Shadows of Self (6 page)

“Something like that,” Wax mumbled, glancing about one last time.

Rusts,
he thought.
The stress is digging into my mind.

“So he got away,” Marasi said, folding her arms, looking displeased.

“Not yet he didn’t,” Wax said. “He’s bleeding and dropping money. He’ll leave a trail. Come on.”

3

“I need you to stay behind as we go into those slums,” Wayne said, determined to impress solemnity into his voice. “It’s not that I don’t want your help. I do. It’s just going to be too dangerous for you. You need to stay where I know you’re safe. No arguments. I’m sorry.”

“Wayne,” Wax said, walking past. “Stop talking to your hat and get over here.”

Wayne sighed, patting his hat and then forcing himself to put it down and leave it in the motorcar. Wax was a right good fellow, but there were a lot of things he didn’t understand. Women for one. Hats for another.

Wayne jogged over to where Wax and Marasi peered into the Breakouts. It seemed a different world in there. The sky inside was strung with clotheslines, derelict bits of clothing dangling like hanged men. Wind blew out of the place, happy to escape, carrying with it uncertain scents. Food half cooked. Bodies half washed. Streets half cleaned.

The tall, compact tenements cast deep shadows even in the afternoon. As if this were the place dusk came for a drink and a chat before sauntering out for its evening duty.

“The Lord Mistborn didn’t want there to be slums in the city, you know,” Marasi said as the three of them entered. “He tried hard to prevent them from growing up. Built nice buildings for the poor, tried to make them last…”

Wax nodded, absently moving a coin across his knuckles as he walked. He seemed to have lost his guns somewhere. Had he bummed some coins off Marasi? It never was fair. When Wayne borrowed coins off folks, he got yelled at. He did forget to ask sometimes, but he always offered a good trade.

As they penetrated deeper into the Breakouts, Wayne lagged behind the other two.
Need a good hat …
he thought. The hat was important.

So he listened for some coughing.

Ah …

He found the chap nestled up beside a doorway, a ratty blanket draped over his knees. You could always find his type in a slum. Old, clinging to life like a man on a ledge, his lungs half full with various unsavory fluids. The old man hacked into a glove-wrapped hand as Wayne settled down on the steps beside him.

“What, now,” the man said. “Who are you?”

“What, now,” Wayne repeated. “Who are you?”

“I’m nobody,” the man said, then spat to the side. “Dirty outer. I ain’t done nothing.”

“I’m nobody,” Wayne repeated, taking his flask from the pocket of his duster. “Dirty outer. I ain’t done nothing.”

Good accent, that was. Real mumbly, a classic vintage, wrapped in a blanket of history. Closing his eyes and listening, Wayne thought he could imagine what people sounded like years ago. He held out the flask of whiskey.

“You trying to poison me?” the man asked. He clipped off words, left out half the sounds.

“You trying to poison me?” Wayne repeated, working his jaw as if his mouth were full of bits of rock he kept trying to chew. Some northern fields mix in this one, for sure. He opened his eyes and tipped the whiskey at the man, who smelled it, then took a sip. Then a swig. Then a gulp.

“So,” the man asked, “you an idiot? I’ve a son that’s an idiot. The real kind, that was born that way. Well, you seem all right anyway.”

“Well, you seem all right anyway,” Wayne said, standing up. He reached over to take the man’s old cotton cap off his head, then gestured toward the whiskey flask.

“In trade?” the man asked. “Boy, you
are
an idiot.”

Wayne pulled on the cap. “Could you say another word that starts with ‘h’ for me?”

“Huh?”

“Rusting wonderful,” Wayne said. He hopped back down the steps onto the street and ditched his duster in a cranny—and along with it his dueling canes, unfortunately. He kept his wooden knucklebones though.

The clothing underneath his duster was Roughs stock, not so different from what they wore in these slums. Buttoned shirt, trousers, suspenders. He rolled up the sleeves as he walked. The clothing was worn, patched in a few places. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. Took years to get clothing that looked right. Used, lived-in.

