The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,140

of firing. For all his cleverness, Waxillium had a hole in his judgment regarding Suit and Telsin. He always had.

Not that you did any better, Marasi thought.

Telsin walked calmly down the steps, holding her handgun before herself. “That was bungled.”

“Bungled?” Edwarn said. “I thought it went well.”

“I let Waxillium escape.”

“You shot him thrice,” Edwarn said. “He’s as good as dead.”

“And you’re going to trust that?” Telsin asked.

Edwarn sighed. “No.”

Telsin nodded, her expression calm as she slid a knife from her pocket, then knelt and plunged it into MeLaan. Steris cried out, stepping toward them.

“What did you do to her?” Marasi asked.

They didn’t answer, but Marasi suspected the truth. There were liquids that, when injected into kandra, immobilized them and made them start to lose their shapes. It was temporary, but Marasi could only guess that while she had been focused on Suit, Telsin had somehow used one of those on MeLaan. With her arms twisted, her legs broken, the kandra’s skeleton hadn’t been in any shape for her to fight.

Telsin worked for a gruesome moment and came out with a spike. She tucked it into her pocket, then kept working. Suit walked over to Marasi, and through his ripped shirt Marasi caught a glint of metal peeking between two of his ribs. Not a large spike like the one Ironeyes had. Something more subtle.

They hadn’t just been experimenting with Hemalurgy—they’d used spikes to grant themselves powers.

Telsin finally got the second spike out of poor MeLaan and pocketed it. The kandra melted, a mess of greenish-brown flesh and muscles without anything to cling to—oozing out of her clothing, leaving her bones and her skull of green crystal to gaze vacantly at the ceiling.

Telsin pointed toward the pit Waxillium had fallen into. “Chase him down.”

“Me?” Suit said. “Surely we can wait for—”

“No waiting,” Telsin said. “You know him best. You hunt him down. He is still alive. I’ve met rocks less durable than my brother.”

Suit sighed again, but nodded this time, swapping guns with Telsin so he’d have the aluminum pistol, then reloading it. He walked toward the pit. Marasi glanced at Telsin, who watched MeLaan’s remains but held the rifle at the ready.

Should Marasi charge her? Suit obeyed her. She wasn’t simply a member of the Set; she outranked Waxillium’s uncle. And she was obviously an Allomancer; the way she’d used the Allomantic grenade proved that.

Suit climbed down, using a rope. Shortly after that, Marasi heard footsteps outside, and soon an array of soldiers in uniforms like those from the warehouse piled in.

“The short one,” Telsin said, urgent. “Wayne. Did you pass him?”

“Sir?” one of the soldiers asked. “No, we haven’t seen him.”

“Damn,” Telsin said. “Where did that rat get to? I need as many men as we can get scouring that hallway and the plain outside. He’s extremely dangerous, particularly if he has another vial of bendalloy.”

Marasi turned to Steris, who was still dazed, eyes wide, still looking at the hole where Waxillium had fallen. Allik held Marasi’s arm, his eyes visible behind his mask.

“I’ll get us out of this,” she whispered to them.

Somehow.

27

He’ll tell on us.… You know he will.

Wax rolled onto his back, staring upward. Darkness. The pit had twisted during the fall—he remembered ramming into one of its curves—and deposited him here.

Rusts … how could his vision swim when he couldn’t see anything? He fumbled at his gunbelt and came up with a vial, which he managed to down, replenishing his metal reserves.

You coming? Of course you’re not. You never want to risk trouble.

No. He could see something. A lone candle in a black room. He blinked his eyes, but it was gone. A vision of the past. A memory …

Light in a dark room. Set there to distract …

That was what the dais up above had been. The Bands had never been there. The people who had built the place left the broken glass, the empty rack, the dais and the pedestal—all as a ruse. But they’d made a mistake.

The glass box they’d broken had been too large to fit on the pedestal.

Candle in a dark room … Wax thought. That meant the Bands were somewhere else. He blinked, and thought—as his eyes adjusted—he actually could pick out light.

He wasn’t in a narrow pit. That hole had dumped him out somewhere. He heaved himself over in a twist, coming to his knees, and felt at his gut. Blood there. A bad hit, all the way through, judging by the wetness he felt trickling down the back