Shadows of Self Read online

  “Executed?” Marasi asked. “How did the killer get them to stand there and take it?”

  “He didn’t,” Waxillium said. “He moved too quickly for them to respond.”

  “Feruchemist,” Wayne said softly. “Damn.”

  They were called Steelrunners, Feruchemists who could store up speed. They’d have to move slowly for a time, then could draw upon that reserve later. Waxillium looked up. Marasi saw something in his eyes, a hunger. He thought his uncle was involved. That was what he thought every time a Metalborn committed crimes. Waxillium saw Suit’s shadow over his shoulder each way he turned, the specter of a man whom Waxillium hadn’t been able to stop.

  Suit still had Waxillium’s sister, best as they could tell. Marasi didn’t know much of it. Waxillium wouldn’t talk about the details.

  He stood up, expression grim, and strode to the door behind the fallen men. He threw it open and entered, Marasi and Wayne close behind, to find a single corpse slumped in an easy chair at the center of the room. His throat had been slit; the blood on the front of his clothing was thick, dried like paint.

  “Killed with some sort of long knife or small sword,” Aradel said. “Even more strange, his tongue was cut out. We’ve sent for a surgeon to try to tell us more of the wound. Don’t know why the killer didn’t use a gun.”

  “Because the guards were still alive then,” Waxillium said softly.

  “What?”

  “They let the killer pass,” Waxillium said, looking at the door. “It was someone they trusted, perhaps one of their number. They let the murderer into the saferoom.”

  “Maybe he was just moving very quickly to get past them,” Marasi said.

  “Maybe,” Waxillium agreed. “But that door has to be unlocked from the inside, and it hasn’t been forced. There’s a peephole. Winsting let the murderer in, and he wouldn’t have done that if the guards had been killed. He’s sitting calmly in that chair—no struggle, just a quick slice from behind. Either he didn’t know someone else was in here, or he trusted them. Judging by the way the guards fell outside, they were still focused on the steps, waiting for danger to come. They were still guarding this place. My gut says it was one of their own, someone they let pass, who killed Winsting.”

  “Rusts,” Aradel said softly. “But … a Feruchemist? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” Wayne said, from the doorway. “This wasn’t a speed bubble. Can’t shoot out of one of those, mate. These fellows were killed before one could turn about. Wax is right. Either this is a Feruchemist, or somebody figured out how to fire out of speed bubbles—which is somethin’ we’d really like to know how to do.”

  “Someone moving with Feruchemical speed explains the knife deaths up above,” Waxillium said, standing. “A few swift executions in the chaos, while everyone else was shooting. Quick and surgical, but the killer would be safe despite the firefight. Captain Aradel, I suggest you gather the names of Winsting’s companions and staff. See if any corpses that should be here, aren’t. I’ll look into the Metalborn side—Steelrunners aren’t common, even as Feruchemists go.”

  “And the press?” Marasi asked.

  Waxillium looked to Aradel, who shrugged. “I can’t keep a lid on this, Lord Ladrian,” Aradel said. “Not with so many people involved. It’s going to get out.”

  “Let it,” Waxillium said with a sigh. “But I can’t help feeling that’s the point of all this.”

  “Excuse me?” Wayne said. “I thought the point was killing folks.”

  “Lots of folks, Wayne,” Waxillium said. “A shift in power in the city. Were those upstairs the main target? Or was this an attack on the governor himself, a sideways strike upon his house, a message of some sort? Sent to tell Governor Innate that even he is not beyond their reach.…” He tipped Winsting’s head back, looking at the gouged-out mouth. Marasi looked away.

  “They removed the tongue,” Waxillium whispered. “Why? What are you up to, Uncle?”

  “Excuse me?” Aradel asked.

  “Nothing,” Waxillium said, dropping the head back to its slumped position. “I have to go sit for a portrait. I assume you’ll be willing to send me a report once you’ve detailed all of this?”

  “I can do that,” Aradel said.

  “Good,” Waxillium said, walking toward the door. “Oh, and Captain?”

  “Yes, Lord Ladrian?”