Be slow to trust a man with clothing that was too new. You didn’t get to wear new, clean clothing by doing honest work.

Wax and Marasi had paused up ahead, speaking to some old women with scarves on their heads and bundles in their arms. Wayne could almost hear what they were saying.

We don’t know nothing.

He came running past here mere moments ago,
Wax would say.
Surely you—

We don’t know nothing. We didn’t see nothing.

Wayne wandered over to where a group of men sat under a dirty cloth awning while eating bruised fruit. “Who’re those outers?” Wayne asked as he sat down, using the accent he’d just picked up from the old man.

They didn’t even question him. A slum like this had a lot of people—too many to know everyone—but you could easily tell if someone belonged or not. And Wayne belonged.

“Conners for sure,” one of the men said. He had a head like an overturned bowl, hairless and too flat.

“They want someone,” another man said. Rust and Ruin, the chap’s face was so pointy, you could have used it to plow a field. “Conners only come here if they want to arrest someone. They’ve never cared about us, and never will.”

“If they did care,” bowl-head said, “they’d do something about all those factories and power plants, dumping ash on us. We ain’t supposed to live in ash anymore. Harmony said it, he did.”

Wayne nodded. Good point, that. These building walls, they
were
ashen. Did people care about that, on the outside? No. Not as long as
they
didn’t have to live in here. He didn’t miss the glares Wax and Marasi drew, pointed at them by people who passed behind, or who pulled windows closed up above.

This is worse,
Wayne thought.
Worse than normal.
He’d have to talk to Wax about it. But for now there was a job to do. “They
are
looking for something.”

“Stay out of it,” bowl-head said.

Wayne grunted. “Maybe there’s money in it.”

“You’d turn in one of our own?” bowl-head said with a scowl. “I recognize you. Edip’s son, aren’t you?”

Wayne glanced away, noncommittal.

“You listen here, son,” bowl-head said, wagging his finger. “Don’t trust a conner, and
don’t
be a rat.”

“I ain’t a rat,” Wayne said, testily. He
wasn’t
. But sometimes, a man just needed cash. “They’re after Marks. I overheard them. There’s a thousand notes on his head, there is.”

“He grew up here,” plow-face said. “He’s one of us.”

“He killed that girl,” Wayne said.

“That’s a lie,” bowl-head said. “Don’t you go talking to conners, son. I mean it.”

“Fine, fine,” Wayne said, moving to rise. “I’ll just go—”

“You’ll sit back down,” bowl-head said. “Or I’ll rap you something good on your head, I will.”

Wayne sighed, sitting back down. “You olders always talk about us, and don’t know how it is these days. Working in one of the factories.”

“We know more than you think,” bowl-head said, handing Wayne a bruised apple. “Eat this, stay out of trouble, and don’t go where I can’t see you.”

Wayne grumbled, but sat back and bit into the apple. It didn’t taste half bad. He ate the whole thing, then helped himself to a couple more.

It happened soon enough. The men of the fruit-eating group broke apart, leaving Wayne with a basket full of cores. They split with a few amicable gibes at one another, each of the four men claiming he had some important task to be about.

Wayne stuffed another apple in each pocket, then stood up and sauntered off after bowl-head. He tailed the fellow fairly easily, nodding occasionally at people, who nodded back as if they knew him. It was the hat. Put on a man’s hat, surround your mind with his way of thinking, and it changed you. A man in dockworker’s clothing passed by, shoulders slumped, whistling a sad tune. Wayne picked up the melody. Rough life that was, working the docks. You had to commute each day on the canal boats—either that or find a bed out near the waterfront of the bay, where you were about as likely to get stabbed as have breakfast.

He’d lived that life as a youth. Had the scars to prove it, he did. But as a chap grew, he wanted more to his days than a fight on every corner and women who couldn’t remember his name one day to the next.

