Wayne nudged him. Down below, the limping man came back out of the boat. Wax focused the spyglass on him, watching as he crossed to one of the nearby rooms.
“Did he look anxious about somethin’ to you?” Wayne asked.
“Yeah,” Wax said, lowering the spyglass. “What did those two women do in there?”
“Maybe they—”
“I don’t want to hear your guess,” Wax said. “Really.”
“Fair enough.”
“Come on,” Wax said, leading the way back around the shadowed catwalks toward the ladders.
“You have an idea?” Wayne asked.
“More of an impression,” Wax said. “Suit doesn’t like talking to minions. Everyone we’ve interviewed indicates the same thing—he chooses underlings with some power and repute and lets them handle things. Miles, the Marksman. My uncle loathes being bothered.”
“So…”
“That man with the limp,” Wax said, “probably has a similar role here. He’s an Allomancer, and I heard him referenced in Lady Kelesina’s mansion; he’s an important underling, though perhaps not in favor right now. Either way, he likely reports directly to my uncle.”
“So follow him long enough…” Wayne said.
“… and we should find Suit.”
“Sounds good,” Wayne said. “Unless he reports every afternoon at tea, which would have us waitin’ a long time.”
Wax paused by the ladder, noticing with surprise that the man with the limp had already left the rooms. Wax’s view was partially obscured by the massive ship, but he did catch sight of the man hobbling around the front of the vessel, again walking with a determined air.
Wax held up a hand to Wayne, then crouched down with the spyglass. The limping man crossed the warehouse to a solitary room, much like a guard chamber, built into the southwest corner. A soldier here stepped aside, letting the limping man enter. As the door swung open, Wax got a good glimpse of the room beyond.
His sister was inside.
He almost dropped the spyglass. The door swung shut, so he couldn’t get a second glimpse, but he had seen her. Sitting at a small table, loomed over by the large Coinshot brute Wax had fought on the train.
“Wax?” Wayne asked.
“It’s Telsin,” Wax whispered. “She’s being held inside that room.” He found himself rising and reaching for one of his metal vials.
“Whoa, whoa, mate,” Wayne said, grabbing his arm. “I’m all for charging in recklessly and whatnot, but don’t you think it would be best to talk this through? You know, before we get all ‘Let’s shoot this place up.’”
“She’s here, Wayne,” he said. “This is why I came.” He felt cold. “She’ll know things about our uncle. She’s the key. I’m going in after her.”
“All right, all right,” Wayne said. “But Wax, doesn’t it strike you as worryish that I’m havin’ to be the voice of reason here?”
Wax looked down at his friend. “It probably should.”
“Yeah, I’ll say. Look, I’ve got an idea.”
“How bad an idea is it?”
“Compared to burnin’ Allomancy, going in shooting, and inevitably drawing the attention of all those guards, not to mention the Set’s kill squads? I’d say compared to that, it’s a pretty damn good idea.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, see,” Wayne said, sticking his gum to one of the catwalk’s support beams, “we’ve got this very nice engineer’s outfit over there on the unconscious fellow, and ever since that party half a year back, I been workin’ on my smart-person talk.…”
19
Marasi waited inside the ship, forcing herself—with effort—to remain calm. How did Waxillium do it? He and Wayne could be so relaxed, it seemed like they could take a nap in the middle of a firefight.
Well, she stood her ground—or rather, knelt it—and was rewarded. Through the hole in the ship’s hull, she watched the wall of the warehouse where the rooms were. Irich soon hobbled out of one, then shuffled off and called toward some guards.
“What was that he said?” Marasi asked.
“He told them to ‘Send to Mister Suit,’” MeLaan said. “You think he really stashed that device in the same place as they’re keeping the spike?”
“That’s the hope,” Marasi said.
“Shall we?”
Marasi nodded, then prepared herself for another nerve-racking experience. MeLaan led, strolling down the planks and out into the open. Marasi followed, keeping her head high as MeLaan had told her. Look like you belong, the kandra had said. The first rule of impersonation is to belong.
