The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,51
were moving.
Wax rushed toward them. Marasi followed, suddenly alert, her lamp held high. The lines were coming from the floor inside one of the rooms. Only no luggage was on its racks, and no litter was on its floor. It was a private compartment that hadn’t been rented out for the trip.
Wax entered and ripped open the luggage compartment in the floor. Wayne blinked up at him. The younger man had mussed hair, and his shirt was unbuttoned, but he wasn’t in any bonds that Wax could see. He didn’t seem to have been harmed at all. In fact …
Wax crouched down, Marasi’s light revealing what had been hidden to him by the overhang of the luggage compartment. MeLaan, shirt completely off, was in the compartment too. She sat up, entirely unashamed of her nudity.
“We’ve stopped!” she said. “Are we there already?”
* * *
“Well how was I supposed to know we’d get rusting attacked?” Wayne exclaimed, now properly clothed, though his hair was still a mess.
Wax sat listening with half an ear. The train officials had opened a room in the station for them to use. He knew he should be angry, but he was mostly just relieved.
“Because we are us,” Marasi said, arms folded. “Because we’re on our way to a dangerous situation. I don’t know. You could at least have told us what you were doing.” She hesitated. “And by the way, what do you think you were doing?”
Wayne bowed his head where he sat before her. MeLaan leaned against the wall near the door. She was looking toward the ceiling, as if trying to feign innocence.
“Movin’ on,” Wayne said, pointing at Marasi. “Like you told me to.”
“That wasn’t moving on! That was ‘Running on at full speed.’ It was ‘Shooting on forward like a bullet,’ Wayne.”
“I don’t like doin’ stuff halfway,” he said solemnly, hand over his heart. “It’s been a long time since I had me a good neckin’ on account of my diligent monogamous idealization of a beauteous but unavailable—”
“And how,” Marasi interrupted, “did you not hear the fight? There was gunfire, Wayne. Practically on top of you.”
“Well, see,” he said, growing red, “we was real busy. And we were down next to the tracks, which made a lot of noise. We’d wanted a place what was private-like, you know, and…” He shrugged.
“Bah!” Marasi said. “Do you realize how worried Waxillium was?”
“Don’t bring me into this,” Wax said, seated with his feet up on the next bench.
“Oh, and you approve of this behavior?” Marasi asked, turning on him.
“Heavens, no,” Wax said. “If I approved of half the things Wayne does, Harmony would probably strike me dead on the spot. But he’s alive, and we’re alive, and we can’t blame him for getting distracted during what we assumed would be a simple ride.”
Marasi eyed him, then sighed and walked back out onto the platform, passing MeLaan without a glance.
Wayne stood and wandered over to him, pulling his box of gum from his pocket and tapping it against his palm to settle the powder inside. “These thieves, did one of them happen to shoot her when you weren’t lookin’? ’Cuz she’s sure gotten stiff all of a sudden.”
“She was just worried about you,” Wax said. “I’ll talk to her after she’s cooled down.”
MeLaan left her position by the door. “Was there anything strange about the attack?”
“Plenty of things,” Wax said, standing and stretching. Rusts. Was he really getting too old for all this, as Lessie always joked with him? He usually felt exhilarated after a fight.
It’s the deaths, he thought. Only one passenger had died, an older man. But they’d lost half a dozen payroll guards, not to mention the many wounded.
“One of the bandits,” he said to MeLaan, “he did something that dampened my Allomancy.”
“A Leecher?” she asked.
Wax shook his head. “He didn’t touch me.”
Leechers who burned chromium could blank another Allomancer’s metals—but it required touch. “It did feel the same. My steel was there one moment, then gone the next. But MeLaan, there was some kind of device involved. A little metal cube.”
“Wait,” a voice said. Marasi appeared in the doorway. “A cube?”
All three of them looked at her, and she blushed in the harsh electric light. “What?”
“You stalked away,” Wayne pointed, “indigenously.”
“And now I’m stalking back in,” Marasi said, striding toward Wax and fishing in her pocket. “I can be indigen—indignant in here just as easily.” She pulled her hand out, holding a small metal cube.