Return to the world of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn as its second era, which began with The Alloy of Law, comes to its conclusion in The Lost Metal.
Tor.com is serializing The Lost Metal from now until its release on November 15. New chapters will go live every Monday at 12pm ET. We’re thrilled to also share selections from the audiobook edition, narrated by Michael Kramer—find chapters three and four below!
For years, frontier lawman turned big-city senator Waxillium Ladrian has hunted the shadowy organization the Set—with his late uncle and his sister among their leaders—since they started kidnapping people with the power of Allomancy in their bloodlines. When Detective Marasi Colms and her partner Wayne find stockpiled weapons bound for the Outer City of Bilming, this opens a new lead. Conflict between Elendel and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate—whose corruption Wax and Steris have sought to expose—and Bilming is even more entangled.
After Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial’s god, Harmony, reveals that Bilming has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn’t the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere—Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial… at any cost.
Wax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.
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The Lost Metal Audiobook
Marasi studied the footprints in the dust. They appeared to be a few weeks old, as they’d gathered dust themselves. She walked over to Wayne, who was inspecting the path farther down into the depths: an arduous-looking tunnel with a steep decline. He glanced at her.
“If they’re slippin’ in and out of the city fast,” he said, “they musta found a different way out of here. They aren’t makin’ this hike regularly.”
“Agreed,” she said. “We should be stealthy anyway, in case they posted lookouts.”
In response, he turned his lantern down and whispered, “You want to continue without backup?”
“For now. We want to scout and see what we find. I don’t want to mobilize everyone for a dead end.”
Together, the two of them struck forward through the tunnel. The difficulty of the path and its apparent lack of traffic encouraged her. If the enemy was down here but used a different route, then taking this path meant she and Wayne were less likely to be discovered.
They took the decline carefully. Rusts… thank goodness she had trousers on. If she was going to slip and break her skull, she could at least do it with dignity. Or as much dignity as a woman could manage after hiking through sewage for an hour.
She distracted herself by imagining that these caverns must be as old as the Ascendant Warrior—or even older. These tunnels had slumbered through the destruction of the world, through the Catacendre, through the rise and fall of the Final Empire. Had the stones they walked past broken loose from the ceiling during the days of the Ashmounts?
She couldn’t help wondering if they would stumble across the mythical Survivor’s Cradle—the Pits of Hathsin—though she knew that was foolish. Wax said he had been to them, and had found no magical metals of lore.
They eventually hit a particularly deep shaft down; it was essentially vertical, though with a lot of obstructions and clefts in the stone to climb on. Wayne brightened their lantern again, looking doubtful.
“We sure they came this way?” he asked in a whisper.
“Who else would have made the footprints?”
“Footprints?”
“In the dust? And near the opening, they were crusted over with sewage from boots? Seriously, Wayne, you can be remarkably oblivious for a detective.”
“You and Wax are detectives,” he said. “Not me.”
“What are you then?”
“Bullet stopper,” he said. “Skull knocker. Guy who occasionally gets exploded.”
“We’ll be doing nothing like that today,” Marasi whispered. “We will peek in, see if I’m right, then get out for clearance and support.”
“Guess we’ll be comin’ back up this way then,” he said with a sigh, then dug the climbing rope out of his canvas backpack. He found a sturdy rock formation to tie it around, then tossed the other side down into the darkness.
He started down first, then Marasi followed, rifle slung across her back. The descent proved easier than she’d feared, as the rope had knots in it. Still, her arms were soon burning.
“So,” Wayne said softly, dangling below, keeping pace with her instead of going on ahead, “wanna hear my list of ways how women break the laws of physics?”
“Depends,” Marasi said. “How misogynistic is it? Can you give me a number on some kind of scale?”
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“Uh… thirteen?”
“Out of what?”
“Seventeen?”
“What kind of insane scale is that?” she whispered, halting atop a boulder and glancing down at him. “Why in the world would you pick seventeen? Why not, at least, sixteen?”
