He harbored a hope that his uncle wasn’t involved in the direct … breeding. The very idea made Waxillium uncomfortable. Perhaps Ladrian was merely selling the women to someone else.
What a thing to hope for.
Ladrian tapped the broadsheet. The headline was about news that was going around the city. House Tekiel was on the brink of collapse. They’d had too much bad publicity in the robbery last week, even though the cargo had been recovered. That, mixed with other serious financial troubles …
Other serious financial troubles.
Waxillium scanned the broadsheet. Tekiel’s main house business was security. Insurance. Rust and Ruin! he thought, making the connection.
“A series of targeted attacks,” Ladrian said, leaning in, sounding pleased with himself. “House Tekiel is doomed. They owe payments on too many high-profile losses. These attacks, and the insurance claims, have devastated them and their financial integrity. Company shareholders have been selling their stakes for pennies. You claimed my finances were weak. That is only because they have been dedicated to a specific task. Have you wondered, yet, why your house is destitute?”
“You took it all,” Waxillium guessed. “You funneled it out of the house finances into … something. Somewhere.”
“We have just seized one of the most powerful financial institutions in the city,” Ladrian said. “The materials stolen are being returned, and so while we’ve assumed Tekiel’s debts by purchasing them, the claims for lost goods will soon be nullified. I always expected Miles to be captured. This plan wouldn’t work without it.”
Waxillium closed his eyes, feeling a dread. I’ve been chasing chickens this entire time, he realized. While someone stole the horses. It wasn’t about robberies, or even kidnappings.
It was insurance fraud.
“We needed only the temporary disappearance of goods,” Edwarn said. “And everything has worked out perfectly. Thank you.”
* * *
The bullets ripped through Miles’s body. Marasi watched, holding her breath, forcing herself not to wince. It was time to stop being a child.
He was shot again. Her eyes open, her nerves steeled, she was able to watch with horror as his wounds started to heal. It should have been impossible. They’d searched him carefully for metalminds. Yet the bullet holes pulled closed, and his smile widened, his eyes wild.
“You are fools!” Miles yelled at the firing squad. “One day, the men of gold and red, bearers of the final metal, will come to you. And you will be ruled by them.”
They fired again. More bullets ripped into Miles. The wounds again closed, but not all the way. He didn’t have enough healing stored in whatever last metalmind he had hidden. Marasi found herself shivering as a fourth volley struck his body, causing him to spasm.
“Worship,” Miles said, his voice failing, his mouth spouting blood. “Worship Trell and wait…”
The fifth volley of bullets hit, and this time none of the wounds healed. Miles slackened in his bonds, eyes open and lifeless, staring at the ground before him.
The constables looked extremely disturbed. One of them ran up to check for a pulse. Marasi shivered. Right up until the end, Miles hadn’t seemed like he accepted death.
But he was dead now. A Bloodmaker like him could heal repeatedly, but if they ever actually stopped healing—let their wounds consume them—they would die like anyone else. Just to make certain, the nearest constable raised a handgun and blasted Miles three times in the side of the head. This was gruesome enough that Marasi had to look away.
It was done. Miles Hundredlives was dead.
In turning away, however, she saw a figure watching from the shadows below, ignored by the constables. He turned away, black robe rippling, and walked out through a gate leading into the alley.
* * *
“It’s not only about the insurance,” Waxillium said, meeting Edwarn’s eyes. “You took the women.”
Edwarn Ladrian said nothing.
“I’m going to stop you, Uncle,” Waxillium said softly. “I don’t know what you’re doing with those women, but I am going to find a way to stop it.”
“Oh please, Waxillium,” Edwarn said. “Your self-righteousness was tiring enough when you were a youth. Your heritage alone should make you better than that.”
“My heritage?”
“You are of a noble bloodline,” Ladrian said. “Directly back to the Counselor of Gods himself. You are Twinborn, and a powerful Allomancer. It was with great regret that I ordered your death, and I only did so under pressure from my colleagues. I suspected, even hoped, you would survive. This world needs you. Us.”
“You sound like Miles,” Waxillium said, surprised.
“No,” Ladrian said. “He sounded like me.” He tucked his handkerchief into his collar, then began to dine. “But you are not ready. I will see that you are sent the proper information. For now, you may withdraw and consider what I’ve told you.”
“I don’t think so,” Waxillium said, reaching into his jacket for a handgun.
Ladrian looked up with a pitying expression. Waxillium heard guns being cocked, and glanced to the side, to where several young men wearing black suits stood in the corridor outside. None were wearing metal on their bodies.
“I have nearly twenty Allomancers riding in this train, Waxillium,” Edwarn said, voice cold. “And you are wounded, barely able to walk. You don’t have a sliver of evidence against me. Are you certain this is a fight you want to start?”
