The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel

by Brandon Sanderson

  The one he’d filled with his guns on that night months ago. There was a tassel from a mistcoat hanging out of one side.

  You’re welcome, the voice whispered.

  * * *

  Marasi hid in the shadows behind the broken train car, anxious, her heart pounding. The Coinshot had come hunting her after what she’d done to his friend. With his Allomancy, he’d have been able to see her wherever she ran, despite the darkness and the mist, so she’d tucked the rifle behind a few boxes and hid elsewhere.

  It felt cowardly, but it had worked. He’d shot a few times into the boxes, then walked around and picked up the gun, looking baffled. He’d obviously expected to find her bleeding and dead.

  Instead, she was simply unarmed. She had to get to a weapon, had to do something. Wayne had been shot; he’d lured the Coinshot away, but he’d been dripping blood when she’d seen him.

  The room was chaos, and it left her disoriented. Wayne had told her that the dynamite sticks they had were relatively small ones, but detonating them in close confines was still enormously, painfully loud. The gunshots were nearly so. The air smelled of smoke, and when gunshots weren’t sounding, she could faintly hear men groaning and cursing and dying.

  Before the Vanishers had appeared at the wedding dinner, she’d never been in any kind of fight. Now she didn’t know what to do; she’d even lost track of which direction was which. The room was dark, lit only by flickering flames, and the mists made apparitions around her.

  Some Vanishers were huddled together, guarding the mouth of the tunnel with the koloss-blooded man. She could barely make them out when she peered out of her hiding place. They held their guns leveled. She couldn’t go that way.

  A figure strode from the darkness nearby, and she barely held in a gasp. She recognized Miles Hundredlives from his description. Narrow face, short dark hair. He was stripped to the waist, exposing a powerful chest. His trousers were in tatters. He was counting the bullets in a revolver, and was the only one in the room who wasn’t creeping or cowering. His legs kicked up mist, which now coated the floor.

  He stopped by the Vanishers at the mouth of the tunnel and said something she couldn’t hear. They ducked away, retreating down the passage. Miles didn’t follow them, but strode through the room, getting closer to Marasi. She held her breath, hoping he’d pass closely enough to her hiding place for …

  A rustle of cloth sounded, and the Coinshot dropped into place beside Miles. Miles stopped, raising an eyebrow.

  “Pull is dead,” the Coinshot said. Marasi could barely hear him, but she could tell that his voice was taut with anger. “I’ve been trying to end the short one. He keeps leading me on chases through the room.”

  “I believe I have said before,” Miles said, voice loud and bold, “that Wayne and Waxillium are like rats. Chasing them is useless. You need to draw them to you.”

  Marasi leaned forward, breathing shallowly, as quietly as she could. Miles was almost close enough. A few more steps …

  Miles snapped his revolver closed. “Waxillium crawled somewhere. I lost him, but he’s wounded and unarmed.” Then Miles turned and pointed the revolver directly at Marasi’s hiding place. “Call for him if you would, Lady Marasi.”

  She froze, feeling a sharp stab of horror. Miles’s face was calm. Icy. Emotionless. He would kill her without a second thought.

  “Call for him,” Miles said more firmly. “Scream.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She could only stare at that gun. Her training in the university told her to do as he ordered, then run the moment he turned away. But she couldn’t move.

  The mist-shrouded shadows at the corner of the room began to shift. She ripped her gaze away from Miles. Something dark moved in the mists. A man, standing up tall.

  The mists seemed to draw back. Waxillium stood there, wearing a large, dusterlike coat, cut into strips below the waist. A pair of revolvers gleamed in holsters at his hips, and he rested a shotgun on each shoulder. His face was bloodied, but he was smiling.

  Without saying a word, he lowered the shotguns and blasted Miles in the side.

  19

  Shooting Miles was, of course, useless. The man could survive a dynamite explosion at close range. He could take a few shotgun blasts.

  But the shots caused the Coinshot to Push himself away in alarm. They also left Miles sprayed with metal. Wax increased his weight and Pushed, though he found it hard to get a purchase on the birdshot. Any metal that pierced a person’s body or touched his blood was very difficult to affect with Allomancy.

