, then light flooded the room as he pushed back the wall. It opened there, rolling to give large-scale access to the canal.
“How easily did that open?” Waxillium asked, trotting over. Marasi followed.
“I dunno,” Wayne said, shrugging. “Easy enough.”
Waxillium inspected the door. It slid on wheels in a small channel cut into the floor. He rubbed his fingers in the trench and brought them out, rubbing grease between them.
“They’ve been using it,” Marasi said.
“Exactly,” Waxillium said.
“So?” Wayne asked.
“If they were doing illegal things in here,” Marasi said, “they wouldn’t be wanting to open the entire side of the building with any frequency.”
“Maybe they did it to keep up the act,” Waxillium said, rising.
Marasi nodded, thoughtful. “Oh! Aluminum.”
Wayne pulled out his dueling canes, spinning. “What? Where? Who’s shooting?”
Marasi felt herself blush. “Sorry. I meant, we should check and see if we can find any aluminum droplets on the ground. You know, from forging or casting guns. That will tell us if this place is really the hideout, or if Wayne’s source was trying to lead us to a bad alloy.”
“He was honest,” Wayne said. “I got a sense for that sort of thing.” He sneezed.
“You believed that Lessie really was a dancer, the first time we met her,” Waxillium said, rising.
“That’s different. She was a woman. Good at lying, they are. The God Beyond made’m that way.”
“I’m … not certain how I should take that,” Marasi said.
“With a pinch of copper,” Waxillium said. “And a healthy dose of skepticism. Just like anything Wayne says.” He held out his hand.
Marasi frowned, raising her palm. He dropped something into it. Some bits of metal that looked like they’d been scraped off the floor, where they’d cooled. They were silvery, light, and dirty black around the edges.
“I found them on the floor over there,” Waxillium said. “Near one of the blackened sections.”
“Aluminum?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes,” he said. “At least, I can’t Push them with Allomancy, which along with their appearance is sufficient indication.” He studied her. “You’ve got a good mind for this sort of thing.”
She blushed. Again. Rust and Ruin! she thought. I’m going to have to find a way to deal with that. “It’s about deviations, Lord Waxillium.”
“Deviations?”
“Numbers, patterns, movements. People seem erratic, but they actually follow patterns. Find the deviations, isolate the reason why they deviated, and you’ll often learn something. Aluminum on the floor. It’s a deviation.”
“And are there others, here?”
“The opening door,” she said, nodding to the side. “Those windows. They’re smeared with too much soot. If I were to guess, it was put there by burning a candle close to the glass to blacken it so nobody could peek in.”
“Maybe it was natural,” Waxillium said. “From forging.”
“Why would the windows be closed during the heat of forging? Those windows can open easily, and they open outward—so there wouldn’t be any soot on them. Not so much, at least. Either they left them closed while working in order to hide what was in here, or they darkened them intentionally.”
“Clever,” Waxillium said.
“So the question is,” she said, “what have they been moving in and out of the building through that large side door? Something important enough that they’d open it, even after going through so much trouble with the windows.”
“That part, at least, is easy,” Waxillium said. “They’ve been robbing freight cars, so they’ve been moving the cargo in.”
“Which implies they’ve been shipping it after stealing it…” Marasi said.
“Which gives us a lead,” Waxillium said with a nod. “They’ve been moving things in and out of this location via the canals. In fact, the canals might be connected to how they’re getting the cargo out of the railway cars so easily.” He strode away toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m going to go sniff around outside,” he said. “You two go look through the sleeping quarters. Tell me if you see any … deviations, as you put it.” He hesitated. “Let Wayne go in first. We might have missed a trap or two. Better for him to explode than you.”
“Hey!” Wayne said.
“I mean it with all fondness,” Waxillium said, slipping out through the open side of the building. Then he leaned back in. “And maybe it will blow your face off, and spare us having to look at that mug of yours.” With that, he left.
Wayne smiled. “Damn. Sure is good to see him acting more like himself again.”
“So he wasn’t always so solemn?”
“Oh, Wax has always been solemn,” Wayne said, wiping his nose with his handkerchief. “But when he’s at his best, there’s a smirk underneath. C’mon.”
He led her to the back part of the building. There was a small box by the wall, the explosives they had discovered and disarmed, she assumed. The ceiling was lower here. Wayne climbed up a stairwell, gesturing for her to wait.
She poked around, looking for anything that had been discarded, but succeeded only in making herself jump a few times when she thought she saw something from the corner of her eye. This side of the chamber was very dim.