“I don’t know! You’re the one what asked me for a scale. Look, this is good. Women. Break the laws of physics. I’ve been thinkin’ on this forever. Couple days at least. You’ll like it.”
“I’m sure.”
“Way one,” he said, sliding to the next outcropping. “When they take off clothes, they get hotter. Strange, eh? Normal folks, they get colder when they take off—”
“Normal folks?” she repeated, following him. “By normal, you mean men?”
“Uh… I guess.”
“So half the world is not normal? Women are not normal?”
“It sounds a little silly when you say it like that.”
“You think?”
“Look, I just wanted to point out something interesting. Useful observationalizing ’bout the nature of the cosmere and the relationship between the genders.”
“I think you thought of something that amused you, and wanted an excuse to say it.” She landed on the little platform next to him, and below she could finally see the bottom. They were roughly halfway.
He met her eyes. “So… uh… fourteen then?” he said. “Outta seventeen.”
“And rising. It’s not even true, Wayne. Plenty of men get hotter when they take off clothing. Depends on the man.”
He grinned. “What about Allik?”
“With Allik, it’s more the mask.”
“He raises the rusting thing so often, makes you wonder why he wears it in the first place.”
“Moving the mask is like… emphasis to the Malwish. It’s not wrong to let people see under the mask, though they pretend it’s taboo—and maybe it was once upon a time. Now they like the way they can use it to express themselves.”
He swung over the side and continued down. She gave him a little space, then followed.
“So…” he said. “Want to hear number two?”
“Actually… I kind of do.”
“Ha! I thought so. Wax would have said no.”
“Wax had years to get accustomed to the depths of your depravity, Wayne. To me, it’s still remarkable how you manage to dig yourself deeper each and every time.”
“Fair enough. Number two: Ask a woman how much she weighs. Then lift her. She’ll have increased in weight. Feruchemists, every one.”
“Wayne, that joke is so tired, it slept through breakfast.”
“What. Really?”
“Absolutely. My father was making stupid cracks about women lying about their weight when I was a child.”
“Damn. Old blustering Harms made that joke?” He looked up at her with wide eyes. “Oh, hell, Marasi. Am I getting old? Was that an old man joke?”
“I have no comment.”
“Damn conners and their damn tight lips.” He reached the bottom and dropped off the rope softly, with a rustle of cloth and boots on stone, then held the rope steady for her.
She climbed the rest of the way to join him. “So, what’s number three on the list?”
“I don’t got one yet.”
“It’s a list of two items, one of which was dumb?”
“Two of which was dumb,” he said sullenly. “One was apparently also geriatric. Same jokes as Lord Harms. I’m losing my edge, I am.” He met her eyes, then grinned. “Does this mean I get to be the grumpy old one in the partnership? You can be the young spunky one what swears all the time and makes bad life decisions.”
She grinned. “Do I get a lucky hat?”
“Only if you treat it well,” he said, his hand over his heart, “and take it off before somethin’ unlucky happens, as to not break its lucky streak.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, eyeing the tunnel that extended onward from the bottom of the shaft. “But let’s cut the chatter—as much as I love learning whatever has metastasized in your brain lately, we can’t afford to be overheard.”
He dimmed the lantern again and they continued along the tunnel. People at the constabulary offices gave her sympathetic looks on occasion for putting up with Wayne—but the truth was, he could be a really good constable when he wanted to. And he usually did want to.
Case in point, at her request he kept his mouth closed and concentrated on the job. Wayne could lack decorum, and could be painfully un-self-aware at times, but he was a good partner. Even excellent. So long as you got past his bubble—not his Allomantic one, but his personal one. Wayne was a fort of a man, with outer walls and defenses. If you were one of the lucky few he let in, you had a friend for life. One who’d stand with you against literal gods.
We’re going to find you, Trell, Marasi thought, creeping forward. She’d first heard that name uttered by a dying man, years ago—and she was increasingly certain Trell was a god of vast power like Harmony. You can’t hide forever. Not if you want to keep influencing the world.
