The Bands of Mourning (52 page)

The ship quivered, and the fans started up with a much louder sound than he had expected. Before he reached the bridge, the thing rocked, and he heard ice cracking above the sound of the fans. He leaned over to a porthole, looking out as the ground retreated.

It
worked
. Immediately, implications flooded his mind. Travel. Shipping. Warfare. New regions could be settled. New types of buildings and docks would be needed.

It would all flow through him.

He suppressed a smile—best to celebrate
after
he was safely away—but he could not stop the heady sensation. The Set had been planning for events a century or more away, putting careful plots into motion at his suggestion. He was proud of those, but truth be told, he’d rather they rule in
his
lifetime.

And with this, he could do so.

*   *   *

Jordis huddled in the tent, watching her crew die.

It had been long coming, this death. The last ember of the fire, refusing to give up its spark. During the terrible march through the dead rain, her people had been given tiny sips of warmth from a metalmind. Enough to barely keep them alive, like plants locked in a dark shed for most of the day.

But now, in this place, the cold was too pervasive—and the hardships of the march too devastating. She crawled among her crew and whispered encouragement, though she could no longer feel her fingers or toes. Most of the men and women of the ship couldn’t even nod. A few had started removing their clothing, complaining of heat. Chillfever had struck them.

Not long now. The maskless devils seemed to know this; they’d posted only a single guard at the tent. Her people could have snuck away out the back, perhaps. But what would they sneak toward? Death outside in the winds rather than death inside here?

How do the maskless survive it?
she wondered. They must be devils indeed, born of the frost itself, to be so capable of withstanding the cold.

Jordis knelt beside Petrine, the enginemaster and eldest of her crew. How had the woman survived so long? She was by no means feeble, but she was past her sixth decade. Petrine lifted her hand and gripped Jordis’s arm—though her wrinkled eyes were shadowed by the mask, Jordis needed no gesture or expression to know Petrine’s emotions.

“Do we attack?” Petrine asked.

“For what purpose?”

“We could die by their weapons instead of the cold.”

Wise, those words. Perhaps they could—

A loud thump came from outside the tent. Jordis found her feet, surprisingly, though most of the others remained huddling where they lay. The front of the tent burst open and a man with a familiar—but broken—mask appeared there.

Impossible. Was the chillfever striking her too?

The man raised his mask and displayed a bearded, youthful face. “I am sorry to have come in unannounced,” Allik said. “But I bear gifts, as is traditional for visiting someone’s house unannounced, yes?”

He held up a gloved fist, which clutched a bundle of medallions by their cords.

Jordis looked from the medallions to young Allik, then back. For once she didn’t even care about how free he was with raising his mask. She stumbled to him, seizing one of them, unable to believe.

The wonderful warmth ran through her, like a sunrise within. She sighed in relief, her mind clearing. It
was
him. “How?” she whispered.

“I,” Allik proclaimed, “have made friends with some of the devils.” He gestured to the side and a female maskless one almost toppled in, wearing one of the long dresses that were popular here, carrying an armful of rifles.

She said something in her language, dropping the guns to the floor of the tent and dusting off her hands.

“I think she wants us to start shooting the other ones,” Allik said as Jordis quickly grabbed the other medallions and began distributing them to the most severely afflicted of her people. “I, for one, am
more
than happy to oblige.”

Petrine continued the distribution as Jordis armed herself with one of the guns. Though the warmth was wonderful, she still felt weak, and she didn’t want to look in her boots to see if her toes had frostbite. “I don’t know that we will put up much of a fight.”

“Better than no fight at all, yes, Captain?” Allik asked.

“This is true,” Jordis admitted, and made a sign of respect, touching her right shoulder with her left hand, then lowering her hand to touch her wrist. “You did well. Almost I forgive you for your terrible dancing.” She turned to Petrine. “Arm the men and women with these weapons. Let’s kill as many of the devils as we can.”

*   *   *

Wax ripped from the temple in a burst of might and Allomancy. He spun above the building, rocks flung by his explosive exit tumbling in the air around him, trailing mist. Below, a storm of gunfire broke out on the previously quiet mountainside, though they weren’t firing at him.

