The Alloy of Law (Mistborn 4)

This was worse. Filling his metalmind as much as he dared, storing up health as they went about, meant he got sick. Fast. He sneezed a lot more, his throat grew sore, and his eyes watered. He felt tired and groggy, too. But he’d need that health, so he did it.

He walked across the grass. The Outer Estates were an odd place. The Roughs were dry and dirty. The City was densely populated and—in places—grimy. Out here, things were just … nice.

A little too nice. Made his shoulders itch. This was the kind of place where a man would work in the field during the day, then go home and sit on his porch, drinking lemonade and petting his dog. Men died of boredom in places like that.

Odd, that in a place so open, he could feel even more anxious and confined than when locked in a cell.

“The last railway robbery happened here,” Waxillium said. He held out his hand to the tracks—which rounded a bend just to their left—then moved his hand along their path, as if seeing something Wayne wasn’t. He often did things like that.

Wayne yawned, then took another bite of his pretzel. “What whasdat, sir? What whazzat sir? What whassat, sir?”

“Wayne, what are you babbling about?” Waxillium turned, inspecting the canal to the right. It was wide and deep here, intended for carrying barges full of food into the city.

“Practicing my pretzel guy,” Wayne said. “He had a great accent. Must have been from one of the new rim towns, right by the southern mountains.”

Waxillium glanced at him. “That hat looks ridiculous.”

“Fortunately, I can change hats,” Wayne said in the pretzel-guy accent, “while you, sir, are stuck with that face.”

“You two sound a lot like siblings,” Marasi said, watching curiously. “Do you realize that?”

“So long as I’m the handsome one,” Wayne said.

“The tracks here bend toward the canal,” Waxillium said. “The other robberies all happened near canals as well.”

“As I recall,” Marasi noted, “most of the railway lines parallel the canals. The canals were here first, and when the tracks were laid, it made sense to follow the established paths.”

“Yes,” Waxillium said. “But it’s especially striking here. Look how close the tracks get to the canal.”

His accent is changing, Wayne thought. Only six months back in the city, and it already shows. It’s more refined in some ways, less formal in others. Did people see how their voices were like living things? Move a plant, and it would change and adapt to the environment around it. Move a person, and the way they talked would grow, adapt, evolve.

“So that machinery the Vanishers are using,” Marasi said, “you’re thinking they can’t move it far on land? They have to ship it up the canal, and pick a place near the tracks to set it up and carry out their robbery?”

Her accent … Wayne thought. She uses more elevated diction around him than around me. She tried so hard to impress Wax. Did he see it? Probably not. The man had always been oblivious about women. Even Lessie.

“Yes,” Waxillium said, hiking down the hillside. “The question is, how did this thing—whatever it is—empty the freight cars so quickly and efficiently?”

“Why is that so odd?” Wayne said, following him. “If I’d been a Vanisher, I’d have brought a whole heap of men. That would let me finish the work faster.”

“This isn’t a question of simple manpower,” Waxillium said. “The train cars were locked, and some of the later ones had guards inside. When the cars arrived at their destination, they were still locked, but empty. Beyond that, from one of the cars, many heavy ingots of iron were stolen. There’s a bottleneck at the car door—beyond a certain point, more men wouldn’t have helped. There is no way they unloaded hundreds of ingots in under five minutes using just manpower.”

“A speed bubble?” Marasi asked.

“Could have helped,” Wax said, “but not much. You’d have the same bottleneck, and you can’t fit many people in a speed bubble. Let’s say you could have six workers inside, which would be really tight. They’d have to move the iron ingots up to the edge of the speed bubble, then drop the bubble and create another—you can’t move the bubbles once they’re up—and repeat.”

Wax shook his head, hands on hips. “The cost in bendalloy would be incredible. With one nugget worth about five hundred notes, Wayne can compress about two minutes into fifteen external seconds. To compress time equal to five minutes on the outside—gaining you enough time on the inside to move all of those iron bars—you’d need to spend ten thousand notes. The bars would be worth just a fraction of that; Harmony, you could buy your own train for that kind of money. I don’t believe it. Something else is happening here.”

“Machinery of some sort,” Marasi said.

Wax nodded, walking down the hillside, scanning the ground. “Let’s see if we can find any traces they may have left behind. Maybe the machinery had wheels that left ruts or tracks.”

Wayne shoved his hands in his pockets and walked about, making a show of looking, but the whole reason he’d come to get Waxillium involved in this investigation was because he was good at this kind of stuff. If there were people involved, Wayne was quite handy. But flowers and dirt … not so much.

