Brandon Sanderson - Shadows of Self

The thing was, woman constables were also expected to be models of ladylike behavior. A holdover from the old days, reinforced by the speeches of Lady Allrianne Ladrian soon after the Catacendre. There was just this blunt expectation that you would strive to remain feminine at the same time as you did your job. A heavy double standard to bear. At times Marasi didn’t mind. She liked dresses, and nice hair, and solving problems with a careful word instead of a fist to the face. To her it was perfectly reasonable to be feminine and a constable. But did the men ever have to worry about being properly masculine while doing their jobs?

One social problem at a time, Marasi, she admonished herself, riding alongside Aradel. Though she was going to buy some rusting trousers. Riding this way was cold .

“You ride well,” Aradel called to her as they slowed slightly from their initial burst away from the others. He led the way across a canal bridge, cutting across the middle of the Third Octant to get to the Second.

“I’ve had plenty of practice,” Marasi said.

“That’s uncommon in the city these days,” Aradel noted. “A hobby?”

“You could say that,” Marasi said, blushing as she remembered her girlish fascination with the Roughs, lawmen, and Allomancer Jak stories. When her friends—well, acquaintances—had been given new coats for their birthdays, she’d begged for a Roughs duster and hat.

Pure foolishness, of course. She’d completely grown out of that.

“What is it you wanted to tell me?” Aradel called.

“Could we slow further for a moment?”

He nodded and obliged, to the point where the horses were maintaining a brisk walk. Marasi opened the purse she’d slung over her shoulder and thrust the letters at Aradel. She hadn’t consciously realized how eager she’d been to pass them on to someone else, so that the responsibility they represented wouldn’t rest solely on her.

Aradel took them. “What’s this?” he asked quietly.

“You remember telling me to snoop around the governor’s place, if I got the chance?”

“I remember telling you—with great circumspection—to keep your eyes open, Lieutenant.”

“I did, sir. I kept my hands open too. In case something damning happened to fall into them.”

“Harmony. What did you find?”

“Letters,” Marasi said, “from Innate to various ladies and lords in the city, arranging for the purchase of political favors and the suppression of legislation they didn’t want. Sir, they’re annotated in his own hand, and they match my records of suspicious events during his tenure as governor. During the ride to bring you the writ I read through them, and I’m convinced he’s just as corrupt as his brother was.”

Aradel gave no outward reaction of either surprise or outrage. He rode in silence, gripping the letters, eyes forward.

“Sir?” Marasi finally asked.

“You put me in a difficult position, Lieutenant.”

“Sir. I’d say that the governor has put you in that position, not me.”

“How legally did you obtain these?”

“That depends,” Marasi said, “on how the courts would interpret your authority to investigate when there is reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, and whether or not you were justified in authorizing me to act.”

“In other words, you stole them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aradel tucked them away.

“It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect him, sir,” Marasi offered. “Until proven guilty in court, he’s still the rightful leader of the city. This isn’t the Roughs, where we can just stride up and shoot someone, then publish our reasons later.”

“The mere fact that you feel you need to point that out,” Aradel said, “means you’ve been spending too much time with your Coinshot friend, Colms. I’m not considering avoiding my duty. I’m just thinking of all those people, and their rioting. And they’re right . They are being robbed by the system. Ruin … we were supposed to be better than this. What if the Lord Mistborn saw us now?”

“I suspect,” Marasi said, “he’d tell us to do something about the situation.”

Aradel nodded curtly. When he offered no further commentary, Marasi kicked her horse back into a trot, and the lord high constable followed suit.

Tradition held that today’s Field of Rebirth looked exactly the same as on that day long ago when humankind had crept from the wombs of stone that Harmony had created. Though the city had claimed all of the surrounding area, this central ring of pleasant grass and gentle hills had been left as a monument to another time.

Marewill flowers brushed Wax’s mistcoat as he strode across the springy ground. The tradition that this place hadn’t changed was pure stupidity. Surely when Breeze and Hammond had climbed out into the sunlight, they hadn’t found grass that was perfectly manicured or flowers that grew in careful lines. Did people who spoke of that tradition just ignore the benches and the pathways? The buildings? Surely Harmony hadn’t left lavatories on the grassland for the convenience of visitors.

At the center the highest hill was topped by the half museum, half mausoleum sheltering the tombs of the Last Emperor and the Ascendant Warrior. Their giant statues rose above, dominating the area. As Wax approached, he was surprised to find lamps on the low structure spilling light across the grass and flowers. A pair of constables guarded the door.

“Now, just turn on back and don’t make trouble,” one of them called as Wax approached.

Wax ignored the order, striding out of the mists and up to the men. “The caretakers called for your help, I assume?”

The two constables studied him, then reluctantly saluted. His reputation preceded him, though these men wore the patches of constables from the First Octant. It was a precinct he hadn’t often visited, but who else strode through the night in a mistcoat with a shotgun strapped to his leg?

“They’re worried about looters,” one of the constables said, a squat fellow with a half beard around his mouth. “Um, sir.”

“Wise,” Wax said, striding past them and pushing into the mausoleum.

“Uh, sir?” one of the constables said. “They said not to let … Sir?”

Wax pushed the door shut as the two constables started arguing outside about whether they should stop him or not. He scanned the open foyer, with its murals of the Originators. Hammond, the Lord Mistborn, Lady Truth, Wax’s own ancestor Edgard Ladrian. Portly and self-satisfied, in his portrait he held a cup of wine. He’d always looked like the sort of person Wax would want to punch on sight. The type who was certainly guilty of something .

Wax ignored the displays of various relics from the World of Ash, and didn’t enter the chamber that held the resting places of the Ascendant Warrior and her husband, though he did raise his gun and spin the cylinder toward them in acknowledgment. A Roughs tradition to respect the fallen.

“What’s this?” A bleary-eyed woman stepped out of a nearby room, apparently a small apartment for the caretaker. “Nobody was to be let in!”

“Routine inspection,” Wax said, striding past without looking.

“Routine? In the middle of the night?”

“You asked for constable involvement,” Wax said. “Codes require that when you ask for guards from the precinct, we have to do an inspection to make sure you don’t have contraband.”

“Contraband?” the woman asked. “This is the Originator Tomb !”

“Just doing my job,” Wax said. “You can take it up with my superiors outside, if you wish.”

She stormed out toward the front doors in a huff as Wax reached a small room unadorned with relics or plaques. The only thing in here was a hole in the ground.