The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,55
and Wax landed them softly alongside the falls. Marasi let out a held breath as he set her down; he could tell from the tension of her grip that she hadn’t enjoyed the flight as much as he had. Steelpushing wasn’t natural to her, nor were the heights—she backed away from the cliff as soon as she was free.
“Going to go get the others?” she asked.
“Let’s find the hotel first,” Wax said, pointing the way toward a statue he’d spotted upon landing. He could still make out the green patina of the statue’s head over the tops of the nearby homes. He started in that direction.
Marasi joined him, and they entered a street with a fair amount of foot traffic, papergirls and boys hawking broadsheets at every corner. Fewer horses or carriages than in Elendel—almost none, though he did see a fair number of pedicabs. That made sense, with the layout of the city. He found it interesting that the gondola system wasn’t only for getting between terraces; there were also lines crossing the sky above them carting people from one section of this terrace to another.
“Like a shark among minnows,” Marasi mumbled.
“What’s that?” Wax asked.
“Look at how people swerve around you,” Marasi said. “Lord Cimines once did a study comparing constables to sharks, showing how the people in a crowded walkway responded exactly the same way as animals do to a predator moving nearby.”
He hadn’t noticed, but she was right. People gave him a wide berth—though not because they guessed he was a constable. It was the mistcoat duster, the weapons, and perhaps his height. Everyone seemed a little shorter down here, and he saw over the crowd by several inches.
In Elendel, his clothing had been abnormal—but so was everyone’s. That city was a mishmash, like an old barrel full of spent cartridges. All different calibers represented.
Here, the people wore lighter clothing than in Elendel. Pastel dresses for the ladies, striped white suits and boater hats for the men. Compared to them, he was a bullet hole in a stained-glass window.
“Never been good at blending in anyway,” he said.
“Fair enough,” Marasi said. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Do you need Wayne tonight?”
“At the party?” Wax asked, amused. “I have trouble imagining a situation where he doesn’t end up drunk in the punch bowl.”
“Then I’ll borrow him,” Marasi said. “I want to check the graveyards for ReLuur’s spike.”
Wax grunted. “That will be dirty work.”
“Which is why I asked for Wayne.”
“Noted. What do you think the chances are you’ll find the thing buried in a grave?”
Marasi shrugged. “I figure we’ll start with the most obvious and easiest method.”
“Grave robbing is the easiest method?”
“It is with proper preparation,” Marasi said. “I don’t intend to do the digging, after all.…”
Wax stopped listening.
The chatter of the crowd faded as he froze in place, staring at a broadsheet held up by a papergirl on a nearby corner. That symbol, the jagged reverse mah … he knew that symbol all too well. He left Marasi midsentence, pushing through the crowd to the girl and snatching the paper.
That symbol. Impossible. FARTHING MANSION HIT, the headline read. He fished out a few clips for the girl. “Farthing Mansion? Where is it?”
“Just up Blossom Way,” the girl said, pointing with her chin and making the coins in his palm disappear.
“Come on,” he said, interrupting Marasi as she started saying something.
People did make way for him, which was convenient. He could have taken to the sky, but he found the mansion without difficulty, partially because of the people crowded outside and pointing. The symbol was painted in red, exactly like the one he’d known back in the Roughs, but this time it marred the wall of a fine, three-story stone mansion instead of a stagecoach.
“Waxillium, for the love of sanity,” Marasi said, catching up to him. “What has gotten into you?”
He pointed at the symbol.
“I recognize that,” Marasi said. “Why would I recognize that?”
“You read the accounts of my time in the Roughs,” Wax said. “It’s in there—that’s the symbol of Ape Manton, one of my old nemeses.”
“Ape Manton!” Marasi said. “Didn’t he—”
“Yes,” Wax said, remembering the nights of torture. “He hunts Allomancers.”
But why would he be here? Wax had put him away, and not just in some minor village. He’d been locked up in True Madil, biggest town in the Northern Roughs, with a jail like a vise. How in Harmony’s True Name had he gotten all the way down to New Seran?