Mistborn #04 The Alloy of Law

carefully. You may read it, if you wish, but deliver it to Lord Waxillium on my behalf.”
    She took the book. “Pardon,” she said, trying to fight through the numbness he had put inside her. Was she really speaking to a mythological figure? Was she going mad? She could barely think. “But why didn’t you take it to him yourself?”
    Ironeyes responded with a tight-lipped smile, watching her with the heads of those silvery spikes. “I have a feeling he’d have tried to shoot me. That one does not like unanswered questions, but he does my brother’s work, and that is something I feel inclined to encourage. Good day, Lady Marasi Colms.”
    Ironeyes turned, cloak rustling, and walked away down the alley. He put his hood up as he walked, then lifted into the air, propelled by Allomancy over the tops of the nearby buildings. He vanished from sight.
    Marasi clutched the book, then slid it into her handbag, shaking.
    * * *

    Waxillium landed at the rail station, dropping as gently as he could from his Allomantic flight down the tracks. Landing still hurt his leg.
    Wayne sat on the platform, feet up on a barrel, smoking his pipe. He still had his arm in a sling. He wouldn’t be able to heal it quickly—he had no health stored up. Trying to store some now would just make him heal more slowly during that process, then heal more quickly as he tapped his metalmind, ending with no net gain.
    Wayne was reading a small novel that he’d picked out of someone’s pocket on their train ride out to the estates. He’d left an aluminum bullet in its place, worth easily a hundred times the price of the book. Ironically, the person who found it would probably throw it away, never realizing its value.
    I’ll need to talk to him about that again, Waxillium thought, walking up onto the platform. But not today. Today, they had other worries.
    Waxillium joined his friend, but continued staring to the south. Toward the city, and his uncle.
    “It’s a pretty good book,” Wayne said, flipping a page. “You should try it. It’s about bunnies. They talk. Damnedest thing ever.”
    Waxillium didn’t reply.
    “So, was it your uncle?” Wayne asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Crud. I owe you a fiver, then.”
    “The bet was for twenty.”
    “Yeah, but you owe me fifteen.”
    “I do?”
    “Sure, for that bet I made that you’d end up helpin’ me with the Vanishers.”
    Waxillium frowned, looking at his friend. “I don’t remember that bet.”
    “You weren’t there when we made it.”
    “I wasn’t there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Wayne, you can’t make bets with people when they aren’t there.”
    “I can,” Wayne said, tucking the book into his pocket and standing, “if they shoulda been there. And you shoulda, Wax.”
    “I…” How to respond to that? “I will be. From now on.”
    Wayne nodded, joining him and looking toward Elendel. It rose in the distance, the two competing skyscrapers rising on one side of the city, other smaller ones growing like crystals from the center of the expanding metropolis.
    “You know,” Wayne said, “I always wondered what it would be like to come here, find civilization and all that. I didn’t realize.”
    “Realize what?” Waxillium asked.
    “That this was really the rough part of the world,” Wayne said. “That we had it easy, out past the mountains.”
    Waxillium found himself nodding. “You can be very wise sometimes, Wayne.”
    “It’s onnacount of my thinkin’, mate,” Wayne said, tapping his head, increasing the thickness of his accent. “It’s what I do wif my brain. Somma the time, at least.”
    “And the rest of the time?”
    “The rest of the time, I don’t do so much thinkin’. ’Cuz if I did, I’d go runnin’ back to where things is simple. You see?”
    “I see. And we do have to stay, Wayne. I have work to do here.”
    “Then we’ll see it done,” Wayne said. “Just like always.”
    Waxillium nodded, reaching into his sleeve and sliding out a thin black book.
    “What’s that?” Wayne asked, taking it, curious.
    “My uncle’s pocket book,” Waxillium said. “Filled with appointments and notes.”
    Wayne whistled softly. “How’d you take it? Shoulder bump?”
    “Table sweep,” Waxillium said.
    “Nice. Glad to know I’ve taught you somethin’ useful during our years together. What did you trade for it?”
    “A threat,” Waxillium said, looking back toward Elendel. “And a promise.”
    He would see this to the end. Roughs honor. When one of