Shadows of Self (19 page)

*   *   *

Wax paused in his story. He held the coin in front of him, studying it as he and Steris rode toward the party.

“Well?” Steris asked, sitting across from him in the carriage. “What did your uncle do?”

“He was livid, of course,” Wax said. “The laborer signed the papers; he couldn’t believe that I’d actually give him something so valuable. My uncle came in, wove lies in the air like pretty puffs of colored smoke, and got his documents.”

Wax turned the coin over, looking at the image of the Lord Mistborn pressed into the front. “The laborer—his name was Jendel—killed himself by jumping off a bridge eight years later. His sons are still in debt to the bank, though House Ladrian no longer owns an interest in the First Central Bank; my uncle sold it off for capital before gutting the house and faking his death.”

“I’m sorry,” Steris said softly.

“It’s part of what drove me away,” Wax said. “Events like that—and what happened in the Village, of course. I told myself I was setting out to find adventure; I never intended to be a lawman. I think I knew, deep down, that I couldn’t change anything in Elendel. It was too big, the men in suits too crafty. Out in the Roughs, one man with a gun meant something. Here, it’s hard to see him as anything other than a relic.”

Steris pursed her lips, and obviously didn’t know what to say. Wax didn’t blame her. He’d thought often of the events in that bank, and he still didn’t know what—if anything—he could have done differently.

He flipped the coin over in his fingers. Scratched onto the back, in tiny letters, were the words
Why did you leave, Wax?

“How did Bleeder get the coin?” Steris asked.

“I can’t fathom,” Wax said. “I sold it before going to the Roughs. My father had cut me off by then, and I needed money to outfit myself for the trip.”

“And those words?”

“I don’t know,” Wax said, pocketing the coin. “Thing is, remembering that story bothers me. I told myself at the time that I was trying to help the man, but I don’t think that was true. Looking back, I was just trying to anger my uncle.

“I’m still like that, Steris. Why did I leave for the Roughs? I wanted to be a hero—I wanted to be seen and known. I could have done a great deal of good by taking a position in my house here in Elendel, but I’d have had to do it quietly. Leaving, then eventually trying to make a name for myself as a lawman, was ultimately selfish. Even joining the constables here sometimes seems like an act of insufferable hubris to me.”

“I doubt that you care,” Steris said, leaning in, “but I consider your motives to be irrelevant. You save lives. You … saved
my
life. My gratitude is not influenced by what was running through your head as you did so.”

Wax met her eyes. Steris was prone to this—startling moments of pure honesty, where she stripped everything away and laid herself bare.

The carriage slowed, and Steris’s eyes flicked toward the window. “We have arrived, but it will take us time to get in. There are many carriages in front of us.”

Wax frowned, opening his window and leaning his head out. Indeed, a line of carriages and even a few motors clogged the way into the coach portico of ZoBell Tower. The skyscraper towered some twenty stories up into the night sky, its top disappearing in the dark mists.

Wax pulled back into the carriage, mist tumbling in through the now-open window beside him. Steris glanced at it, but did not ask him to close the shade.

“I guess we’ll be late,” Wax said.

Unless, of course, he improvised.

“This is the first party in the space atop the tower,” Steris said, taking a small planning notebook out of her handbag, “and the coach attendants aren’t accustomed to this heavy traffic.”

Wax smiled. “You accounted for this delay, did you?”

Steris stopped on a page in her notebook, then turned it around. There, in her neat handwriting, was a detailed agenda for their evening at the party. The third entry read,
8:17. Way into the building likely blocked by traffic. Lord Waxillium carries us up to the top floor by Allomancy, which is completely inappropriate and at the same time breathtaking.

He raised an eyebrow, checking his pocket watch, which he carried in his gunbelt—not his vest—to be easily dropped with his other metals. “It’s 8:13. You’re slipping.”

“Traffic on the promenade was lighter than I expected.”

“You really want to do this the hard way?”

“I believe this will actually be the easy way,” Steris said. “Completely inappropriate though.”

“Completely.”

“Fortunately, you have a reputation for that sort of thing, and I can’t be expected to keep you reined in. I did wear dark undergarments, though, so they won’t be as visible from below while we are flying.”

Wax smiled, then reached under his seat, getting out the package that Ranette had sent him. He tucked that under his arm, then pushed open the door. “People underestimate you, Steris.”

“No,” she said, stepping out onto the misty sidewalk. He saw she wore shoes that fastened securely. Good. “They simply presume to know me when they do not. Understanding social conventions is not the same as condoning them. Now, how is it that we are to—
Oh!
”

She said the last part as Wax gathered her to him in a close embrace, then unholstered Vindication and shot a bullet into the ground—between three cobblestones—at their feet. He grinned as heads popped out of carriages all down the line. He’d have to leave Wayne and Marasi to fend for themselves this way, but that was likely better. Might keep eyes off those two.

Wax decreased his weight, oriented himself and Steris at the correct angle to the bullet, and
Pushed
. They shot into the air at a slant, soaring over the coaches in a line. He landed them on one of the skyscraper’s decorative outcroppings a few stories up. Steris clung to him with the grip of a cat hanging above an ocean, her eyes wide. Then, cautiously, she released him and stepped up to the edge of the stonework, leaned out, and peered through the misty depths. Lights bobbed below: coaches, streetlamps, lanterns held high by footmen. In the mist, most were just bubbles and shadows.

“I feel like I’m afloat in a sea of smoke and fog,” she said. The mists twisted and churned as if alive. Eddies and swirls seemed to move against the currents of air, always in motion.

Wax opened Ranette’s package, getting out the length of tightly twined rope inside. He looked upward. Ranette’s note said she wanted him to experiment with using a tether as he jumped with Allomancy, then provide her with feedback.

