Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)(72)

“I’ve got a feeling that if she’s using her powers right in front of me, I’m dead anyway,” Wax said.

The group fell silent. Wax took both syringes and tucked them into the pouch on his gunbelt. Marasi scribbled on a note pad, transcribing the conversation—he’d have to ask her for a copy. Drink refills arrived, and no payment was requested. What had Wayne done here before Wax arrived? He was afraid to ask.

What help is this? Wax thought, frustrated, his tower falling to pieces. A weapon he could use only when he was already a hundred percent certain who the impostor was? It felt like so little. Bleeder could be anyone. Bleeder could manifest any of the powers. Bleeder was ancient, brilliant, and crafty.…

“She has a plan,” Wax said. “She’s not simply crazy, MeLaan. There is more to this.”

“You’re still determined to kill her,” MeLaan said, sighing.

“If I have to. Why are you so hesitant? I’d think that the kandra would be determined, more than anyone, to see this problem dealt with.”

“She’s not a ‘problem,’” MeLaan said. “She’s a person. Yes, I want to see her stopped. She needs to be stopped. But…” She settled back, then knocked over her small tower of coasters with a flick of the finger. “There’s so few of us left. Hell, there weren’t ever more than five or six hundred of us, and we lost a lot in the days before the Final Ascension. Imagine if your entire race consisted of three hundred people, lawman. Maybe you’d be a little more hesitant to see one of them slagged.”

“A person’s species shouldn’t matter,” Wax snapped. “I don’t care if there are three hundred of you left or just three; when one of you starts nailing people to walls in my city, I’m going to—”

“Wax,” Wayne interrupted, balancing his sixth story of beer-mat coasters. “Check your pulse, mate.”

Wax took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he said.

“What was that,” Marasi said, wagging her pencil from Wayne to Wax. “Pulse?”

“Sometimes,” Wayne said, “Wax forgets he’s a person and starts thinkin’ he’s a rock instead.”

“It’s Wayne speak,” Wax said, grabbing some coasters and starting another tower. “For times when he thinks I should be a little more empathetic.”

“You can be single-minded, mate.”

“Says the man who once collected eighty different kinds of beer bottles.”

“Yeah,” Wayne said, smiling fondly. “Did that mostly to annoy you, I did.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “Started to hate all those rusting bottles, but each morning you’d curse when you tripped over a new box o’ them, and it was just so melodious…”

“You know,” MeLaan said, taking a pull on her drink, “you two aren’t anything like I was led to believe.”

“Tell me about it,” Marasi said.

“For one thing,” MeLaan added, “I had no idea that Kid Wayne was so talented with beer-mat sculptures.”

“He cheated,” Wax said. “He stuck some of the coasters on his lower level together with that gum stuff he’s been chewing.”

Marasi and MeLaan turned to Wayne, who grinned. He picked up his sculpture, knocking down the top levels, but revealing that the bottom three had—indeed—been stuck together.

“Wayne,” Marasi said, aghast. “Are you that concerned with impressing us?”

“It wasn’t about impressing anyone,” Wax said. “The contest wasn’t about how high the towers got—it was about if I’d spot what he did. He always cheats somehow. Back to the matter at hand, MeLaan. Your rogue kandra friend is planning something. If her plot gains momentum, it will roll over us and crush this city.”

“I agree,” MeLaan said. “So what do we do?”

“We outthink her,” Wax said. “I need to know her motive. Why is she doing this? What drove her to pull out her spike in the first place?”

“I wish I knew,” MeLaan said. “We’ve been trying to figure out the same thing.”

“Tell me about her, then,” Wax said, tapping at his empty shot glass. “What is she like? What are her passions?”

“Paalm was the ultimate blank slate,” MeLaan said. “Old-style kandra. Like I said, she spent so much time out on missions that she barely had a personality of her own. She had real trouble with that at the dawn of a new world. Some of the older generations, they liked to spend time in the Homeland, only left for a mission when forced to. Not Paalm. She was the Father’s own, the kandra reserved specifically to do missions for the Lord Ruler.” She hesitated. “She might know things from him. Things the rest of us weren’t told. I think he may even have had her imitate Inquisitors at times, act as a mole among them.

“Anyway, she wouldn’t have been able to impersonate an Inquisitor without a good grasp of Allomancy and Feruchemy. So maybe that’s where she got the knowledge. She was loyal to the Lord Ruler, and then when he was gone, she became loyal to Harmony. Fanatical about it. Insisted on being given mission after mission, and never spent time with the rest of us. Kept to herself. She was almost always in character. Until…”