Above it, an airship lumbered through the sky, fans whirring powerfully on its two pontoons. It was awesome to behold, but the ship was obviously not spry. It moved with the ponderous motions of something very large, and very heavy—even with the weight reduction granted by the medallions.

Wax was tempted to crush the ship. Push the nails from their mountings, rip the thing apart in a storm of destruction, dumping Suit and his traitorous sister to the frozen ground below. He almost did it. But … rusts. He wasn’t an executioner. He was a lawman. He’d rather die than betray that.

Well, die
again
.

He dropped, then used the trace metals in the stonework of the temple as an anchor to send himself soaring across the ground in a swoop. A few of the soldiers below took halfhearted shots at him, but most seemed engrossed in a gunfight with a group of people in masks who had taken up a position behind a rocky shelf.

Steris, Allik,
Wax thought, identifying them.
Good.

He landed among the soldiers and flung them aside. He grabbed an aluminum pistol from one of their racks, loaded it, then waved to the masked people before hurling himself into the sky after the airship.

He was strong. Incredibly strong. The Bands, still clutched in his left hand, somehow gave him not just Allomancy, but
ancient
Allomancy. The potency of those who had lived long ago, during the time of the Lord Ruler. Perhaps even more. Was that possible?

What did you create?
he wondered.
And how long will it last?

His resources were diminishing. Not merely the metals inside of him, but the reserves stored inside the Bands. Stores that changed his level of Investiture.

He should have held back, he knew—reserved it for study, or for use in a future emergency—but
rusts
it was intoxicating. He reached the airship easily, despite only having a few shell casings to Push upon below. He soared up and landed on the ship’s nose, then smashed his hand through one of the windows to the bridge, any cuts healing immediately.

Inside, Suit sat alone. There was no sign of pilots, technicians, or servants. Just a wide, half-oval deck, not even carpeted, and Suit in a chair.

Wax climbed in and raised the aluminum pistol. His boots thumped on the wood. He did a quick scan.
People in the hallway outside,
he thought.
And a bit of metal in Suit’s mouth.
The old coin-in-the-mouth trick, a way to hide metal from an Allomancer. Anything inside the body was very hard to sense.

Unless you were bearing the very powers of creation, that is.

“And so,” Suit said, lighting his pipe, “our confrontation comes at long last.”

“Not much of a confrontation,” Wax said, still alight with power. “I could destroy you a hundred different ways right now, Uncle.”

“I don’t doubt that you could,” Suit said, shaking out his match, then puffing on the pipe. Trying to hide the coin. Talking around a pipe let him have a reason to sound odd. “And here I can only destroy you
one
way.”

Wax leveled his pistol.

Suit looked right at it and smiled. “Do you know why I’ve always beaten you, Nephew?”

“You haven’t beaten me,” Wax said. “You’ve refused to fight. That is an entirely different thing.”

“But sometimes the only way to win
is
to refuse to fight.”

Wax strode forward, wary of traps. He thought faster, moved faster than normal. The blue lines spread from him as a brilliant web, seeking sources of metal smaller—and farther away—than he could normally sense. At times this seemed to flicker, and for a moment he saw the
radiance
inside of each person and thing. It felt as if he might be able to move those too.

An awed voice in the back of his mind whispered,
They’re all the same. Metal, minds, men, all the same substance.…

“What have you done, Uncle?” Wax asked softly.

“And here I must answer my own question,” Edwarn said, shaking his head and standing. “I beat you, Waxillium,
not
because of preparation—though it is extensive. I beat you not because of wit or strength of arm, but because of a unique ability of mine. Creativity.”

“You’re going to bludgeon me with paintings?”

“Always quick with a wry comment!” Suit said. “Bravo.”

“What have you done?”

“I armed the bomb,” Suit said. “It is set to explode in mere moments. Unless I stop it.”

“Let it explode,” Wax said, holding up the Bands—metallic strata weaving across the triangular chunk of metal. “I’m pretty sure I’ll survive it.”

