The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel (11 page)

“I’d like to hear what she has to say, my lord,” Waxillium said. “For the sake of conversation.”

“Well … all right … I suppose.”

“It’s simply a theory I had,” Marasi said, blushing. “Lord Ladrian, when you were lawkeeper in Weathering, what was the population of the city?”

He fingered the item in his hand. A spent bullet casing that had been capped with a dab of wax. “Well, it started to grow rapidly in the last few years. But for most of the time, I’d say it was around fifteen hundred.”

“And the surrounding area?” she asked. “All the places you’d patrol, but didn’t have their own lawkeepers?”

“Maybe three thousand total,” Waxillium said. “Depending. There are a lot of transients out in the Roughs. People looking to find a mineral claim or to start up a farmstead. Workers moving from place to place.”

“Let’s say three thousand,” Marasi said. “And how many of you were there? Those who helped you keep the law?”

“Five or six, depending,” he said. “Wayne and I, and Barl most of the time. A few others on and off.”

And Lessie,
he thought.

“Let’s say six per three thousand,” she said. “Gives us an easy number to work with. One lawman per five hundred people.”

“What is the point of this?” Lord Harms asked sufferingly.

“The population of our octant is around six hundred thousand,” she explained. “By the same ratio Lord Ladrian described, we should have roughly twelve hundred constables. But we don’t. It’s somewhere closer to six hundred, last I looked over the numbers. So, Lord Ladrian, your ‘savage’ wildlands actually had
double
the number of lawmen watching over it as we have here in the city.”

“Huh,” he said.
Odd information for a young woman of means to have.

“I’m not trying to diminish your accomplishments,” she said quickly. “You more likely had a higher percentage of lawbreakers as well, since the reputation of the Roughs draws that type. But I think it’s a matter of perception. As you said, out of the city, people expect to get away with their crimes.

“Here, they are more circumspect—and many of the crimes are smaller in scope. Instead of the bank getting robbed, you get a dozen people being robbed on their way home at night. The nature of the urban environment makes it easier to hide if you keep your crimes below a certain level of visibility. But I wouldn’t say life is really
safer
in the city, despite what people think.

“I’ll bet more people are murdered here, by percentage of the population, than out in the Roughs. There is so much more going on in the City, however, that people pay less attention to it. By contrast, when a man is murdered in a small town, it’s a very disruptive event—even if it’s the only murder that’s happened in years.

“And all of this isn’t even counting the fact that much of the wealth in the world is concentrated in a few places inside the city. Wealth draws men looking for opportunity. There are a whole
host
of reasons why the City is more dangerous than the Roughs. It’s just that we pretend that it isn’t.”

Waxillium folded his arms in front of him on the table.
Curious.
Once she started talking, she didn’t seem shy at all.

“You see, my lord,” Harms said. “This is why I tried to still her.”

“It would have been a shame if you had,” Waxillium said, “as I believe that’s the most interesting thing anyone has said to me since I returned to Elendel.”

Marasi smiled, though Steris just rolled her eyes. Wayne returned with the soup. Unfortunately, the area right around them was crowded—Wayne wouldn’t be able to create a speed bubble around just Waxillium and himself. It would catch someone else, and anyone caught in it would have time sped up for them as well. Wayne couldn’t shape the bubble or choose whom it affected.

While the others were distracted by the soup, Waxillium broke the wax off the sealed shell casing and found a small rolled-up piece of paper inside. He glanced at Wayne, then unrolled it.

You were right,
it read.

“I usually am,” he muttered as Wayne placed a bowl in front of him. “What are you up to, Wayne?”

“One seventy, thank you,” Wayne said under his breath. “I’ve been lifting weights and eating steak.”

Waxillium gave him a flat stare, but got ignored as Wayne proceeded to explain—with his slight Terris accent—that he’d soon return with a bread basket and more wine for the group.

“Lord Ladrian,” Steris said as they began eating, “I suggest that we begin compiling a list of conversational topics we can employ when in the company of others. The topics should not touch on politics or religion, yet should be memorable and give us opportunities to appear charming. Do you know any particularly witty sayings or stories that can be our starting point?”

