The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,72
glass of the tank beside Devlin, a short, handsome man with a hint of hair on his upper lip and chin.
“I expected you to be arrogant,” Devlin noted.
“What makes you think that I’m not?”
“You waited,” Devlin said.
“An arrogant man can still be polite,” Wax said.
Devlin smiled. “I suppose he can be, Lord Waxillium.” One of the little octopuses seized a passing fish in its tentacles and dropped from the side of the tank, holding the squirming fish and pulling it up toward its beak.
“They don’t feed them,” Devlin noted, “for a week or so before a party. They like the show they provide.”
“Brutal,” Wax said.
“Lady Kelesina imagines herself the predator,” he said, “and we all her fish, invited in to swim and perhaps be consumed.” Devlin smiled. “Of course, she doesn’t see that she’s in a cage as well.”
“You know something about that cage?” Wax asked.
“It’s the cage we’re all in, Lord Waxillium! This Basin that Harmony created for us. So perfect, so lush. Nobody leaves.”
“I did.”
“To the Roughs,” Devlin said, dismissive. “What’s beyond them, Waxillium? Beyond the deserts? Across the seas? Nobody cares.”
“I’ve heard it asked before.”
“And has anyone put up the money to find the answers?”
Wax shook his head.
“People can ask questions,” Devlin said, “but where there is no money, there are no answers.”
Wax found himself chuckling, to which Devlin responded with a modest nod. He had developed a subtle way of explaining that he needed to be paid to give information. Oddly, despite the immediate—and somewhat crass—demand, Wax found himself more comfortable here than he’d been with Lord Gave.
Wax fished in his pocket and held out the strange coin. “Money,” he said. “I have an interest in money.”
Devlin took it, then cocked an eyebrow.
“If someone could tell me how this could be spent,” Wax noted, “I would be enriched. Really, we all would be.”
Devlin turned it over in his fingers. “Though I’ve never seen the exact image on this one, coins like these have been moving with some regularity through black-market antiquities auctions. I’ve been baffled as to why. There is no reason to keep them secret, and it would not be illegal to sell them in the open.” He flipped the coin back to Wax.
He caught it with surprise.
“You didn’t expect me to answer so frankly,” Devlin said. “Why do people so often ask questions when they’re not expecting answers?”
“Do you know anything else?” Wax asked.
“Gave bought a few,” Devlin said, “then immediately stopped, and the pieces he purchased are no longer on display in his home.”
Wax nodded thoughtfully and dug into his pocket for some money to offer the informant.
“Not here,” Devlin said, rolling his eyes. “One hundred. Send a note of transfer to your bank and have them move it to my account.”
“You’d trust me?” Wax asked.
“Lord Waxillium, it’s my job to know whom to trust.”
“It will be done, then. Assuming you have a little more for me.”
“Whatever is being covered up,” Devlin said, looking back toward the fish tank, “a good quarter of the nobility in the city is embroiled in it. First I was curious; now I’m terrified. It involves a massive building project to the northeast of here.”
“What kind of building project?” Wax asked.
“No way of knowing,” Devlin said. “Some farmers have seen it. Claimed Allomancers were involved. News died before it got here. Quashed. Smothered. Everything’s been strange in New Seran lately. A murderer from the Roughs showing up, attacking the homes of rich Metalborn, then you come to a party…”
“This project to the northeast,” Wax said. “Allomancers?”
“I don’t have anything more on it,” Devlin said, then tapped the fish tank, trying to frighten one of the little octopuses.
“What about the explosion a few weeks back?” Wax asked. “The one in the city?”
“An attack by this murderer from the Roughs, they say.”
“Do you believe them?”
“It didn’t kill any Metalborn,” Devlin said.
None that you know of, Wax thought. Where did Hemalurgy fit into all of this?
Devlin stood and nodded to Wax, extending a hand as if in farewell.
“That’s it?” Wax asked.
“Yes.”
“Steep price for so little,” Wax said, taking the hand.
Devlin leaned in, speaking softly, “Then let me give you a bit more. What you’re involved in is dangerous, more than you can imagine. Get out. That’s what I’m doing.”
“I can’t,” Wax said as Devlin pulled back.
“I know you, lawman,” Devlin said. “And I can tell you, the group you chase, you don’t need to worry about them. They won’t be a danger for decades, perhaps centuries. You’re ignoring the bigger threat.”