Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)(74)

14



If you want to know a man, dig in his firepit.

The phrase was from the Roughs, maybe koloss in origin. Basically, it meant that you could judge a lot about a man’s life by what he threw away—or by what he was willing to burn in order to stay warm.

A loud church clock rang eleven as Wax moved through the mists on Allomantic jumps. The sound echoed in the night, the bell tower hidden in the darkness. Eleven was not late these days, particularly not in the heart of the city, but it should have marked a time when most men and women had begun to seek their beds. Labor started early in the morning.

Only, a sizable portion of the laborers in the city didn’t have a job to get up for right now. That was reflected in the busy streets and busier pubs, not to mention the Soothing parlors he passed, still open well into the night. Those were places where the downhearted could seek a different kind of relief, in the form of an Allomancer who—for a small fee—would wipe away their emotions for a time and leave them numb.

Rioting parlors were a different beast. There, you could choose the emotion you wanted and have it stoked within you. Those might be even more popular, judging by the line he saw outside one.

Wax delayed on a rooftop, listening, then headed for the sound of men shouting. He ran along the peaked roof and Pushed off the nails in the shingles, launching himself over a set of apartments in a quiet flutter, coming down and landing on a street beyond.

Here, he found a small Pathian sanctuary. Not the church with the bell he’d heard earlier; Pathian structures were too small for that. Built to resemble old Terris huts, they were often empty save for two chairs. One for you. One, ostensibly, for Harmony. The religion forbade worship, in a formal way. But talking to God was encouraged.

Tonight, the little sanctuary was under siege.

They shouted and threw rocks: a group of shadows in the mist, probably drunk. He could make them out well enough; a misty night was never too dark in the city, not with all the ambient light reflecting off the vapors.

Wax yanked Vindication from her holster and stalked forward, mistcoat flaring behind him. His profile was enough. The first man who spotted him emerging from the mists yelled a warning and the men scattered, leaving the detritus of their tiny riot. Fallen stones. A few bottles. Wax watched their metal lines to make sure none of them rounded back on him. One stopped nearby, but kept his distance.

He shook his head, stepping up to the sanctuary. He found the missionary cowering inside, a Terriswoman in intricate braids. Pathian clergy was a strange thing. On one hand, the religion emphasized man’s personal connection to Harmony—doing good, without formality. On the other hand, people needed direction. Someone to explain all of this. Pathian missionaries—called priests by outsiders, though they rarely used the term for themselves—set up in places like this, explaining the Path to all who came. A clergy, yes, but not in the formal way of the Survivorists.

He’d always found it curious that the small Pathian sanctuaries—with large doorways on eight sides—let in the mists, while Survivorist churches observed the mists from behind domes of glass, comfortable in their ornate rooms full of golden statues and fine wood pews. The woman looked up at him as he knelt, smelling oil. Her lantern lay broken nearby.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I … Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

Her eyes flicked toward the gun. On principle, Wax didn’t holster the thing. “It would be best if you retired for the night,” Wax said.

“But I live in the loft upstairs.”

“Go to the Village then,” Wax said. “In fact, gather any of your colleagues you can in a short time and take them as well. A Survivorist priest has been brutally murdered by someone posing as a Pathian missionary.”

“Sweet Harmonies,” the woman whispered.

Wax left her to gather her things and, hopefully, do as he told her. He struck out into the night, following a few lines of metal toward where the man he’d scared off earlier had hidden. Wax studied the darkened alleyway in the mists, then dropped a shell casing and launched himself into the air. A careful Push let him drop straight into the alleyway, where he landed and leveled a gun at the head of the person hiding there.

Who immediately soiled himself, judging from the stench and the liquid pooling at the young man’s feet. Wax sighed and lifted Vindication. The young man scrambled backward, stumbling over a box of trash, adding to his humiliation.

“You’re going to leave that missionary alone,” Wax said. “She had nothing to do with the murder.”

The youth nodded. Wax dropped a shell casing and prepared to launch himself back into the night.

“M-murder?” the youth asked.

“Of the…” Wax hesitated. “Wait. Why were you here, attacking that sanctuary?”

The boy whimpered. “They came into the pub, two of them in those Pathian robes, and cursed out the Survivor an’ us.”

“Two?” Wax said, advancing on the boy, making him cringe. “There was more than one?”

He nodded, then—crying—scrambled away and ran into the night. Wax let him go.

I should have guessed, he thought, launching himself into the air. The news of the murder couldn’t have traveled this quickly. There was more to the plot than the one killing. Rusts. Were other priests in danger?

Two people. Bleeder and someone else? Or two helpers? MeLaan had seemed confident that Bleeder would be working alone, but this offered evidence to the contrary. And the attempt to kill Wax earlier, the ploy involving the server at ZoBell Tower, matched too well with his fears of an assassin to be coincidence. Bleeder had help, likely from Wax’s uncle. He’d look into that later. For now, however, there was a different lead he wanted to chase.