Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)(6)

Joe drew.

Waxillium reacted quickly, Pushing himself off the wall lamps to his right. They were firmly anchored, so his Allomantic shove Pushed him to the left. He twisted his gun and fired.

Joe got his crossbow out and loosed a bolt, but the shot missed, zipping through the air where Waxillium had been. Waxillium’s own bullet flew true for once, hitting the female guard, who had pulled out her crossbow. She dropped, and as Waxillium crashed into the wall, he Pushed—knocking the gun out of the other guard’s hand as the man fired.

Waxillium’s Push, unfortunately, also flung his own gun out of his hand—but sent it spinning toward the second bodyguard. His gun smacked the man right in the face, dropping him.

Waxillium steadied himself, looking across the room at Joe, who seemed baffled that both his guards were down. No time to think. Waxillium scrambled toward the large, koloss-blooded man. If he could reach some metal to use as a weapon, maybe—

A weapon clicked behind him. Waxillium stopped and looked over his shoulder at Lessie, who was pointing a small hand-crossbow right at him.

“Everyone up here has a price,” Granite Joe said.

Waxillium stared at the crossbow bolt, tipped with obsidian. Where had she been carrying that? He swallowed slowly.

She put herself in danger, scrambling up the stairs with me! he thought. How could she have been …

But Joe had known about his Allomancy. So had she. Lessie knew he could spoil the thugs’ aim, when she’d joined him in running up the steps.

“Finally,” Joe said, “do you have an explanation of why you didn’t just shoot him in the saloon room, where the barkeep put him?”

She didn’t respond, instead studying Waxillium. “I did warn you that everyone in the saloon was in Joe’s employ,” she noted.

“I…” Waxillium swallowed. “I still think your legs are pretty.”

She met his eyes. Then she sighed, turned the crossbow, and shot Granite Joe in the neck.

Waxillium blinked as the enormous man dropped to the floor, gurgling as he bled.

“That?” Lessie said, glaring at Waxillium. “That’s all you could come up with to win me over? ‘You have nice legs’? Seriously? You are so doomed up here, Cravat.”

Waxillium breathed out in relief. “Oh, Harmony. I thought you were going to shoot me for sure.”

“Should have,” she grumbled. “I can’t believe—”

She cut off as the stairs clattered, the troop of miscreants from above having finally gathered the nerve to rush down the stairwell. A good half dozen of them burst into the room with weapons drawn.

Lessie dove for the fallen bodyguard’s gun.

Waxillium thought quickly, then did what came most naturally. He struck a dramatic pose in the rubble, one foot up, Granite Joe dead beside him, both bodyguards felled. Dust from the broken ceiling still sprinkled down, illuminated in sunlight pouring through a window above.

The thugs pulled to a stop. They looked down at the fallen corpse of their boss, then gaped toward Waxillium.

Finally, looking like children who had been caught in the pantry trying to get at the cookies, they lowered their weapons. The ones at the front tried to push through the ones at the back to get away, and the whole clamorous mess of them swarmed back up the steps, leaving the forlorn barkeep, who fled last of all.

Waxillium turned and offered his hand to Lessie, who let him pull her to her feet. She looked after the retreating group of bandits, whose boots thumped on wood in their haste to escape. In moments the building was silent.

“Huh,” she said. “You’re as surprising as a donkey who can dance, Mister Cravat.”

“It helps to have a thing,” Waxillium noted.

“Yeah. You think I should get a thing?”

“Getting a thing has been one of the most important choices I made in coming up to the Roughs.”

Lessie nodded slowly. “I have no idea what we’re talking about, but it sounds kinda dirty.” She glanced past him toward Granite Joe’s corpse, which stared lifelessly, lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Thanks,” Waxillium said. “For not murdering me.”

“Eh. I was gonna kill him eventually anyway and turn him in for the bounty.”

“Yes, well, I doubt you were planning to do it in front of his entire gang, while trapped in a basement with no escape.”

“True. Right stupid of me, that was.”

“So why do it?”

She kept looking at the body. “I’ve done plenty of things in Joe’s name I wish I hadn’t, but as far as I know, I never shot a man who didn’t deserve it. Killing you … well, seems like it would have been killing what you stood for too. Ya know?”

“I think I can grasp the concept.”

She rubbed at a bleeding scratch on her neck, where she’d brushed broken wood during their fall. “Next time, though, I hope it won’t involve making quite so big a mess. I liked this saloon.”

“I’ll do my best,” Waxillium said. “I intend to change things out here. If not the whole Roughs, then at least this town.”

“Well,” Lessie said, walking over to Granite Joe’s corpse, “I’m sure that if any evil pianos were thinking of attacking the city, they’ll have second thoughts now, considering your prowess with that pistol.”