Shadows of Self Read online

  “You trained as an attorney,” Wax said. “You belong in a courtroom, not chasing a killer.”

  “I’ve done well caring for myself in the past. You never complained then.”

  “Each time, it felt like an exception. Yet here you are again.”

  Marasi did something with the stick to her right, changing the motor’s gears. Wax never had been able to get the hang of that. She darted around several horses, causing one of the riders to shout after them. The swerving motion pushed Wax against the side of the motorcar, and he grunted.

  “What’s wrong with you lately?” Marasi demanded. “You complain about the motorcar, about me being here, about your tea being too hot in the morning. One would almost think you’d made some horrible life decision that you regret deep down. Wonder what it could be.”

  Wax kept his eyes forward. In the mirror, he saw Wayne lean back in and raise his eyebrows. “She might have a point, mate.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Wasn’t intending to,” Wayne said. “Fortunately, I know which horrible life decision she’s talkin’ about. You really should have bought that hat we looked at last week. It was lucky. I’ve got a fifth sense for these things.”

  “Fifth?” Marasi asked.

  “Yeah, can’t smell worth a heap of beans. I—”

  “There,” Wax said, leaning forward and looking through the windscreen. A figure bounded out of a side street soaring through the air, landed in the street, then launched himself down the thoroughfare ahead of them.

  “You were right,” Marasi said. “How did you know?”

  “Marks likes to be seen,” Wax said, slipping Vindication from her holster at his side. “Fancies himself a gentleman rogue. Keep this contraption moving steadily, if you can.”

  Marasi’s reply was cut off as Wax threw open the door and leaped out. He fired down and Pushed on the bullet, launching himself upward. A Push on a passing carriage sent it rocking and nudged Wax to the side, so that when he came down, he landed on the wooden roof of Marasi’s motorcar.

  He grabbed the roof’s front lip in one hand, gun up beside his head, wind blowing his mistcoat out behind him. Ahead, Marks bounded down the thoroughfare in a series of Steelpushes. Deep within, Wax felt the comforting burn of his own metal.

  He propelled himself off the motorcar and out over the roadway. Marks always performed his robberies in daylight, always escaped along the busiest roadways he could find. He liked the notoriety. He probably felt invincible. Being an Allomancer could do that to a man.

  Wax sent himself into a series of leaps over motorcars and carriages, passing the tenements on either side. The rushing wind, the height and perspective, cleared his mind and calmed his emotions as surely as a Soother’s touch. His worries dissolved, and for the moment there was only the chase.

  The Marksman wore red, an old busker’s mask covering his face—black with white tusks, like a demon of the Deepness from old stories. And he was connected to the Set, according to the appointment book Wax had stolen from his uncle. After so many months the usefulness of that book was waning, but there were still a few gems to exploit.

  Marks Pushed toward the industrial district. Wax followed, bounding from motorcar to motorcar. Amazing how much more secure he felt while hurtling through the afternoon air, as opposed to being trapped in one of those horrible motorized boxes.

  Marks spun in midair and released a handful of something. Wax Pushed himself off a lamppost and jerked to the side, then shoved Marks’s coins as they passed, sending them out of the way of a random motorcar below. The motor swerved anyway, running toward the canal, the driver losing control.

  Rust and Ruin, Wax thought with annoyance, Pushing himself back toward the motorcar. He tapped his metalmind, increasing his weight twentyfold, and came down on the hood of the motorcar.

  Hard.

  The smash crushed the front of the motorcar into the ground, grinding it against the stones, slowing and then stopping its momentum before it could topple into the canal. He caught a glimpse of stunned people inside, then released his metalmind and launched himself in a Push after Marks. He almost lost the man, but fortunately the red clothing was distinctive. Wax spotted him as he bounded up off a low building, then Pushed himself high along the side of one of the city’s shorter skyscrapers. Wax followed, watching as the man Pushed himself in through a window on the top floor, some twelve or fourteen stories up.