She felt completely exposed, as if she were dancing naked in the middle of Elendel’s Hub. They reached the bottom of the gangway, walking with excruciating slowness, and crossed the floor of the warehouse to the door. Was Marasi walking too stiffly? She couldn’t check over her shoulder—MeLaan had warned her about that. But surely a quick glance wouldn’t hurt anything.…
Stay firm. MeLaan tried the door, and blessedly it opened. The two of them stepped through into an empty hallway, and Marasi shut the door. No shouts of alarm followed. She was positive one of the carpenters had glanced at them, but nobody had said a word.
“Nice work,” MeLaan said.
“I feel like I’m going to puke.”
“Must run in the family,” MeLaan said, leading her along the hallway. It had bare wooden walls and smelled of sawdust, and a solitary electric light hung from the ceiling. Melaan stopped at the simple door at the end, listened carefully, then tried the knob. This one was locked.
“You can open it?” Marasi said. “Like you did before?”
“Sure,” MeLaan said, kneeling by the doorknob. “No problem. I’ll try something more mundane first.” She cocked her hand, and a set of picks sprouted from the skin of her forearm. She plucked them free and started working on the door.
“Handy,” Marasi said.
“Pun intended?”
“That depends,” she said, checking over her shoulder. The hallway was still empty. Fool girl. “How many times have you heard that joke?”
MeLaan smiled, focused on her lockpicking. “I’ve been alive pushing seven hundred years now, kid. You’ll have trouble finding jokes I haven’t heard.”
“You know, I should really interview you sometime.”
MeLaan cocked an eyebrow in her direction.
“You kandra have a unique perspective on society,” Marasi explained softly. “You’ve seen trends, movements across large scales.”
“I suppose,” MeLaan said, twisting her lockpick. “What good does it do?”
“Statistics show that if we make subtle changes to our environment—the way we approach our legal system, or employment rates, maybe even our city layout—we can positively influence the people living in that environment. Your head may hold the key to what those changes should be! You’ve seen society evolve, move; you’ve watched the shifting of peoples like the tides on a beach.”
“My thigh,” MeLaan said, twisting the doorknob with a click, then pushing the door open a crack. She nodded, standing up straight.
“Your … what?” Marasi asked.
“You said my head might hold the key,” MeLaan said, striding into the chamber beyond—a small, surprisingly well-furnished room. “It’s actually my thigh, right now. A kandra stores its cognitive system through its entire body, but my memories right now are in a solid metal compartment in my thigh. Safer that way. People aim for the head.”
“So what’s in your head?”
“Eyes, sensory apparatus,” MeLaan said. “And an emergency canteen.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” MeLaan said, hands on hips, scanning the room. Another door on the left led farther into the system of rooms built along the side of the warehouse, but there were no windows out to the main chamber, which was good.
Though the room smelled of new sawdust, like the rest of the building, here that was mixed with a scent of wood polish and
a faint odor of cigar smoke. Light from a small electric desk lamp revealed a tidy study, with rows of books in a bookcase, two plush chairs with a maroon and yellow pattern in front of the desk, and several decorative plants that probably had to be rotated outside each day to keep from wilting.
Marasi trailed through the room, noting its oddities. Every room had them—marks of individuality, clues to the life of the occupant. The desk drawers had wide, exaggerated handles on them. The stand lamp in the corner had been bolted to the wooden floor, as had the chairs, likely to keep them in place should Irich stumble into them. Marasi was not familiar with the man’s disease, but it appeared he liked his chambers to accommodate a little fumbling.
MeLaan went straight for the bookcase, then began pulling books off, toppling them to the ground. “It’s always behind the books,” she said. “People don’t like to read, they like to be seen as someone who reads. I—”
“MeLaan?” Marasi said, then pointed to the large safe in the corner.
“Ah,” MeLaan said, mid-ransack. She knocked the last few books off the shelf, perhaps for completeness’s sake, then strode to the safe. “Hmm … This is going to be a little tougher. Can’t crack something like this with a set of picks.”