“I once shot the tail off a dog by mistake,” Waxillium said idly. “It’s kind of a funny story.”

“Shooting dogs is hardly appropriate dinner conversation,” Steris said.

“I know. Particularly since I was aiming for its balls.”

Marasi just about spat her soup across the table.

“Lord Ladrian!” Steris exclaimed, though her father seemed amused.

“I thought you said I couldn’t shock you any longer,” he said to Steris. “I was merely testing your hypothesis, my dear.”

“Honestly. You
will
eventually overcome this rural lack of decorum, won’t you?”

He stirred his soup to make sure Wayne hadn’t hidden anything in it.
I hope he at least washed that bullet casing.
“I suspect that I will, indeed, eventually overcome it,” he said, raising the spoon to his lips. The soup was good, but too cold. “The amusing thing is that when I was in the Roughs, I was considered to be highly refined—so much so, in fact, that they thought me haughty.”

“Calling a man ‘refined’ by Roughs standards,” Lord Harms said, raising a finger, “is like saying a brick is ‘soft’ by building-material standards—right before you smash it into a man’s face.”

“Father!” Steris said. She glared at Waxillium, as if the comment were his fault.

“It was a perfectly legitimate simile,” Lord Harms said.

“We will have no further talk of hitting people with bricks or of shootings,
regardless
of the target!”

“Very well, cousin,” Marasi said. “Lord Ladrian, I once heard that you threw a man’s own knife at him and hit him right through the eye. Is the story true?”

“It was actually Wayne’s knife,” Waxillium said. He hesitated. “And the eye was an accident. I was aiming for the balls that time too.”

“Lord Ladrian!” Steris said, nearly livid.

“I know. That’s quite off target. I’ve got
really
bad aim with throwing knives.”

Steris looked at them, growing red as she saw that her father was snickering, but trying to cover it up with his napkin. Marasi met her gaze with innocent equanimity. “No bricks,” Marasi said, “and no guns. I was making conversation as you requested.”

Steris stood. “I’m going to see myself to the women’s washroom while you three compose yourselves.”

She stalked away, and Waxillium felt a stab of guilt. Steris was stiff, but she seemed earnest and honest. She did not deserve mockery. It was very hard not to try provoking her, however.

Lord Harms cleared his throat. “That was uncalled for, child,” he said to Marasi. “You must not make me regret my promise to start bringing you to these functions.”

“Don’t blame her, my lord,” Waxillium said. “I was the primary offender. I’ll offer a suitable apology to Steris when she returns, and will guard my tongue for the rest of the evening. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to go so far.”

Harms nodded, sighing. “I’ll admit, I’ve been tempted to such lengths myself a time or two. She’s much as her mother was.” He gave Waxillium a pitying look.

“I see.”

“This is our lot, son,” Lord Harms said, standing. “To be lord of a house requires certain sacrifices. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see Lord Alernath over at the bar and I think I’ll grab a nip of something harder with him before the main course. If I don’t go before Steris gets back, she’ll bully me into staying. I shouldn’t be long.” He nodded to the two of them, then waddled toward a group of higher-built tables off to the side, next to an open bar.

Waxillium watched him go, idly thinking and rolling Wayne’s note in his fingers. Previously, he’d assumed Lord Harms had driven Steris to be as she was, but it appeared he was more under
her
thumb than vice versa.
Another curiosity,
he thought.

“Thank you for your defense of me, Lord Ladrian,” Marasi said. “It appears that you are as quick to come to a lady’s aid with words as you are with pistols.”

“I was merely stating the truth as I saw it, my lady.”

“Tell me. Did you really shoot off a dog’s tail when aiming for his … er…”

“Yes,” Waxillium said, grimacing. “In my defense, the damn thing was attacking me. Belonged to a man I hunted down. The aggressiveness wasn’t the dog’s fault; the poor thing looked like it hadn’t been fed in days. I was trying to shoot it somewhere nonlethal, scare it off. That part about the man I hit in the eye was fabricated, though. I wasn’t actually aiming for any body part in particular—I was just hoping I’d hit.”

