The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,96

when you snapped the spine—helped with the pain.

Not that the pain went completely away, mind you. But he and pain were old friends what shared a handshake and a beer now and then. Didn’t much like one another, but they had a working relationship. Sensation—and agony—flooded back into him as his metalmind healed his spine, focusing on the worst wounds first. He drew in a deep breath. A snapped spine could suffocate a man. People didn’t know that. Or, well, the ones who did know had suffocated already.

As soon as he could move—even while his legs were healing—he twisted and used his good arm to position one of the large rocks in the pile. Looked like these stones were here intended for shoring up the sides of the stream, perhaps to make a pathway across. Wayne put them to good use, reaching up with his other hand as his shoulder healed. Wax had placed him well, right in the dark area between the perimeter watchposts and the building. But that didn’t mean he was safe.

Wayne stumbled to his feet, dragging Wax’s gun, his leg twisting about and bones reknitting. Damn fine metalmind, that gold bracelet was. An extensive healing like this would have cost him months of saving up, but this metalmind was still mostly full.

He stumbled away as quietly as he could, leaving a large rock balanced on the others as he sought a place deeper in the shadows, then hid the gun near the building so his damn hand would stop shaking.

He got away none too soon. A pair of soldiers were approaching from the perimeter.

“It was over here,” one said to the other. As they drew closer, one of the spotlights turned around and shone on the area, giving them light and quite nearly exposing Wayne. He froze in the shadows near a pile of work equipment, sweating as his toes popped softly, the bones grinding against one another as they knit back into their proper places.

The guards didn’t hear. They stepped up to where he’d fallen—no tomato splat of blood this time, fortunately—and looked around. One nudged the stone accidentally, and it fell off the peak where Wayne had placed it, rolling down the side of the small pile and clattering against the other rocks. The men looked at it, then nodded, doing a quick sweep but heading back to their post and returning the light to its scan of the nearby area. The noise they’d heard had merely been some rocks shifting. Nothing significant.

Wayne stood up straight in the darkness and stopped tapping the bracelet metalmind. He felt good. Renewed, like he always did after a big healing. Felt like he could do something impossible, run up a mountain, or eat the entire boar and chips plate at Findley’s all on his own.

He crept off through the shadows, about important business. Fortunately, he found his hat almost immediately, near another rock pile. That done, he moved on to less important matters, like making an opportunity to help the others sneak in.

Wax had said north side. Let’s see.… He kept close to the building, and even resisted the urge to go sneaking in on his own to find out what in Ruin’s name was in there.

Time to think like a guard. It was hard, as he didn’t have a guard’s hat. He settled into the shadows and listened as a pair of them passed on patrol, digesting their accents like a nice snack of pretzel sticks with mustard.

After about fifteen minutes of watching, he picked out a likely candidate and kept pace as the man did his rounds, though Wayne stayed in the shadow. The lanky fellow had a face like a rabbit, but was tall enough he could probably have picked all the walnuts he wanted without needing a stepladder.

Here I am, Wayne thought, in the middle of nowhere! Guarding a big old barn. This isn’t what I signed up for. I haven’t seen my daughter in eight months. Eight months! She’s probably talking by now. Rusts. This life.

The man turned to go back the other way on his rounds, and someone barked out at him from one of the stations with the floodlights, saying something Wayne couldn’t hear. The tone was unmistakable.

And my superiors, Wayne thought, turning and slinking along in the shadows, still keeping pace with the man. Oh, how they lean on me! Every little thing gets me a talking-to. Shouting. That’s all this life is. Being yelled at day in and