Brandon Sanderson - Shadows of Self

We don’t know nothing. We didn’t see nothing.

Wayne wandered over to where a group of men sat under a dirty cloth awning while eating bruised fruit. “Who’re those outers?” Wayne asked as he sat down, using the accent he’d just picked up from the old man.

They didn’t even question him. A slum like this had a lot of people—too many to know everyone—but you could easily tell if someone belonged or not. And Wayne belonged.

“Conners for sure,” one of the men said. He had a head like an overturned bowl, hairless and too flat.

“They want someone,” another man said. Rust and Ruin, the chap’s face was so pointy, you could have used it to plow a field. “Conners only come here if they want to arrest someone. They’ve never cared about us, and never will.”

“If they did care,” bowl-head said, “they’d do something about all those factories and power plants, dumping ash on us. We ain’t supposed to live in ash anymore. Harmony said it, he did.”

Wayne nodded. Good point, that. These building walls, they were ashen. Did people care about that, on the outside? No. Not as long as they didn’t have to live in here. He didn’t miss the glares Wax and Marasi drew, pointed at them by people who passed behind, or who pulled windows closed up above.

This is worse, Wayne thought. Worse than normal. He’d have to talk to Wax about it. But for now there was a job to do. “They are looking for something.”

“Stay out of it,” bowl-head said.

Wayne grunted. “Maybe there’s money in it.”

“You’d turn in one of our own?” bowl-head said with a scowl. “I recognize you. Edip’s son, aren’t you?”

Wayne glanced away, noncommittal.

“You listen here, son,” bowl-head said, wagging his finger. “Don’t trust a conner, and don’t be a rat.”

“I ain’t a rat,” Wayne said, testily. He wasn’t . But sometimes, a man just needed cash. “They’re after Marks. I overheard them. There’s a thousand notes on his head, there is.”

“He grew up here,” plow-face said. “He’s one of us.”

“He killed that girl,” Wayne said.

“That’s a lie,” bowl-head said. “Don’t you go talking to conners, son. I mean it.”

“Fine, fine,” Wayne said, moving to rise. “I’ll just go—”

“You’ll sit back down,” bowl-head said. “Or I’ll rap you something good on your head, I will.”

Wayne sighed, sitting back down. “You olders always talk about us, and don’t know how it is these days. Working in one of the factories.”

“We know more than you think,” bowl-head said, handing Wayne a bruised apple. “Eat this, stay out of trouble, and don’t go where I can’t see you.”

Wayne grumbled, but sat back and bit into the apple. It didn’t taste half bad. He ate the whole thing, then helped himself to a couple more.

It happened soon enough. The men of the fruit-eating group broke apart, leaving Wayne with a basket full of cores. They split with a few amicable gibes at one another, each of the four men claiming he had some important task to be about.

Wayne stuffed another apple in each pocket, then stood up and sauntered off after bowl-head. He tailed the fellow fairly easily, nodding occasionally at people, who nodded back as if they knew him. It was the hat. Put on a man’s hat, surround your mind with his way of thinking, and it changed you. A man in dockworker’s clothing passed by, shoulders slumped, whistling a sad tune. Wayne picked up the melody. Rough life that was, working the docks. You had to commute each day on the canal boats—either that or find a bed out near the waterfront of the bay, where you were about as likely to get stabbed as have breakfast.

He’d lived that life as a youth. Had the scars to prove it, he did. But as a chap grew, he wanted more to his days than a fight on every corner and women who couldn’t remember his name one day to the next.

Bowl-head ducked into an alley. Well, every rusting street in here felt like an alley. Bowl-head entered an alley’s alley. Wayne stepped up to the side of the tiny roadway, then burned bendalloy. Allomancy was a useful trick, that it was. Burning the metal set up a nice little bubble of sped-up time around him. He strolled around the corner, staying inside the bubble—it didn’t move when he did, but he could move within it.

Yup. There he was, bowl-head himself, crouching beside a rubbish pile, waiting to see if anyone followed him. Wayne had almost made the bubble too big and caught the man in it.

Sloppy, sloppy, Wayne thought. A mistake like that on the docks could cost a man his life. He fished a ratty blanket out of the part of the rubbish pile that was inside his bubble, then wandered back around the corner and dropped the bubble.

Inside the speed bubble, he’d have been moving so quickly bowl-head wouldn’t have seen more than a blur—if that. He wouldn’t think anything of it, Wayne was certain. If he were wrong, he’d eat his hat. Well, one of Wax’s hats at least.

Wayne found a set of steps and settled down. He pulled his cap down half over his eyes, sidled up to the wall in a comfortable position, and spread the blanket around himself. Just another homeless drunk.

Bowl-head was a careful one. He waited inside the alley a whole five minutes before creeping out, looking back and forth, then hastening to a building across the street. He knocked, whispered something, and was let in.

Wayne yawned, stretched, and tossed aside the blanket. He crossed the street to the building that bowl-head had entered, then started checking the shuttered windows. The ancient shutters were so old, a good sneeze might have knocked them off. He had to be careful to avoid getting splinters in his cheeks as he listened at each window in turn.

The men of the slums had an odd sense of morality to them. They wouldn’t turn in one of their own to the constables. Not even for a reward. But then again, a chap needed to eat. Wouldn’t a man like Marks want to hear just how loyal his friends were?

“… was a pair of conners for sure,” Wayne heard at a window. “A thousand notes is a lot, Marks. A whole lot. Now, I’m not saying you can’t trust the lads; there’s not a bad alloy in the bunch. I can say that a little encouragement will help them feel better about their loyalty.”

Ratting out a friend: completely off-limits.

Extorting a friend: well, that was just good business sense.

And if Marks didn’t act grateful, then maybe he hadn’t been a friend after all. Wayne grinned, slipping his sets of wooden knucklebones over his fingers. He stepped back, then charged the building.

He hit the shutters with one shoulder, crashing through, then tossed up a speed bubble the moment he hit the floor. He rolled and came up on his feet in front of Marks—who was inside the speed bubble. The man still wore his red trousers, though he’d removed his mask, and was bandaging his shoulder. He snapped his head up, displaying a surprised face with bushy eyebrows and large lips.

Rusts. No wonder the fellow normally wore a mask.

Wayne swung at his chin, laying him out with one punch. Then he spun, fists up, but the other half-dozen occupants of the room, including bowl-head, stood frozen just outside the edge of his speed bubble. Now that was right lucky.

Wayne grinned, heaving Marks up onto his shoulder. He took his knuckles off, slipping them into his pocket, and got out an apple. He took a juicy bite, waved farewell to bowl-head—who looked forward with glassy eyes, frozen—then tossed Marks out the window and followed after.

Once he passed beyond the edge of his speed bubble, it automatically collapsed.