The Alloy of Law (Mistborn #4)(78)

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Waxillium stared at the wall of Ranette’s sitting room. One side was piled with furniture, where she’d put things out of the way to make a handier pathway between her workshop and her bedroom. The other half of the room was strewn with boxes of various kinds of ammunition, bits of scrap metal, and cast barrels for gun making. There was dust everywhere. Very like her. He’d asked her for a way to prop up his paper pad, expecting her to find him an easel. She’d absently handed him some nails and pointed toward a hammer. So he’d just hung it on the wall, wincing as he drove the nails into the fine wood.

He stepped up, using a pencil to scribble a note to himself in the corner. The pile of shipping manifests that Wayne had brought lay to the side. Apparently, Wayne had left a gun he’d borrowed from Ranette in place of the manifests, considering it a fair trade. It had probably never occurred to him that a group of train engineers would be completely baffled to find their manifests gone and a pistol in their place.

Miles will strike at Carlo’s Bend, Wax thought, tapping the paper.

It had been easy to locate a shipment of aluminum. House Tekiel, tired of being robbed, was indeed making a large fuss over their new vault-style railway car. Wax could understand the reasoning; the Tekiels were best known as bankers, and their business relied on security and asset protection. The robberies been become a major embarrassment to them. They were intending to recover in a visible way.

It was almost like a dare to Miles and his Vanishers. Wax made another notation on his paper. The Tekiel shipment would follow a very direct route toward Doxonar. He’d mapped it, noting locations where the railway tracks wound close to one of the canals.

I won’t be able to watch where we’re going, Wax thought, making another notation. I need to know exactly how far from the previous stop Carlo’s Bend is.…

There wasn’t much time to prepare. He fingered the earring in his left hand, running his thumb along its smooth side as he thought.

The door opened. Wax didn’t look up, but the sound of the footsteps was enough to tell him it was Marasi. Soft shoes. Ranette and Wayne both wore boots.

Marasi cleared her throat.

“Nets?” Wax asked, distractedly writing the number 35.17 on the paper.

“I found some, finally,” she said, walking up beside him, looking over the notations. “You can make sense of this?”

“For the most part. Except Wayne’s doodles.”

“They … appear to be pictures of you. Unflatteringly ugly ones.”

“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense,” Waxillium said. “Everyone knows I’m irreparably handsome.” He smiled to himself. That was one of Lessie’s phrases. Irreparably handsome. She’d always claimed he’d look better with a nice scar on his face, after good Roughs fashion.

Marasi smiled too, though her eyes were on his notations and scribbling. “The phantom railcar?” she asked, pointing to his drawing of a ghostly train coming down the tracks, alongside a diagram of how it had probably been made.

“Yes,” he said. “Most of the attacks happened on misty nights, apparently to make it much easier to hide the fact that the phantom ‘train’ is really just a false front with a large headlamp, attached to a moving rail platform.”

“You’re certain?”

“Reasonably,” Waxillium said. “They’re using the canals to attack, and so they need some sort of diversion to keep eyes off what is sneaking up behind.”

She pursed her lips, thoughtful.

“Was Wayne out there?” Waxillium asked.

“Yes, he’s bothering Ranette. I … honestly left the room because I worried she’d shoot him.”

Waxillium smiled.

“I picked up a broadsheet when I was out,” she said. “The constables have found the old hideout.”

“Already?” Waxillium said. “Wayne said we had until dark.”

“It’s dark already.”

“It is? Hell.” Waxillium checked his watch. They had less time than he’d thought. “It still shouldn’t be in the papers yet. The police found the hideout early.”

Marasi nodded toward his sketches. “This indicates that you know where the Vanishers will strike. I don’t want to pound a brittle metal, Lord Waxillium, but we really should tell the constables that fact.”

“I think I know where the attack will happen. If we let the constables know, they’ll flood the area and scare off Miles.”

“Wax,” she said, stepping closer. “I understand that independent spirit; it’s part of what makes you what you are. But we’re not in the Roughs. You don’t have to do this all by yourself.”

“I don’t intend to. I’ll involve the constables, I promise. Miles, however, is not an ordinary criminal. He knows what the constables will try, and he will watch for them. This has to be done at the right time, in the right way.” Waxillium tapped his notations on the wall. “I know Miles. I know how he thinks. He’s like me.”

Almost too much so.

“That means he can anticipate you too.”

“He undoubtedly will. I’ll anticipate him better.”

The moment Waxillium had drawn his gun and fired back against the Vanishers, he’d started down this path. Once he got his teeth into something, he didn’t let go.