Authors: Brandon Sanderson
“I’ll remember that.”
“Keep an eye on my sister out there,” Steris said.
“This is a dangerous chase,” Wax said, hastening to the door. “I doubt Marasi will be involved.”
“If you think that, then your professional faculties are suspect. It’s a dangerous chase, so she’ll
find
a way to be involved.”
Wax hesitated by the door. He glanced back at her, and she looked up, meeting his eyes. It felt as if there should be something more to their parting. A send-off of some sort. Fondness.
Steris seemed to sense it too, but neither said anything.
Wax tipped his head back, taking a shot of whiskey and metal flakes, then charged through the doorway and threw himself over the balcony railing. He slowed himself with a Push on the silver inlays in the marble floor of the entrance hall, hitting with a thump of boots on stone. Darriance opened the front door ahead of him as he raced out to join Wayne at the coach, for the ride to
…
He froze on the steps down to the street. “What the hell is that?”
“Motorcar!” Wayne said from the back seat of the vehicle.
Wax groaned, hastening down the steps and approaching the machine. Marasi sat behind the steering mechanism, wearing a fashionable dress of lavender and lace. She looked much younger than her half sister, Steris, though only five years separated them.
She was a constable now, technically. An aide to the constable-general of this octant. She’d never fully explained to him why she would leave behind her career as a solicitor to join the constables, but at least she’d been hired on not as a beat constable, but as an analyst and executive assistant. She shouldn’t be subjected to danger in that role.
Yet here she was. A glint of eagerness shone in her eyes as she turned to him. “Are you going to get in?”
“What are you doing here?” Wax asked, opening the door with some reluctance.
“Driving. You’d rather Wayne do it?”
“I’d rather have a coach and a good team of horses.” Wax settled into one of the seats.
“Stop being so old-fashioned,” Marasi said, moving her foot and making the devilish contraption lurch forward. “Marksman robbed the First Union, as you guessed.”
Wax held on tightly. He’d guessed that Marksman would hit the bank three days ago. When it hadn’t happened, he’d thought the man had fled to the Roughs.
“Captain Reddi thinks that Marksman will run for his hideout in the Seventh Octant,” Marasi noted, steering around a horse carriage.
“Reddi is wrong,” Wax said. “Head for the Breakouts.”
She didn’t argue. The motorcar thumped and shook until they hit the new section of paving stones, where the street smoothed out and the vehicle picked up speed. This was one of the latest motorcars, the type the broadsheets had been spouting about, with rubber wheels and a gasoline engine.
The entire city was transforming to accommodate them.
A lot of trouble just so people can drive these contraptions,
Wax thought sourly. Horses didn’t need ground this smooth—though he did have to admit that the motorcar turned remarkably well, as Marasi took a corner at speed.
It was still a horrible lifeless heap of destruction.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Wax said as Marasi took another corner.
She kept her eyes forward. Behind them, Wayne leaned halfway out one of the windows, holding his hat to his head and grinning.
“You trained as an attorney,” Wax said. “You belong in a courtroom, not chasing a killer.”
“I’ve done well caring for myself in the past. You never complained then.”
“Each time, it felt like an exception. Yet here you are again.”
Marasi did something with the stick to her right, changing the motor’s gears. Wax never had been able to get the hang of that. She darted around several horses, causing one of the riders to shout after them. The swerving motion pushed Wax against the side of the motorcar, and he grunted.
“What’s wrong with you lately?” Marasi demanded. “You complain about the motorcar, about me being here, about your tea being too hot in the morning. One would almost think you’d made some horrible life decision that you regret deep down. Wonder what it could be.”
Wax kept his eyes forward. In the mirror, he saw Wayne lean back in and raise his eyebrows. “She might have a point, mate.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Wasn’t intending to,” Wayne said. “Fortunately, I know which horrible life decision she’s talkin’ about. You really should have bought that hat we looked at last week. It was lucky. I’ve got a fifth sense for these things.”
“Fifth?” Marasi asked.