Was Wayne taking too long? She fidgeted, then finally decided to climb the stairwell.
It was dark inside. Not pitch dark, just dark enough that she thought she should be able to see what she was doing—but couldn’t. She hesitated halfway up the stairs, then decided she was a fool and pushed forward.
“Wayne?
” she said, nervous as she peeked out of the stairwell. The upper floor was lit by a few windows, darkened by soot, despite being in an area where there would be no forging or casting. That reinforced her theory. And her nervousness.
“He is dead, young lady,” an aged, distinguished voice said from the darkness. “I am sorry for your loss.”
Her heart just about stopped.
“Yes,” the voice continued, “he was simply too handsome, too clever, and too immensely remarkable in all aspects of his existence to allow to live.” Someone pushed open a window, letting in light and revealing Wayne’s face. “I’m afraid it took a hundred men to bring him down, and he killed all but one. His last words were, ‘Tell Wax … that he’s a total git … and he still owes me five notes.’”
“Wayne,” she hissed.
“Couldn’t help myself, mate,” he said, switching back to his own voice, which was completely different. “Sorry. But you shouldn’t have come up here.” He nodded to the corner, where a few sticks of something lay against the wall.
“More explosives?” she said, feeling faint.
“Yeah. We missed them on the first pass. Were rigged to blow when the latch was opened on a chest in the corner.”
“Was there anything in the chest?”
“Yeah. Explosives. Weren’t you listening?”
She gave him a flat stare.
“No,” he said, chuckling. “I don’t know what Wax expects us to find in this place. Swept it clean, they did.”
By the light of the open window, she could make out a low-ceilinged room. Well, more of a loft. She and Wayne could walk in it without bending over, but him just barely. Waxillium would have to stoop.
The floorboards were warped and there were nails sticking out in places. She had images of prying one up and finding some stash of hidden clues, but as she felt across the floor, she realized she could see between the boards to the floor below. There wasn’t really any space for hiding things.
Wayne poked through some cupboards built into the wall, checking for explosives, then knocking for hidden compartments. Marasi looked around, but quickly determined that there wasn’t anything to find here. Other than, perhaps, the explosives.
Explosives.
“Wayne, what kind of explosives are those?”
“Hum? Oh, ordinary stuff. They call it dynamite, used for blowing holes in rock out in the Roughs. Pretty easy to get, even in the city. These are smaller sticks than I’ve seen, but basically the same stuff.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Were they in anything?”
He hesitated, then looked back at the trunk. “Huh.” He reached in and held up something. “They weren’t in anything, but someone used this to prop up the fuse and the detonator.”
“What is it?” she asked, hurrying over.
“Cigar box,” he said, letting her see it. “Citizen Magistrates. Expensive brand. Very expensive.”
She looked over the box. The top was painted gold and red, with the brand splayed across in large letters. There weren’t any cigars left, though it did look like some numbers had been scribbled across the inside of the lid in pencil. The sequence didn’t make any sense to her.
“We’ll show it to Wax,” Wayne said. “This is just the sort of thing he likes. It’ll probably lead him to some grand theory about how our boss smokes cigars, and that’ll somehow let him pick the guy out of a crowd. He’s always doing stuff like that, ever since we started working together.” Wayne smiled, taking the cigar box back, then returned to poking around the cupboards.
“Wayne,” Marasi said. “How did you end up with Waxillium, anyway?”
“That wasn’t in your reports?” he asked, knocking at the side of a cupboard.
“No. It’s considered a bit of a mystery.”
“We don’t talk about it much,” Wayne said, voice muffled, head inside the cupboard. “He saved my life.”
She smiled, sitting down on the floor, resting her back against the wall. “That’s probably a good story.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said, pulling his head out. “I was to be hanged over in Far Dorest, by the lawkeeper there.”
“Wrongfully, I assume?”
“Depends on your definition of that particular word and all,” Wayne said. “I shot a man. Innocent one.”
“Was it an accident?”
“Yeah,” Wayne said. “I only meant to rob him.” He paused, looking at the cupboard, seeming distant. He shook his head, then crawled inside, pushing hard and breaking in the back wall.
That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. She sat back, hands around her legs. “You were a criminal?”
“Not a very capable one,” Wayne said from inside the cupboard. “I’ve always had a problem not taking things. I just grab stuff, you know? And then it’s there, in my fingers. Anyway, I was getting good at it, and I had some friends … they convinced me that I should go a little farther. Really take hold of my destiny, they said. Start going for coin, get into robbing with guns and the like. So I tried it out. Left a man dead. Father of three.”
