Brandon SANDERSON - The Alloy of Law

“I don’t think so,” Waxillium said, reaching into his jacket for a handgun.

Ladrian looked up with a pitying expression. Waxillium heard guns being cocked, and glanced to the side, to where several young men wearing black suits stood in the corridor outside. None were wearing metal on their bodies.

“I have nearly twenty Allomancers riding in this train, Waxillium,” Edwarn said, voice cold. “And you are wounded, barely able to walk. You don’t have a sliver of evidence against me. Are you certain this is a fight you want to start?”

Waxillium hesitated. Then he growled and reached forward with an empty hand to sweep the meal off his uncle’s table. Dishes and food spilled to the floor with a crash as Waxillium bent forward, enraged. “I’ll kill you someday, Uncle.”

Edwarn leaned back, unthreatened. “Lead him to the back of the train. Throw him off. Good day, Waxillium.”

Waxillium tried to reach for his uncle, but the men rushed in and grabbed him, pulling him away. His side and his leg both flared in pain at the treatment. Edwarn was right about one thing. This wasn’t the day to fight.

But that day would come.

Waxillium let them tow him down the hallway. They opened the door at the end of the train and tossed him out toward the tracks that sped by beneath. He caught himself with Allomancy, as they’d no doubt expected he would, and landed to watch the train speed away.

Marasi burst out into the alleyway beside the precinct building. She felt something stirring in her, a powerful curiosity she could not describe. She had to find out who that figure was.

She caught a glimpse of the hem of a dark robe disappearing around a corner. She ran after it, holding her handbag in a tight grip and reaching inside for the small revolver Waxillium had given her.

What am I doing? a part of her mind thought. Running into an alleyway alone? It wasn’t a particularly sensible thing to do. She just felt that she had to do it.

She ran a short distance. Had she lost the figure? She paused at an intersection, where an even smaller alleyway cut off from the first. Her curiosity was almost unbearable.

Standing in the mouth of the smaller alleyway, waiting for her, was a tall man in a black robe.

She gasped, stepping backward. The man was well over six feet tall, and the enveloping robe gave him an ominous appearance. He brought up pale hands and took down his hood, exposing a shaved head and a face that was tattooed around the eyes in an intricate pattern.

Driven into those eyes, point-first, were what looked like a pair of thick railroad spikes. One of the eye sockets was deformed, as if it had been crushed, long-healed scars and bony ridges under the skin marring the tattoos.

Marasi knew this creature from mythology, but seeing him left her cold, terrified. “Ironeyes,” she whispered.

“I apologize for bringing you like this,” Ironeyes said. He had a quiet, gravelly voice.

“Like this?” she said, her voice coming out as almost a squeak.

“With emotional Allomancy. I sometimes Pull too hard. I’ve never been as good at this sort of thing as Breeze was. Be calm, child. I will not hurt you.”

She felt an instant calmness, though that felt terribly unnatural, and left her feeling even worse. Calm, but sick. One should not be calm when speaking with Death himself.

“Your friend,” Ironeyes said, “has uncovered something very dangerous.”

“And you wish him to stop?”

“Stop?” Ironeyes said. “Not at all. I wish him to be informed. Harmony has particular views about how things must be done. I do not always agree with him. Oddly, his particular beliefs require that he allow that. Here.” Ironeyes reached into the folds of his cloak, bringing out a small book. “There is information in this. Guard it carefully. You may read it, if you wish, but deliver it to Lord Waxillium on my behalf.”

She took the book. “Pardon,” she said, trying to fight through the numbness he had put inside her. Was she really speaking to a mythological figure? Was she going mad? She could barely think. “But why didn’t you take it to him yourself?”

Ironeyes responded with a tight-lipped smile, watching her with the heads of those silvery spikes. “I have a feeling he’d have tried to shoot me. That one does not like unanswered questions, but he does my brother’s work, and that is something I feel inclined to encourage. Good day, Lady Marasi Colms.”

Ironeyes turned, cloak rustling, and walked away down the alley. He put his hood up as he walked, then lifted into the air, propelled by Allomancy over the tops of the nearby buildings. He vanished from sight.

Marasi clutched the book, then slid it into her handbag, shaking.

Waxillium landed at the rail station, dropping as gently as he could from his Allomantic flight down the tracks. Landing still hurt his leg.

Wayne sat on the platform, feet up on a barrel, smoking his pipe. He still had his arm in a sling. He wouldn’t be able to heal it quickly – he had no health stored up. Trying to store some now would just make him heal more slowly during that process, then heal more quickly as he tapped his metalmind, ending with no net gain.

Wayne was reading a small novel that he’d picked out of someone’s pocket on their train ride out to the estates. He’d left an aluminum bullet in its place, worth easily a hundred times the price of the book. Ironically, the person who found it would probably throw it away, never realizing its value.

I’ll need to talk to him about that again, Waxillium thought, walking up onto the platform. But not today. Today, they had other worries.

Waxillium joined his friend, but continued staring to the south. Toward the city, and his uncle.

“It’s a pretty good book,” Wayne said, flipping a page. “You should try it. It’s about bunnies. They talk. Damnedest thing ever.”

Waxillium didn’t reply.

“So, was it your uncle?” Wayne asked.

“Yes.”

“Crud. I owe you a fiver, then.”

“The bet was for twenty.”

“Yeah, but you owe me fifteen.”

“I do?”

“Sure, for that bet I made that you’d end up helpin’ me with the Vanishers.”

Waxillium frowned, looking at his friend. “I don’t remember that bet.”

“You weren’t there when we made it.”

“I wasn’t there?”

“Yeah.”

“Wayne, you can’t make bets with people when they aren’t there.”

“I can,” Wayne said, tucking the book into his pocket and standing, “if they shoulda been there. And you shoulda, Wax.”

“I…” How to respond to that? “I will be. From now on.”

Wayne nodded, joining him and looking toward Elendel. It rose in the distance, the two competing skyscrapers rising on one side of the city, other smaller ones growing like crystals from the center of the expanding metropolis.

“You know,” Wayne said, “I always wondered what it would be like to come here, find civilization and all that. I didn’t realize.”

“Realize what?” Waxillium asked.

“That this was really the rough part of the world,” Wayne said. “That we had it easy, out past the mountains.”

Waxillium found himself nodding. “You can be very wise sometimes, Wayne.”

“It’s onnacount of my thinkin’, mate,” Wayne said, tapping his head, increasing the thickness of his accent. “It’s what I do wif my brain. Somma the time, at least.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“The rest of the time, I don’t do so much thinkin’. ’Cuz if I did, I’d go runnin’ back to where things is simple. You see?”

“I see. And we do have to stay, Wayne. I have work to do here.”

“Then we’ll see it done,” Wayne said. “Just like always.”