  Fortunately, Miles’s body obliged him by healing itself and spitting out the birdshot. In the instant before it could drop to the floor, Wax’s Push suddenly found anchors, and he threw Miles across the room and into the wall.

  The Coinshot landed on the other side of the room. Waxillium dashed forward, mistcoat flapping. Damn, but it felt good to be wearing one of those again. He skidded to a stop beside Marasi, taking cover next to the railcar.

  “I almost had him,” Marasi said.

  “Waxillium!” Miles bellowed, his voice echoing in the room. “All you do is stall. Well, know this. My men have gone to kill the woman you came here to save. If you want her to live, give yourself to me. We—”

  His voice cut off strangely. Wax frowned as something moved behind Marasi. She jumped, and Wax pointed a shotgun, but it turned out to be Wayne.

  “Hey,” he said, puffing. “Nice gun.”

  “Thanks,” Wax said, shouldering it, noting the speed bubble around them. That was what had stopped Miles’s voice. “Your arm?”

  Wayne glanced down at the bloody bandage around his left arm. “Not so good. I’m outta healing, lost some blood. I’m slowing, Wax. Slowing too much. You look pretty beat-up yourself.”

  “I’ll survive.” Wax’s leg was throbbing, his face scraped up, but he felt surprisingly good. He always felt that way, in the mists.

  “The things he’s saying,” Marasi said. “You think he’s telling the truth?”

  “He might be, Wax,” Wayne said urgently. “The blokes who was set up in front of the tunnel, they charged off a few shakes back. Looked like they had something important to do.”

  “Miles did tell them something,” Marasi added.

  “Damn,” Wax said, glancing around the corner of the railcar. Miles might be bluffing … but then again, he might not be. It wasn’t a chance Wax could take. “That Coinshot is going to make things difficult. We need to take him down.”

  “What happened to Ranette’s fancy gun?” Wayne asked.

  “Not sure,” Wax said with a grimace.

  “Wow. She’s gonna rip out your insides, mate.”

  “I’ll be sure to blame you for it,” Wax said, still watching the Coinshot. “He’s good. Dangerous. We’ll never take out Miles unless that Allomancer is dead.”

  “But you’ve got those special bullets,” Marasi noted.

  “One,” Wax said, slipping a shotgun into its holster inside his coat. He pulled out the other Coinshot round. “I don’t think an ordinary revolver will fire this. I…”

  He trailed off, then looked at Marasi. She was raising an eyebrow at him.

  “Right,” Wax said. “Can you two keep Miles busy?”

  “No problem,” Wayne said.

  “Let’s go, then,” Wax said, taking a deep breath. “One last try.”

  Wayne met his eyes and nodded. Wax saw tension in his friend’s face. The two of them were battered and bloodied, low on metals, metalminds drained.

  But they’d been here before. And this was when they tended to shine their brightest.

  As the speed bubble fell, Wax ran out from behind the train car. He tossed the bullet into the air ahead of him, then Pushed on it with a quick snap of power. The Coinshot raised his hand with casual confidence, Pushing it right back at Wax.

  The casing and bullet proper broke free and flipped toward Wax, who deflected them easily, but the ceramic tip continued forward. It took
the Coinshot right in the eye.

  Bless you, Ranette, Wax thought, leaping up and Pushing off the coins in a fallen Vanisher’s pocket. That launched him forward, into the tunnel. There were tracks on the ground here, as if this were built for a train.

  Wax frowned in puzzlement, but Pushed on them, heedlessly hurling himself through the darkness until he reached a set of stairs leading upward. The ceiling here was wood; a structure of some sort had been built over the tunnel. He charged into the stairwell, which led up to the wooden building, perhaps a barrack or dormitory.

  Wax smiled, the pain of his wounds retreating further as he grew more energetic. He heard footsteps on the wooden floor at the top of the stairwell. They were ready for him. It was a trap, of course.

  He found that he didn’t care. He unslung both shotguns, then Pushed on the nails in the steps and blasted up the stairwell. He passed the first floor and continued on toward the second—he’d rather check up first, then down. If Steris was being held here, she’d probably be up at the top.

