The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,123

pausing his narrative.

“I don’t even speak my own that well,” he said with a grin. “But I’m trying. Seems like a good skill for a skimmer pilot to have, since it’s often my job to pilot Wilg and take people between ships or towers. And if I’m going to sit half the day in a class, I figure it should be something useful. Though mathematics has—”

“Class?” Marasi asked, frowning.

“Sure. What do you think we do all day on the ship?”

“I don’t know,” Marasi said. “Swab decks? Tie ropes. Um … trim … stuff. Deckhand types of things.”

He looked at her, eyes bulging, then slapped his mask down. “I’m going to pretend that you did not just compare me to a common lowshipman, Miss Marasi.”

“Ummm…”

“You have to be something more special than that, if you want to fly. We’re expected to be gentlemen and ladies. We’ve thrown people overboard for not knowing the proper dance moves.”

“What, really?”

“Yah, really.” He hesitated. “All right, so we tied a rope to his foot first.” He made a gesture she had started to realize was something like a smile or a laugh. “He dangled there below Brunstell for a good five minutes, cursing up a storm. He never got the cistern three-step wrong again, though! And Svel always said to him…”

Allik trailed off, growing silent.

“And?” Marasi prodded.

“Sorry. His mask … Svel, I mean. On the wall…”

Oh. The conversation died, Allik staring out the front of the ship, then making a few adjustments to their heading. Outside, the landscape was dark save for a few pinpricks of towns, now far to their left. Though they’d initially skirted the Seran Range, Allik had moved the skimmer into the mountains about a half hour back. Now they flew over the tops of the peaks, having ascended higher than they’d been when flying over the Basin.

“Allik,” Marasi said, resting her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t respond. And so, hesitantly—fully aware that she was probably doing something taboo—she reached out and lifted his mask. He didn’t stop her, and the motion revealed eyes staring sightlessly, a tear trickling down each cheek.

“I’m never going to see them again,” he said softly. “Brunstell is crashed; I’ll never serve on him again. Hell, I’m never going to see home again, am I?”

“Of course you will,” Marasi said. “You can fly there.”

“Wilg won’t last on the stone I’ve got,” he said, wiping the tears from first one cheek, then the other.

“The stone?”

“Fuel,” Allik said, glancing at her. “What, you think Wilg flies on clouds and dreams?”

“I thought it flew on Allomancy.”

“Allomancy Pushes the impellers,” Allik said. “But ettmetal is what supports it.”

“I don’t think that one translated either,” Marasi said, frowning.

“Here, see,” Allik said, kneeling down and opening the compartment where he’d put the little cube that Waxillium called an Allomantic grenade. It was attached to a metal shell, which glowed softly at the center. Allik pointed, and to the side she could see a greater light blazing with a pure whiteness. A stone, burning like a limelight.

Or like Allomancy itself, Marasi realized. “What kind of metal is it, though?”

“Ettmetal,” Allik said, shrugging. “There’s a little bit in the primer cube too, to make it work. A lot more to make a ship like Wilg go, and a lot, lot more to get Brunstell into the air. You don’t have this metal?”

“I don’t think so,” Marasi said.

“Well, what we have in Wilg, it’ll be enough to fly us a day or two. After that, we’d need an Allomancer Pushing full-time. So unless His Greatness the Drowsy One back there wants to fly with me all the way back, I’m stuck, yah?”

“You said there was more on Brunstell.”

“Yah, but they have it.” He grinned. “At first, the evil ones didn’t know how to care for it. Got some wet. That was a good day.”

“Wet?”

“Ettmetal explodes if it gets wet.”

“What kind of metal explodes if you put it in water?”

“This kind,” he said. “Anyway, your evil men, they got most of ours.”

“And we’re going to stop them,” Marasi said firmly. “We’ll get your crewmates back, stick you on your ship—or some of these skimmers, if the big one won’t fly anymore—and send you home.”

He settled back in his seat, closing the panel under the dash. “That’s what we’re going to do,” he agreed, nodding. Then he eyed her, his mask still up. “Of course, your people don’t have what we do. No airships at all. So they’ll simply let me and mine soar away,