The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson
Part of him wanted to dismiss it as mere laziness. But that was his response to everything he didn’t want to do—an excuse. What was it really? Why was he so reluctant?
It’s because these are their rules. If I play by them, I accept their games. It felt like he was accepting their collar.
He turned to raise his hand to the side for Lady Demoux to take. However, as he did, a different woman slid into place and grasped his hand, towing him into the dancing and away from the perimeter. He was so surprised that he let it happen.
“Excuse me?” Wax said.
“No excuses necessary,” the woman said, “I won’t take but a moment of your time.” She looked to be Terris, judging by her dark skin—though hers was darker than most he’d seen. Her hair was in tight braids, streaked with grey, and her face bore full, luscious lips. She took the lead in the dance, causing him to stumble.
“You realize,” she said, “that you are a very rare specimen. Crasher: a Coinshot and a Skimmer.”
“Neither are that rare,” Wax said, “in terms of Metalborn.”
“Ah, but any Twinborn combination is rare indeed. Mistings are one in a thousand; most Ferrings even more unusual, and their bloodlines constrained. To arrive at any specific combination of two is highly improbable. You are one of only three Crashers ever born, Lord Waxillium.”
“What, really?”
“I cannot, of course, be one hundred percent certain of that figure. Infant mortality on Scadrial is not as bad as some regions, but still shockingly high. Tell me, have you ever tried increasing your weight while in midair?”
“Who are you?” Wax said, stepping into the dance and seizing back control, twisting her to his right.
“Nobody important,” she said.
“Did my uncle send you?”
“I have little interest in your local politics, Lord Waxillium,” she replied. “If you would kindly answer my questions, I will let you be.”
He turned with her to the music. They danced more quickly than he was accustomed to, though the steps were familiar. The constant intrusion of those brass instruments drove the song, made his steps seem to spring. Why had he mentioned his uncle? Sloppy.
“I’ve increased my weight while moving,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t do anything—all things fall at the same speed, regardless of how heavy they are.”
“Yes, the uniformity of gravitation,” the woman said. “That’s not what I’m curious about. What if you’re soaring through the air on a Steelpush and you suddenly make yourself heavier. What happens?”
“I slow down—I’m so much heavier that it’s harder to Push myself forward.”
“Ahh…” the woman said softly. “So it is true.”
“What?”
“Conservation of momentum,” she said. “Lord Waxillium, when you store weight, are you storing mass, or are you changing the planet’s ability to recognize you as something to attract? Is there a difference? Your answer gives me a clue. If you slow when you become heavier midflight, then that is not likely due to you having trouble Pushing, but due to the laws of physics.”
She stepped back from him in the middle of the dance, releasing his hands and sidestepping another couple, who gave them a glare for interfering with the flow of the dance. She produced a card and handed it toward him. “Please experiment with this further and send me word. Thank you. Now, if I can just figure out why there’s no redshift involved in speed bubbles…”
With that she wandered off the floor, leaving him befuddled in the middle of the dancing. Suddenly conscious of how many stares he was drawing, he lifted his chin and sauntered off the dance floor, where he found Lady Demoux and apologized to her profusely for the interruption. She allowed him to have the next dance, which passed without incident, save for Wax having to hear a protracted description of Lady Demoux’s prize-winning hounds.
Once done, he tried to find the strange woman with the braids, even going so far as to approach the doorkeeper and ask after her. The card had an address in Elendel, but no name.
The doorman claimed he hadn’t admitted anyone by that description, which left Wax even more troubled. His uncle was trying to breed Allomancers. A woman asking after the specifics of Allomantic powers couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
He did pass MeLaan. Square-chinned, standing over six feet tall, her masculine body bulged with muscles beneath her tuxedo, and she’d drawn a gaggle of interested young ladies. She winked at Wax as he passed, but he gave her no response.
Steris had a drink waiting for him at the table, where she was flipping through pages of her notebook and mumbling. As Wax neared, he noticed a young man approach and try to engage her in conversation, but she dismissed him with a wiggle of her fingers, not even looking up. The man, deflated, drifted away.
Wax stepped up to the table. “Not interested in dancing?”
“What would be the point?” she said.
“Well, I’m going out and dancing, so maybe you could too.”
“You are lord of your house,” Steris said absently, still reading. “You have political and economic obligations. Anyone who would want to do the same with me is simply trying to get to you, something for which I have no time.”
“Either that,” Wax said, “or he thought you were pretty.”
Steris looked up from her notes and cocked her head, as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to her. “I’m engaged.”
“We’re new here,” Wax said, “largely unknown save to those who pay attention to Elendel politics. The lad probably didn’t know who you were.”
Steris blinked very pointedly. She actually seemed troubled by the idea that someone unknown might find her attractive. Wax smiled, reaching for the cup she’d set out for him. “What is this?”
“Soda water,” she said.
He held it up to the light. “It’s yellow.”
“All the rage here, apparently,” Steris said. “With lemon flavoring.”
Wax took a drink, then nearly choked.