  Now we’re burning, Wax thought, metal flaring, energy rising. He threw his shoulder against the door at the top of the stairs, breaking out into a second-floor hallway. Feet stomped up the steps behind him and men burst out of rooms nearby, fully armed, wearing no metal.

  Wax smiled, raising his shotguns. All right. Let’s do this.

  Wax Pushed hard against the nails in the boards under the feet of the men leveling aluminum guns at him. Planks ripped free by their nails, making the floor tremble, throwing off the Vanishers’ aim. He dodged right, rolling out of the hallway and into a room to its side. He came up and spun, leveling both shotguns back at the doorway.

  Vanishers from the stairwell piled into the hallway after him, and his arms jerked as he fired twin shotgun blasts. He Pushed, slamming the men back and sending himself crashing out the window. This building was more an old warehousing shed; there was no glass in the windows, just shutters.

  Wax blasted out into open air. There was a lamppost on the dark street, a little bit to his left. He Pushed on that while at the same time dropping his weight to nearly nothing. The Push sent him back against the outside of the building; he landed and half ran, half leaped parallel to the ground along the wall.

  Reaching the next room over from where he’d been, he Pushed on another lamppost and crashed through the window feet-first, splinters spraying around him. He landed and came up in the building, then turned toward the wall between him and the room he’d just left.

  He holstered the shotguns and grabbed his revolvers, pulling them out in a cross-armed motion. They were Ranette-made Sterrions, among the best guns he’d ever owned. He raised them and increased his weight, then Pushed hard on the nails in the wall before him.

  The cheap wood exploded away, the wall disintegrating into a spray of splinters and planks, nails becoming as deadly as bullets as they ripped into the men in the next room. Wax fired, dropping any that the nails had missed in a storm of splinters, steel, and lead.

  A click to his left. Wax spun as a doorknob turned. He didn’t wait to see who was beyond. He Pushed on the doorknob, ripping it out of its frame and through the door, into the chest of the Vanisher trying to get in. The door slammed open, and the unfortunate man crashed through the wall of the hallway—there were no rooms on the other side, just the wall of the narrow building—propelled out into the misty night.

  Wax holstered the Sterrions, barrels smoking, chambers empty. He pulled out the shotguns, rolling into the hallway and coming up in a crouch. He raised a shotgun in each direction. A few straggling Vanishers climbed up the stairs to his right; another group were leveling weapons to his left.

  He Pushed on the twin metal levers on the sides of his shotguns, cocking them with Allomancy. The spent casings flipped out into the air above the guns, and Waxillium fired while Pushing, driving birdshot and spent casings into the waiting Vanishers on either side.

  The floor next to Waxillium exploded.

  He cursed, throwing himself to the left as gunfire from below blasted chips of wood into the air. They were getting smart, firing at him from underneath. He turned and ran, firing shotgun blasts down through the floor, mists creeping in through the broken walls.

  There had to be another dozen Vanishers below. Too many to fire at without being able to see them. A bullet grazed his thigh. He turned and ducked away, leaping over the bodies of the fallen and dashing down the hallway. Bullets chased him, the floor splintering, men calling below as they fired everything they had up at him.

  He hit the door at the end of the hallway. It was locked. A healthy dose of increased weight—along with some momentum and a shoulder—fixed that. He crashed through and found himself in a small windowless room with no other doors.

  A short, balding man cowered in one corner. A woman with golden hair and a rumpled ball gown sat on a bench at the back of the room, her eyes red, her face haggard. Steris. She looked utterly dumbfounded as Wax spun through the broken doorway, mistcoat tassels flaring around him. He Pushed on some of the nails in the floor back in the hall, causing the boards there to ripple, drawing much of the gunfire.

  “Lord Waxillium?” Steris said, shocked.

  “Most of me,” he said, wincing. “I may have left a toe or two in that hallway.” He glanced at the man in the corner. “Who are you?”

  “Nouxil.”

  “The gunsmith,” Wax said, tossing him a shotgun.

  “I’m not actually a very good shot,” the man said, looking terrified. A few bullets blasted up through the floor between them. The Vanishers had realized they’d been tricked. They knew what he was looking for.