Bowl-head ducked into an alley. Well, every rusting street in here felt like an alley. Bowl-head entered an alley’s alley. Wayne stepped up to the side of the tiny roadway, then burned bendalloy. Allomancy was a useful trick, that it was. Burning the metal set up a nice little bubble of sped-up time around him. He strolled around the corner, staying inside the bubble—it didn’t move when he did, but he could move within it.

Yup. There he was, bowl-head himself, crouching beside a rubbish pile, waiting to see if anyone followed him. Wayne had
almost
made the bubble too big and caught the man in it.

Sloppy, sloppy,
Wayne thought. A mistake like that on the docks could cost a man his life. He fished a ratty blanket out of the part of the rubbish pile that was inside his bubble, then wandered back around the corner and dropped the bubble.

Inside the speed bubble, he’d have been moving so quickly bowl-head wouldn’t have seen more than a blur—if that. He wouldn’t think anything of it, Wayne was certain. If he were wrong, he’d eat his hat. Well, one of Wax’s hats at least.

Wayne found a set of steps and settled down. He pulled his cap down half over his eyes, sidled up to the wall in a comfortable position, and spread the blanket around himself. Just another homeless drunk.

Bowl-head was a careful one. He waited inside the alley a whole five minutes before creeping out, looking back and forth, then hastening to a building across the street. He knocked, whispered something, and was let in.

Wayne yawned, stretched, and tossed aside the blanket. He crossed the street to the building that bowl-head had entered, then started checking the shuttered windows. The ancient shutters were so old, a good sneeze might have knocked them off. He had to be careful to avoid getting splinters in his cheeks as he listened at each window in turn.

The men of the slums had an odd sense of morality to them. They wouldn’t turn in one of their own to the constables. Not even for a reward. But then again, a chap needed to eat. Wouldn’t a man like Marks want to hear just how loyal his friends were?

“… was a pair of conners for sure,” Wayne heard at a window. “A thousand notes is a lot, Marks. A whole lot. Now, I’m not saying you can’t trust the lads; there’s not a bad alloy in the bunch. I
can
say that a little encouragement will help them feel better about their loyalty.”

Ratting out a friend: completely off-limits.

Extorting a friend: well, that was just good business sense.

And if Marks didn’t act grateful, then maybe he hadn’t been a friend after all. Wayne grinned, slipping his sets of wooden knucklebones over his fingers. He stepped back, then charged the building.

He hit the shutters with one shoulder, crashing through, then tossed up a speed bubble the moment he hit the floor. He rolled and came up on his feet in front of Marks—who was inside the speed bubble. The man still wore his red trousers, though he’d removed his mask, and was bandaging his shoulder. He snapped his head up, displaying a surprised face with bushy eyebrows and large lips.

Rusts. No wonder the fellow normally wore a mask.

Wayne swung at his chin, laying him out with one punch. Then he spun, fists up, but the other half-dozen occupants of the room, including bowl-head, stood frozen just outside the edge of his speed bubble. Now that was right lucky.

Wayne grinned, heaving Marks up onto his shoulder. He took his knuckles off, slipping them into his pocket, and got out an apple. He took a juicy bite, waved farewell to bowl-head—who looked forward with glassy eyes, frozen—then tossed Marks out the window and followed after.

Once he passed beyond the edge of his speed bubble, it automatically collapsed.

“What the hell was that!” bowl-head yelled inside.

Wayne heaved the unconscious Marks up onto his shoulder again, then wandered back down the road, chewing on his apple.

*   *   *

“Let me talk to the next ones,” Marasi said. “Maybe I can get them to say something.”

She felt Waxillium’s eyes on her. He thought she was trying to prove herself to him. Once he’d have been right. Now she was a constable—fully credentialed and in the city’s employ. This was her
job
. Waxillium didn’t agree with her decision, but her actions were not subject to his approval.

Together they walked up to a group of young outcasts sitting on the steps of the slums. The three boys watched them with suspicion, their skin dirty, their too-big clothing tied at the waists and ankles. That was the style, apparently, for youths of the streets. They smelled of the incense they’d been smoking in their pipes.