  “Prepare for a storm. This wasn’t done quietly; it was done to be noticed. This was a challenge. Whoever did this isn’t likely to stop here.”

  PART TWO

  5

  Wayne tugged on his lucky hat. It was a coachman’s hat—something like a wide-brimmed bowler, only one that didn’t have three ounces of fancy shoved up its backside. He nodded to himself in his mirror, then wiped his nose. Sniffles. He’d started storing up health the day before, just after finding all those corpses.

  He already had a nice cushion of healing he could draw upon, tucked away in his metalmind bracers. He hadn’t needed much lately, and always spent days when he had a hangover as sickly as he could manage, since he was going to have an awful time of it anyway. But the way things smelled, with all those important folk dead, warned him. He’d soon need some healing. Best to expand that cushion as he could.

  He went light at it today, though. Because it was today, a day when he was going to need some luck. He was tempted to call it the worst day of his life, but that would certainly be an exaggeration. The worst day of his life would be the one when he died.

  Might die today though, he thought, looping on his belt and slipping his dueling canes into their straps, then wiping his nose again. Can’t be certain yet. Every man had to die. He’d always found it odd that so many died when they were old, as logic said that was the point in their lives when they’d had the most practice not dying.

  He wandered out of his room in Wax’s mansion, idly noticing the scent of morning bread coming from the kitchens. He appreciated the room, though he really only stayed because of the free food. Well, that and because of Wax. The man needed company to keep him from going more strange.

  Wayne wandered down a carpeted corridor that smelled of polished wood and servants who had too much time. The mansion was nice, but really, a man shouldn’t live in a place that was so big; it just reminded him how small he was. Give Wayne nice, cramped quarters, and he’d be happier. That way he’d feel like a king, with so much stuff it crowded him.

  He hesitated outside the door to Wax’s study. What was that sitting on the stand beside the doorway? A new candelabra, pure gold, with a white lace doily underneath. Exactly what Wayne needed.

  He fished in his pocket. Rich people didn’t make sense at all. That candelabra was probably worth a fortune, and Wax just left it lying around. Wayne fished in his other pocket, looking for something good to trade, and came out with a pocket watch.

  Ah, that, he thought, shaking it and hearing the pieces rattle inside. How long since this thing actually told time? He picked up the candelabra, pocketed the doily underneath, then put the candelabra back in place with the pocket watch hanging from it. Seemed like a fair trade.

  Been needing a new handkerchief, he thought, blowing his nose into it, then pushed open the door and wandered in.

  Wax stood before an easel, looking at the large artist’s sketch pad he had filled with intricate plans. “Up all night, were you?” Wayne asked with a yawn. “Rusts, man, you make it hard to loaf about properly.”

  “I don’t see what my insomnia has to do with your laziness, Wayne.”

  “Makes me look bad, ’sall,” Wayne said, looking over Wax’s shoulder. “Proper loafing requires company. One man lying about is being idle; two men lying about is a lunch break.”

  Wax shook his head, walking over to look at some broadsheets. Wayne leaned in, inspecting Wax’s paper. It held long lists of ideas, some connected by arrows, with a sketch of the way the bodies had fallen in both the ballroom and the saferoom.

  “What’s all this, then?” Wayne ask
ed, picking up a pencil and drawing a little stick figure with a gun shooting at all the dead bodies. His hand trembled as he drew the stick gun, but otherwise it was a right good stick figure.

  “Proof to me that a Steelrunner is involved,” Wax said. “Look at the pattern of deaths in the ballroom. Four of the most powerful people in the room were killed with the same gun, and they were the only ones up there killed by that weapon—but it’s the same one that killed the guards outside the saferoom. I’d bet those four above were shot first, dead in an eyeblink, so fast that it sounded like a single long shot. Thing is, judging by the wounds, each shot came from a different location.”

  Wayne didn’t know a lot about guns, seeing as how he couldn’t try to use one without his arm doing an impersonation of a carriage on a bumpy road, but Wax was probably right. Wayne moved down to start sketching some stick figures of topless women in the center of the picture, but Wax stepped over and plucked the pencil from his fingers.