“Can you manage it?” Marasi asked.
“Patience,” MeLaan said. “Bring over that lamp.”
Marasi took it from the desk, stretching out the cord to its fullest and directing its light for MeLaan.
“Hmmm…” MeLaan said, then pressed her hand against the safe, ignoring the dial. Her fingers and palm went translucent, and then her flesh began to wiggle, squeezing into the joints, leaving behind crystalline bones held together with the barest of sinew.
Marasi swallowed, mouth suddenly tasting bitter. She’d known MeLaan could do this, but watching it was something else. She busied herself propping the lamp on the arm of the desk chair to give MeLaan light, though the kandra now knelt with eyes closed, so who knew if she needed it any longer? Marasi then started rummaging through the desk drawers to see if she could find anything important.
Harmony send that Irich goes back to the scientists after this, Marasi thought, instead of returning here to catch up on paperwork.
“The world back then,” MeLaan said suddenly, “wasn’t all that different from the one now.”
Marasi hesitated. MeLaan still knelt with her eyes closed, her strange bones exposed. The flesh had gone translucent all the way up to her elbow.
“What do you mean?” Marasi asked.
“People talk about that time,” MeLaan said. “The time of the Lord Mistborn, right after the Catacendre. They speak of it in hushed tones as if it were some time of legends.”
“It was,” Marasi said. “The Counselor of Gods, Hammond, Allrianne Ladrian. They forged a new world.”
“Yeah, sure,” MeLaan said. “But they also squabbled like children, and each one had their own vision of what this ‘new world’ should be. Half the reason you’re having troubles now was because they didn’t care about settlements outside of Elendel. The Originators were big-city people, through and through. You want trends? Want to know what I’ve seen? People are people. Hell, even kandra act the same, in our own way. Life then was like life now, only you have better street food.”
Marasi pondered this, then turned back to the desk. She’d still want to interview some kandra—but perhaps ones who were a little more … reflective than MeLaan.
In the desk, she found a notebook with some of Irich’s observations and sketches about the ship, written in a shaky scrawl, along with a map of the area. The more she discovered, the more certain she was that the Set hadn’t built this vessel. They were studying it as much as repairing it.
Marasi tucked the book into her purse. See, handy, she thought. After that, she rose to check the other door out of the room. She wouldn’t want to have some random carpenter wander in. She cracked it open and peeked into a completely dark room, and was immediately hit with a pungent odor like that of the slums. Unwashed bodies, dirt and grime. Frowning, she opened the door wider.
The shaded illumination of the lamp—which faced the wrong way to give direct light—crept hesitantly into the room. Shadows stretched long from a few bare tables and a stack of boxes. And beyond them … were those cages? Yes. Perhaps four feet tall, with thick bars, the cages looked like the type you might use to contain a large animal.
They were empty. “MeLaan?” Marasi asked, glancing at the kandra—who did not respond. She looked utterly absorbed by her task.
Marasi inched into the room, wishing for another light. What did they keep in here? Guard dogs? She hadn’t seen any of those at the perimeter. She stopped near one of the three large cages, bending over to see if she could determine what kind of animal had been kept in it.
Something rustled in the next cage over. Marasi’s breath caught. What she’d mistaken for a lump of blankets or pillows was moving. She glanced toward the desk in the other room, where she’d set her rifle.
The thing lurched and slammed against the bars.
Marasi gasped, jumping away, her back crashing against the stack of nearby boxes. Inside the cage, dim light reflected from a too-flat face of red and black. Dark pits of eyes.
The pictures. Marasi had forgotten the pictures that ReLuur had left. Horrible faces of red and black, with those deep, dark eyes. Images as if from a nightmare, drawn in frantic, scribbled strokes.
The monsters were real. And there was one in the cage here, swathed in thick fur, face of polished red. It regarded her, silent, then reached out between the bars with a shockingly human hand and whispered a single word through lips that somehow didn’t move.