After a few minutes, Wayne was bored, so he wandered over to where Marasi was looking. She glanced at him. “I do have to say, Wayne … that hat does not fit you very well.”

“Yeah. I just want to keep reminding Wax he owes me a new one.”

“Why? You were the one who let the man take your old one from you.”

“He convinced me not to fight back,” Wayne grumbled. Seemed obvious to him. “And then, he shot the guy wearing it, and the guy walked away!”

“He couldn’t have known the man would survive.”

“He shoulda grabbed my hat,” Wayne said.

She smiled, looking bemused.

Most people, they didn’t understand hats, and Wayne didn’t really blame them. Until you’d had a good, lucky hat, you wouldn’t understand the value of it. “It’s actually all right,” Wayne said softly, kicking around in the weeds. “But don’t tell Wax.”

“What?”

“I needed to lose that hat,” Wayne admitted. “Otherwise, it would have been blown up in the explosion, see? It was lucky it got stolen. It could have ended up like my duster.”

“You’re a very unique individual, Wayne.”

“Technically, we all are,” he said. Then he hesitated. “Except for twins, I guess. Anyway, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. It’s a little personal, though.”

“How personal?” she asked.

“Well, you know, about yourself and all. The personal kind of personal. I guess.”

She looked at him, frowning, then blushed. Seemed the girl did that a lot, which was just fine by Wayne. Girls were pretty with a bit of color on them. “You don’t mean about me … and you … I mean…”

“Oh, Harmony!” Wayne laughed. “It’s not anythin’ like that, mate. Don’t worry. You’re pretty enough, particularly through the coppers, if you know what I mean.”

“The coppers?”

“Sure. Word with a lot of curves, like you. You have a pretty accent too, and some nice bounce to you in the cloud area.”

“Dare I ask what that is?”

“The white, puffy things that float high above the fruitful land where the seeds are planted.”

She blushed even further. “Wayne! That might be the most crude thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“I strives for excellence, mate. I strives for excellence. But don’t worry—like I said, you’re right nice, but you ain’t got enough punch for me. I like women what could take my face clean off with a good roundhouse.”

“You prefer women who could beat you up?”

“Sure. It’s a thing. Anyway, what I was talkin’ about was your Allomancy. See, you and I, we have opposite powers. I speed up time, you slow it. So what happens if we both use it at the same time? Eh?”

“It’s been documented,” Marasi said. “They cancel one another out. Nothing happens.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” he said, wiping his nose with his handkerchief. “Most expensive ‘nothing’ a person could find, what with us both burning rare metals.”

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “My power is pretty good at doing nothing on its own. I don’t think I really understood how pathetic being a Pulser was until I saw what your power could do.”

“Oh, yours ain’t so bad.”

“Wayne, any time I use my ability—any time—I’ll be left frozen in place, looking stupid while everyone else is able to run about. You can use your power to gain extra time. I can only use mine to lose time.”

“Sure, but maybe sometime you want a certain day to come along sooner. You want it real badly, right? So you can burn some chromium, and poof, it’s here!”

“I’ve…” She looked embarrassed. “I’ve actually done that. Chromium burns way more slowly than bendalloy.”

“See! Advantages. How big can your bubbles get?”

“I can make one the size of a small room.”

“That’s way bigger than mine,” Wayne said.

“Multiply zero by a thousand, and you still get zero.”

He hesitated. “You do?”

“Er, yes,” she said. “It’s basic mathematics.”

“I thought we were talking about Allomancy. When did it become about mathematics?”

That made her blush too. You expected that out of a girl when you talked about her more attractive body parts, but not when you mentioned mathematics. She was an odd alloy, this one.

She glanced to the side, toward Waxillium. He was crouching down beside the canal.

“Now him,” Wayne said. “He likes ’em smart.”

“I have no intentions toward Lord Ladrian,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

“Pity,” Wayne said. “I think he likes you, mate.”

That might have been an exaggeration. Wayne wasn’t certain what Wax was thinking in regards to Marasi—however, the man needed to get his mind off Lessie. Lessie had been a great girl. Wonderful, and all that. But she was dead, and Wax still had that … hollow look to him. The same one he’d displayed in the weeks after Lessie’s death. It was softer now, but still there.

A new love would help a lot. Wayne was certain of it, so he found himself quite pleased with himself as Marasi started moving, eventually wandering over to where Wax was working. She touched his arm, and he pointed at something on the ground beside the canal. Together, they inspected it.

Wayne strolled over.

“… perfectly rectangular,” Marasi was saying. “From something mechanical.”