Wayne grabbed her arm, stopping her without a word. Then he pointed at a tiny light shining far along the tunnel ahead. They crept the final distance, then peeked around the corner and were rewarded by the exact sight she’d been hoping for: a pair of men in vests and hats only a few feet away, playing cards on an overturned box. A small lamp flickered on their improvised table.
Marasi nodded backward. She and Wayne crept away again, far enough to not be heard whispering. She looked to him in the darkness, wondering at his advice. Should they poke forward further, or was this enough of a confirmation to go get backup?
“Tragic,” Wayne whispered.
“What?”
“Poor sod’s got a great hand,” Wayne whispered. “One in a million. And he’s playin’ against his broke buddy on guard duty? Rusting waste of a full-on Survivor’s suite…”
Marasi rolled her eyes, then pointed to a small darkened side tunnel splitting off the main one. “Let’s see where this goes.”
Behind them, a cursed exclamation echoed in the tunnels; sounded like the fellow with the good hand had just revealed it. This smaller tunnel wound around to the right of the guard post, and they soon saw why it wasn’t guarded; it hit a kind of dead end. Though some light did spill through a two-foot-wide hole in the rocks there.
They sidled up to it, then peeked through into a midsized cavern— roughly as big as a dock warehouse—full of men and women boxing goods or lounging on improvised furniture. The hole appeared to be part of the natural rock formations; dripping water from the ceiling had covered the wall with odd protrusions and knobs, covering up what might once have been a larger opening. Marasi and Wayne were maybe fifteen feet up.
She let out a long breath and surveyed the operation. It was here. Months of work. Months of promising Reddi her leads were good. Months of connecting theft records, witness accounts, and money trails. And here it was. A large-scale smuggling base set up directly underneath the city, funded by—best she could guess—a mix of Outer Cities interests and the Set.
It was actually here. By Harmony’s True Name… she’d done it.
Wayne looked to her with a wide smile on his face, then nudged her in the shoulder. “Nice,” he whispered. “Real nice.”
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“When you tell the constable-general about this,” he said, “leave out the part where I whined because of the sewage.”
“And the bad jokes?”
“Nah. Leave those in. You gotta give people what they expect, or they won’t believe your lies when you tell them.”
Marasi took in the sight. Thirty-seven people, counting the two guards, all armed. Even the menial workers wore holsters. Judging by the leads she’d been tracing, those boxes would be full of military supplies—with a frightening number of explosive components. The gang had tried to cover their tracks by making some more mundane thefts as well, but she was confident she knew what was really happening here.
Elendel had been squeezing the Outer Cities by refusing to let certain items—including weapons—be shipped out of Elendel, which was a central hub for all the train lines. This group was acting like an ordinary gang with their shakedowns and the like, but she was almost a hundred percent certain their purpose was to funnel weapons toward Bilming, current capital of Outer Cities interests.
She didn’t like the Outer Cities being forced to work this way—but these gang members had killed innocent people on the streets. Plus, they were likely collaborating with some kind of evil god bent on the subjugation or destruction of the world.
“Right, then,” Wayne whispered, pointing. “See that fellow near the back in the nice outfit? He’s a Set member for certain. Maybe the new Cycle.”
Marasi nodded. Cycle was the lowest level of real officer in the Set. They were local bosses that operated gangs of hired muscle. Miles Hundredlives had been a Cycle, reporting to the Suit above him. This man was dressed in an upscale way—visibly more decorated than the others in the cavern. He was also lean, muscular, and tall. As a Cycle, he might be Metalborn. So they’d best not underestimate him in a fight.
“You plug that fellow in the head with a nice rifle shot,” Wayne said, “and I bet the entire group will fold to us.”
“That isn’t how things work in the real world, Wayne,” Marasi whispered.
“Sure it is,” Wayne said. “If that’s the guy payin’ them, those other sods got no reason to keep fightin’.”
“Even if you were right—and I sincerely doubt you are—that’s not how we’re going to do this. Confirmation, coordination, backup, and proper authorization. Remember?”