  “It doesn’t matter if you’re a good shot,” Wax said, raising his empty hand to the back wall and breaking it open with an increased-weight Push. “It matters if you can swim or not.”

  “What? Of course I can. But why—”

  “Hang on tightly,” Wax said as more gunshots erupted around him. He Pushed on the shotgun in the gunsmith’s hands, flinging him out the opening, throwing him some thirty feet in an arc toward the canal outside.

  Wax spun, grabbing Steris as she stood up. “The other girls?” he asked.

  “I haven’t seen any other captives,” she said. “The Vanishers implied they were sent somewhere.”

  Blast, he thought. Well, he was lucky to find even Steris. He Pushed lightly off the nails in the floor, propelling the two of them toward the ceiling. As they approached, he took advantage of the fact that it didn’t matter how heavy an object was when it came to falling. All objects fell at the same rate. That meant that increasing his weight manyfold would not affect his motion.

  Raising his shotgun, he shot a concentrated blast of pellets into the ceiling. Then he Pushed on them sharply, his increased weight meaning the Push didn’t really move him much—just as when he was lighter, a Push affected him greatly.

  The result was that he continued his momentum upward—but his Push blasted a hole in the ceiling. He made himself incredibly light and Pushed more strongly off the nails below. The two of them shot up through the hole he’d made, propelled some forty or fifty feet into the air. He spun in the night, mistcoat tassels splaying outward, smoking shotgun clutched tightly in one arm, Steris in the other. Bullets from below left streaks in the mist as it swirled around them.

  Steris gasped, clinging to him. Wax drew every bit of weight he had left, draining his metalminds completely. That was hundreds upon hundreds of hours of weight, enough to make him crush paving stones if he tried to walk on them. In the strange way of Feruchemy, he didn’t grow more dense—bullets would still cut through him easily if they hit. But with this incredible conflux of weight, his ability to Push grew incredible.

  He used that weight to Push downward with everything he had. There were numerous lines of metal below. Nails. Doorknobs. Guns. Personal effects.

  The building trembled, then undulated, then ripped apart as every nail in its frame was driven downward as if propelled by a rotary g
un. There was an enormous crash. The building was crushed down into the railroad tunnel on top of which it had been built.

  The weight was gone from him in an instant, compounded upon itself in that moment, his metalminds drained all at once. Wax let gravity take him, and he dropped through the mists, Steris clinging to him. They landed in the middle of the wreckage at the bottom of the railroad tunnel. Smashed lumber and fragments of furniture were strewn across the floor.

  Three Vanishers stood in the mouth of the tunnel, openmouthed. Wax raised the shotgun and cocked it with Allomancy, then laid into them with shotgun blasts. They were the only ones that had still been standing. Everyone else had been crushed down into the tunnel.

  A small fire flickered in the corner where a lantern had fallen. By its light, he checked on Steris, the mists pouring down around them and filling the tunnel.

  “Oh Survivor of Mists!” Steris breathed, cheeks flushed, eyes wide, lips parted as she held to him. She didn’t look terrified. If anything, she seemed aroused.

  You are a bizarre woman, Steris, Wax thought.

  “Do you realize that you have missed your calling, Waxillium?” a voice yelled from within the blackened tunnel. It was Miles. “You are an army unto yourself. You are wasted in the life you’ve taken upon yourself.”

  “Take this,” Wax said softly to Steris, handing her the shotgun. He cocked it. One shell left. “Hold it tightly. I want you to run for the precinct station. It’s at Fifteenth and Ruman. If one of the Vanishers comes for you, fire the shotgun.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t expect you to hit him,” Wax said. “I’ll listen for the sound of the shot.”

  She tried to comment further, but Wax ducked down to get his center of mass beneath her, then carefully Pushed the shotgun up into her middle. He used it to launch her up and out of the pit. She landed awkwardly, but safely, and hesitated only a moment before running off into the mists.

  Wax scrambled to the side, making sure he wasn’t backlit by the fire. He pulled a Sterrion from its holster and fished out some rounds. He reloaded as he crouched down.