Brandon Sanderson - Shadows of Self

He’s probably finished by now, Wax thought. He’ll be on one of the nearby docks, listening to the lapping water.…

He continued along the canal, which was cluttered with boats. Tindwyl Promenade, which ran along this canal, was crowded—even more so than usual. Dense with life. It was difficult not to feel subsumed by the great city, engulfed, overwhelmed, insignificant. Out in the Roughs Wax hadn’t just enforced the law; he had interpreted it, revised it when needed. He had been the law.

Here he had to dance around egos and secrets.

As Wax searched for the right dock, he was surprised to eventually find the reason for the traffic on the promenade. It was all bunched up, trying to get through a large clot of men with signs. Wax passed overhead, and was shocked to see a small cluster of constables from the local octant amid the picketers—they were being pressed on all sides by the shouting men, waving signs in an uncomfortably violent manner.

Wax dropped through the air and Pushed lightly on the nails in the promenade boards here, slowing his descent. He landed in a crouch in an opening nearby, mistcoat flaring, guns clinking.

The picketers regarded him for a long moment, then broke apart, taking off in different directions. He didn’t even have to say a word. In moments the beleaguered constables emerged, like stones on the plain as the soil washed away in a sudden rain.

“Thanks, sir,” said their captain, an older woman whose blonde hair poked down straight about an inch on all sides around her constable’s hat.

“They’re getting violent?” Wax asked, watching the last of the picketers vanish.

“Didn’t like us trying to move them off the promenade, Dawnshot,” the woman said. She shivered. “Didn’t expect it to go so bad, so fast.…”

“Can’t say I blame them much,” one of the other constables said, a fellow with a neck like a long-barreled pistol. His fellows turned to him, and he hunched down. “Look, you can’t say you don’t have mates among them. You can’t say you haven’t heard them grumble. Something needs to change in this city. That’s all I’m saying.”

“They don’t have the right to block a main thoroughfare,” Wax said, “no matter their grievances. Report back to your precinct, and make sure you bring more men next time.”

They nodded, hiking off. The promenade’s knot of pedestrians slowly unwound itself, and Wax shook his head, worried. The men running the strikes did have a grievance. He’d found some of the same problematic conditions among the few factories he owned—long hours, dangerous environments—and had been forced to fire a few overseers because of it. He’d replaced them with overseers who instead would hire more men, for shorter shifts, as there was no shortage of laborers in the city who were out of work these days. But then he’d needed to up wages, so that the men could live on the shorter-shift income—making his goods more costly. Difficult times. And he didn’t have the answers, not to those problems.

He hiked along the promenade a short distance, drawing more than a few stares from people he passed. But he soon found what he’d been looking for. Wayne sat on a narrow dock nearby. He had his shoes and socks off, feet in the water, and was staring off down the canal. “Hello, Wax,” he said without looking as Wax stepped up.

“It went poorly?” Wax asked.

“Same as always. It’s strange. Most days I don’t mind being me. Today I do.”

Wax crouched down, resting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“Do you ever wonder if you shoulda just shot me?” Wayne asked. “Back when you and Jon first found me?”

“I’m not in the habit of shooting people who can’t shoot back,” Wax said.

“I coulda been faking.”

“No. You couldn’t have been.”

Wayne had been a youth of sixteen when Wax and Jon Deadfinger—a lawman who had been mentoring Wax—had found him curled up in the crawl space under a house, hands over his ears, cloaked in dirt and whimpers. Wayne had thrown his guns and ammunition down a well. Even as Deadfinger had dragged him out, Wayne had been complaining of the gunfire. Shots only he could hear, echoing from that well.…

“Any number of the boys we run across and take down,” Wayne said. “Any of them could be like me. Why did I get a second chance, but none of them do?”

“Luck.”

Wayne turned to meet his eyes.

“I’d give those lads second chances if I could,” Wax said. “Maybe they’ve had their moments of doubt, regret. But the ones we shoot, we don’t find them unarmed, hiding, willing to be brought in. We find them killing. And if I’d found you in the process of armed robbery all those years ago, I’d have shot you too.”

“You’re not lying, are you?”

“Of course not. I’d have shot you right in the head, Wayne.”

“You’re a good friend,” Wayne said. “Thanks, Wax.”

“You’re the only person I know that I can cheer up by promising to kill him.”

“You didn’t promise to kill me,” Wayne said, pulling on his socks. “You promised to have killed me. That there be the present perfect tense.”

“Your grasp of the language is startling,” Wax said, “considering how you so frequently brutalize it.”

“Ain’t nobody what knows the cow better than the butcher, Wax.”

“I suppose…” Wax said, standing up. “Have you ever met a woman named Idashwy? A Feruchemist.”

“Steelrunner?”

Wax nodded.

“Never met her,” Wayne said. “They keep kicking me out of the Village when I visit. Right unneighborly.”

So far as Wax knew, that wasn’t true. Wayne would occasionally toss on some Terris robes, mimic their accents, then sneak in to live among them for a few days. He’d eventually get into trouble for saying something crude to one of the young women, but he wouldn’t get thrown out. He’d baffle them, as he did most people, until he got bored and wandered away.

“Let’s see what we can find,” Wax said, waving down a canal gondola.

“Five notes, for one basket of apples! That’s robbery!”

Marasi hesitated on the street. She’d driven the motorcar up to the Hub for the governor’s speech, then parked it with the coachmen who took pay to watch and refuel motors, intending to walk the rest of the way on foot. The Hub could be a busy place.

That led her here, near this small street market with people selling fruit. With disbelief, she saw that one vendor was—indeed—selling apples at five notes a basket. Those shouldn’t cost more than half a boxing per basket, at most. She’d seen them for a handful of clips.

“I could get these at Elend’s stand for a fraction of the price!” the customer said.

“Well, why don’t you go see if he has any left?” the cart owner said, nonplussed. The customer stormed off, leaving the cart owner with her sign proudly proclaiming the ridiculous price. Marasi frowned, then glanced down the row of stands, barrels, and carts.

Suspiciously low quantities, all ’round. She walked up to the cart owner with the high prices; the woman stood up stiffly, braids shaking, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her apron. “Officer,” she said.

“Five is on the high side, wouldn’t you say?” Marasi asked, picking up an apple. “Unless these are infused with atium.”

“Am I doing anything wrong?” the woman asked.

“You have the right to set your prices,” Marasi said. “One simply wonders what you seem to know that nobody else does.”

The woman didn’t respond.

“Shipment coming late?” Marasi asked. “Apple harvest gone bad?”

The woman sighed. “Not apples, officer. Grain shipments out of the east. Simply not coming. Floods did them in.”