Waxillium hesitated. Then he growled and reached forward with an empty hand to sweep the meal off his uncle’s table. Dishes and food spilled to the floor with a crash as Waxillium bent forward, enraged. “I’ll kill you someday, Uncle.”
Edwarn leaned back, unthreatened. “Lead him to the back of the train. Throw him off. Good day, Waxillium.”
Waxillium tried to reach for his uncle, but the men rushed in and grabbed him, pulling him away. His side and his leg both flared in pain at the treatment. Edwarn was right about one thing. This wasn’t the day to fight.
But that day would come.
Waxillium let them tow him down the hallway. They opened the door at the end of the train and tossed him out toward the tracks that sped by beneath. He caught himself with Allomancy, as they’d no doubt expected he would, and landed to watch the train speed away.
* * *
Marasi burst out into the alleyway beside the precinct building. She felt something stirring in her, a powerful curiosity she could not describe. She had to find out who that figure was.
She caught a glimpse of the hem of a dark robe disappearing around a corner. She ran after it, holding her handbag in a tight grip and reaching inside for the small revolver Waxillium had given her.
What am I doing? a part of her mind thought. Running into an alleyway alone? It wasn’t a particularly sensible thing to do. She just felt that she had to do it.
She ran a short distance. Had she lost the figure? She paused at an intersection, where an even smaller alleyway cut off from the first. Her curiosity was almost unbearable.
Standing in the mouth of the smaller alleyway, waiting for her, was a tall man in a black robe.
She gasped, stepping backward. The man was well over six feet tall, and the enveloping robe gave him an ominous appearance. He brought up pale hands and took down his hood, exposing a shaved head and a face that was tattooed around the eyes in an intricate pattern.
Driven into those eyes, point-first, were what looked like a pair of thick railroad spikes. One of the eye sockets was deformed, as if it had been crushed, long-healed scars and bony ridges under the skin marring the tattoos.
Marasi knew this creature from mythology, but seeing him left her cold, terrified. “Ironeyes,” she whispered.
“I apologize for bringing you like this,” Ironeyes said. He had a quiet, gravelly voice.
“Like this?” she said, her voice coming out as almost a squeak.
“With emotional Allomancy. I sometimes Pull too hard. I’ve never been as good at this sort of thing as Breeze was. Be calm, child. I will not hurt you.”
She felt an instant calmness, though that felt terribly unnatural, and left her feeling even worse. Calm, but sick. One should not be calm when speaking with Death himself.
“Your friend,” Ironeyes said, “has uncovered something very dangerous.”
“And you wish him to stop?”
“Stop?” Ironeyes said. “Not at all. I wish him to be informed. Harmony has particular views about how things must be done. I do not always agree with him. Oddly, his particular beliefs require that he allow that. Here.” Ironeyes reached into the folds of his cloak, bringing out a small book. “There is information in this. Guard it carefully. You may read it, if you wish, but deliver it to Lord Waxillium on my behalf.”
She took the book. “Pardon,” she said, trying to fight through the numbness he had put inside her. Was she really speaking to a mythological figure? Was she going mad? She could barely think. “But why didn’t you take it to him yourself?”
Ironeyes responded with a tight-lipped smile, watching her with the heads of those silvery spikes. “I have a feeling he’d have tried to shoot me. That one does not like unanswered questions, but he does my brother’s work, and that is something I feel inclined to encourage. Good day, Lady Marasi Colms.”
Ironeyes turned, cloak rustling, and walked away down the alley. He put his hood up as he walked, then lifted into the air, propelled by Allomancy over the tops of the nearby buildings. He vanished from sight.
Marasi clutched the book, then slid it into her handbag, shaking.
* * *
Waxillium landed at the rail station, dropping as gently as he could from his Allomantic flight down the tracks. Landing still hurt his leg.
Wayne sat on the platform, feet up on a barrel, smoking his pipe. He still had his arm in a sling. He wouldn’t be able to heal it quickly—he had no health stored up. Trying to store some now would just make him heal more slowly during that process, then heal more quickly as he tapped his metalmind, ending with no net gain.
Wayne was reading a small novel that he’d picked out of someone’s pocket on their train ride out to the estates. He’d left an aluminum bullet in its place, worth easily a hundred times the price of the book. Ironically, the person who found it would probably throw it away, never realizing its value.
I’ll need to talk to him about that again, Waxillium thought, walking up onto the platform. But not today. Today, they had other worries.
Waxillium joined his friend, but continued staring to the south. Toward the city, and his uncle.
“It’s a pretty good book,” Wayne said, flipping a page. “You should try it. It’s about bunnies. They talk. Damnedest thing ever.”
Waxillium didn’t reply.
“So, was it your uncle?” Wayne asked.
“Yes.”
“Crud. I owe you a fiver, then.”
“The bet was for twenty.”
“Yeah, but you owe me fifteen.”
“I do?”
“Sure, for that bet I made that you’d end up helpin’ me with the Vanishers.”