So it evened out.
* * *
“Please.”
The creature spoke with a strange accent, but the voice was unmistakably human. Marasi breathed in and out in sharp breaths, regarding that hand reaching for her. A human hand.
Lips that didn’t move … polished skin … That wasn’t a face, but a mask. This wasn’t some horrible creature, but a person in a wooden mask, the eyeholes caught by the shadows. What Marasi had mistaken for fur was thick blankets clutched around the person’s shoulders.
“Marasi?” MeLaan asked. The kandra appeared in the doorway. “I got it open. What are you doing— What the hell is that?”
“It’s a person,” Marasi said. The masked one turned toward MeLaan, and the new angle lit the holes in its mask, illuminating human eyes with brown irises.
Marasi stepped forward. “Who are you?”
The person turned back to her and said something completely unintelligible. Then it paused, and said, “Please?” That was a man’s voice.
“We’ve got to go,” MeLaan said. “Safe is open.”
“Is the spike inside?” Marasi asked.
“See for yourself.”
Marasi hesitated, then hustled into the other room, passing MeLaan.
“Please!” the man cried, huddled against the bars, reaching out.
The safe gaped open in the corner of the room. The top shelf was cluttered with objects, including the little Allomantic grenade. Prominent among them was also a length of silvery metal. Kandra spikes, as proven in the Bleeder case, were smaller than Marasi might have once imagined—less than three inches long, and slender, not at all like the spikes in Death’s eyes.
She knelt beside the safe, taking it out.
“We have it,” Marasi said, turning toward MeLaan. “Do you want to carry it?”
MeLaan shook her head. “We don’t touch one another’s spikes.”
Marasi frowned, remembering the stories. “Didn’t the Guardian—”
“Yes.”
MeLaan’s face remained impassive, but her tone was stern. Marasi shrugged, tucking the spike into her purse, then searched in the safe. She left the banknotes—stupid, she knew, but it felt more like really robbing to take those—and took back the little cube that stored Allomantic charges.
Beside it were several other small relics—each was coinlike, with cloth bands attached to the sides. They too bore the strange inscriptions in an unknown language. Marasi picked one up, then looked over MeLaan’s shoulder into the other room, where the man in the mask slumped against his bars.
Marasi tucked the disc in her purse, then reached farther into the safe, taking out something she’d noticed earlier. A small set of keys. She stood up and strode through the room.
“Marasi?” MeLaan asked, sounding skeptical. “It might have some kind of disease.”
“He’s not an it,” Marasi said, stepping up to the cage.
The figure twisted to regard her.
Hand quivering only a little, she unlocked the cage, getting the right key on the second try. As soon as the lock clicked, the figure lunged for the cage door, throwing it open. Outside, he stumbled—he obviously hadn’t been allowed to stand up straight for some time.
Marasi backed away until she was beside MeLaan. The tall kandra woman watched with a skeptical expression, arms folded, as the masked figure staggered up against the boxes, holding to them. He panted, then lurched away from the boxes toward the back of the room. There was a door there that Marasi hadn’t noticed in the gloom, and the man frantically shoved it open, stepping into the next room. Lights flicked on as the man found a switch within.
“If he alerts the guards, I’m blaming you,” MeLaan said, joining Marasi as they walked after the man. “I would hate to have to tell Wax that…” MeLaan trailed off as they reached the next room over.
“By the Father and the First Contract,” MeLaan whispered.
The floor was stained red. Operating tables of sleek metal crowded one wall, gleaming garishly compared to the macabre floor. On the wall hung a dozen wooden masks like the one the man wore.
He had fallen to his knees before them, looking up. Dried blood stained the wall where it had dripped from a few of the masks.
Marasi raised her hand to her mouth, taking in the gruesome scene. There were no bodies, but the blood bespoke a massacre. The man she’d rescued lifted his mask with a trembling hand, tipping it back so it rested on the top of his head, exposing his face. A young face, much younger than she’d imagined. A youth not yet twenty, she guessed, with a short, wispy beard and mustache. He stared up at those masks, unblinking, hands spread to the sides in disbelief.
