Shadows of Self Read online

  She saluted, still wrestling with a mixture of shame and indignation. He didn’t mean anything by his comments. But Rust and Ruin, she had worked most of her life swept under the rug with a few coins in hand, her father refusing to openly acknowledge her. Among the constables at least, couldn’t she be known for her professional accomplishments, not the nature of her birth?

  Still, she wouldn’t turn down the opportunity for a better spot, so she began to work her way around the square toward the section he’d specified.

  * * *

  What was that? Wax thought. He spun to look away from the group of beggars he’d been questioning.

  “Wax?” Wayne called, turning away from another group of people. “What—”

  Wax ignored him, shoving through a crowd on the street toward the thing he’d seen. A face.

  It can’t be.

  His frantic actions drew annoyed shouts from some people, but only dark glares from others. The days when a nobleman, even an Allomancer, could quell with a look were passing. Wax eventually stumbled into a pocket of open ground and spun about. Where? Wild, every sense straining, he dropped a bullet casing and Pushed, instantly popping up about ten feet. Scanning, he whirled, the motion flaring his mistcoat tassels.

  The heavy flow of people on Tindwyl Promenade continued toward the Hub, near which the governor would apparently be making a speech. That’s a dangerous crowd, a piece of him noticed. There were too many men wearing battered coats and bearing battered expressions. The labor issue was becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Half the city was underpaid and overworked. The other half was simply out of work. A strange dichotomy.

  He kept seeing men loitering on corners. Now they flowed together in streams. That would create dangerous rapids, as when a real river met rocks. Wax landed, heart thrumming like the drum of a march. He’d been sure of it, this time. He had seen Bloody Tan in that crowd of men. A brief glimpse of a familiar face, the mortician killer, the last man Wax had hunted in the Roughs before coming to Elendel.

  The man who had caused Lessie’s death.

  “Wax?” Wayne hurried up. “Wax, you all right? You look like you ate an egg you found in the gutter.”

  “It’s nothing,” Wax said.

  “Ah,” Wayne said. “Then that look I saw … you were just contemplatin’ your impendin’ marriage to Steris, I guess?”

  Wax sighed, turning away from the crowds. I imagined it. I must have imagined it. “I wish you’d leave Steris alone. She’s not nearly so bad as you make her sound.”

  “That’s the same thing you said about that horse you bought—you remember, the one who only bit me?”

  “Roseweather had good taste. Did you find anything?”

  Wayne nodded, leading them out of the press of traffic. “Miss Steelrunner settled down nearby, all right,” he said. “She got a job doing bookkeeping for a jeweler down the road. She hasn’t come in to work in over a week though. The jeweler sent someone to her flat, but nobody answered the door.”

  “You got the address?” Wax asked.

  “Of course I did.” Wayne looked offended, shoving his hands in the pockets of his duster. “Got me a new pocket watch too.” He held up one made of pure gold, with opaline workings on the face.

  Wax sighed. After a short trip back to the jeweler to return the watch—Wayne claimed he figured it had been for trade, since it had been sitting out on the counter with naught but a little box of glass around it—they made their way up the road to the Bournton District.

  This was a high-quality neighborhood, which also meant it had less character. No laundry airing in front of buildings, no people sitting on the steps. Instead the street was lined by white townhouses and rows of apartment buildings with spiky iron decorations around their upper windows. They checked the address with one of the local newsboys, and eventually found themselves in front of the apartment building in question.

  “Someday I’d like to live in a fancy place like this,” Wayne said wistfully.

  “Wayne, you live in a mansion.”

  “It ain’t fancy. It’s opulent. Big difference.”

  “Which is?”

  “Mostly it involves which kinds of glasses you drink out of and what kind of art you hang.” Wayne looked offended. “You need to know these things now, Wax, being filthy rich and all.”

  “Wayne, you’re practically rich yourself, after the reward from the Vanishers case.”