“Please.”
* * *
Wayne turned down his saunter and added a fair measure of scramble to his step instead. This engineer, he didn’t like being here, among all these soldiers. He’d spent his life building houses and working on skyscrapers, and now here he was, basically in the middle of a bivouac!
That ship was marvelous, but he had a distinct worry. It was secret. And secret projects were the kind where little men like himself disappeared when everything was finished.
No, something’s wrong, Wayne thought, halfway across the floor of the warehouse. He didn’t stop walking, but he turned his steps in a little circle, like he was pacing. Something was wrong, but what was it?
“Wayne?” Wax hissed from the shadows nearby, crouched beside a barrel of pitch.
Wayne ignored him, continuing his loop. He … he was a scientist. No, no, an engineer. He was a working man. Learned enough, but not some fancy professor who was paid to stand all day and talk. He built things, and he hated being in this place, with all its guns. He encouraged life, and the soldiers were the opposite of that. They, they …
No, he thought again, raising hands to the sides of his head. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Shape up, Wayne. This was your plan. You’ve gotta make it work.
What was wrong? He … He was a …
He stopped. Then reached into the pocket of his vest and took out a charcoal pencil. He held it up, inspecting it, before slipping it behind his ear. He let out a long sigh.
He was an engineer. A no-nonsense man who saw that things got done. He liked it here, as they had a military way about them—they said what they wanted, and were straight with him. Men were rewarded for hard work.
He didn’t like all those guns. And he certainly didn’t like the men in charge of this place. There was something off about them. But he held his tongue.
Relaxing, Wayne crossed the rest of the way to the door guard. False nose, mustache, a little extra air in the cheeks to fatten his face, and a perpetual squint in the right eye. Came from looking at plans all the time, he figured. But he didn’t need a monocle. Those things looked downright stupid.
He stepped up to the guard. “The lattice supports of the apricity are completely liminal!”
The man blinked at him.
“Don’t just stand there!
” Wayne said, waving toward the walls of the warehouse. “Can’t you see that the forebode malefactors are starting to bow? We could have a full-blown bannock on our hands at any minute!”
“What…” the guard said. “What am I supposed to—”
“Please,” Wayne said, pushing him aside—the man let him—and pulling open the door.
The scene beyond was as Wax had described it. That was Telsin, all right. Dark hair, rugged body. Almost like a Roughs woman. He’d seen her evanotypes all over the mansion. Looked older now. Being a prisoner could do that to somebody.
Tweaked-leg and thick-neck stood beside her table, and both turned with annoyance toward him.
Now, Wayne thought, focusing on tweaked-leg, the real test.
“We’ve got a serious problem,” Wayne said. “I’ve been checking the integrity of the structure, and the caronals are completely nepheligenous out there! We are about to have a full-blown case of ximelolagnia if somebody doesn’t do something.”
The bespectacled man looked at Wayne, blinked once, then said, “Well, of course we will, you idiot. But what do we do about it?”
Wayne held back a smile, tucking it into his pocket for later use. It seemed to him that the smarter a man was, the more likely he was to pretend he knew more than he did. Like the way the drunkest fellow at the pub was always the one who was most sure he could handle another pint. Tweaked-leg would sooner sell his own grandmother as a footstool than admit he didn’t know what Wayne was talking about.
“Quickly,” Wayne said, gesturing. “We’ve got to hold it up while I ratchet the saprostomous underlays! You’ll need to supervise while I work!”
Tweaked-leg sighed, but walked out. Thankfully, his thick-necked companion followed. Within moments, Wayne had this guy pushing against the supports of the ship’s pontoon while tweaked-leg observed, a few guards joining in to help.
A soft thump from behind indicated that Wax had dealt with the guard at the door. Normally Wayne would feel left out, since he didn’t get to do any hitting. This time though, Wayne got to make a bunch of idiots stand with their hands pressed against some wood, thinking they were keeping the ship from tipping over.