  Wax shot up into the sky, windows passing him in a blur. The city of Elendel stretched out all around, smoke rising from coal plants, factories, and homes in countless spouts. He neared the top floor one window to the left of where Marks had entered, and as he landed lightly on the stonework ledge, he tossed a coin toward the window Marks had used.

  The coin bounced against the glass. Gunfire sprayed out of the window. At the same time, Wax increased his weight and smashed through his own window by leaning against it, entering the building. He skidded on glass, raising Vindication toward the plaster wall separating him from Marks.

  Translucent blue lines spread around him, pointing in a thousand different directions, highlighting bits of metal. The nails in a desk behind him, where a frightened man in a suit cowered. The metal wires in the walls, leading to electric lamps. Most importantly, a few lines pointed through the wall into the next room. These were faint; obstructions weakened his Allomantic sense.

  One of those lines quivered as someone in there turned and raised a gun. Wax rolled Vindication’s cylinder and locked it into place.

  Hazekiller round.

  He fired, then Pushed, flaring his metal and drilling that bullet forward with as much force as he could. It tore through the wall as if it were paper.

  The metal in the next room dropped to the floor. Wax threw himself against the wall, increasing his weight, cracking the plaster. Another slam with his shoulder smashed through, and he broke into the next room, weapon raised, looking for his target.

  He found only a pool of blood soaking into the carpet and a discarded submachine gun. This room was some kind of clerk’s office. Several men and women pressed against the floor, trembling. One woman raised a finger, pointing out a door. Wax gave her a nod and crouched against the wall next to the doorway, then cautiously glanced out.

  With a painful grating sound, a filing cabinet slid down the hallway toward him. Wax ducked back out of the way as it passed, then leaped out and aimed.

  His gun immediately lurched backward. Wax grabbed it with both hands, holding tight, but a second Push launched his other pistol out of its holster. His feet started to skid, his gun hauling him backward, and he growled, but finally dropped Vindication. She tumbled all the way down the hall to fetch up beside the ruins of the filing cabinet, which had crashed into the wall there. He would have to come back for her once this was over.

  Marks stood at the other end of the hallway, lit by soft electric lights. He bled from a shoulder wound, his face hidden by the black-and-white mask.

  “There are a thousand criminals in this city far worse than I am,” a muffled voice said from behind the mask, “and yet you hunt me, lawman. Why? I’m a hero of the people.”

  “You stopped being a hero weeks ago,” Wax said, striding forward, mistcoat rustling. “When you killed a child.”

  “That wasn’t my fault.”

  “You fired the gun, Marks. You might not have been aiming for the girl, but you fired the gun.”

  The thief stepped back. The sack slung on his shoulder had been torn, either by Wax’s bullet or some shrapnel. It leaked banknotes.

  Marks glared at him through the mask, eyes barely visible in the electric light. Then he dashed to the side, holding his shoulder as he ran into another room. Wax Pushed off the filing cabinet and threw himself in a rush down the hallway. He skidded to a stop before the door Marks had gone in, then Pushed off the light behind, bending it against the wall and entering the room.

  Open window. Wax grabbed a handful of pens from a desk before throwing
himself out the window, a dozen stories up. Banknotes fluttered in the air, trailing behind Marks as he plummeted. Wax increased his weight, trying to fall faster, but he had nothing to Push against and the increased weight helped only slightly against air resistance. Marks still hit the ground before him, then Pushed away the coin he’d used to slow himself.

  A pair of dropped pens—with metal nibs—Pushed ahead of himself into the ground was enough, barely, to slow Wax.

  Marks leaped away, bounding out over some streetlamps. He bore no metal on his body that Wax could spot, but he moved a lot more slowly than he had earlier, and he trailed blood.

  Wax followed him. Marks would be making for the Breakouts, a slum where the people still covered for him. They didn’t care that his robberies had turned violent; they celebrated that he stole from those who deserved it.

  Can’t let him reach that safety, Wax thought, Pushing himself up over a lamppost, then shoving on it behind him to gain speed. He closed on his prey, who checked on Wax with a frantic glance over his shoulder. Wax raised one of the pens, gauging how risky it would be to try to hit Marks in the leg. He didn’t want a killing blow. This man knew something.