  Wayne shrugged. He hadn’t touched his share of that, which had been paid out mostly in aluminum recovered from Miles and his gang. Wax led the way up the steps running along the outside of the building. Idashwy’s place was at the top, a small apartment on the rear, with a view only of the back of other buildings. Wax slipped Vindication out of her holster, then knocked, standing to the side of the door in case someone shot through it.

  No response.

  “Nice door,” Wayne said softly. “Good wood.” He kicked it open.

  Wax leveled his gun and Wayne ducked inside, sliding up against the wall to avoid being backlit. He found a switch a moment later, turning on the room’s electric lights.

  Wax raised the gun beside his head, pointing at the ceiling, and swept in. The apartment wasn’t much to look at. The pile of folded blankets in the corner probably served as a bed. With steelsight, Wax saw no moving bits of metal. Everything was still and calm.

  Wax peeked into the bathroom while Wayne moved over to the only other room in the apartment, a kitchen. Indoor plumbing for the bathroom, electric lights. This was a fancy place. Most Terris claimed to prefer simple lives. What had led her to pay for something like this?

  “Aw, hell,” Wayne said from the kitchen. “That ain’t no fun.”

  Wax moved over, gun out, and glanced around the corner into the kitchen. It was just large enough for one person to lie down in. He knew this because of the bloody corpse stretched out on the floor, her chest bearing a large hole in the center, eyes staring sightlessly into the air.

  “Looks like we’re going to need a new prime suspect, Wax,” Wayne said. “This one downright refuses to not be dead already.”

  * * *

  Marasi’s position at the speech turned out to be exactly as advertised: nestled into a narrow gap in the crowd formed by the side steps of the mansion’s forecourt. Around her, the members of the press clutched pencils and pads, ready to jot down bite-sized quotes from the governor’s speech that might make good headlines. Marasi was the only constable among them, and her lieutenant’s bars didn’t earn her much consideration from the reporters.

  Their view was obstructed not only by the position of the wide stone steps, but also by the governor’s guard—a row of men and women in dark suits and hats, standing with hands clasped behind their backs along the steps. Only a pair of sketch artists, who stood at one corner of the knot of reporters, had anything resembling a good view of the governor’s platform, which had been erected on the steps.

  That was fine with Marasi. She didn’t need to see much of Innate to digest and relate his words. Besides, this position gave her an excellent view of the gathering crowd, which she found more interesting. Dirty men stained with soot from work in the factories. Tired women who—because of the advent of electricity—could now be forced to work much longer hours, well into the night, with the threat of dismissal to keep them at the loom. Yet there was hope in those eyes. Hope that the governor would have encouragement to offer, a promised end to the city’s growing strain.

  Mirabell’s Rules, Marasi thought, nodding to herself. Mirabell had been a statistician and psychologist in the third century who had studied why some people worked harder than others. Turned out a man or woman was much more likely to do good work if they were invested—if they felt ownership of what they did and could see that it mattered. Her personal studies proved that crime went down when people had a sense of identity with and ownership of their community.

  That was the problem, because modern society was eroding those concepts. Life seemed more
transient now, with people commonly relocating and changing jobs during their lifetime—things that had almost never happened a century ago. Progress had forced it upon them. These days, Elendel just didn’t need as many carriage drivers as it did automobile repairmen.

  You had to adapt. Move. Change. That was good, but it could also threaten identity, connection, and sense of purpose. The governor’s guards studied the crowd with hostility, muttering about miscreants, as if seeing the crowd as barely contained malefactors who were looking for any excuse to riot and loot.

  To the contrary, these people wanted something stable, something that would let them sustain their communities or forge new ones. Rioting was rarely caused by greed, but frequently by frustration and hopelessness.

  The governor finally made his appearance, stepping from the mansion. Marasi caught a few fragmentary glimpses of him between the legs of the guards. Innate was a tall, handsome man, unlike his brother, who had always seemed dumpy to Marasi. Clean-shaven, with a wave in his salt-and-pepper hair and a trendy set of spectacles, Innate was the first governor to pose for his official portrait wearing spectacles.