Marasi stepped forward, moving to lift the hem of her skirt so as not to brush that bloody ground—before remembering she had on trousers.
As she reached the youth, he turned to her.
“Please,” he whispered, tears in his eyes.
* * *
Wax stepped into the room.
Telsin sat twirling a pencil in her hand. There was a speaking box before her on the table, but making no sound. She turned lazily to see who had entered, then froze in place, gaping.
He closed the door quietly, aluminum gun in his other hand. He started to speak, but Telsin leaped from her chair and threw herself into his arms. Head against his chest, she started weeping softly.
“Rusts,” he said, holding her, feeling awkward. “What did they do to you, Telsin?” He wasn’t certain what he’d expected from their reunion, but this hadn’t been it. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her cry. He certainly couldn’t remember it.
She shook her head, pulling back, sniffling and setting her jaw. She looked … old. Not that she was ancient, but he remembered her as a youth, not a middle-aged woman.
Stupid though it sounded, he hadn’t expected age to come for Telsin. She had always seemed invincible.
“No other ways out of this room?” Wax asked, glancing about.
“No,” she said. “Do you have another weapon?”
He pulled out one of his Sterrions and handed it to her. “Do you know how to use it?”
“I’m a fast learner,” she said, looking far more comfortable now that she had a gun in hand.
“Telsin,” Wax said. “Is he here? Our uncle?”
“No. I was just speaking with him through that device. He likes … he likes to check in on me. I have to tell him how wonderful I think my accommodations are. He pretends I’m his guest, even still.”
“Well, you’re not. Not anymore. Let’s go.” Hopefully Wayne’s distraction was still working.
Telsin, however, sat down in her chair again. She gripped that gun in both hands, held before her, but she stared unseeingly. “There’s so much to ask. Why did you come back? Rusts … why did you leave, Waxillium? You didn’t come when I sent to you, when I was engaged to Maurin, when our parents died—”
“There isn’t time,” Wax said, seizing her by the shoulder.
She looked up at him, dazed. “You were always the quiet one. The thoughtful one. How did you get here? I … Your face, Waxillium. You’re old.”
The door suddenly slammed open. The tall, thick-armed man that Wax had fought on the train stood there, looking stunned. He turned from Wax to Telsin, and opened his mouth.
Telsin shot him.
* * *
“We need to go,” MeLaan said.
“We’re bringing him,” Marasi said, pointing to the man.
“Why?”
“Haven’t you figured it out, MeLaan?” Marasi asked. “That ship out there wasn’t built by the Set. It’s from somewhere else, someplace distant and alien. It probably wrecked near our coast, and the Set brought it here to be studied.”
MeLaan cocked her head. “Harmony does say odd things sometimes, about other peoples, not from the Basin—” She blinked, focusing on the man kneeling on the bloody floor. “Wow. Wow.”
Marasi nodded. Proof that there was life past the Roughs, and the deserts bey
ond. She couldn’t let him stay here, particularly not with the Set.
“Bring him then,” MeLaan said, moving out of the room. “And let’s get back to the meeting point.”
Marasi gestured toward the way out, trying to usher the masked man along. He just knelt there on the bloody floor, looking up at those hollow masks on the wall.
Then, with a trembling finger, he reached up and slid his mask back down over his face. He stood and pulled his blankets tight, shambling after Marasi as she crossed the room with the cages and entered the study.
MeLaan was already out in the hallway beyond. Marasi fetched her rifle and moved to join the kandra. Rusts, what was Waxillium going to say when he found out she’d picked up a stray? She could almost hear his voice. You freed him, Marasi, but for all he knows you’re a member of the same group who apparently killed his friends. Be careful.
She stopped at the door and looked back, gripping her rifle more tightly. Waxillium could be a curmudgeon, but he was right more often than not. The masked man might be dangerous.
He had stopped inside the room with the safe, looking about, seeming dazed. How long had he been in that little cage, trapped in the darkness? Listening as his friends were taken, tortured, and killed.