“Yeah, can’t smell worth a heap of beans. I—”
“There,” Wax said, leaning forward and looking through the windscreen. A figure bounded out of a side street soaring through the air, landed in the street, then launched himself down the thoroughfare ahead of them.
“You were right,” Marasi said. “How did you know?”
“Marks likes to be seen,” Wax said, slipping Vindication from her holster at his side. “Fancies himself a gentleman rogue. Keep this contraption moving steadily, if you can.”
Marasi’s reply was cut off as Wax threw open the door and leaped out. He fired down and Pushed on the bullet, launching himself upward. A Push on a passing carriage sent it rocking and nudged Wax to the side, so that when he came down, he landed on the wooden roof of Marasi’s motorcar.
He grabbed the roof’s front lip in one hand, gun up beside his head, wind blowing his mistcoat out behind him. Ahead, Marks bounded down the thoroughfare in a series of Steelpushes. Deep within, Wax felt the comforting burn of his own metal.
He propelled himself off the motorcar and out over the roadway. Marks always performed his robberies in daylight, always escaped along the busiest roadways he could find. He liked the notoriety. He probably felt invincible. Being an Allomancer could do that to a man.
Wax sent himself into a series of leaps over motorcars and carriages, passing the tenements on either side. The rushing wind, the height and perspective, cleared his mind and calmed his emotions as surely as a Soother’s touch. His worries dissolved, and for the moment there was only the chase.
The Marksman wore red, an old busker’s mask covering his face—black with white tusks, like a demon of the Deepness from old stories. And he was connected to the Set, according to the appointment book Wax had stolen from his uncle. After so many months the usefulness of that book was waning, but there were still a few gems to exploit.
Marks Pushed toward the industrial district. Wax followed, bounding from motorcar to motorcar. Amazing how much more secure he felt while hurtling through the afternoon air, as opposed to being trapped in one of those horrible motorized boxes.
Marks spun in midair and released a handful of something. Wax Pushed himself off a lamppost and jerked to the side, then shoved Marks’s coins as they passed, sending them out of the way of a random motorcar below. The motor swerved anyway, running toward the canal, the driver losing control.
Rust and Ruin,
Wax thought with annoyance, Pushing himself back toward the motorcar. He tapped his metalmind, increasing his weight twentyfold, and came down on the hood of the motorcar.
Hard.
The smash crushed the front of the motorcar into the ground, grinding it against the stones, slowing and then stopping its momentum before it could topple into the canal. He caught a glimpse of stunned people inside, then released his metalmind and launched himself in a Push after Marks. He almost lost the man, but fortunately the red clothing was distinctive. Wax spotted him as he bounded up off a low building, then Pushed himself high along the side of one of the city’s shorter skyscrapers. Wax followed, watching as the man Pushed himself in through a window on the top floor, some twelve or fourteen stories up.
Wax shot up into the sky, windows passing him in a blur. The city of Elendel stretched out all around, smoke rising from coal plants, factories, and homes in countless spouts. He neared the top floor one window to the left of where Marks had entered, and as he landed lightly on the stonework ledge, he tossed a coin toward the window Marks had used.
The coin bounced against the glass. Gunfire sprayed out of the window. At the same time, Wax increased his weight and smashed through his own window by leaning against it, entering the building. He skidded on glass, raising Vindication toward the plaster wall separating him from Marks.
Translucent blue lines spread around him, pointing in a thousand different directions, highlighting bits of metal. The nails in a desk behind him, where a frightened man in a suit cowered. The metal wires in the walls, leading to electric lamps. Most importantly, a few lines pointed
through
the wall into the next room. These were faint; obstructions weakened his Allomantic sense.
One of those lines quivered as someone in there turned and raised a gun. Wax rolled Vindication’s cylinder and locked it into place.
Hazekiller round.
He fired, then
Pushed,
flaring his metal and drilling that bullet forward with as much force as he could. It tore through the wall as if it were paper.
The metal in the next room dropped to the floor. Wax threw himself against the wall, increasing his weight, cracking the plaster. Another slam with his shoulder smashed through, and he broke into the next room, weapon raised, looking for his target.
