The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,46

and started walking forward. Each step closer let him Push harder.

Wax gritted his teeth. The cuts on his fingers were superficial, though they stung like hell and the blood made his grip slippery. He struggled, trying to pull the vial toward his mouth, but failed.

Ranette’s sphere devices. They hung from the gunbelt tucked into his waist. Could he use those? How? Beneath him, the train started across the bridge.

The thug advanced on Wax, rolling his shoulder and trying to make a fist despite his broken thumb. Behind the man something moved on the ladder. A head coming up? Wayne!

No. He saw the tip of a gun wave as the person climbed. Wayne wouldn’t have a gun. Marasi?

Steris appeared at the lip of the roof, wind blowing her hair wildly. She looked from the huge robber to Wax, then seemed to gasp—though the wind was too loud for Wax to hear it. She scrambled up and set herself, crouching on one knee, holding Ranette’s shotgun.

Oh no.

“Steris!” he shouted.

The brute spun, noticing her as she set the gun at her shoulder, wide-eyed, dress rippling against her body in the wind.

She pulled the trigger. Unsurprisingly, the shot went wild, but it did manage to clip the brute in the arm, spraying blood. The man grunted, releasing his Push on Wax.

Unfortunately, the enormous kick of that gun—intended to be used to fight Allomancers—hurled Steris backward.

And right off the side of the train.

8

Wax leaped off the side of the train and raised the vial to his mouth.

Steris toppled below, falling toward the river. He ripped the cork free with his teeth and turned over in the air, sucking down the contents of the vial. Cod-liver oil and metal flakes washed into his mouth. Swallowing took a precious moment.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Power.

Wax shouted, flaring steel and Pushing on the tracks up above. He shot downward in a blur, slamming into Steris, grabbed her, and Pushed on the shotgun that toppled beneath her.

It hit the water.

They slowed immediately. Water viscosity being what it was, you could Push off something sinking. A second later, the shotgun hit the bottom of the churning river, and that left the two of them hanging about two feet above the water’s surface. A faint, solitary blue line led from Wax to the shotgun.

Steris breathed in short, frantic gasps. She clung to him, blinked, then looked down at the river.

“What is wrong with that gun!” she said.

“It’s meant for me to shoot,” Wax said, “when my weight is increased to counteract the kick.” He looked up toward the disappearing train. It had crossed the river, but now would have to slow and chug its way down some switchbacks on a hill on the other side, coming out of the highlands to head on toward New Seran.

“Hold this,” he told Steris, handing her his gunbelt and removing the two spheres. “What were you thinking? I told you to stay back in the other car.”

“As a point of fact,” she said, “you did not. You told me to stay safe.”

“So?”

“So, it has been my experience that the safest place in a gunfight is near you, Lord Waxillium.”

He grunted. “Hold your breath.”

“What? Why should I—”

She yelped as he Pushed on the steel bridge supports nearby, plunging them down into the river. Ice-cold water surrounded them as Wax kept Pushing, plunging downward until he reached his gun—easily located by its blue line—settled into the muck on the bottom. Ears throbbing from the pressure, he snatched the gun, replacing it with one of Ranette’s sphere devices, then Pushed.

They popped back out of the river, trailing water, and Wax Pushed them as high as his anchor would allow and handed Steris the shotgun to hold. From there, he Pushed off one of the support beams below—launching them upward and to the side. A Push on one from the other direction sent them bounding upward the other way, and he was able to work them toward the top of the bridge.

The angle of these Pushes had sent them out away from the tracks, unfortunately. When they soared up past the bridge, he needed to sling Ranette’s other sphere device out—getting it into a small gap between bridge struts. He engaged the hooks, so that the Push from below, combined with the taut cord in his hand, swung him and Steris in an arc.

He landed on the tracks, a soggy Steris in one arm, cord in the other. He could imagine Ranette’s grin as he told her how well the thing had worked. He