Rust and Ruin …
His eyes found the safe, fixating upon it, and then he crossed the room in a shuffle. He reached inside, and for a moment she assumed he was going for the banknotes. But of course not—he pulled out one of the little discs with the straps.
He held it up, seeming awed, then shucked off the blankets he’d been wearing like a cloak. She’d expected him to be wearing a loincloth or something savage underneath, but instead he was dressed in trousers that went down to just below his knees, under which he wore tight white socks. His shirt was loose and white, and over it he wore a snug red vest—matching his mask in coloring—with a double row of buttons up the front.
She’d never seen clothing like it before, but it was hardly savage. The man yanked up one sleeve, exposing his arm, and strapped on the disc by its cloth ties. He let out a relieved sigh.
Looking toward her again, he seemed more confident now. He was a short man, even a few inches shorter than Wayne, but seemed to have grown a foot by standing up straight and discarding those thick blankets. But rusts, how were they going to sneak him out? He was hardly inconspicuous with that mask. Perhaps Marasi and MeLaan could openly move short distances in here without drawing attention, but this man certainly couldn’t.
A series of gunshots rang out in the warehouse.
Perhaps sneaking wouldn’t be an issue.
20
The corpse slumped into the room, one hand still on the doorknob, face frozen in an expression of shock. Telsin had fired four times and had only hit twice, but that was enough.
Wax cursed, grabbing his sister by the arm and towing her across the room. With his other hand, he found a vial of metal flakes on his belt.
“I’ll kill them all, Waxillium,” she whispered. “Each and every one of them. They held me.…”
Great. On one hand, he couldn’t blame her. On the other hand, this was going to be rusting inconvenient. He downed the metal vial, then peeked out of the doorway to see the engineers and carpenters scattering for cover as guards came running toward Wax’s position. A few were very near, the ones Wayne had led away, and one pointed at him and shouted.
The room’s flimsy walls seemed like they’d be about as effective against bullets as stern words were against the town drunk. As the first soldier took a shot at him—Wax shoved back with a Steelpush—he made a decision.
“Hang on to me,” he said, pulling Telsin to his side. He took one step out of the room, fired into the ground, and sent them on a Push up into the air. Soldiers pointed, leveling guns, but in a moment he was on the top of the large ship. As he’d seen earlier, it was wide and flat up here, though the planks were smoother than the deck of any ship he’d seen, and the gunwales were like the crenellated tops of a fort or old tower.
He dropped Telsin. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised, leaping over the side of the ship. The man who had shot at him earlier wasn’t giving up, and fired more rounds. Splinters popped off the sides of the ship as Wax fired Vindication and dropped the man. Wax landed, bounced off a stray nail, then skidded to a stop beside a stack of boxes where Wayne was hiding.
“What?” Wayne asked. “Get impatient?”
“My sister shot one of them.”
“Nice.”
Wax shook his head. Soldiers had started to pour into both ends of the large structure. “Not nice. There will be kill squads mixed among those soldiers, Wayne. Aluminum bullets. We need to get Marasi and MeLaan and go. Fast.”
Wayne nodded. Wax took another draught of steel flakes, in case he lost his gunbelt, then nodded. “Speed us to the other side.”
Wayne ran out, and Wax followed. Gunfire sounded, but Wayne popped up a speed bubble. It only covered about ten feet, but that was plenty to throw off aim. Wayne let Wax pass him, then they charged through the edge, side by side. The bubble collapsed, and bullets zipped through the air back where they’d been.
They ran on, but about the time the soldiers got another bead on them, Wayne created another bubble. This lurched them forward again, and shortly they were able to dive behind the broken section of the ship’s pontoon and take cover. Soldiers cried out, confused by the Allomancy—but if there were kill squads among them, trained hazekiller hit men, they wouldn’t be so easily fooled.
Wax led the way, darting along the front of the ship, in its shadow. As soon as someone started firing, Wayne tossed up another bubble, and the two of them repositioned. Wayne made to run out, but Wax stopped him, arm on shoulder.
“Wait.”
