خاتمه

EPILOGUE

Marasi attended Miles’s execution.

Daius, the senior prosecutor, had counseled against it. He never attended executions.

She sat on the outer balcony, alone, watching Miles walk up the steps to the firing platform. Her position was above the execution site.

She narrowed her eyes, remembering Miles standing in that underground room of darkness and mist, pointing a gun at her hiding place. She’d had a gun to her head three times during that two-day span, but the only time she’d really believed that she would die had been when she had seen the look in Miles’s eyes. The heartless lack of emotion, the superiority.

She shivered. The time between the Vanisher attack at the wedding and Miles’s capture had been less than a day and a half. Yet she felt like during that time she’d aged two decades. It was like a form of temporal Allomancy, a speed bubble around her alone. The world was different now. She’d nearly been killed, she’d killed for the first time, she’d fallen in love and been rejected. Now she’d helped condemn to death a former hero of the Roughs.

Miles looked with contempt on the constables who tied him to the restraining pole. He’d shown that same expression through most of the trial—the first one she’d helped prosecute as an attorney, though Daius had been the lead on the case. The trial had gone quickly, despite its high-profile and high-stakes nature. Miles had not denied his crimes.

It seemed that he saw himself as immortal. Even standing up there—his metalminds removed, a dozen rifles cocked and pointed toward him—he didn’t seem to believe he would die. The human mind was very clever at tricking itself, at keeping the despair of inevitability at bay. She’d known that look in Miles’s eyes. Every man had it, when young. And every man eventually saw it as a lie.

The rifles went to shoulders. Perhaps now Miles would finally recognize that lie himself. As the guns fired, Marasi found that she was satisfied. And that disturbed her greatly.

Waxillium boarded the train at Dryport. His leg still ached, he walked with a cane, and he wore a bandage around his chest to help with the broken ribs. One week wasn’t nearly enough time to heal from what he’d been through. He probably shouldn’t have left his bed.

He limped down the corridor of the lavish first-class carriage, passing handsomely appointed private rooms. He counted off to the third compartment as the train labored into motion. He walked into the chamber, leaving the door open, and sat down in one of the well-stuffed chairs by the window. It was affixed to the floor, and sat before a small table with a long, single leg. It was curved and slender, like a woman’s neck.

A short time later, he heard footsteps in the corridor. They hesitated at the doorway.

Waxillium watched the scenery passing outside. “Hello, Uncle,” he said, turning to look at the man in the doorway.

Lord Edwarn Ladrian stepped into the room, walking with a whale-ivory cane and wearing fine clothing. “How did you find me?” he asked, sitting down in the other chair.

“A few of the Vanishers we interrogated,” Waxillium said. “They described a man that Miles called ‘Mister Suit.’ I don’t think anyone else recognized you in the description. From what I understand, you were hermitlike during the decade leading up to your ‘death.’ Save for your letters to the broadsheets about political matters, of course.” That didn’t answer the question exactly. Waxillium had found this train, and this car, based on the numbers written in Miles’s cigar box, the one Wayne had found. Railway routes. Everyone else thought they had been trains the Vanishers had been planning to hit, but Waxillium had seen a different pattern. Miles had been tracking Mister Suit’s movements.

“Interesting,” Lord Edwarn said. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his fingers as a servant entered, bringing a tray of food and setting it on the table in front of him. Another poured him wine. He waved for them to wait outside the door.

“Where is Telsin?” Waxillium asked.

“Your sister is safe.”

Waxillium closed his eyes, and fought down the welling of emotion. He’d thought her dead in the wreck that supposedly claimed his uncle’s life, but had dealt with his emotions, such as they were. It had been years since he’d seen his sister.

Why, then, was finding out that she lived so powerfully meaningful to him? He couldn’t even define which emotions he was feeling.

He forced his eyes open. Lord Edwarn was watching him, holding a glass of crystalline white wine in his fingers. “You suspected,” Edwarn said. “All along, you suspected I wasn’t dead. That’s why you recognized whatever description those ruffians were able to give. I’ve changed clothing styles, my haircut, and even shaved my beard.” “You shouldn’t have had your butler try to kill me,” Waxillium said. “He was too long in the family employ, and he was too ready to kill me, to have been hired by the Vanishers on such short notice. It meant he was working for someone else, and had been for some time. The simplest answer was that he was still working for the person he’d served for years.” “Ah. Of course, you weren’t supposed know he caused the explosion.” “I wasn’t supposed to survive it, you mean.”

Lord Ladrian shrugged.