He found only a pool of blood soaking into the carpet and a discarded submachine gun. This room was some kind of clerk’s office. Several men and women pressed against the floor, trembling. One woman raised a finger, pointing out a door. Wax gave her a nod and crouched against the wall next to the doorway, then cautiously glanced out.
With a painful grating sound, a filing cabinet slid down the hallway toward him. Wax ducked back out of the way as it passed, then leaped out and aimed.
His gun immediately lurched backward. Wax grabbed it with both hands, holding tight, but a second Push launched his other pistol out of its holster. His feet started to skid, his gun hauling him backward, and he growled, but finally dropped Vindication. She tumbled all the way down the hall to fetch up beside the ruins of the filing cabinet, which had crashed into the wall there. He would have to come back for her once this was over.
Marks stood at the other end of the hallway, lit by soft electric lights. He bled from a shoulder wound, his face hidden by the black-and-white mask.
“There are a thousand criminals in this city far worse than I am,” a muffled voice said from behind the mask, “and yet you hunt
me,
lawman. Why? I’m a hero of the people.”
“You stopped being a hero weeks ago,” Wax said, striding forward, mistcoat rustling. “When you killed a child.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“You fired the gun, Marks. You might not have been aiming for the girl, but
you fired the gun
.”
The thief stepped back. The sack slung on his shoulder had been torn, either by Wax’s bullet or some shrapnel. It leaked banknotes.
Marks glared at him through the mask, eyes barely visible in the electric light. Then he dashed to the side, holding his shoulder as he ran into another room. Wax Pushed off the filing cabinet and threw himself in a rush down the hallway. He skidded to a stop before the door Marks had gone in, then Pushed off the light behind, bending it against the wall and entering the room.
Open window. Wax grabbed a handful of pens from a desk before throwing himself out the window, a dozen stories up. Banknotes fluttered in the air, trailing behind Marks as he plummeted. Wax increased his weight, trying to fall faster, but he had nothing to Push against and the increased weight helped only slightly against air resistance. Marks still hit the ground before him, then Pushed away the coin he’d used to slow himself.
A pair of dropped pens—with metal nibs—Pushed ahead of himself into the ground was enough, barely, to slow Wax.
Marks leaped away, bounding out over some streetlamps. He bore no metal on his body that Wax could spot, but he moved a lot more slowly than he had earlier, and he trailed blood.
Wax followed him. Marks would be making for the Breakouts, a slum where the people still covered for him. They didn’t care that his robberies had turned violent; they celebrated that he stole from those who deserved it.
Can’t let him reach that safety,
Wax thought, Pushing himself up over a lamppost, then shoving on it behind him to gain speed. He closed on his prey, who checked on Wax with a frantic glance over his shoulder. Wax raised one of the pens, gauging how risky it would be to try to hit Marks in the leg. He didn’t want a killing blow. This man knew something.
The slums were just ahead.
Next bound,
Wax thought, gripping the pen. Bystanders stared up from the sidewalks, watching the Allomantic chase. He couldn’t risk hitting one of them. He had to—
One of those faces was familiar.
Wax lost control of his Push. Stunned by what he’d seen, he barely kept himself from breaking bones as he hit the street, rolling across cobbles. He came to a rest, mistcoat tassels twisted around his body.
He drew himself up on hands and knees.
No. Impossible. NO.
He scrambled across the street, ignoring a stomping black destrier and its cursing rider. That face. That
face
.
The last time he had seen that face, he had shot it in the forehead. Bloody Tan.
The man who had killed Lessie.
“A man was here!” Wax shouted, shoving through the crowd. “Long-fingered, thinning hair. A face almost like a bare skull. Did you see him? Did anyone see him?”
People stared at him as if he were daft. Perhaps he was. Wax raised his hand to the side of his head.
“Lord Waxillium?”
He spun. Marasi had stopped her motorcar nearby, and both she and Wayne were climbing out. Had she actually been able to tail him during his chase? No … no, he’d told her where he thought Marks would go.
“Wax, mate?” Wayne asked. “You all right? What did he do, knock you from the air?”