The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,54
by the waterfalls. Indeed, the whole city. Buildings sprouted between the rivers, and vibrant green vines draped the cliffs like nature’s own tresses. Beyond, the Seran mountains rose, lofty and whited at the tops.
Marasi grinned, leaning out of the cab to get a better look up at the heights of the city. The engineer stood by his levers, valves, and cranks trying to act casual, though he was obviously watching Wax and Marasi for their reactions.
“I often think,” the man eventually said, “that Harmony was showing off a little when He made this place.”
“I had no idea this was here,” Wax said, stepping up beside Marasi. Behind him, Wayne yawned and stumbled to his feet.
“Yeah, well,” the engineer said, “people from Elendel often forget there’s a whole country out here. No offense, my lord. There’s a lot of Elendel to take in, so it makes sense you’d get a little blinded by it.”
“You’re from New Seran?” Marasi asked.
“Born and raised, Captain Colms.”
“Then you can tell us where to find our hotel, perhaps?” Marasi asked. “The Copper Gate?”
“Oh, that’s a nice one,” the engineer said, pointing. “Top terrace, in the waterman district. Look for the big statue of the Lord Mistborn. It’s not two blocks from there.”
“How close can you get us?” Marasi asked.
“Not close at all, I’m afraid,” the engineer said. “We’re not a passenger train, and even those can only go to the middle tiers. We’ll be down at the bottom. It’ll take you a few hours to ride the gondolas up. There are ramps too, if you’d prefer a carriage, but they take longer—and the gondolas have a better view.”
Gondolas would have been wonderful, Wax thought, if most of them had had more than a few hours of sleep. With the reception tonight, they’d need to be rested and ready to go.
“Shortcut?” he asked Marasi.
“You realize I’m wearing a skirt.”
“I do. What happened to that fancy new constable uniform with the trousers?”
“Packed away. Not everyone likes wearing uniforms when we don’t have to, Waxillium.”
“Well, you can wait and take the gondolas,” Wax said. “Think of me resting peacefully in a soft hotel bed while you blink bleary eyes and droop against—”
“All right, fine,” Marasi said, stepping up to him. “Just stay away from crowds.”
Wax grabbed her around the waist. “I’ll be back for the rest of you,” he told Wayne, who nodded. “Engineer, have our things sent to the Copper Gate, if you please.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Wax slid open the side of the cab, took another drink of metal flakes—recovered from the stash in his luggage—then pulled Marasi tight, burned steel, and leaped. A flared Push sent them soaring away from the train, which was slowing as it approached the buildings clustered around the base of New Seran.
They dropped toward these, but a shot from Vindication as they neared the ground gave him something to bounce off of. He sent them upward, past the lower tiers, using metal he found there to keep them aloft.
The homes here were much smaller than those in Elendel. Quaint, even. In Elendel, you could rarely afford to waste space on a single dwelling—even in the slums, towering apartments were the norm. There was a kind of eternal shift going on, where sections of town would fall into disrepair over time, filling with the poor while those able to afford something new moved to other sections. It was fascinating to him that, if you looked at old maps, what were now slums had once been considered prime real estate.
He saw few apartment buildings and only three skyscrapers, confined to a small commercial district on the top terrace. Though the terraces constrained the city’s boundaries, they looked large enough to hold the population. Lots of parks and small streams, none deep enough to be navigable like Elendel’s canals.
He stayed to the rooftops, rather than the streets, for Marasi’s sake—though she didn’t have much trouble with her skirt. She’d tucked it around her legs before they started, and the generally upward motion kept it from flaring.
Wax threw the two of them in great leaping arcs over residential areas until they reached the next cliff face, where he found a gondola and used it as an anchor to shoot them up the fifty feet or so toward the top tier of the terraces. He exulted in the moment, the freedom, the beauty of it. There was a majesty about soaring alongside a churning waterfall, with sparkling pools and lush gardens spreading out beneath.