“What?” Steris asked, alarmed. “Poison?”
“Sugar,” Wax said. “About seven cups of it.”
Steris took a sip, then pulled back. “How odd. It’s like champagne, only … not.”
Wax shook his head. What was wrong with people in this city?
“I’ve decided upon our next target,” Steris said, pointing toward a man across the room leaning against the archway near some tanks of exotic fish. In his thirties, he wore his jacket unbuttoned with a kind of purposeful sloppiness. Occasionally, someone else would approach and talk to him for a short time, then move back out into the crowd.
“They’re reporting to him?” Wax asked.
“Devlin Airs,” Steris said with a nod. “Informant. You’ll find his sort at any party. He’s either one of the least important people in the room or one of the most important, depending upon the secrets you’re interested in discovering. He was also on ReLuur’s list.”
Wax studied the man for a time, and when he looked back toward Steris, half of his fizzy yellow drink was gone. She looked innocently in the other direction.
“Probably best,” she said, “if you approach him alone. His type doesn’t like an audience.”
“All right,” Wax said, taking a deep breath.
“You can do this, Lord Waxillium.”
He nodded.
“I mean it,” Steris said, resting her hand on his. “Lord Waxillium, this is exactly what you’ve been doing for the last twenty years, in the Roughs.”
“I could shoot people there, Steris.”
“Could you really? Is that how you solved things? You couldn’t get answers, so you shot somebody?”
“Well, I’d usually just punch them.”
She gave him a raised eyebrow.
“To be honest, no, I didn’t have to shoot—or punch—all that often. But the rules were different. Hell, I could make the rules, if I needed to.”
“Same goes here,” Steris said. “These people know thi
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Thank you. Besides, who knows? Maybe he’ll pull a knife on you, and you’ll get an excuse to punch him anyway.”
“Don’t get my hopes up,” he said, then gave her a nod, and walked across the room.
* * *
The gates to the Seran New District Cemetery were topped with a crouching statue of the Survivor, scarred arms spread wide and gripping the metalwork arch on either side. Marasi felt dwarfed by the statue’s looming intensity—brass cloak tassels spreading out in a radial flare behind him, his metallic face glaring down at those who entered. A spear through his back pierced the front of his chest, the polished tip emerging to hang a foot below the center of the arch.
When she and Wayne passed beneath it, Marasi felt as if it should drip blood upon her. She shivered, but didn’t slow her step. She refused to be intimidated by the Survivor’s glare. She’d been raised Survivorist, so the gruesome imagery associated with the religion was familiar to her.
It was just that every time she saw a depiction of the Survivor, his posture seemed so demanding. It was like he wanted people to recognize the contradiction in his religion. He commanded that people survive, yet the death imagery associated with him was a cruel reminder that they’d eventually fail in that task. Survivorism therefore was not about winning, but about lasting as long as you could before you lost.
The Survivor himself, of course, broke the rules. He always had. Doctrine explained he was not dead, but surviving—and planning to return in their time of greatest need. But if the end of the world hadn’t been enough to get him to return in his glory, then what could possibly do so?
They wound through the graveyard, seeking the caretaker’s building. Evening had fallen, and the mists had decided to come out tonight. She tried not to take that as any kind of sign, but it did make the place look extra creepy. Gravestones and statues were shadowed in the churning mists. Some nights, she saw the mists as playful. Tonight their unpredictable motions seemed more a crowd of shifting spirits, watching her and Wayne, angered at their intrusion.
Wayne started whistling. That sent another shiver up Marasi’s spine. Fortunately, the gravekeeper’s building was now only a short distance up the path—she could see its lights creating a bubble of yellow in the mists.
She stuck close to Wayne, not because she felt more comfortable having him beside her. “Our target is a man named Dechamp,” she said. “Should be the night gravekeeper, and one of those whose ledger entries show regular upticks in income. He’s grave robbing for sure. In fact, this cemetery showed the highest frequency of that, and the ledgers listed it as the place the city pays to take care of unidentified bodies. I’m reasonably certain the kandra’s remains ended up here; we just need to find this man and get him to dig for us.”
Wayne nodded.
“This won’t be like with the banker,” Marasi said. “Who was reluctant, but ultimately helpful.”
“Really?” Wayne said. “Because I thought he was kind of a tit.…”
“Focus, Wayne. We’ll have to use the full weight of the law here, to push this man. I suspect we’ll have to offer clemency to get him to help us.”
“Wait, wait,” Wayne said, stopping on the path, tendrils of mist curling around his brow, “you’re gonna flash your goods at him too?”
“I really wish you wouldn’t phrase it that way.”
“Now, listen,” Wayne said softly, “you were right ’bout the banker. You did damn good work in there, Marasi, and I’m not too proud to admit it. But authority works different out here in the world of regular men. You bring out your credentials with this fellow, and I guarantee he’s gonna react like a rabbit. Find the nearest hole, hunker down, not say a word.”