“You were eager to come tonight,” Steris said. “It’s more than wanting to meet the governor. You’re working. I can see it in you.”

Wax hefted the rope—which was weighted at one end with a hooked steel spike—getting a feel for what throwing it would be like.

“I can tell, you see,” she said, “because you are fully awake. You are a predator, Waxillium Ladrian.”

“I
hunt
predators.”

“You are one too.” She looked at him through the translucent mists dancing between them. Her eyes were alight, reflecting the glow from the sea of fog below. “You are like a lion. Most days you’re only partially present, with me. Lounging, half asleep. You do what you must, you fulfill the needs of the house, but you don’t thrive. Then the prey appears. You wake. The burst of speed, the fury and power; the pounding, pulsing, rush of the hunt. This is the real you, Waxillium Ladrian.”

“If what you say is true, then all lawmen are predators.”

“True lawmen, perhaps. I don’t know that I’ve met another.” She followed his gaze as he looked upward. “So, my question. What do you hunt tonight?”

“Bleeder will be here.”

“The murderer? How do you know?”

“She is going to try to kill the governor again,” Wax said. “She’ll want to test me, to see if she can get close, judge how I’ll react.”

“You act as if it’s personal, between the two of you.”

“I wish it were.”
Someone else moves us.
“I wish I knew Bleeder well enough for it to be personal, as that would give me an edge. But she certainly is interested in me, and that means I can’t skip this party. Otherwise she might take it as a sign that she should strike.”

Wax finished coiling the rope in one hand, then held it with the spiked end dangling free. He held out his hand, and Steris readily stepped up to him.

He searched out a metal line that pointed toward one of the steel girders in the stone under his feet. With so much rock separating them, it wouldn’t be as strong an anchor as otherwise—but it was large and solid, so it would work for his purposes. Holding Steris, he Pushed off it into the night air. Skyscrapers like this one presented a problem for him, since they tapered as they grew taller. In addition, many of the footholds he used were narrow ledges, which made it hard to get a Push directly upward—those Pushes often sent him slightly outward, away from the building at an angle. Either way, the higher he went, the farther from the wall he got. Usually, he could counter this with his shotgun and his ability to make himself lighter. That wouldn’t work while carrying Steris.

Ranette’s rope and spike might. He reached a height where he started to slow, his anchor getting too far to give him further lift. As usual, he’d drifted out some ten feet from the building. So, as he slowed, he flipped the spiked end toward a balcony and Pushed on it, shooting the tether toward the balcony frame. The hooked spike shot between the metal bars of the balcony, but then pulled free. He drifted to a stop, precarious, in danger of falling sideways away from the building. He cursed and tried again, and this time got the hook to lock in place.

He pulled them inward, like a fish reeling itself in. That got them to the balcony. He set Steris down and coiled the rope again, looking upward.

“That was well performed.”

“Too slow,” Wax said absently.

“Oh dear.”

He smiled, gathered her again, and Pushed them upward off the balcony. This time, as he drew near the halfway point to the party, he launched his hook toward a passing balcony at speed, hooking in place. He continued Pushing himself, moving up past the balcony on his right. Then a sharp pull on the rope made him pivot in the air as he flew, and he swung toward the building.

Wax hit the side of the building boots first, rope in one hand, the other arm wrapped around Steris. He then dropped them the few feet to the balcony. Better, better. The great liability of a Coinshot like himself was that he could only Push away from things, never Pull toward them. A tether could be useful indeed.

He wiggled the hook free. This was awkward. What if he needed to unhook it while flying, or fighting? Could Ranette make that hook able to unhitch on command somehow? He Pushed on the balcony, sending them upward again. Steris dug her fingers into his shoulders. Mists streamed lazily about them. A Coinshot grew very comfortable with heights—no matter how far he fell, dropping a single piece of metal and Pushing carefully let him land unharmed.

“I forget how disorienting this can be,” Wax said, slowing their ascent. “Close your eyes.”

“No,” Steris said. She seemed breathless. “This is … this is wonderful.”

I don’t think I’m ever going to understand that woman,
he thought. He could have sworn she was terrified. The next few leaps went well as he got used to the tether.
The rope is way too bulky,
he thought.
Lugging this around would be a serious pain.
And the hook could easily get tangled. If he were using this in a fight, he’d probably have to leave the rope tether behind after the first leap.

Tonight it worked well enough though, and a moment later he swung them onto the top-floor balcony in a flurry of skirts and mistcoat tassels. A small group of partygoers stood here, and Wax’s arrival caused surprised exclamations and one dropped glass. Wax straightened, letting Steris down. Despite what she’d been through, she quickly composed herself, settling her skirts and pulling back her hair to smooth straggling locks.

“I believe,” she said softly, “that was an entrance befitting your station.”

“Alerted the guards, at least,” Wax said, nodding to the men who stood at the sides of the balcony, watching them. The men were doing their job, which was good to see. A Coinshot couldn’t enter this party unnoticed. They didn’t stop him, however. He was too important to bother.

Wax wound up the rope and spike, tying it at his waist within his coat, which made Steris roll her eyes. Then she rested her hand on his arm. Before leaving Ladrian Mansion, she’d coached him with precision on how to walk and stand—her sixth such coaching during their time together. Perhaps that was because he never did it as he was supposed to. Indeed, tonight he took her by the arm in a more familiar way than she’d explained. They were betrothed. Rusts, he could hold her by the arm.

Steris eyed him, but said nothing as Wax Pushed open the balcony doors with an Allomantic shove and they entered the party.

9

Standing at the foot of ZoBell Tower, Wayne watched Wax and Steris disappear into the mists. He shook his head, then took a ball of gum from the tin in his pocket. He’d gotten himself some of the stuff. It was actually fun to chew.