The Bands of Mourning (53 page)

Something
banged
behind her.

She blinked at the sudden spray of redness on the snow all around her. Flakes of it.

Her blood.

“You killed one of my friends today,” a ragged voice said from behind. “I’m not going to let you take a second.”

She fell to her knees before the craft, then turned her head. Wayne stood behind her in the snow, his face haggard, holding a shotgun.

“You…” Telsin whispered. “You can’t … guns…”

“Yeah,” Wayne said, cocking the shotgun. “About that.”

He lowered the barrel to her face and fired.

*   *   *

Marasi climbed the previously hidden steps back into the room with the broken glass and the ornate pedestal. She didn’t know what had opened this hidden path, but she was glad for it. Ever blunt, Waxillium had simply ripped himself a hole out of the catacombs, going straight up through the stone—half this chamber had collapsed as a result—but following his route would have been an arduous climb.

The power was gone. She’d handed it over to Waxillium, but instead of feeling deflated, she felt … peaceful. Hers was the serenity of a woman who’d lain stretched out on a perfect summer day, feeling the sun as it slowly sank. Yes, the light was gone now, but
oh
what a joy it had been.

Poor MeLaan was still here, and her form had started to incorporate the bones, slowly assembling them in a strange configuration. With no spikes, she’d become a mistwraith. Marasi knelt beside her, but wasn’t certain what comfort she could offer. At the very least, MeLaan seemed to still be alive.

Marasi rose, then hurried down the hallway with the traps, reaching the entryway with the murals. Outside, a war was going on, hundreds of gunshots echoing in the cold, snow-filled night. She was surprised to see that the people in masks seemed to be winning. The soldiers had been pushed back to the edge of the stone field, their backs to a series of gulfs and cliffs. They had nowhere to retreat, and many of their number lay dead or wounded.

She thought she saw Waxillium’s influence in the way some of those bodies lay, as if tossed through the air to land crumpled. Marasi nodded in satisfaction. Let him do the job he came to do.

She still had one of her own to finish. She strode out of the temple, down the steps past the statue of the Lord Ruler holding what now, with the spearhead removed, appeared to be only a staff.

Now where would she find—

A loud gunshot from quite nearby. She swiveled her head, searching for the source. A second one sounded.

A moment later, Wayne emerged through the snowstorm, head down, expression shadowed. He carried a shotgun on his shoulder, and clutched not one, but
three
small metal spikes in his other hand.

*   *   *

Wax stood quietly on the bridge of the ship, waiting for his uncle to move.

This didn’t work the way it did in the stories. You didn’t outdraw a man; couldn’t happen, not without Feruchemical speed. If you waited for him to start moving, you would be too slow. He’d tried it with blanks on the fastest men he knew.

The man who drew first got the first shot. That was that.

Suit drew.

Wax Pushed on the metal window frame behind him. He crossed the distance between them in a blur, even as Suit fired. The bullet hit Wax in the shoulder, but Wax collided with the surprised Suit, knocking them both to the floor of the bridge.

Suit grabbed his arm. Wax’s metal reserves vanished.

“Aha!” Suit said. “I made myself a Leecher! I can drain the metals from anyone who touches me, Waxillium. You’re dead. No Bands. No Allomancy. I win.”

Wax grunted, clinging tight to Suit as they rolled. “You forget,” he said. “I’m not surprised. You’ve always hated it. I’m a
Terrisman,
Uncle.”

He increased his weight manyfold.

He tapped everything he had in his arm bracer, hundreds of hours spent being lighter than he should have been. He brought it all out in one moment of desperation.

The airship lurched. And then the floor shattered.

Wax clung to Suit as they fell, holding him tight, though one hand was weakening from the gunshot. They crashed through two levels of the ship—Suit’s body, which tapped healing, bearing the brunt of the damage—before smashing out the bottom, battered, bleeding, and thrashed by splintered wood.

Suit looked horrified. “You fool! You—”

Wax spun them in the air, pointing Suit downward as they plummeted. Snow-filled air was a roaring wind around them, flakes streaking past.

Suit screamed.

And then he Pushed.

Suit dropped the coin from his mouth and used his Allomancy to Push it downward in a straight shot. It hit the approaching ground and slowed the two of them with a lurch.

Wax decreased his weight just enough that Suit’s Push was sufficient to keep them alive. They crashed into the snow, some distance from the plateau with the temple.

Wax recovered first. He lurched to his feet and pulled Suit up by one hand, the two of them standing alone in a field of white. Suit looked up at him, dazed by the fall and the impact.

“The definition of a lawman,
Uncle,
is easy,” Wax said, feeling blood from a dozen cuts trickle down his face. He lifted Suit by the front of his clothing, bringing him close. “He’s the man who takes the bullet so nobody else has to.”

With that, Wax decked him across the face and dropped him to the snow, unconscious.

*   *   *

MeLaan swam in a sea of terror. Terror within her own mind; a piece of her knowing this was not right. This being ruled by instinct, this craven set of impulses.

But this was what she did. Food. She needed food.

No. First a place to hide. From the trembling sounds. Hide away, find a crack. She continued building a body that would let her walk. Flee.

So cold. She didn’t understand coldness. It wasn’t a thing that should be. And she couldn’t taste dirt, just stone. Stone everywhere.

Frozen stone.

She felt like screaming. Something was missing. Not food. Not a place to hide, but … something. Something was horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.

An object dropped on her. It was cold, but not stone. This wasn’t food. She enfolded it and intended to spit it away, but then something happened.

Something wonderful. She gobbled up the second one as it was dropped, and began to undulate, frantic. It came
back
. Memory. Knowledge. Rationality.

Self.