“Good interrogation techniques—”
“Ain’t worth beans if you’re in a hurry,” Wayne said, “which we are. I’m puttin’ my foot down.” He hesitated. “’Sides, I already lifted your credentials.”
“You…” Marasi started, then rummaged through her purse and discovered that the small, engraved plate that held her constable’s credentials was gone, replaced with an empty bottle of Syles brandy. “Oh please. This isn’t worth nearly the same as those credentials.”
“I know I gave you a good deal,” Wayne said. “’Cuz yours is only a bit of useless metal—which is about what it’d be worth here, in this cemetery.”
“You will give the credentials back after we’re done.”
“Sure. If you fill that bottle in trade.”
“But you said—”
“Convenience fee,” Wayne said, then looked up the path toward the gravekeeper’s building. He took his top hat off and stomped on it.
Marasi stepped back, hand to her breast, as Wayne ground the hat beneath his heel, then brought it up and twisted it the other way. Finally, after inspecting it critically, he pulled a knife off his metalbelt and cut a hole in the hat’s side. He tossed aside his duster and cut off one of the straps of his suspenders.
When the top hat went back on his head, he looked shockingly like a vagrant. Of course, he was always one step from that, but it was still surprising how much of a difference two little changes could make. He spun the knife in his hand and inspected Marasi with a critical eye. The sun had set completely, but with the light of the city diffusing through the mists, it could actually be brighter on a night like this than on one without any mist.
“What?” Marasi said, uncomfortable.
“You look too fancy,” Wayne said.
Marasi glanced down at herself. She wore a simple, sky-blue day dress, hem at midcalf, laced up the sleeves and neck. “This is pretty ordinary, Wayne.”
“Not for what we’ll be doin’.”
“I can be your employer or something.”
“Men like this don’t open up none if there’s someone respectable about.” He spun the knife in his hand, then reached for her chest.
“Wayne!” she said.
“Don’t be so stiff. You want this done right, right?”
She sighed. “Don’t get too frisky.”
“Sooner get frisky with a lion, Mara. That I would.”
He cut the opaque lace window out of her bodice, leaving her with a plunging neckline. Her sleeves went next, shortened by a good foot to above the elbow. He took the lace there and tied it like a ribbon around her dress right beneath her breasts, then pulled the laces on the back of the dress more tightly. That lifted and thrust her upper chest outward in a decidedly scandalous way.
From there, he made a few choice slits on the skirt before rubbing dirt on the bottom parts. He stepped back, tapping his cheek thoughtfully, and nodded.
Marasi looked down, inspecting his handiwork, and was actually impressed. Beyond enhancing the bust, he’d cut along seams, pulling out threads, and the effect wasn’t so much ruined as used.
“Everyone looks at the chest first,” Wayne said, “even women, which is kinda strange, but that’s the way it is. Like this, nobody will care that the dirt looks too fresh and the rest of the dress ain’t aged properly.”
“Wayne, I’m shocked,” she said. “You’re an excellent seamstress.”
“Clothes is fun to play with. Ain’t no reason that can’t be manly.” His eyes lingered on her chest.
“Wayne.”
“Sorry, sorry. Just gettin’ into character, you know.” He waved for her to follow, and they headed up the path. As they did, Marasi realized something.
She wasn’t blushing.
Well, that’s a first, she thought, growing strangely confident.
“Try not to open your mouth much,” Wayne advised as they approached the hut. “On account of you normally soundin’ way too smart.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He snapped a branch off a tree they passed, spun it around his finger, then held it down before himself like a gnarled cane. Together th
A greasy little man with a blond ponytail whistled to himself beside the hut, sharpening his shovel with a whetstone. Who sharpens a shovel? Marasi thought as Wayne presented himself, chest thrust out, improvised cane before him as if he were some grand attendee at a ball.
“And are you,” Wayne said, “bein’ the one called Dezchamp?”
“Dechamp,” the man said, looking up lazily. “Now, now. Did I leave that gate open again? I am supposed to be closin’ the thing each night. I’ll have to be askin’ you to leave this premises, sir.”
“I’ll make my way out, then,” Wayne said, pointing with his cane-stick, yet not moving. “But afore I go, I would like to make you aware of a special business proposition regardin’ you and me.”
Wayne had exaggerated his accent to the point that Marasi had to pay strict attention to make out what he was saying. Beyond that, there was a more staccato sense to it. More stressed syllables, more of a rhythm to the sentences. It was, she realized, very similar to the accent the gravekeeper was using.
“I’m a honest man, I am,” Dechamp said, drawing his whetstone along his shovel. “I don’t have no business I needs to discuss, particularly not at a time of night like this one here.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of your honesty,” Wayne said, rolling back on his heels, hands on his cane before him. “Heard it spoken of from one street to the next. Everyone’s talkin’ ’bout your honesty, Dechamp. It’s a right keen topic of interest.”
“If everyone’s sayin’ so much,” Dechamp replied, “then you’ll know I already got plenty of people with whom to share my honesty. I’m … gainfully contracted.”