“I try not to,” he grumbled. “Can’t we do this one my way? I got nothin’ against some blokes just doin’ their jobs, but I’d hate to hike through all that muck again, then return here and find this lot gone. Let’s bring ’em in now.”
“No,” she said. “Your way involves too much chaos.”
“That’s a bad thing because…”
“Well, there’s the whole officers of the law thing.”
“Right, right,” he said, then checked in his coat to reveal a shiny badge. It wasn’t something they used in the city, preferring their paper credentials.
“Is that… Wax’s old badge from the Roughs?” she asked.
“He traded it to me.”
“For?”
“Half a meat-’n’-ale bun.” Wayne grinned. “He’ll find it eventually. They get real hard to ignore.”
She shook her head, waving him back down the tunnel. They had to keep their lantern darkened though—and that made it difficult to see. So despite being careful, as they returned to the main tunnel they surprised a guard who had stepped that direction to relieve himself.
He glanced at them in the darkness, then shouted. Wayne had him down and knocked out half a second later, but cries of alarm sounded from the direction of the main cavern.
Still standing atop the body, Wayne looked to her and grinned again. “My way it is!”
There was no way for Marasi and Wayne to escape using the difficult route they’d taken to get here—not with the entire gang on their tails. Beyond that, she wanted to capture that Cycle, who would certainly vanish after this.
Unfortunately all of this meant Wayne was right. So much for protocol.
It was time to do this his way.
They burst into the main tunnel, where the other guard had his gun pointed toward them. Wayne tossed up a speed bubble, giving him and Marasi time to step aside and flank the guard.
Once the speed bubble dropped, the gangster fired into now-open space. Wayne was on him a moment later, laying into him with dueling canes. Marasi left him to it, instead picking her spot. Beyond the card table was a wide tunnel presumably leading into the main warehouse cavern. She went to one knee and raised her rifle, sighting, calming herself, waiting…
She fired the moment someone appeared from that direction. Only her training on the range prevented her from immediately trying to cycle the bolt on her gun. This was a new semiautomatic Bastion rifle, and so she kept it shouldered and downed the next person who stumbled over the falling body. Those behind called a warning, and no one dared come barreling in after that.
Wayne wiped his brow, leaving an unconscious gangster on the floor. “You got the magic boxes?”
“They’re not magic, Wayne,” Marasi said. “Malwish technology is just different but—”
“Magic boxes from your boyfriend. How many?”
“I have three Allomantic grenades,” she said. “All of the new design. And two flash-bangs. Wax charged one of the grenades for me before we left.”
“Nifty,” Wayne said. “Got a plan?”
“You hold the tunnel. I’ll go back to that overlook and toss some Allomantic grenades to catch groups of enemies, then cover you as you move in. Once you’re out of the line of fire, I’ll follow.”
“Good as done!” Wayne said, and they split, him heading toward the two people she’d dropped. There he picked up one of their handguns and fired it a bunch of times into the main chamber—not to hit, but to make those beyond take cover. His hand wobbled a little, and he tossed the weapon aside as soon as it was empty, but it was excellent progress. Not that he needed to be more deadly, she supposed.
She left him, rounding to the overlook, which made a decent sniper spot. She picked out several groups of gangsters behind nearby boxes, watching as Wayne fired a second gun.
Marasi carefully took a small metal box from the pouch on her belt. All her life she had suffered disappointment and even dismissal because of her useless Allomantic talent. She could slow time around herself, which was… well, not much use. It essentially froze her to the perspective of everyone around her—removing her from a fight, giving the advantage to her enemies.
She’d found occasional uses for it, but mostly she’d internalized the presumed truth that her abilities were weak.
Then she’d met Allik.
His people revered all Metalborn, Allomancers and Feruchemists alike. Though he’d been in awe of Wax and his flashy powers, Allik had been equally impressed with her abilities. She had one of the most useful Allomantic skills, he claimed. That had been difficult to accept, but the upshot was that if you had access to a little specialized technology, you could turn the world on its head.