“And those below?” Suit asked. “Your friends? My captives? From the sounds of it, they’re fighting quite vigorously for their freedom. How sad it will be to see them vaporized by an explosion I’ve been told should be enough to destroy a large city all on its—”

Wax increased the speed of his thoughts, tapping zinc. He sorted through a dozen scenarios. Find the explosives and Push them away? How far could he get them? Would Suit detonate the bomb before he could arrive?

His speed of body was nearly tapped out—Marasi must have used that in getting to him—so yes, Suit would have time, though would he actually
do
it? Would he blow himself up, along with this ship, to defeat Wax?

If this were an ordinary criminal, Wax would have bet strongly against it. Unfortunately, Suit and the Set in general had demonstrated a level of fanaticism he had not expected. Like the way Miles had acted as he was executed. These people were not just thugs and thieves; they were political reformers, slaves to an ideal.

What else? What else could Wax do? He discarded scenario after scenario. Get Marasi and the others to safety: too slow. Shoot Suit now: the man could heal himself, and Wax might not have time to get to the bomb and remove it before the blast happened anyway. Push the ship upward? He wouldn’t be able to do that fast enough; unless he Pushed slowly, he’d rip the vessel apart.

“—own,” Suit said.

“What do you want?” Wax demanded. “I’m not going to let you go.”

“You don’t need to,” Suit said. “I have little doubt that you’d chase me across the world, Waxillium. I might be creative, but you … you are
tenacious
.”

“What, then?”

“You drop the Bands out the window,” Suit said. “I order the bomb disarmed. Then we face one another as men, without unnatural advantages.”

“You think I’d trust you?”

“You don’t need to,” Suit said. “Just give me your word you’ll do it.”

“Done,” Wax said.

“Disarm the device!” Suit shouted toward the door. He strolled to the front of the ship and spoke into a tube there. “Disarm it and stand down.”

Feet thumped away from the door. Wax could actually watch them go—not by their metals, but by the signature their souls made. In moments, he could see nobody there, or hiding anywhere around the bridge.

A voice soon echoed up through the tube. The tin Wax burned let him hear. “Done, my lord.” A pause. “Thank Trell for that.” The voice sounded relieved.

Suit turned to Wax. “There is a tradition in the Roughs, is there not? Two men, a dusty road, guns on their hips. Man against man. One lives. The other dies. A dispute settled.” He patted the sidearm at his hip. “I can’t give you a dusty road, but perhaps we can squint and pretend that the frost is playing that role.”

Wax drew his lips to a line. Edwarn looked entirely sincere. “Don’t make me do this, Uncle.”

“Why?” Suit said. “I know you’ve been
itching
for this exact opportunity! You have an aluminum gun, I see. The same as mine. No Steelpushing to interfere. Just two men and their sidearms.”

“Uncle…”

“You’ve dreamed of it, son. The chance to shoot me, no questions asked, and not be running afoul of the law. Besides, to the law I’m already dead! Your conscience can rest. I won’t give in, and I’m armed. The only way to stop me is to shoot me. Let’s do it.”

Wax fingered the Bands of Mourning, and felt himself smiling. “You don’t understand at all, do you?”

“Oh, I do. I’ve seen it in you! The hidden hunger of the lawman, wishing to be cut free so he can kill. It’s what defines you and your type.”

“No,” Wax said. He unhooked the holster from his leg, the one that had held his shotgun, and slipped the Bands into its leather pouch. His remaining bullets and metal vials followed, leaving him with no metals, save the aluminum gun.

“Perhaps I have felt hidden hunger,” Wax said. “But it isn’t what defines me.”

“Oh, and what does?”

Wax tossed the leather holding the Bands out the broken window, then slipped his gun into his side holster. “I’ll show you.”

*   *   *

Telsin scrambled in the snow, climbing through it, frantic.

Suit was an idiot. She’d always known this, but today made it manifest. Flying away in the ship? That was the
first
place they’d go to chase him. He was as good as dead.

Today was a disaster. An unparalleled disaster. Waxillium knew of her subterfuge. The Set was exposed. Their plans were crumbling.

Something had to be salvageable. She stumbled to a small clearing in the snow, near the temple entrance, where her people had deposited the skimmer that she and Waxillium had ridden in on. Still functional, hopefully. She knew how it worked—she’d watched carefully during their trip. All she needed to do was—