She smiled. “Might I ask you something?”

“Please.”

“You looked crestfallen when I spoke of the statistics dealing with lawman ratios. I didn’t mean to offend or downplay your heroics.”

“It’s all right,” he said.

“But?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure if I can explain it. When I found my way out to the Roughs, when I started bringing in the warranted, I started to … Well, I thought I’d found a place where I was needed. I thought I’d found a way to do something that nobody else would do.”

“But you did.”

“And yet,” he said, stirring his soup, “it appears that all along, the place I left behind might have needed me even more. I’d never noticed.”

“You did important work, Lord Ladrian.
Vital
work. Besides, I understand that before you arrived, nobody was upholding the law in that area.”

“There was Arbitan,” he said, smiling, remembering the older man. “And, of course, the lawkeepers over in Far Dorest.”

“A distant city and with a short reach,” she said, “which had a single capable lawman to serve a large population. Jon Deadfinger had his own problems. By the time you had built things up, Weathering was protected better than those in the City—but it did not start that way.”

He nodded, though—again—he was curious about how much she knew. Were people
really
telling stories about him and Wayne all the way over here in the city? Why hadn’t he heard of them before now?

Her statistics
did
bother him. He hadn’t thought of the City as dangerous. It was the Roughs, wild and untamed, that needed rescuing. The City was the land of plenty that Harmony had created to shelter mankind. Here, trees grew fruit in abundance and cultivated lands had water without need for irrigation. The ground was always fertile, and somehow never got farmed out.

This land was supposed to be different. Protected. He’d put away his guns in part because he’d convinced himself that the constables could do their jobs without help.
But don’t the Vanishers prove that might not be the case?

Wayne returned with the bread and a bottle of wine, then stopped, looking at the two empty seats. “Oh dear,” he said. “Did you grow so tired of waiting that you
devoured
your two companions?”

Marasi glanced at him and smiled.

She knows,
Waxillium realized.
She recognizes him.

“If I may note something, my lady,” Waxillium said, drawing her attention back. “You are far less unassuming than you were at our first meeting.”

She winced. “I’m not very good at being shy, am I?”

“I wasn’t aware it was something that required practice.”

“I try all the time,” Wayne said, sitting down at the table and taking the baguette out of his basket. He took a healthy bite. “Nobody gives me any credit for it. ’S because I’m misunderstood, I tell you.” His Terris accent had vanished.

Marasi looked confused. “Should I pretend to be aghast at what he’s doing?” she asked Waxillium in a hushed tone.

“He saw that you’d recognized him,” Waxillium said. “Now he’s going to sulk.”

“Sulk?” Wayne started eating Steris’s soup. “That’s right unkind, Wax.
Ugh.
This stuff is far worse than I was telling you guys. Sorry ’bout that.”

“It will reflect in my tip,” Waxillium said dryly. “Lady Marasi, I was serious in my inquiry. To be frank, it seems that you’ve been trying to act with exaggerated timidity.”

“Always looking down after you speak,” Wayne agreed. “Raising the pitch of your tone a little too much with questions.”

“Not the type to be studying at the university at her own request,” Waxillium noted. “Why the act?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“You’d rather not,” Waxillium said, “or Lord Harms and his daughter would rather you not?”

She blushed. “The latter. But please. I would really prefer to leave the topic.”

“Ever charming, Wax,” Wayne said, taking another bite from the loaf of bread. “See that? You’ve pushed the lady almost to tears.”

“I’m not—” Marasi began.

“Ignore him,” Waxillium said. “Trust me. He’s like a rash. The more you scratch him, the more irritating he gets.”

“Ouch,” Wayne said, though he grinned.

“Aren’t you worried?” Marasi asked softly of Wayne. “You’re wearing a waiter’s uniform. If they see you sitting at the table and eating…”

“Oh, that’s a good point,” Wayne said, tipping his chair back. The person behind him had left, and with Lord Harms gone, Wayne had just enough room to—

—and there it was. He leaned his chair forward again, clothing changed back to a duster with a loose button-down shirt and thick Roughs trousers underneath. He spun his hat on his finger. The earrings were gone.