The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,58
“Reminds me. Would you order me something to eat? A nice hunk of aged meat.”
“Rotting, you mean,” Wax said.
“Nothing like the odor of a nice flank after a day in the sun,” MeLaan said, ducking back into her room as a knock came at the other door. “Ah! My bags. Excellent. What? No, of course there aren’t corpses in these. Why would I need bones with the flesh still on them? Thank you. Bye.”
Wayne popped the last of the peanuts into his mouth. “I dunno about you all, but I’m gonna find a place to snore for a few hours.”
“Sleeping arrangements, Waxillium?” Marasi asked.
“You and Steris in the suite across the hall,” Wax said, “Wayne and I in here. MeLaan gets her own room. She probably wants to, um…”
“Melt?” Marasi offered.
“… on her own.”
“I’m good, really,” MeLaan called from the next room. A second later she opened the door again. She wore the same bones and build, but this time she was completely bare-chested.
It wasn’t a woman’s chest.
“I solved the problem,” MeLaan said. “I’ll go as a fellow. That will probably be more covert anyway. Just have to choose the right bones.”
Wayne cocked his head. She’d sculpted her face too, giving herself masculine features. Steris’s eyes were bulging. At least that was worth seeing.
“You’re…” Steris said. “You’ll become a…”
“A man?” MeLaan asked. “Yeah. It’ll look better when I’ve decided on the right body. Need to settle on a voice, too.” She looked around the room. “Um, is this a problem?”
Everyone looked at Wayne for some reason. He thought for a moment, then shrugged. Maybe he should have given his shoes to her.
“You don’t mind?” Steris demanded of him.
“It’s still her.”
“But she looks like a man!”
“So does the lady what runs this house,” Wayne said, “but she has kids, so someone still decided to take her an—”
“It will do, MeLaan,” Wax said, resting a hand on Steris’s arm. “Assuming you can get into the party.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said, spinning around. “I will get in, and be ready to give you support. But this is your play, Ladrian, not mine. You’re the detective; I’m just around for the punchy-punchy, stabby-stabby.”
She closed the door. Wayne shook his head. Now that, that’s a situation a man don’t rightly encounter all that often.… Well, he’d found occasion to be an old lady now and then, so it made sense to him. It was probably good for a woman to be a fellow once in a while, if only to offer some perspective. Easier to piss too. Couldn’t discount that.
“To be fair,” Wayne said, “it’s usually a more shooty-shooty, whacky-whacky type.”
Marasi rubbed her forehead. “Why are we having this conversation?”
“Because we’re tired,” Wax said. “Get some sleep, everyone. Wayne, you’re going to go with Marasi tonight and dig up some graves.” He took a deep breath. “And I, unfortunately, am going to a party.”
11
Wearing a formal cravat and jacket reminded Wax of the year after he’d left the Village. A year when his uncle had gleefully wrapped him in the packaging of a young nobleman and presented him to the city’s elite, feeling he’d won some kind of war when Wax was expelled from Terris society.
Wax had moved back in with his parents, of course. But it had been his uncle who had overseen his education, grooming him specifically as heir to the house. After that time in the Village, Wax’s life had grown to be less and less about his immediate family—he’d barely seen his parents during that year, despite living with them.
That was when his uncle’s grip had really started to strangle him. Wax tapped his fingers on the armrest of his carriage, remembering those parties. How much were his memories of them colored by his uncle’s presence?
The carriage eventually pulled up before a resplendent mansion with stained-glass windows and limelights burning outside. A classical style of lighting, though the interior had little in common with the ancient keeps of lore it was meant to evoke—as he well knew from the floor plans he’d memorized earlier today, while the others were sleeping.
This mansion was more sprawling than imposing, with a multipeaked roof design, like the profile of a mountain range. A line of carriages waited to pull through the coach portico and drop off their occupants.
“You’re nervous,” Steris said, laying her hand on his arm. She wore white lace gloves, and her dress—which she’d fretted over for at least