  The slums were just ahead.

  Next bound, Wax thought, gripping the pen. Bystanders stared up from the sidewalks, watching the Allomantic chase. He couldn’t risk hitting one of them. He had to—

  One of those faces was familiar.

  Wax lost control of his Push. Stunned by what he’d seen, he barely kept himself from breaking bones as he hit the street, rolling across cobbles. He came to a rest, mistcoat tassels twisted around his body.

  He drew himself up on hands and knees.

  No. Impossible. NO.

  He scrambled across the street, ignoring a stomping black destrier and its cursing rider. That face. That face.

  The last time he had seen that face, he had shot it in the forehead. Bloody Tan.

  The man who had killed Lessie.

  “A man was here!” Wax shouted, shoving through the crowd. “Long-fingered, thinning hair. A face almost like a bare skull. Did you see him? Did anyone see him?”

  People stared at him as if he were daft. Perhaps he was. Wax raised his hand to the side of his head.

  “Lord Waxillium?”

  He spun. Marasi had stopped her motorcar nearby, and both she and Wayne were climbing out. Had she actually been able to tail him during his chase? No … no, he’d told her where he thought Marks would go.

  “Wax, mate?” Wayne asked. “You all right? What did he do, knock you from the air?”

  “Something like that,” Wax mumbled, glancing about one last time.

  Rusts, he thought. The stress is digging into my mind.

  “So he got away,” Marasi said, folding her arms, looking displeased.

  “Not yet he didn’t,” Wax said. “He’s bleeding and dropping money. He’ll leave a trail. Come on.”

  3

  “I need you to stay behind as we go into those slums,” Wayne said, determined to impress solemnity into his voice. “It’s not that I don’t want your help. I do. It’s just going to be too dangerous for you. You need to stay where I know you’re safe. No arguments. I’m sorry.”

  “Wayne,” Wax said, walking past. “Stop talking to your hat and get over here.”

  Wayne sighed, patting his hat and then forcing himself to put it down and leave it in the motorcar. Wax was a right good fellow, but there were a lot of things he didn’t understand. Women for one. Hats for another.

  Wayne jogged over to where Wax and Marasi peered into the Breakouts. It seemed a different world in there. The sky inside was strung with clotheslines, derelict bits of clothing dangling like hanged men. Wind blew out of the place, happy to escape, carrying with it uncertain scents. Food half cooked. Bodies half washed. Streets half cleaned.

  The tall, compact tenements cast deep shadows even in the afternoon. As if this were the place dusk came for a drink and a chat before sauntering out for its evening duty.

  “The Lord Mistborn didn’t want there to be slums in the city, you know,” Marasi said as the three of them entered. “He tried hard to prevent them from growing up. Built nice buildings for the poor, tried to make them last…”

  Wax nodded, absently moving a coin across his knuckles as he walked. He seemed to have lost his guns somewhere. Had he bummed some coins off Marasi? It never was fair. When Wayne borrowed coins off folks, he got yelled at. He did forget to ask sometimes, but he always offered a good trade.

  As they penetrated deeper into the Breakouts, Wayne lagged behind the other two. Need a good hat … he thought. The hat was important.

  So he listened for some coughing.

  Ah …

  He found the chap nestled up beside a doorway, a ratty blanket draped over his knees. You could always find his type in a slum. Old, clinging to life like a man on a ledge, his lungs half full with various unsavory fluids. The old man hacked into a glove-wrapped hand as Wayne settled down on the steps beside him.

  “What, now,” the man said. “Who are you?”

  “What, now,” Wayne repeated. “Who are you?”

  “I’m nobody,” the man said, then spat to the side. “Dirty outer. I ain’t done nothing.”

  “I’m nobody,” Wayne repeated, taking his flask from the pocket of his duster. “Dirty outer. I ain’t done nothing.”

  Good accent, that was. Real mumbly, a classic vintage, wrapped in a blanket of history. Closing his eyes and listening, Wayne thought he could imagine what people sounded like years ago. He held out the flask of whiskey.

