The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,82

heedless of how he’d look to someone entering the hallway. Rusts … he couldn’t make out much. A half word here and there. But it was Edwarn. Another voice spoke, and that was almost certainly Kelesina.

The gap under the door was dark. Wax put his hand to his pocket and the handgun secreted there, then turned the door’s knob and eased it open. Beyond was some kind of study, completely dark but for the thin strip of light under the door on the far side. Wax slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and scuttled through the room—stifling a curse as he smacked his arm on an end table. Heart thumping, he put his back to the wall beside the other door.

“Never mind that,” his uncle was saying. His voice was muffled, as if he were speaking through a cloth or a mask or something. “Why have you interrupted me? You know the importance of my work.”

“Waxillium knows about the project,” Kelesina said. “And he’s found one of the coins. He’s acting stupid, but he knows.”

“The diversions?”

“He’s not biting.”

“You’re not trying hard enough then,” Suit said. “Kidnap one of his friends and leave a letter, purportedly from one of his old enemies. Challenge his wits, draw him into an investigation. Waxillium cannot resist a personal grudge. It will work.”

“The train robbery didn’t,” Kelesina said. “What of that, Suit? We wasted vital resources, important connections I had spent years cultivating, on that attack. You promised that if we attacked while he was on board, he wouldn’t be able to resist investigating. Yet he ignored it. Left Ironstand that same night.”

Wax felt a chill as a whole set of assumptions shifted within him. The train robbery … had it been a distraction, intended to draw his attention away from pursuing the Set?

“Recovering the device,” Suit said, “was worth the risk.”

“You mean the device Irich immediately lost?” Kelesina demanded. “That one shouldn’t be trusted with important missions. He’s too eager. You should have let me recover the item once Waxillium was off the train.”

“There was a good chance he’d take the bait,” Edwarn said. “I know my nephew; he’s probably still itching to go after those bandits. If he’s at your party instead, then you aren’t doing your duty properly. I haven’t time to hold your hand on this, Kelesina. I need to be off to the second site.”

Wax frowned. The train hadn’t been just a distraction, it seemed. But the words left him with a deeper sense of worry. He’d chased half a dozen leads during the last year, anticipating that he was close on the heels of his uncle. How many of those had been plants? And how many of his other cases had been intentional distractions? And Ape Manton? Was he really even in New Seran? Likely not.

Edwarn spoke a truth. He knew Wax well. Too well, for a man he’d barely seen in the last twenty years.

“Well,” Suit said, “you have your chance now to recover the device, as you promised you could. How is that going?”

“It wasn’t in the things he checked at the party,” Kelesina said. “We snuck a spy among the hotel staff, and she will search for it in his rooms. I’m telling you, Irich—”

“Irich was punished,” Suit said. Why did his voice sound so much smaller than Kelesina’s? “That is all you need know. Recover it for me, and other mistakes might be forgiven. It is only a matter of time before they accidentally use Allomancy near it.”

“And then will we see this ‘miracle’ you keep promising, Suit?” she demanded. “A few more speeches like this one, and Severington will have the entirety of the Basin whipped into a frenzy. Completely ignoring that Elendel has us outmanned and outgunned.”

“Patience!” Suit said, sounding amused.

“You try to be patient. They’re bleeding us dry. You promised to crush that city, provide an army, and—”

“Patience,” Suit repeated softly. “Stop Waxillium. That is your part of the bargain now. Keep him in the city; keep him distracted.”

“That’s not going to work, Suit,” Kelesina said. “He knows too much already. That damn shapeshifter must have told him—”

“You let it escape?”

Kelesina was silent.

“I thought,” Suit said, voice growing cold, “that you had disposed of the creature. You presented its spike to me, claiming the other had been destroyed.”

“We … may have assumed too quickly.”

“I see,” Suit said.

The two did not speak for a protracted moment. Wax raised his gun beside his head, sweat trickling down his brow in the dark room.