  “What’s that?” Wayne asked, tapping the center of the sketch pad, where Wax had drawn a bunch of straight lines.

  “The pattern the killer used baffles me,” Wax said. “The four people in the party he shot, they all fell while in random conversations—look how they were lying. Everyone else who died was part of the larger shoot-out, but these four, they died while the party was still going on. But why did he shoot them from different directions? See, best I can guess, he fired first here, killing Lady Lentin. Her dropped drink was stomped on many times over the next few minutes. But then the killer used his speed to move quickly over here and fire in another direction. Then he moved again, and again. Why four shots from different places?”

  “Who was standing where he shot?”

  “The people he killed, obviously.”

  “No, I mean, who was standing near him when he fired his gun. Not who did he shoot, but who was he near when he shot?”

  “Ahh…” Wax said.

  “Yep. Looks to me like he was trying to set them all off,” Wayne said, sniffling. “Get everyone in the room shootin’ at each other. See? It’s like how, to start a bar fight, you throw a bottle at some fellow and then turn to the person next to you and cry out, ‘Hey, why’d you throw that bottle at that nice fellow? Rusts, he looks big. And now he’s comin’ for you, and—’”

  “I understand the concept,” Wax said dryly. He tapped the drawing pad. “You might have something.”

  “It’s not catching.”

  Wax smiled, writing some notes on the side of the pad. “So the killer wanted to sow chaos.… He started a firefight by bouncing around the room, making it look like various parties were attacking one another. They would already have been tense, suspicious of one another.…”

  “Yup. I’m a genius.”

  “You just recognized this because the killer was making others do his work for him, which is an expertise of yours.”

  “As I said. Genius. So how are you going to find him?”

  “Well, I was thinking of sending you to the Village to—”

  “Not today,” Wayne said.

  Wax turned to him, raising his eyebrows.

  “It’s the first of the month,” Wayne said.

  “Ah. I had forgotten. You don’t need to go every month.”

  “I do.”

  Wax studied him, as if waiting for a further comment or wisecrack. Wayne said nothing. This was actually serious. Slowly, Wax nodded. “I see. Then why haven’t you left yet?”

  “Well, you know,” Wayne said. “It’s like I often say…”

  “Greet every morning with a smile. That way it won’t know what you’re planning to do to it?”

  “No, not that one.”

  “Until you know it ain’t true, treat every woman like she has an older brother what is stronger than you are?”

  “No, not … Wait, I said that?”

  “Yes,” Wax said, turning back to his notes. “It was a very chivalrous moment for you.”

  “Rusts. I should really write these things down.”

  “I believe that is another thing you often say.” Wax made a notation. “Unfortunately, you’d first have to learn how to write.”

  “Now, that’s unfair,” Wayne said, walking over to Wax’s desk and poking around in its drawers. “I can write—I know four whole letters, and one’s not even in my name!”

  Wax smiled. “Are you going to tell me what you always say?”

  Wayne found a bottle in the bottom drawer and lifted it up, dropping in the lace he’d taken from outside as a replacement. “If you’re going to have to do something awful, stop by Wax’s room and trade for some of his rum first.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve ever said that.”

  “I just did.” Wayne took a gulp of the rum.

  “I…” Wax frowned. “I have no response to that.” He sighed, setting down his pencil. “However, since you’re going to be indisposed, then I suppose I will have to go visit the Village.”

  “Sorry. I know you hate that place.”

  “I will survive,” Wax said, grimacing.

  “Wanna piece of advice?”

  “From you? Probably not. But please feel free.”

  “You should stop by Wax’s room before you go,” Wayne said, trailing out toward the door, “and pinch some of his rum.”

  “The rum you just pocketed?”

  Wayne hesitated, then took the rum out of his pocket. “Ah, mate. Sorry. Tough for you.” He shook his head. Poor fellow. He pulled the door closed behind him, took a pull on the rum, and continued on his way down the stairs and out of the mansion.

