Brandon SANDERSON - The Bands of Mourning

“You are not encouraging me. Aren’t You omnipotent?”

“Hardly,” Harmony said, smiling. “But I believe that parts of me could be.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It won’t until I make it do so,” Harmony said, extending His hands to either side. “In answer to your question, however, you don’t fade just yet. Though soon. Right now, you make a choice.”

Wax looked from one of the deity’s hands to the other. “Does everyone get this choice?”

“Their choices are different.” He proffered His hands to Wax, as if offering them for him to take.

“I don’t see the choice.”

“My right hand,” Harmony said, “is freedom. You can feel it, I think.”

And he could. Soaring, released from all bonds, riding upon lines of blue light. Adventure into the unknown, seeking only the fulfillment of his own curiosity. It was glorious. It was what he’d always wanted, and its lure thrummed through him.

Freedom.

Wax gasped. “What … what is the other one?”

Harmony held up His left hand, and Wax heard something. A voice?

“Wax?” it said.

Yes, a frantic voice. Feminine.

“Wax, you have to know what it does. It will heal you, Wax. Waxillium! Please…”

“That hand,” Wax said, looking at it. “That hand is duty, isn’t it?”

“No, Waxillium,” Harmony said gently. “Although that is how you’ve seen it. Duty or freedom. Burden or adventure. You were always the one who made the right choice, when others played. And so you resent it.”

“No I don’t,” Wax said.

Harmony smiled. The understanding in His face was infuriating.

“This hand,” Harmony said, “is not duty. It is but a different adventure.”

“Wax…” the voice said from below, choked with emotion. It belonged to Marasi. “You have to tap the metalmind.”

Wax reached toward the left hand, and Harmony – shockingly – pulled it away. “Are you certain?”

“I have to.”

“Do you?”

“I have to. It’s who I am.”

“Then perhaps,” Harmony said, “you should stop hating that, my son.” He extended the hand.

Wax hesitated. “Tell me one thing first.”

“If it is within my means.”

“Did she come here? When she passed?”

Harmony smiled. “She asked me to look after you.”

Wax seized the left hand with his own. He was immediately pulled toward something, like air being sucked through a hole. Warmth bathed him; then it became a fire . Pulling breath into his lungs, he screamed, heaving, throwing the boulder off. It clattered to the side, and he found himself in the low-roofed chamber beneath the temple.

Such strength! He hadn’t thrown that rock with muscles, but with steel . His body reknit even as he launched himself to his feet by Pushing on tiny traces of metal in the ground beneath him. He landed and looked down at his left hand. The one that had been dangling, broken, before his face as he died.

Clutched in it was an oversized spearhead crafted from sixteen different metals melded together. He looked up from it and toward Marasi, who regarded him with tearstained eyes, but a broad smile.

“You found it,” Wax said.

She nodded eagerly. “Just took a little old-fashioned detective work.”

“You saved me,” Wax said.

Rust and Ruin … such power . He felt as if he could level cities or build them up anew.

“Suit and your sister are outside,” Marasi said. “I left the others there. I don’t– Well, I wasn’t thinking straight. Or maybe I was thinking too much. Here.” She handed him a vial of metals.

Wax took it, then held up the Bands. “You could have done this yourself.”

“No,” Marasi said. “I couldn’t have.”

“But–”

“I couldn’t have,” Marasi said. “It just … isn’t me.” She shrugged. “Does that make sense?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” He flexed his hand around the Bands.

“Go,” Marasi said. “Do what you do best, Waxillium Ladrian.”

“Which is what? Break things?”

“Break things,” Marasi said, “ with style. ”

He grinned, then downed the vial of metals.

“Waxillium’s followers have the Bands!” Suit whispered to himself as he crossed the dark, stony field. Snow had begun falling – a bitter, icy snow, nothing like the soft flakes he’d occasionally seen in the eastern Basin. “It is a crisis. They will be coming for us. We must move up our timetables!”

He chewed on the words, mulling them over as he pulled his coat tight. Warming device notwithstanding, that wind was annoying.

Would they buy his argument? No, not dire enough.

“Waxillium and his people have the Bands!” he whispered to himself. “This will undoubtedly let the kandra devise the means of creating metalminds anyone can use. We must move up our timetables and seize Elendel now, or we will find ourselves technologically outmatched!”

Yes. Yes, that was the idea. Even the most careful of the Series would be distressed by the prospect of being technologically outmaneuvered. This would convince them to give him the leeway he desired.

Anything could be an advantage. He’d wanted the Bands for himself, but in lieu of that, he’d find something else.

Suit always found the advantage.

He passed soldiers scurrying about and unloading weapons on the frozen plain of rock. They’d planned for a potential fight here, as he’d worried he might encounter more of the masked savages.

“Sir!” one of the men called. “Orders?”

He gestured toward the sky. “If anyone other than the Sequence drops from the air or approaches your position, shoot them. Then keep shooting, even after they are down.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldier said, waving to a group of his men. He turned toward an empty rack, then paused. “My rifle? Who took my rifle!”

Suit continued on past, tossing the fake Bands of Mourning into the snow and leaving the troops to – hopefully – slow down Waxillium’s minions. He eagerly marched aboard the new airship. Now this device, this was an advantage. The Bands could serve one man, make a deity out of him. A fleet of ships like this could deify an entire army.

The wooden hallway inside had gaslights set into lamps with austere metal housings. It was all distinctly plainer than the ship that had crashed in Dulsing – the wood here was unornamented, unpolished. The other ship had felt decorated like a den. This one, a warehouse.

Probably cheaper to build this way, he thought, nodding his head in approval.

Footsteps clattered above as men charged through one of the corridors on another deck, and Suit brushed the snow from his arms as a technician ran up to him, bearing the red uniform of the Set’s Hidden Guard.

“My lord,” the man said, proffering one of the medallions. “You’ll need this.”

Suit took it and rolled up his sleeve to strap it to his upper arm. “Is this ship operational?”

The man’s eyes lit up. “Yes, sir! The machinery is operational, sheltered as it was from the weather. Sir … it’s amazing . You can feel the energy pulsing off that metal. We did have to send men out to unclog the fans – a few of the Coinshots helped – and we have them moving now. Fed is down below, priming the weight-changing machinery with her Feruchemy, to lighten the ship. That should be the last step!”

“Then lift us off,” Suit said, walking toward where he assumed the bridge would be found.