The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,31

lived in cities other than the capital. The railway rolled along beside a river wide enough to swallow whole towns up in the Roughs. Villages, towns, and even cities sprinkled the route, so common that the train barely went five minutes without passing another one. Between the towns, orchards stretched into the distance. Fields of wheat bowed and danced. Everything was green and vibrant, refreshed on evenings when the mists came out.

Wax turned from the window and dug into the package Ranette had sent him. Inside, in a fitted, plush-lined case, was a large double-barreled shotgun. Beside it, in their own indentations, were three spheres each wrapped with a thin cord.

The spheres and cords he’d expected. The shotgun was a treat.

Experimenting with extra-powerful loads, a note read, and enormous slugs, for stopping Thugs or full-blooded koloss. Please test. Will require increased weight on your part to fire. Recoil should be exceptional.

Rust and Ruin, the shells for this thing were almost as wide as a man’s wrist. It was like a cannon. He held one up as the train slowed into a station. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but windows in the town were bright with electricity.

Electric lights. He lowered the shell, studying them. The outer cities had electricity?

Of course they do, idiot, he immediately thought to himself. Why wouldn’t they? He’d fallen into the same trap he’d once mocked others for. He’d started to assume that anything important, trendy, or exciting happened inside Elendel. That sort of attitude had annoyed him when he’d lived in the Roughs.

The train yielded a handful of passengers and picked up fewer, which surprised Wax, considering the crowded platform. Were they waiting for another train? He leaned to the side to get a better look out the window. No … the people were clumped together, listening to one of their number shout something Wax couldn’t hear. As he strained to read a sign one of the people carried, someone threw an egg and it splatted right beside his window.

He pulled back. The train started up again, having waited only a fraction of the time it normally did at a stop. As it eased out of the station, more eggs flew toward it. Wax finally got a good look at the sign. END ELENDEL OPPRESSION!

Oppression? He frowned, leaning as the train turned a bend, letting him watch the crowd of people on the platform. A few hopped onto the tracks and shook fists.

“Steris?” he asked, packing away Ranette’s box. “Have you paid attention to the outer cities situation?”

No reply came. He glanced toward his fiancée, who still sat across the compartment from him, huddled in her seat with a blanket around her shoulders. She didn’t appear to have noticed the stop or the eggs; her face was stuck so far into her book that snapping it closed would have caught her nose.

Landre, the lady’s maid, had gone to ready Steris’s bed, and Wayne was doing who knows what. So the two of them were alone in the room.

“Steris?”

No reply. Wax cocked his head, trying to read the spine and make out what had her so fascinated, but she’d wrapped the volume in a cloth cover. He inched to the side, and saw that her eyes were wide as she read. She turned the page quickly.

Wax frowned, rising and leaning across to get a view of one of the pages. Steris saw him, jumped, and snapped the book closed. “Oh!” she said. “Did you say something?”

“What are you reading?”

“History of New Seran,” Steris said, tucking the book under her arm.

“You looked shocked as you read.”

“Well, I don’t know if you realize it, but the name Seran has a very disturbing history. What did you want to ask me?”

Wax settled back. “I saw a crowd on the train platform. They seemed angry about Elendel.”

“Oh, hum, yes. Let’s see. Outer cities … political situation.” She seemed to need a moment to compose herself. What had she read in that history that was so disconcerting? “Well, I’m not surprised to hear of it. They aren’t happy, for obvious reasons.”

“You mean the taxation issues? They’re that upset?” He looked out the window, but they were too far away now for him to make out the crowd. “We only tax them a little, to maintain infrastructure and government.”

“Well, they would argue that they don’t need our government, as they have their own city administrations. Waxillium, many in the Basin feel that Elendel is trying to act as if our governor were some