The Alloy of Law (Mistborn #4)(62)

Now he came charging in, guns raised, assuming he could handle a problem built on Elendel’s scale. He assumed he could take down a team that was so well funded it could field men with guns made of something so expensive it might as well have been gold.

Maybe we should take it to the constables, Marasi had said. But could he?

He fingered the earring in his pocket. He’d felt that Harmony wanted him to do this, to investigate. But what was Harmony but an impression in Waxillium’s mind? Confirmation bias, they called it. He felt what he expected to. That was what his logical brain said.

I wish I could feel the mists, he thought. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to go out in them. He always felt stronger in the mists. He felt like someone was watching, when he was out in them.

I have to continue with this, he told himself. He’d tried abstaining, and it had led to Lord Peterus being shot. Waxillium’s usual method was to just take command and do what needed to be done. It was the way a lawman learned to work, out in the Roughs. We aren’t so different, Miles and I, he thought. Perhaps that was what had always frightened him so much about the man.

The train slowed, pulling into their station.

12

Wayne stepped out of the carriage, following Waxillium and Marasi. He looked up to the carriage man, tossing him a coin. “We’ll need you to wait a spell, mate. I trust it won’t be a problem.”

The carriage man looked at the coin and raised an eyebrow. “No problem at all, mate.”

“That’s quite the hat,” Wayne said.

The carriage man wore a round cap of stiff felt, conical, but with a flat top and a feather on it. “We all wear ’em,” he said. “Mark of Gavil’s Carriages, you see.”

“Huh. Wanna trade?”

“What? Trade hats?”

“Sure,” Wayne said, tossing up his flimsy knit cap.

The man caught it. “I’m not sure…”

“I’ll throw in a pretzel,” Wayne said, fishing it out of his pocket.

“Er…” The man looked down at the coin in his hand, which was quite substantial. He pulled off his cap and tossed it down to Wayne. “No need. I guess … I’ll just buy another.”

“Mighty nice of you,” Wayne said, taking a bite from the pretzel as he sauntered after Waxillium. He put the cap on. It wasn’t a terribly good fit.

He hurried to catch up to the other two, who had stopped on a small hill. Wayne breathed in, smelling the humidity of the canal, the scents of wheat in the fields and flowers at their feet. Then he sneezed. He hated filling his metalmind when he was out doing stuff. He preferred to fill it in large chunks. That made him very sick, but he could sleep it off and drink a lot to pass the time.



This was worse. Filling his metalmind as much as he dared, storing up health as they went about, meant he got sick. Fast. He sneezed a lot more, his throat grew sore, and his eyes watered. He felt tired and groggy, too. But he’d need that health, so he did it.

He walked across the grass. The Outer Estates were an odd place. The Roughs were dry and dirty. The City was densely populated and—in places—grimy. Out here, things were just … nice.

A little too nice. Made his shoulders itch. This was the kind of place where a man would work in the field during the day, then go home and sit on his porch, drinking lemonade and petting his dog. Men died of boredom in places like that.

Odd, that in a place so open, he could feel even more anxious and confined than when locked in a cell.

“The last railway robbery happened here,” Waxillium said. He held out his hand to the tracks—which rounded a bend just to their left—then moved his hand along their path, as if seeing something Wayne wasn’t. He often did things like that.

Wayne yawned, then took another bite of his pretzel. “What whasdat, sir? What whazzat sir? What whassat, sir?”

“Wayne, what are you babbling about?” Waxillium turned, inspecting the canal to the right. It was wide and deep here, intended for carrying barges full of food into the city.

“Practicing my pretzel guy,” Wayne said. “He had a great accent. Must have been from one of the new rim towns, right by the southern mountains.”

Waxillium glanced at him. “That hat looks ridiculous.”

“Fortunately, I can change hats,” Wayne said in the pretzel-guy accent, “while you, sir, are stuck with that face.”

“You two sound a lot like siblings,” Marasi said, watching curiously. “Do you realize that?”

“So long as I’m the handsome one,” Wayne said.

“The tracks here bend toward the canal,” Waxillium said. “The other robberies all happened near canals as well.”

“As I recall,” Marasi noted, “most of the railway lines parallel the canals. The canals were here first, and when the tracks were laid, it made sense to follow the established paths.”

“Yes,” Waxillium said. “But it’s especially striking here. Look how close the tracks get to the canal.”

His accent is changing, Wayne thought. Only six months back in the city, and it already shows. It’s more refined in some ways, less formal in others. Did people see how their voices were like living things? Move a plant, and it would change and adapt to the environment around it. Move a person, and the way they talked would grow, adapt, evolve.