  Would he know? Would he understand how to calm these people? He was corrupt, but it was a quiet kind of corruption—little favors done to enrich himself or his friends. It was quite possible he did care for the people of his city, even while enriching himself. He stepped up to his platform, where a diminutive woman in a green dress skittered around, adjusting devices that looked like big cones with their wide openings facing the crowd. Marasi felt she should recognize the young woman—who was barely more than a girl, with long blonde hair and a lean face. Where had Marasi seen her before?

  She thought for a moment, then sidled up to one of the reporters to read over her shoulder. “Breezy day” … blah blah … “air of violent suspense,” whatever that means … There! “Attended by the curious ministrations of Miss Sophi Tarcsel, the inventor’s daughter.”

  Sophi Tarcsel. She’d been making an uproar, writing opinion pieces in the broadsheets about her father, who had supposedly been a great inventor—though Marasi had never heard or read his name before those articles.

  “People of Elendel,” Governor Innate said, and Marasi was surprised by how his voice echoed across the square, loud and clear. Something to do with those devices, apparently. “The papers would have you believe that this evening we stand on the brink of a crisis, but I assure you, no such problem exists. My brother was not the criminal they are condemning him to have been.”

  Oh, Innate, Marasi thought, sighing to herself as she wrote. That’s not why they’re here. Nobody had come to hear more about Winsting. What about the city’s real problems?

  “I will not suffer this defamation of my dear brother’s character,” Innate continued. “He was a good man, a statesman and philanthropist. You might have forgotten the Hub beautification project that he spearheaded just three years ago, but I have not.…”

  He continued in that vein. Marasi dutifully took notes for Captain Aradel, but she shook her head. Innate’s goal was understandable. He hoped to preserve his family’s reputation in the eyes of important investors and noblemen, and perhaps deflate some of the public anger. It wouldn’t work. The people didn’t actually care about Winsting. It was the deeper corruption, the feeling of powerlessness, that was destroying this city.

  As the speech progressed, laboring with explanations of how good a man Winsting had been, Marasi edged to the side in an attempt to get a better view. How was Innate responding to the crowd? He was charismatic; she could hear that even from the way he spoke. Maybe he was doing some good with his oratory alone, even if the speech lacked substance.

  “A full investigation of the constables will be ordered,” Innate continued. “I am not convinced my brother was killed as they say. My sources posit this might all be the result of a bungled raid, using my brother as willing bait to catch criminals. If that is true, and they put my brother in harm’s way and are now covering it up, the responsible parties will answer for it.”

  Marasi moved to the side, but her view was obstructed by one of the guards, who stepped in front of her. Annoyed, Marasi moved again, and again the guardsman moved. She’d have considered it deliberate if his back hadn’t been to her.

  “As for the floods in the east, we are sending relief. Your friends and relatives there shall be succored. We stand with them in the face of this disaster.”

  Not good, she noted. The people don’t want to hear about aid going outside the city, no matter how necessary, not while things are growing worse and worse here.… Marasi moved again. Aradel wanted her to judge the public’s reaction, but she needed a better view.

  Her shuffling earned a curse of annoyance from one of the reporters, and she finally got a sight of Innate on his podium. He moved into a longer rant against the press. Perhaps that was why the reporter had been so testy. She certainly would be.…

  Marasi frowned. That guardsman who had been moving and shuffling and blocking her view had turned, and she could see a very odd expression on his face, like a grimace of pain. And he was whispering—at least his mouth was moving. Nobody else seemed to notice him, as they were focused on the speech.

  So Marasi was the first one to scream as the guardsman pulled a revolver from underneath his coat and leveled it at the governor.

  * * *

  Wayne prowled around the dead woman’s room. It was too clean. A room where people lived should have a healthy amount of clutter. Miss Steelrunner hadn’t spent much time here.

