Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)(97)

“Ha!” Wayne said, turning on the accent, which was actually more clipped than MeLaan had made it. “Good, but you’re trying too hard. Being raised by parents who can’t hear doesn’t make a chap stupid. He just looks at the world differently, see?”

“Not bad,” MeLaan said. The next servant who passed gave them a glare as she had to pick her way over their outstretched legs in the hallway.

“It’s better if I have a hat,” Wayne said.

“A … hat.”

“Sure,” Wayne said. “Hats is a disguise for your brain. Helps you think like the person what wore it last. You wanna know a guy? Put on his hat.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re surprisingly wise?” MeLaan asked.

“All the bloody time.”

“They’re idiots. You’re not wise, you’re playing them. You’re doing this on purpose.” She grinned. “I love it.”

Wayne tipped his hat forward, smiling and leaning back again. “I’m not lying ’bout the hats though. They do help.”

“Sure,” MeLaan said. “Like bones.”

He cracked an eye at her. “Does it ever … bother you? Knowin’ you might live forever?”

“Bother me? Why would it? Immortality is damn convenient.”

“Don’t know about that,” Wayne said. “Seems to me that it would be nice to finally be done, you know? It’s like … like you’re running a race, and you don’t know quite where the end is, but you got an idea. An’ you only need to make it that far. I can do that, I figure. But you, you don’t have no end.”

“You actually sound like you want to die.”

“Someday,” Wayne said. “Huh. Maybe I should get into politics.”

MeLaan shook her head at him, seeming bemused. “It can be daunting,” she admitted a short time later, “to consider eternity, as Harmony must see it. But anytime I get bored, I can just live a new life.”

“Put on a new hat,” Wayne said. “Become someone else.”

“Switch it up. Be bold where once I was timid. Be crass where I was respectful. Makes life interesting, dynamic.” She paused. “And there’s something else. We can die, if we want.”

“What, just like that?”

“Kinda,” MeLaan said. “Don’t know if you’ve read the accounts. They’re blurry about this topic anyway, but near the end of the World of Ash, Ruin tried to take over the kandra. Control them directly. Well, TenSoon and those in charge, they were really terrified by that. So they planned, and we all talked. And about a century after the Catacendre, we figured out a way to stop our own lives. Takes a little concentration, but sets the body into a spiral where we just … end.”

“Nice,” Wayne said, nodding. “That makes a lot of sense. Always have an escape route planned. Oh, and your ‘a’s are still off; you carried them over from your own accent. They aren’t nasal enough. Draw them out, if you wanna sound like a real twofie.”

She cocked her head at him. “You’re wasted as a human.”

“Nah,” Wayne said. “I’ve barely had a few mouthfuls today.” He reached in his pocket and checked his flask. “Well, maybe a wee more than that.”

“No, I meant—”

He grinned at her, and she cut off, then grinned back. He tipped his hat to her, then closed his eyes and continued listening. A short time later, she stood up and started pacing the hall, and he could hear her saying her “a” sounds to herself as she walked.

He listened for a good long while, catching nothing abnormal, though he was pretty sure the sanitation-minister guy was lying about his education. That fellow had never been to the university—or if he had, he hadn’t hung around long enough to pick up the proper words. Wayne was mulling this over when he heard something out front. A voice, faint but unmistakable.

He scrambled to his feet, causing MeLaan to jump.

“Gottago,” he said. “Watchdaidiot.”

“But—”

“Berideback,” Wayne said, clutching his hat and running down the hallway, his long Roughs-style duster flaring to the sides. He raced around the corner and dashed toward the front of the mansion.

“He said to deliver it here,” the woman was saying to the butler. “So I’ve brought it. It was a simple task—he just needed something made. Hardly worth waking me…”

She turned to him. A radiant, glorious woman, built like a good Roughs fence—just tall enough, lean, but strong too. She had dark hair, which he’d compared to a pony’s on several occasions—and it was right unfair that she should get mad, considering she kept it in a tail and everything. She wore trousers, because skirts were stupid, and boots, ’cuz stuff needed to be kicked.

The whole world could be going wrong, but seeing her made him forget. He grinned.

In return she gave him her special scowl, the one just for him. It was how he knew she cared. That, and when she shot him she tended to aim for places that didn’t hurt too much.

“She’s with me,” Wayne said, running up.

“Like hell I am,” Ranette said, but she let him steer her away from the butler.

“And one wonders,” the butler said from behind, “how His Grace’s life can be threatened, when we’re letting every dust rat in the city saunter up and—”