The Alloy of Law (Mistborn #4)(47)

“Yeah,” Wayne said, trying to sound dejected. “Guess you’ll just have to keep working on them.”

“It won’t work,” Brettin said. “I’ll be dead and buried before these men talk.”

“We could only be so lucky,” Wayne said.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Wayne said, sniffing the air. “I believe that the scones have arrived. Excellent! At least this trip won’t be a complete waste.”

9

“So we aren’t sure yet what happened,” Waxillium said, sitting on the floor beside the long sheet of paper covered with his genealogical results. “The Words of Founding included a reference to two more metals and their alloys. But the ancients believed in sixteen metals, and the Law of Sixteen holds so strongly in nature that it can’t be disregarded. Either Harmony changed the way that Allomancy itself works, or we never really understood it.”

“Hmmm,” Marasi said, sitting on the floor with her knees to the side. “I would not have expected that from you, Lord Waxillium. Lawman I had anticipated. Metallurgist, perhaps. But philosopher?”

“There is a link between being a lawman and a philosopher,” Waxillium said, smiling idly. “Lawkeeping and philosophy are both about questions. I was drawn to law by a need to find the answers nobody else could, to capture the men everyone considered uncatchable. Philosophy is similar. Questions, secrets, puzzles. The human mind and the nature of the universe—the two great riddles of time.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“What was it for you?” Waxillium asked. “One does not often meet a young woman of means studying law.”

“My means are not so … meaningful as they may seem at first,” she said. “I would be nothing without my uncle’s patronage.”

“Still.”

“Stories,” she said, smiling wistfully. “Stories of the good and the evil. Most people you meet, they aren’t quite either one.”

Waxillium frowned. “I’d disagree. Most people seem basically good.”

“Well, perhaps by one definition. But it seems that either one—good or evil—has to be pursued for it to be significant. People today … it seems they are good, or sometimes evil, mostly by inertia, not by choice. They act as their surroundings prepare them to act.

“It’s like … well, think of a world where everything is lit with the same modest light. All places, outside or inside, lit by a uniform light that cannot be changed. If, in this world of common light, someone suddenly produced a light that was significantly brighter, it would be remarkable. By the same token, if someone managed to create a room that was dim, it would be remarkable. In a way, it doesn’t matter how strong the initial illumination was. The story works regardless.”

“The fact that most people are decent does not make their decency any less valuable to society.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, blushing. “And I’m not saying I wish that everyone were less decent. But … those bright lights and those dim places fascinate me, Lord Waxillium—particularly when they’re dramatically out of order. Why is it that in one instance, a man raised in a basically good family—surrounded by basically good friends, with good employment and satisfactory means—starts strangling women with copper wires and sinking their bodies in the canals?

“And conversely, consider that most men who go to the Roughs adapt to the general climate of lax sensibilities there. But some others—a few remarkable individuals—determine to bring civilization with them. A hundred men, convinced by society that ‘everybody does it this way,’ will go along with the most crude and despicable of acts. But one man says no.”

“It’s really not as heroic as all that,” Waxillium said.

“I’m certain it doesn’t look that way to you.”

“Have you ever heard the story of the first man I brought in?”

She blushed. “I … yes. Yes, let’s just say that I’ve heard it. Peret the Black. A rapist and an Allomancer—Pewterarm, I believe. You walked into the lawkeeper station, looked at the board, ripped his picture off and took it with you. Came back three days later with him over the saddle of your horse. Of all the men on the board, you picked the most difficult, most dangerous criminal of the bunch.”

“He was worth the most money.”

Marasi frowned.

“I looked at that board,” Waxillium said, “and I thought to myself, ‘Well, any of these blokes is right likely to kill me. So I might as well pick the one worth the most.’ I needed the money. I hadn’t had anything to eat in three days but jerky and a few beans. And then there was Taraco.”

“One of the great bandits of our era.”

“With him,” Waxillium said, “I figured I could get some new boots. He’d robbed a cobbler just a few days earlier, and I thought if I brought the man in, I might manage to get a new pair of boots out of it.”

“I thought you’d picked him because he’d shot a lawkeeper over in Faradana the week before.”

Waxillium shook his head. “I didn’t hear that until after I brought him in.”

“Oh.” Then, remarkably, she smiled in eagerness. “And Harrisel Hard?”

“A bet with Wayne,” Waxillium said. “You don’t look disappointed.”