  In the other room, Wax inspected the body. Wayne left him to that; he had no interest in poking at a corpse’s insides, even if Wax claimed it was important. Wayne, instead, went looking for more interesting bits of life. His first discovery was a small cache of bottles in the cabinet under the bathroom washbasin. Various forms of alcohol, the harder stuff, each a little gone. All save one, which was empty. Wayne gave it a sniff. Port.

  Not surprising, he thought. He took the whiskey and gave it a good swig. Bleh. Too much bite, and far too warm. He took another swig as he spun about in the main room. These fancy neighborhoods were too quiet. People should be shouting outside. That was right for the city. He checked the trunk beside her sleeping pallet and found it contained three outfits, each clean and carefully folded. The Terris robes were on the bottom. Creases had set; these weren’t worn often. The other two were modern designs, the one on top more daring than the one below.

  He took another swig of whiskey and wandered back into the room with the corpse. Wax had removed his hat and coat, and knelt beside the body in his vest and slacks.

  “You found the alcohol, I see,” Wax said. “How uncharacteristic.”

  Wayne grinned, offering the bottle to Wax, who took a small swig. “Ugh,” he noted, handing it back. “This murder is troubling, Wayne.”

  “I’m sure she felt so.”

  “Too many questions. Why did she leave the Village, and why choose to live here? It doesn’t feel very Terris.”

  “Oh, I can tell you why she was here,” Wayne said.

  “Well?”

  “Think of yourself as a sheltered Terriswoman in her forties,” Wayne said. “Old enough to have missed the chance to be a wild youth, and starting to wish you’d done something more daring.”

  “The Terris don’t long for wildness,” Wax said, taking notes in a little book as he inspected the woman’s wound. “They aren’t daring. They’re a reserved people.”

  “Ain’t we Terris?”

  “We’re exceptions.”

  “Everyone’s an exception to something, Wax. This girl, she left the Village and found a whole world out here. She must have had an adventurous side.”

  Whiskey.

  “She did,” Wax admitted. “I didn’t know her well, but she’d sneak out of the Village as a youth. That was long ago.”

  “And she left again,” Wayne said, “on account of the Village being so dull as to bore the sense out of a scribe. Hell, even Steris woul
d hate that place.”

  “Wayne…”

  “Our miss,” Wayne said, waving the bottle toward the dead woman, “she tried to remain conservative at first, so she got a job as a clerk, a good Terris occupation. She convinced herself that a nice apartment—where she was safe from the supposed horrors of lesser neighborhoods—was worth the expense. Simple stuff.

  “But then some workers at the jeweler took her out, and she let herself drink. She liked that. Awakened memories of sneaked drinks as a youth. She wanted more, so she bought a whole mess of different kinds of spirits to try them all out. She liked port best, by the way.”

  “Makes sense,” Wax said.

  “Now we find her with increasingly liberal dresses, showing more skin, spending most evenings out. Give her a few more months, and she’d have turned into a right proper girl to have a good time with.”

  Whiskey.

  “She didn’t get a few more months,” Wax said softly. He took something from his own pocket and handed it out to Wayne. A book, bound in leather, pocket-sized. “Have a look through this.”

  Wayne took it, flipping through some pages. “What is it?”

  “The book that Death gave me.”

  * * *

  Marasi’s shout was lost in the roar as the governor ended his speech. Polite applause from the nobility, shouts and curses from most of the workers. The noise swallowed her shout like a single splash in a breaking tide.

  She fumbled for her handbag as the guard in the dark coat sighted with his gun at the governor. No. There wasn’t time for her gun. She had to do something else.

  She jumped for the man and slowed time.

  She had metal in her this time—she’d made sure, after being embarrassed this morning. Her Allomancy created a bubble of greatly slowed-down time, enveloping herself, the would-be assassin, and a few bystanders.

  She grabbed the man around the legs, but her speed bubble did the real work, trapping him inside—as everyone outside became a blur. The man squeezed his gun’s trigger, and the crack of a gunshot rang amid the strange warping of sounds that she heard inside a bubble from those outside. One of his fellow guards, also caught in her bubble, shouted in alarm.