Safely inside this speed bubble, Wax looked back across the cavernous hall. They were close to the eastern side, and soldiers in slow motion set up a perimeter, clogging the doorway and kneeling in ranks. Captains at the rear yelled, pointing, and bullets flew toward the last spot where Wayne and Wax had been seen.
Uncomfortably, more shots streaked through the air where—if they’d been following their previous pattern—they would have exited the speed bubble.
“Damn,” Wayne said, eyeing the bullets. He tossed over his canteen. Wax took a drink, judging distances and feeling the surreal sensation of standing calmly in a maelstrom of gunfire, sipping apple juice.
“They’re goin’ all-out,” Wayne said.
“Our reputation precedes us. How much time have you got left?”
“Two minutes, maybe. I’ve got more bendalloy on the horse, in case. The kandra stocked me up before we left.”
Wax grunted. Two minutes could go very quickly. He pointed at the large hole in the ship’s side, where a plank ramp led to the thing’s insides. “I saw the ladies go in there.”
“Funny,” Wayne said, “’Cuz I see them peekin’ out over there.”
Wax followed his gesture, and indeed saw MeLaan’s face behind a barely opened door out of one of the rooms at the side of the warehouse. Wax took a deep breath. “All right. Those armies will cut us apart, Allomancy or no, if we don’t hide quickly. Those rooms will do. We can move through them toward the outer wall of the building, I can break through it, and we flee into the night that direction.”
“Right,” Wayne said. “And your sister?”
“She should be safe for the moment,” Wax said. “Once we break out, I’ll launch myself to the roof, then come back down through the open part and grab her.”
“Sounds good,” Wayne said, “’cept for one thing.”
Wax handed back the canteen. “Here.”
“Ha!” Wayne said, taking it. “But I was talkin’ about that.” He pointed toward the ship. A figure was climbing down one of the rope ladders that hung over the side of the ship. Telsin had not stayed put.
“Rust and Ruin,” Wax snapped.
“Under a minute left, mate.”
“Get her inside a bubble!” Wax sh
outed, gesturing. “I’ll join the other two. Go!”
They split, the speed bubble falling. A sudden storm of gunfire assaulted Wax’s ears as he dropped to the ground, feet forward, and Pushed against the metal supports in the ship behind him. He skidded across the packed dirt of the floor, bullets flying overhead, and reached the door that MeLaan flung open for him. His heels hit the threshold—the corridor had a wooden floor—and he popped up onto his feet, landing inside with a dusty thump.
“I’ll have you know,” Marasi said, “that we managed to do our job without alerting anyone.”
“I’ll send you a plaque,” Wax said, pointing toward a strange, short man standing behind her. “What the hell is that?”
The man pointed back.
“His people must have built the ship,” Marasi said. “They had him caged in there, Waxillium.”
“Damn,” MeLaan said from the doorway. “That army isn’t playing games.” It was hard to hear her over the gunfire.
“I found my sister,” Wax said. “Suit’s people must know how angry that will make him. We need to—”
“Wax!” MeLaan said, pointing.
He squeezed back up beside her. Wayne had almost reached his sister, who pressed herself against the ship’s side, eyes frantic. But Wayne had been hit. He lurched in place, holding his shoulder, as another bullet hit him right in the neck. He fell in a spray of blood.
Wayne could heal from that, with his new, strange metalmind. Unfortunately, the soldiers didn’t stop firing. Another bullet hit Wayne’s side as he dropped and played dead, then another. In an eyeblink he was healed and up, but then another round dropped him.
They were prepared. They knew. You want to kill a Bloodmaker? Knock him down and keep shooting.
Seeing his friend bleeding, facing some fifty men on his own, awakened something primal in Wax. He didn’t think; he didn’t shout orders. He tore from the hallway in a furious Push on the nails in the walls, soaring out into the warehouse proper a foot or so above the ground, pulling up dust in his wake.
The soldiers had been waiting for this. They had formed up on both sides of the warehouse, using boxes as cover, and they sent out twin waves of bullets—completely uncaring that they risked catching one another in the crossfire. Killing an Allomancer was worth the danger.