  “You trying to poison me?” the man asked. He clipped off words, left out half the sounds.

  “You trying to poison me?” Wayne repeated, working his jaw as if his mouth were full of bits of rock he kept trying to chew. Some northern fields mix in this one, for sure. He opened his eyes and tipped the whiskey at the man, who smelled it, then took a sip. Then a swig. Then a gulp.

  “So,” the man asked, “you an idiot? I’ve a son that’s an idiot. The real kind, that was born that way. Well, you seem all right anyway.”

  “Well, you seem all right anyway,” Wayne said, standing up. He reached over to take the man’s old cotton cap off his head, then gestured toward the whiskey flask.

  “In trade?” the man asked. “Boy, you are an idiot.”

  Wayne pulled on the cap. “Could you say another word that starts with ‘h’ for me?”

  “Huh?”

  “Rusting wonderful,” Wayne said. He hopped back down the steps onto the street and ditched his duster in a cranny—and along with it his dueling canes, unfortunately. He kept his wooden knucklebones though.

  The clothing underneath his duster was Roughs stock, not so different from what they wore in these slums. Buttoned shirt, trousers, suspenders. He rolled up the sleeves as he walked. The clothing was worn, patched in a few places. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. Took years to get clothing that looked right. Used, lived-in.

  Be slow to trust a man with clothing that was too new. You didn’t get to wear new, clean clothing by doing honest work.

  Wax and Marasi had paused up ahead, speaking to some old women with scarves on their heads and bundles in their arms. Wayne could almost hear what they were saying.

  We don’t know nothing.

  He came running past here mere moments ago, Wax would say. Surely you—

  We don’t know nothing. We didn’t see nothing.

  Wayne wandered over to where a group of men sat under a dirty cloth awning while eating bruised fruit. “Who’re those outers?” Wayne asked as he sat down, using the accent he’d just picked up from the old man.

  They didn’t even question him. A slum like this had a lot of people—too many to know everyone—but you could easily tell if someone belonged or not. And Wayne belonged.

  “Conners for sure,” one of the men said. He had a head like an overturned bowl, hairless and too flat.

  “They want someone,” another
man said. Rust and Ruin, the chap’s face was so pointy, you could have used it to plow a field. “Conners only come here if they want to arrest someone. They’ve never cared about us, and never will.”

  “If they did care,” bowl-head said, “they’d do something about all those factories and power plants, dumping ash on us. We ain’t supposed to live in ash anymore. Harmony said it, he did.”

  Wayne nodded. Good point, that. These building walls, they were ashen. Did people care about that, on the outside? No. Not as long as they didn’t have to live in here. He didn’t miss the glares Wax and Marasi drew, pointed at them by people who passed behind, or who pulled windows closed up above.

  This is worse, Wayne thought. Worse than normal. He’d have to talk to Wax about it. But for now there was a job to do. “They are looking for something.”

  “Stay out of it,” bowl-head said.

  Wayne grunted. “Maybe there’s money in it.”

  “You’d turn in one of our own?” bowl-head said with a scowl. “I recognize you. Edip’s son, aren’t you?”

  Wayne glanced away, noncommittal.

  “You listen here, son,” bowl-head said, wagging his finger. “Don’t trust a conner, and don’t be a rat.”

  “I ain’t a rat,” Wayne said, testily. He wasn’t. But sometimes, a man just needed cash. “They’re after Marks. I overheard them. There’s a thousand notes on his head, there is.”

  “He grew up here,” plow-face said. “He’s one of us.”

  “He killed that girl,” Wayne said.

  “That’s a lie,” bowl-head said. “Don’t you go talking to conners, son. I mean it.”

  “Fine, fine,” Wayne said, moving to rise. “I’ll just go—”

  “You’ll sit back down,” bowl-head said. “Or I’ll rap you something good on your head, I will.”

  Wayne sighed, sitting back down. “You olders always talk about us, and don’t know how it is these days. Working in one of the factories.”

  “We know more than you think,” bowl-head said, handing Wayne a bruised apple. “Eat this, stay out of trouble, and don’t go where I can’t see you.”