  * * *

  Marasi tugged at the collar of her jacket, glad for the seaborne wind that blew across her. It could get warm in her uniform—a proper one today, with a buttoned white blouse and brown skirt to match the brown coat.

  Next to her, the newsman wasn’t so thankful for the wind. He cursed, throwing a heavy chunk of iron—it looked like a piece of an old axle—onto his stack of broadsheets. On the street, the traffic slowed in a moment of congestion. Motorcar drivers and coachmen yelled at one another.

  “Ruin break that Tim Vashin,” the newsman grumbled, looking at the traffic. “And his machines.”

  “It’s hardly his fault,” Marasi said, digging in her pocketbook.

  “It is,” the newsman said. “Motors were fine, nothing wrong with them for driving in the country or on a summer afternoon. But they’re cheap enough now, everyone has to have one of the rusting things! A man can’t take his horse two blocks without being run down half a dozen times.”

  Marasi exchanged coins for a broadsheet. The yelling subsided as the traffic clot loosened, horses and machines once again flowing across the cobbles. She raised the broadsheet, scanning above the fold for stories.

  “Say,” the newsman said. “Weren’t you just here?”

  “I needed the afternoon edition,” Marasi said absently, walking away.

  “Cry of Outrage in the Streets!” the headline read.

  A cry like that of twisting metal sounds through Elendel as people take to the streets, outraged by government corruption. One week after the governor’s veto of bill 775, the so-called workers’-rights manifesto, his brother Winsting Innate has been found dead after an apparent dealing with known criminals.

  Winsting was killed in his mansion, perhaps a casualty of constable action against these criminal elements. Among the fallen is the notorious Dowser Maline, long suspected of running ore-smuggling operations into the city, undercutting the work of honest men. The constables admit no culpability for the deaths, but suspicions about the mysterious circumstances have led to a general outcry.

  Marasi reached into her handbag and took out the morning edition of the same paper. “Mystery at Lord Winsting’s Mansion!” the headline read.

  Constables have disclosed that Lord Winsting, brother of the governor, was found dead in his mansion home last night. Little is known of the mysterious circumstances of the death, though several members
of high society are rumored to have been present.

  Every other story in the paper was the same in both editions, save for one report on the floods in the east, which had an extra line updating casualty estimates. The Winsting story had nudged two others off the page, in part because of the size of its headline. The Elendel Daily was hardly the most reputable news source in the Basin, but it did know its market. News stories that people agreed with, or were scared by, sold the most copies.

  Marasi hesitated on the steps of the Fourth Octant Precinct of the Constabulary. People flowed on the sidewalks, bustling, anxious, heads down. Others loitered nearby, men in the dark jackets of teamsters, hands shoved in pockets, eyes shaded by peaked hats.

  Out of work, Marasi thought. Too many idle men out of work. Motorcars and electric lights were changing life in Elendel so quickly it seemed that the common man had no hope of keeping up. Men whose families had worked for three generations in the same job suddenly found themselves unemployed. And with the labor disputes at the steel mills …

  The governor had recently given political speeches to these men, making promises. More coach lines to compete with rail lines, going places the railroad could not. Higher tariffs on imports from Bilming. Empty promises, mostly, but men losing hope clung to such promises. Winsting’s death could dash those promises. How would people react if they began to wonder if the governor, Replar Innate, was as corrupt as his brother?

  A fire is kindling in the city, Marasi thought. She could almost feel the heat coming off the page of the broadsheet in her hands.

  She turned and entered the constabulary offices, worrying that Lord Winsting might actually do more harm to Elendel dead than he had alive—which was saying something.

  * * *

  Wax climbed out of the carriage, nodding to his coachman and indicating that the man should continue on home rather than wait for his master.

  Wax pulled on his aluminum-lined hat—broad-brimmed, Roughs style, matching his duster, though he wore a fine shirt and cravat underneath. The hat and mistcoat made him stand out like a man who had brought a shotgun to a knife fight. Workers passed in suspenders and caps, bankers in vests and monocles, constables in helms or bowlers and militaristic coats.