The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,138

this.”

Wax ground his teeth together and felt his eye twitching. He pulled the gun away from his uncle’s head and waved it toward the door.

Edwarn sauntered in, pipe trailing smoke. Wax followed, and entered the solitary room at the center of the fortresslike temple. The dais here was the one depicted in the mural at the temple’s entrance. It rose from the center of the room, gilded and slender, with steps leading up to it. On it was a small square pedestal topped with red velvet and a golden rack suitable for the display of a precious relic. A soft white light, not blue like those at the sides of the room, shone from above the dais and illuminated the whole thing.

The whole empty thing.

Shattered glass lay on the floor of the dais. Wax could pick out corners; it was the remains of a glass box that had once topped the pedestal, enshrouding what had lain there.

The room was quiet and still, frost on the floor in places, dust disturbed by the opening of the stone door floating in the air. There were no other doors or openings in the walls.

“Gone,” Wax whispered. “Someone beat us here.”

26

“Why’s everyone looking at me?” Wayne said.

“Natural reaction,” Marasi said. She held a gun on Edwarn, as did MeLaan.

Wax carefully picked his way across the floor. Looks like a throne room, he thought absently. The others started to follow, and he held them back with an upraised hand.

“Stay in this center row walking toward the dais,” he ordered them, not looking. “There’s a pit trap on either side, and that slightly depressed square over there? It’ll drop a sharpened blade from the ceiling.”

“How does he know that?” Steris asked. She clutched her notebook, within which she made lists.

“Wax has a natural affinity for things what kill people,” Wayne said. “You’re all still lookin’ at me. Rusts, you think I somehow got in here and lifted the rusting thing?”

“No,” Marasi admitted. “But someone did. ReLuur the kandra?”

“No,” Wax said, crouching and picking among the pieces of glass on the steps leading up to the pedestal. “These have been here a long time, judging by the dust.”

There was no way the kandra had gone down that corridor outside. Too many traps were left, and all the ones that had been sprung had bodies near them.

It was likely that the kandra had snapped his pictures and wisely returned home to gather more of his kind and mount a proper expedition. Kandra were immortal; he wouldn’t be hasty in trying to get in here. He’d have planned to take years studying the temple and extracting its secrets.

Who, then?

Telsin passed him, stepping to the dais. Glass crunched under her feet, and Wax glanced up to see her staring at the empty pedestal, aghast. “How?” she murmured.

MeLaan shook her head. “What would you do, if you’d secretly stolen the thing? Leave the place gaping open to let everyone know, or reset the traps and sneak away?”

No, Wax thought. Reset the traps? Unlikely. He glanced at his uncle, who stood with pipe in hand, staring at the dais with bristling anger. He was surprised by this.

Or was that an act? Was this all a setup, after taking the Bands, to throw Wax off? Wax brushed the dust from a piece of glass, then dropped it and selected a larger chunk, one of the corner pieces. Wax eyed it critically, then took another piece and set it alongside.

“This is a disappointment,” Edwarn said. He seemed genuinely troubled.

This wasn’t him, Wax thought, stretching out one of his mistcoat tassels and using it judge the length of the shard of glass. No, this goes back way further than that.…

He stood up, the arguments of the others becoming a distant buzz to him as he regarded the supposed resting place of the Bands of Mourning. A small velvet-topped pedestal, frozen in time.

“I guess that is that,” Edwarn said. “Time for this to end, then.”

Wax spun, whipping out his gun. He pointed it not at Edwarn, but at his sister.

She stared him down, hand at her pocket. Then she slowly removed a gun. Where had she gotten that? He couldn’t sense it. Aluminum.

“Telsin,” Wax said, voice hoarse.

Edwarn wouldn’t have come in here without a mole. She made the most sense. But rusts.

“I’m sorry, Waxillium,” she said.

“Don’t do this.” He hesitated. Too long. She raised the gun.

He fired. She did the same. His shot swerved away from her, Pushed by Allomancy. But her shot—aluminum—took him just below