Shadows of Self

  “There are two appointments today I wanted you to observe,” Uncle Edwarn said as they entered a long, unadorned room. The chairs faced the wall; this was a viewing room, a place to spy upon meetings in the bank. His uncle gestured for him to sit, then pulled aside a panel in the wall, revealing a glass slit that let them see the two people in the next room. One was a male banker in a vest and slacks. He sat at an imposing desk, speaking with a middle-aged man in dusty clothing, holding a felt cap in his fingers.

  “The loan will help us move up,” the dirty man said. “Get a place out of the slums. I have three sons. We’ll work hard, I promise you we will.”

  The banker looked down his nose at the man, then riffled through papers. Uncle Edwarn closed the slit, surprising Waxillium with the abrupt motion. His uncle rose and Waxillium followed, moving to another set of chairs along the same wall. A second spy slit let them look in on another room similar to the first. A female banker in vest and skirt sat behind a similarly intimidating desk. The patron, however, was tall, clean, and relaxed.

  “Are you certain you need another boat, Lord Nikolin?” the banker asked.

  “Of course I’m certain. Would I bother coming here if I weren’t serious? Honestly. You people should allow my steward to make these arrangements. That’s what stewards are for, after all.”

  Uncle Edwarn closed the slit with a quiet snap, then turned to Waxillium. “You are watching a revolution.”

  “A revolution?” Waxillium asked. He’d studied banking—well, he’d been forced to study it by his tutors. “This sounds like what happens every day at a bank.”

  “Ah,” Uncle Edwarn said. “You know all this already. And to which of these men will we give a loan?”

  “The rich one,” Waxillium said. “Assuming he’s not lying or acting somehow.”

  “No, Nikolin is legitimately wealthy,” Uncle Edwarn said. “He has banked with us numerous times in the past, and he never misses his payments.”

  “So you’ll loan money to him and not the other.”

  “Wrong,” Uncle Edwarn said. “We’ll lend to both.”

  “You’ll use the good credit of the rich man to underwrite the risk of helping the poor man?”

  Uncle Edwarn seemed surprised. “Your tutors have been diligent.”

  Waxillium shrugged, but inwardly he found himself growing interested. Perhaps this was a way to become a hero. Maybe Uncle Edwarn was right and the frontier was shrinking, the need for men of action vanishing. Maybe this new world wasn’t at all like the one that the Ascendant Warrior and the Survivor had lived in.

  Waxillium could carefully balance risks, and give money to those who needed it. If men in suits would someday run the world, couldn’t they also make it a better place?

  “Your assessment is correct on one hand,” Uncle Edwarn said, oblivious to the direction Waxillium had been thinking, “but flawed on the other. Yes, we will lend to the poor man—but we will not accept risk to do so.”

  “But—”

  “The papers our banker is now presenting will tie the laborer in debt that is impossible to escape. If he fails to meet payments, his signature on that paper will allow us to go directly to his employer and take a percentage of his wages. If that isn’t enough, we can do the same for his sons. The rich man has banked with us many times, and his house negotiated favorable terms. We will earn barely three percent on what we lend him. But the laborer is desperate, and no other bank will consider him. He’ll pay us twelve percent.”

  Uncle Edwarn leaned in. “The other banks don’t see it yet. They lend safely, and safely only. They have not changed as the world has. Workers earn more now than they ever did, and they’re hungry to pay for things once outside their reach. In the last six months we have pushed aggressively to lend to the common people of the city. They flock to us, and will soon make us very, very wealthy.”

  “You’ll make slaves of them,” Waxillium said, horrified.

  His uncle took out the error coin and set it on the counter beside Waxillium. “This coin is a mistake. An embarrassment. Now it is worth more than thousands of its companions combined. Value created where none once existed. I will take the poor of this city and make of them the same thing. As I said, a revolution.”

  Waxillium felt sick.

  “The coin is for you,” Uncle Edwarn said, standing. “I wish it to be a reminder. The gift that will—”

  Waxillium snatched the coin off the counter, then bolted out the door.

  “Waxillium!” his uncle called.

  The bank was a labyrinth, but Waxillium found his way. He burst into the small room where the poor man sat in consultation with the loan officer. The laborer looked up from the stack of papers; he’d be barely literate. He wouldn’t even know what he was signing.

  Waxillium set the coin down on the desk before him. “This is a misprinted coin, something that collectors covet. Take it, sell it at a curiosities shop—don’t take less than two thousand for it—and use the money to move your family out of the slum. Don’t sign those documents. They’ll be like a chain around your neck.”

  * * *

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.