He pulled out of the broken cupboard, then held something up. It looked like cards of some sort.
“Clues?” she asked eagerly.
“Nudes,” he said, flipping through them. “Old ones. Probably from before our bandits bought this place.” He flipped through a few more, then tossed them back into the hole. “At least it will give the conners something fun to find.” He looked back at her, seeming … haunted, his eyes lying in shadow, face lit on one side by the open window.
“So what happened?” she asked softly. “With you, I mean. Unless you don’t want to tell.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I panicked. I think maybe I wanted to be caught. Never wanted to shoot that bloke. Just wanted his purse, you know? Old Deadfinger caught me easy. He didn’t even have to beat a confession out of me.” Wayne was quiet for a moment. “I cried the whole time. I was sixteen. Just a kid.”
“Did you know you were an Allomancer?” she asked.
“Sure. That was kinda why I was in the Roughs in the first place, but that’s another story. Anyway, bendalloy is hard to make. Bismuth and cadmium aren’t the kinds of metals you find in your corner store. Didn’t know much about Feruchemy yet, though my father was a Feruchemist, so I had an idea. But storing health, it takes gold.”
He walked over, sitting down on the floor beside her. “Still don’t know why Wax saved me. I shoulda hanged, you know. Killed a good man. He wasn’t even rich. He was a bookkeeper. Did charity work for anyone who needed it—wills drawn up, letters read. Every week, he transcribed letters for the mine workers who couldn’t write, so they could send them home to their families in the city. Found out a lot about him in the trial, you see. Got to see his kids crying. And his wife…”
Wayne reached into his pocket, then unfolded something. A sheet of paper. “Got a letter from them a few months back.”
“They write you letters?” Marasi said.
“Sure. I send them half of what I make. Keeps the kids fed, you know. Figure it makes sense, seein’ as to how I killed their daddy. One went to university.” He hesitated. “They still hate me. Write me the letters to let me know they haven’t forgiven me, that no money will bring back their daddy. They’re right. But they do take the money, so that’s something.”
“Wayne…” Marasi said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too. Some mistakes, though, you can’t fix by being sorry. Can’t fix them, no matter what you do. Guns and me, we haven’t gotten along ever since. My hand starts shaking when I hold one, wobbling about like a damn fish dumped on the docks. Ain’t that the funniest thing? Like my hand thinks by itself.”
The sound of footsteps came from the stairwell and a few moments later Waxillium walked in. He raised an eyebrow at the two of them sitting there on the floor.
“See now,” Wayne said. “We’re having a heart-to-heart, here. Don’t go stomping in and m
aking a mess of things.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Waxillium said. “I spoke with the local beggars. The Vanishers have been moving something large in and out of the building and onto a canal boat. They did it on several occasions, always at night. It seems to have been bigger than just cargo; some kind of machinery, I suspect.”
“Huh,” Wayne said.
“Huh indeed,” Waxillium said. “You?”
“Found a box,” Wayne said, holding out the cigar box. “Oh, and some more dynamite. In case you want to blast out a new canal or something.”
“Bring it,” Waxillium said. “Might be useful.” He took the cigar box.
“There’s some nudie pictures too,” Wayne noted, pointing at the cupboard. “They’re so faded you can barely make out the good parts, though.” He hesitated. “The ladies ain’t wearing any guns, so you probably wouldn’t be interested anyway.”
Waxillium snorted.
“The cigar box is of an expensive variety,” Marasi said, standing up. “Unlikely to be from one of the common thieves, unless they took it from someone. But look. Someone wrote some numbers on the inside.”
“Indeed,” Waxillium said. He narrowed his eyes, then looked at Wayne, who nodded.
“What?” she said. “You know something?”
Waxillium tossed the box back to Wayne, who tucked it away inside the pocket of his coat. It was large enough that it hung out. “Have you ever heard the name Miles Dagouter?”
“Sure,” she said. “Miles Hundredlives. He’s a lawkeeper, out in the Roughs.”
“Yes,” Waxillium said somberly. “Come on. I think it’s time for us to take a trip. While we go, I’ll tell you a few stories.”
11
Miles stood by the railing and lit his cigar. He puffed on it a few times to get it going, then slowly released a stream of pungent smoke from between his lips.
“They’ve been spotted, boss,” Tarson said as he walked up. Tarson’s arm was in a sling; most men would still be in bed after taking a shot like he had. But Tarson was a Pewterarm and koloss-blooded. He’d heal quickly.
The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel Page 17