“Why?” Waxillium asked, leaning in. “Why bring me back, if only to then have me killed? Why not arrange for someone else to take the house title?” “Hinston was going to take it,” Lord Ladrian said, buttering a roll. “His disease was … unfortunate. Plans were already in motion. I didn’t have time to search out other options. Besides, I hoped—obviously, without basis—that you’d have overcome your overdeveloped childhood sense of morality. I had hoped you’d be a resource to me.” Rust and Ruin, I hate this man, Waxillium thought, memories of his childhood returning to him. He’d gone to the Roughs, in part, to escape that condescending voice.

“I’ve come for the other four kidnapped women,” Waxillium said.

Lord Ladrian took a sip of wine. “You think I’m going to give them up, just like that?” “Yes. I will expose you, otherwise.”

“Go right ahead!” Lord Ladrian seemed amused. “Some will believe you. Others will think you mad. Neither reaction will hinder me or my colleagues.” “Because you’ve already been defeated,” Waxillium said.

Lord Ladrian almost choked on his roll. He laughed, lowering it to the table. “Is that honestly what you think?” “The Vanishers are gone,” Waxillium said, “Miles is being executed as we speak, and I know that you were funding him. We captured the goods you were stealing, so you have gained nothing there. You obviously didn’t have much in the way of funds to begin with. Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed Miles and his team to do the robberies.” “I assure you, Waxillium, that we are quite solvent. Thank you. And you’ll find no proof that I or my associates had anything to do with the robberies. We rented Miles his space, but how could we have known what he was up to? Harmony! He was a respected lawkeeper.” “You took the women.”

“There is no proof of that. Just speculation on your part. A few of the Vanishers will swear to their graves that Miles raped and killed the women. I know for a fact that one of those Vanishers survived. Though I am still curious how you found me here, in this particular train.” Waxillium made no reply to that specifically. “I know that you’re ruined,” he said instead. “Say what you will, I see it. Give me the women and my sister. I’ll recommend to the judges that you be shown leniency. Yes, you funded a group of robbers as a means of high-stakes investment. But you explicitly told them not to hurt anyone, and you weren’t the one to pull the trigger and kill Peterus. I suspect you’ll escape execution.” “You assume so many things, Waxillium,” Lord Ladrian said. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed a folded broadsheet and a thin, black leather appointment book. He set them down on the table, broadsheet on the top. “Funding a group of robbers as a means of high-stakes investment? Is that really what you think this was about?” “That and kidnapping the women,” Waxillium said. “Presumably as a means of extorting their families.” That last part was a lie. Waxillium didn’t believe for a moment that it was about extortion. His uncle was planning something, and considering the family lines of those women, Waxillium suspected that Marasi was right. It was about Allomancy.

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 ified. 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.” Waxillium frowned, looking at his friend. “I don’t remember that bet.” “You weren’t there when we made it.”

“I wasn’t there?”

“Yeah.”

“Wayne, you can’t make bets with people when they aren’t there.”

“I can,” Wayne said, tucking the book into his pocket and standing, “if they shoulda been there. And you shoulda, Wax.” “I…” How to respond to that? “I will be. From now on.”

Wayne nodded, joining him and looking toward Elendel. It rose in the distance, the two competing skyscrapers rising on one side of the city, other smaller ones growing like crystals from the center of the expanding metropolis.

“You know,” Wayne said, “I always wondered what it would be like to come here, find civilization and all that. I didn’t realize.” “Realize what?” Waxillium asked.

“That this was really the rough part of the world,” Wayne said. “That we had it easy, out past the mountains.” Waxillium found himself nodding. “You can be very wise sometimes, Wayne.” “It’s onnacount of my thinkin’, mate,” Wayne said, tapping his head, increasing the thickness of his accent. “It’s what I do wif my brain. Somma the time, at least.” “And the rest of the time?”

“The rest of the time, I don’t do so much thinkin’. ‘Cuz if I did, I’d go runnin’ back to where things is simple. You see?” “I see. And we do have to stay, Wayne. I have work to do here.”

“Then we’ll see it done,” Wayne said. “Just like always.”

Waxillium nodded, reaching into his sleeve and sliding out a thin black book.

“What’s that?” Wayne asked, taking it, curious.

“My uncle’s pocket book,” Waxillium said. “Filled with appointments and notes.” Wayne whistled softly. “How’d you take it? Shoulder bump?”

“Table sweep,” Waxillium said.

“Nice. Glad to know I’ve taught you somethin’ useful during our years together. What did you trade for it?” “A threat,” Waxillium said, looking back toward Elendel. “And a promise.” He would see this to the end. Roughs honor. When one of your own went bad, it was your job to see the mess cleaned up.