The Alloy of Law (Mistborn #4)(4)

Wax crawled out of the hole, his Sterrion at the side of his head, coat marred by dirt from below. The clean, dry air smelled good to him.

“Each life is a performance,” a voice said, echoing in the ruined church.

Wax immediately ducked to the side, rolling up to an altar.

“But we are not the performers,” the voice continued. “We are the puppets.”

“Tan,” Wax said. “Come out.”

“I have seen God, lawkeeper,” Tan whispered. Where was he? “I have seen Death himself, with the nails in his eyes. I have seen the Survivor, who is life.”

Wax scanned the small chapel. It was cluttered with broken benches and fallen statues. He rounded the side of the altar, judging the sound to come from the back of the room.

“Other men wonder,” Tan’s voice said, “but I know. I know I’m a puppet. We all are. Did you like my show? I worked so hard to build it.”

Wax continued along the building’s right wall, his boots leaving a trail in the dust. He breathed shallowly, a line of sweat creeping down his right temple. His eye was twitching. He saw corpses on the walls in his mind’s eye.

“Many men never get a chance to create true art,” Tan said. “And the best performances are those which can never be reproduced. Months, years, spent preparing. Everything placed right. But at the end of the day, the rotting will begin. I couldn’t truly mummify them; I hadn’t the time or resources. I could only preserve them long enough to prepare for this one show. Tomorrow, it will be ruined. You were the only one to see it. Only you. I figure … we’re all just puppets … you see…”

The voice was coming from the back of the room, near some rubble that was blocking Wax’s view.

“Someone else moves us,” Tan said.

Wax ducked around the side of the rubble, raising his Sterrion.

Tan stood there, holding Lessie in front of him, her mouth gagged, her eyes wide. Wax froze in place, gun raised. Lessie was bleeding from her leg and her arm. She’d been shot, and her face was growing pale. She’d lost blood. That was how Tan had been able to overpower her.

Wax grew still. He didn’t feel anxiety. He couldn’t afford to; it might make him shake, and shaking might make him miss. He could see Tan’s face behind Lessie; the man held a garrote around her neck.

Tan was a slender, fine-fingered man. He’d been a mortician. Black hair, thinning, worn greased back. A nice suit that now shone with blood.

“Someone else moves us, lawman,” Tan said softly.

Lessie met Wax’s eyes. They both knew what to do in this situation. Last time, he’d been the one captured. People always tried to use them against each other. In Lessie’s opinion, that wasn’t a disadvantage. She’d have explained that if Tan hadn’t known the two of them were a couple, he’d have killed her right off. Instead, he’d kidnapped her. That gave them a chance to get out.

Wax sighted down the barrel of his Sterrion. He drew in the trigger until he balanced the weight of the sear right on the edge of firing, and Lessie blinked. One. Two. Three.

Wax fired.

In the same instant, Tan yanked Lessie to the right.

The shot broke the air, echoing against clay bricks. Lessie’s head jerked back as Wax’s bullet took her just above the right eye. Blood sprayed against the clay wall beside her. She crumpled.

Wax stood, frozen, horrified. No … that isn’t the way … it can’t …

“The best performances,” Tan said, smiling and looking down at Lessie’s figure, “are those that can only be performed once.”

Wax shot him in the head.

1

Five months later, Wax walked through the decorated rooms of a large, lively party, passing men in dark suits with tailcoats and women in colorful dresses with narrow waists and lots of folds through long pleated skirts. They called him “Lord Waxillium” or “Lord Ladrian” when they spoke to him.

He nodded to each, but avoided being drawn into conversation. He deliberately made his way to one of the back rooms of the party, where dazzling electric lights—the talk of the city—produced a steady, too-even light to ward off the evening’s gloom. Outside the windows, he could see mist tickling the glass.

Defying decorum, Wax pushed his way through the room’s enormous glass double doors and stepped out onto the mansion’s grand balcony. There, finally, he felt like he could breathe again.

He closed his eyes, taking the air in and out, feeling the faint wetness of the mists on the skin of his face. Buildings are so … suffocating here in the city, he thought. Have I simply forgotten about that, or did I not notice it when I was younger?

He opened his eyes, and rested his hands on the balcony railing to look out over Elendel. It was the grandest city in all the world, a metropolis designed by Harmony himself. The place of Wax’s youth. A place that hadn’t been his home for twenty years.

Though it had been five months since Lessie’s death, he could still hear the gunshot, see the blood sprayed on the bricks. He had left the Roughs, moved back to the city, answering the desperate summons to do his duty to his house at his uncle’s passing.

Five months and a world away, and he could still hear that gunshot. Crisp, clean, like the sky cracking.

Behind him, he could hear musical laughter coming from the warmth of the room. Cett Mansion was a grand place, full of expensive woods, soft carpets, and sparkling chandeliers. No one joined him on the balcony.