Brandon Sanderson - Shadows of Self

Sitting in this hut … the scent of Grandmother’s tea … Memories grabbed Wax by his collar and shoved him face-first up against his past. A young man who had never been able to decide what he was. Allomancer or Feruchemist, city lord or humble Terrisman? His father and uncle pushing him one way, his grandmother another.

“A Feruchemist slaughtered people in the Fourth Octant last night, Grandmother,” Wax said. “He was a Steelrunner. I know you track everyone in the city with Feruchemical blood. I need a list of names.”

Grandmother V swished around her tea. “You’ve visited the Village on … what, a mere three occasions since your return to the city? Nearly two years, and you’ve made time for your grandmother only twice before today.”

“Can you blame me, considering how these meetings usually go? To be blunt, Grandmother, I know how you feel about me. So why torture either of us?”

“You cling to your images of me from two decades ago, child. People change. Even one such as I.” She sipped her tea, then added more herbs to the strainer and lowered it back into the water. She would not drink until it was right. “Not one such as you, it appears.”

“Trying to bait me, Grandmother?”

“No. I am better at insults than that. You haven’t changed. You still don’t know who you are.”

An old argument. She’d said it to him both times they’d met during the last two years. “I am not going to start wearing Terris robes, speaking softly, quoting proverbs at people.”

“You will shoot them instead.”

Wax took a deep breath. A mixture of scents lingered in the air. From the tea? Scents like that of freshly cut grass. His father’s estates, sitting on the lawn, listening to his father and grandmother argue.

Wax had lived here in the Village for only a single year. It had been all his father had agreed to give. Even that had been surprising; Uncle Edwarn had wanted Wax and his sister to both stay away from the place. Before his official heir, the late Hinston Ladrian, had been born when Wax was eighteen, Edwarn had basically appropriated his brother’s children and tried to raise them. Even still, it was hard to separate Wax’s parents’ will in his head from that of Edwarn.

One year among these trees. Wax had been forbidden Allomancy during his days in the Village, but had learned something far greater. That criminals existed, even among the idyllic Terris.

“The only times I’ve truly known who I am,” Wax said, looking up at his grandmother, meeting her eyes, “are when I’ve put on the mistcoat, strapped guns to my waist, and hunted down men gone rabid.”

“You should not be defined by what you do, but by what you are.”

“A man is what he does.”

“You came looking for a Feruchemist killer? You need only look in the mirror, child. If a man is what he does … think of what you’ve done.”

“I’ve never killed a man who didn’t deserve it.”

“Can you be absolutely certain of that?”

“Reasonably. If I’ve made mistakes, I’ll pay for them someday. You won’t distract me, Grandmother. To fight is not against the Terris way. Harmony killed.”

“He slew beasts and monsters only. Never our own.”

Wax breathed out. This again? Rusts. I should have forced Wayne to come here instead of me. He says she actually likes him.

A new scent struck him. Crushed blossoms. In the darkness of that chamber, he imagined himself again, standing among the trees of the Terris Village. Looking up at a broken window, and feeling the bullet in his hand.

And he smiled. Once that memory had brought him pain—the pain of isolation. Now he saw only a budding lawman, remembered the sense of purpose he’d felt.

Wax stood up, grabbing his hat, mistcoat rustling. He almost wanted to believe that the scents to the room, the memories, were his grandmother’s doing. Who knew what she put into that tea?

“I’m going to hunt down a murderer,” Wax said. “If I do it without your help, and he kills again before I can stop him, you will be partially to blame. See how well you sleep at night then, Grandmother.”

“Will you kill him?” she asked. “Will you shoot for the chest when you could aim for the leg? People die around you. Do not deny it.”

“I don’t,” he said. “A man should never pull a trigger unless he’s willing to kill. And if the other fellow is armed, I’m going to aim for the chest. That way, when people do die around me, it’s the right ones.”

Grandmother V stared at her teapot. “The one you’re looking for is named Idashwy. And she is not a man.”

“Steelrunner?”

“Yes. She is not a killer.”

“But—”

“She is the only Steelrunner I know of who could possibly be involved in something like this. She vanished about a month ago after acting … very erratically. Claimed that she was being visited by the spirit of her dead brother.”

“Idashwy,” he said. It was pronounced in the Terris manner, eye-dash-wee. The syllables felt thick in his mouth, another reminder of his days in the Village. The Terris language had been dead once, but Harmony’s records included it, and many Terris now learned to speak it in their youths. “I swear I know that name.”

“You did know her, long ago,” Grandmother V said. “You were with her that night, actually, before…”

Ah yes. Slender, golden hair, shy and didn’t speak much. I didn’t know she was a Feruchemist.

“You don’t even have the decency to look ashamed,” Grandmother V said.

“I’m not,” Wax said. “Hate me if you must, Grandmother, but coming to live with you changed my life, just as you always promised it would. I’m not going to be ashamed that the transformation wasn’t the one you expected.”

“Just … try to bring her back, Asinthew. She’s not a killer. She’s confused.”

“They all are,” Wax said, stepping out of the hut. The three men from before stood outside, glaring at him with displeasure. Wax tipped his hat to them, dropped a coin, then launched himself into the air between two trees, passing their canopies and seeking the sky.

Each time Marasi entered the precinct offices, she got a little thrill.

It was the thrill of bucked expectations, of a future denied. Even though this room didn’t look like she’d imagined—as the clerical and organizational center for the octant’s constables, it felt more like a business office than anything else—the mere fact that she was here excited her.

This wasn’t supposed to have been her life. She’d grown up reading stories of the Roughs, of lawmen and villains. She’d dreamed of six-guns and stagecoaches. She’d even taken up horseback riding and rifle shooting. And then, real life had intervened.

She’d been born into privilege. Yes, she was illegitimate, but the generous stipend from her father had set her and her mother up in a fine home. Money for an education had been guaranteed for her. With that kind of promise—and with her mother’s determination that Marasi should enter society and prove herself to her father—one did not choose a profession so lowly as that of a constable.

Yet here she was. It was wonderful.

She passed through the room full of people at desks. Though a jail was attached to the building, it had its own entrance, and she rarely visited it. Many of the constables she passed on her way through the main chamber were the type who spent most of their days at a desk. Her own spot was a comfortable nook near Captain Aradel’s office. His room felt like a closet inside, and Aradel rarely spent time there. Instead, he stalked through the main chamber like a prowling lion, always in motion.