She exulted in it, ignoring the little holes that were now poked in her memory. She remembered most of the trip here, but something had happened in the room with the Bands.… No, the Bands hadn’t been there, and …

She formed eyes first, and she knew what she would see when she opened them. She’d already tasted him on the air, and knew his flavor.

“Welcome back,” Wayne said, grinning. “I think we won.”

30

Marasi accepted the canteen from Allik. It steamed from the top although it was only lukewarm to the touch. She sat on the steps up to the temple, swathed in about forty blankets. She’d surrendered her medallion to one of the Malwish people until more could be secured from the airship.

And its recovery was an interesting sight to say the least. Waxillium stood on the rocky section before the plateau, heaving with two hands and Pulling on nothing visible. Up ahead, the rogue airship slowly sank through the snow-filled sky, drawn toward Waxillium on an invisible tether.

“Will it break apart?” Allik asked.

She looked at him with surprise, then down at his language medallion.

“Warm choc and a blanket will do me for a minute,” he said, settling down and pulling his blanket around him. “Others are in greater need, yah? The ship. Will it break?”

Marasi looked up toward it. She could imagine Suit’s people aboard, trying desperately to make the engines work harder, the fans blow more powerfully. It sank anyway. Waxillium Ladrian—bearing the Bands of Mourning and supremely annoyed—was like a force of nature.

She smiled and sipped her drink.

“Rusts!” she said, looking at it. “What is this?” It was sweet, thick, warm, chocolaty, and
wonderful
.

“Choc,” he said. “Sometimes it is a man’s only succor in this frozen, lonely world, yah?”

“You
drink chocolate
?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

She never had. Plus, this was far sweeter than the chocolate she was used to. Not bitter at all. She took a long, soothing draught. “Allik, this is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced. And I just held the powers of creation themselves.”

He smiled.

“I don’t think your ship is in danger,” Marasi said. “He’s Pulling on it evenly, and slowly. He’s a careful man, Waxillium is.”

“Careful? It seems to me he is very proficient at breaking things. That doesn’t sound particularly careful, yah?”

“Well,” Marasi said, sipping her drink, “he does it with amazing precision.”

Indeed, it wasn’t long before the airship settled down onto the rocks, still in one piece. Waxillium held it in place, then raised the Bands of Mourning in one hand, winds, snows, and even traces of mist swirling around him.

The fans slowly powered down. A short time later, soldiers exited with hands up. Wayne and MeLaan scurried up to them, gathering weapons while Allik’s people boarded the ship to secure it and search for anyone lurking inside.

Marasi waited through it all, sipping her melted chocolate and thinking. ReLuur’s spike lay safely wrapped in a handkerchief, tucked into her pocket. In her mind’s eye, she saw Wayne again as he had been, trudging through the snow, gun to his shoulder, a pattern of frozen blood flaking his skin. Alongside this image was the glee with which Waxillium had launched into the sky to chase down his uncle.

There was a darkness to these men that the stories hadn’t conveyed. Marasi was glad for it, but she had stepped to that ledge, then turned back. Proud though she was of having fulfilled her mission for the kandra, she had decided that things would be different for her in the future. She was all right with that.

It was what she had chosen.

“Frosts,” Allik said after some time. “We’d better go do something, yah?”

She looked up from her now-empty canteen of chocolate to follow Allik’s gesture. The Malwish airship crew had returned from their inspection, and the enemy soldiers had been led away—to be safely locked in the ship’s brig, Marasi believed.

Suit was still where Waxillium had put him: tied to the top of the Lord Ruler’s spear, feet dangling. He’d been gagged, he’d had his metalminds removed, and Waxillium had used Allomancy to leech away his metals. And this
still
seemed like it might not be cautious enough. He still had his spikes, as they weren’t sure how to remove them without killing him. He shouldn’t be able to do anything without metals, but she couldn’t help being worried.

Steris had joined Waxillium on the field, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders. Marasi smiled. Now
that
was an image she’d never thought she’d find comforting. But they would do well together.

Unfortunately, trouble approached Waxillium and Steris in the form of Allik’s captain and some of her airmen. The two groups faced one another, MeLaan and Wayne falling in beside Waxillium—Wayne casually carrying that shotgun, MeLaan standing a good two inches taller than anyone else, arms folded, her posture unyielding.

Right. “Let’s go,” Marasi said to Allik.

Allik’s captain, Jordis, wore one of the translation medallions—and she didn’t flinch before the gust of wind that accompanied Marasi as she arrived.

“We thank you for your help,” Jordis was saying, her voice touched by the same accent Allik had. “But our appreciation does not allow us to ignore thievery. We expect that our property will be returned.”

“I don’t see any of your property here,” Waxillium replied coldly. “I see only an artifact
we
recovered. Well, that and my airship.”

“Your—” Jordis sputtered. She stepped forward. “Since crashing in your lands, my crew has been incarcerated, tortured, and
murdered
. You seem to be itching for a war, Allomancer.”

Drat. Marasi had been hoping she’d share Allik’s reverence for Waxillium. Indeed, much of the crew seemed nervous about him, but the captain obviously didn’t mean to back down.

“If there is to be war,” Waxillium said, “giving you a powerful weapon does not seem the method to save my people. I cannot help what Suit and his people did to you—they are outlaws, and what they did was deplorable. I will see them brought to justice.”

“And yet you steal from us.”

“Do you deny,” Waxillium asked, “that this temple was
empty
upon my arrival? Do you deny that this airship was from nation other than your own? I cannot steal what was not owned, Captain. By right of salvage, I claim this relic and that ship. You may—”

Marasi was about to step between them when, curiously, Steris spoke up, interrupting Wax.

“Lord Waxillium,” she said. “I think it prudent to let them take the ship.”

“What? Like hell I’m going to—”