Perhaps an inch and a half across, the Allomantic grenade hummed as she burned cadmium—and it absorbed her energy. She wasn’t swallowed by a bubble of slowness; with these new designs, all the power went into the box. She’d charged it earlier, but that had been hours ago and she wanted to top it off.
Then, judging the distance carefully, she tossed it toward a group of enemies who had gathered behind some boxes for cover. Her months of practice paid off; she managed to land the device right in the center of the gangsters, who—focused on Wayne—barely noticed it rolling among them.
The grenade used ettmetal, which was tightly regulated by the Malwish, so she didn’t blame the gangsters for not knowing what to do; even among the Malwish these were rare. If the men had heard of the devices— and they might have, since the Set was known to employ them—they had likely never seen one.
A second later, a bubble of slowed time popped up around the device, trapping about ten of the men and women. She quickly topped off, then threw, the second of her three grenades—this one aimed at a group of enemies farther along. Her aim was true, and she ensnared another eight.
Calls of “Metalborn!” echoed through the cavern as the rest of the gangsters noticed that over half their number were frozen. Those would move in turgid slow motion as they tried to escape the bubble—but the ten-minute charge on the grenade would run out before they managed it.
She unslung her rifle and laid down covering fire—even picking off two of those remaining—as Wayne slipped into the main chamber. He moved in a blur of speed for a moment, then popped out of his speed bubble and leaped over a cleft in the rock. It took a bit between uses for him to recover his talents and put up another bubble, but she swore that time was shrinking.
He avoided the trapped people; she and he would deal with them later. For now he took advantage of the confusion to get in close to a couple of enemies. They noticed him, but he became a blur again—then came in from above, dueling canes held high.
Their shouts of pain distracted the others, which let Marasi pick off two more. Then she dashed back around to the main tunnel. Here she glanced into the warehouse cavern, then ran in a low crouch—careful to avoid the faintly shimmering perimeter bubbles of the grenades. She knew all too well how it felt to be surrounded by that molasses air while everything around you moved like lightning.
Marasi found her own cover near some packing equipment, and as the remaining gangsters reoriented, gunfire began pounding the stone and metal around her. As a girl, she’d read all about Wax’s exploits in the Roughs—and the more she practiced her trade, the more inaccuracies she spotted. Sure, the stories mentioned gunfire. But they usually left out how loud it was when bullets struck. With them pelting the equipment around her, it sounded like she’d given little Max a set of drumsticks and let him loose in a kitchenware shop.
A second later the sounds slowed—like a phonograph playing at a fraction of normal power. The air shimmered near her, and Wayne slumped up against the equipment, a grin on his face—and a bloody wound on his shoulder.
“Sloppy,” she said, nodding to the wound.
“Hey now,” he said. “Any fellow can accidentally get shot now and then. ’Specially if he’s runnin’ around with a pair of sticks in a room with lotsa guns.”
“How much bendalloy do you have left?”
“Plenty.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
“Wayne, I’m proud of you,” she said. “You’re actually saving it, being frugal like I asked.”
He shrugged like it was nothing, but she was legitimately proud of him. He received an allotment from the department, and during the early days of their partnership he’d always run out on missions. She’d been planning to talk to Captain Reddi about increasing the allotment, until she’d discovered that Wayne used his bendalloy for all kinds of non-combat, non-detective work. Playing pranks, changing costumes to delight children, the occasional casual thievery…
It was good to see him doing better.
“How many idiots left?” he asked.
“Eleven,” she said.
“That’s higher than I can count.”
“Unless you’re doing shots in a drinking contest,” Marasi said.
“Damn right,” he said.
Together they peeked out from around the equipment—which was for nailing lids to crates. Wayne immediately yanked her back under cover. A bullet moving in slow motion hit the perimeter of the speed bubble, then zipped through the air above them in a flash before hitting the other side and slowing again. Bullets behaved erratically when they hit speed bubbles, and you could never tell which way they’d turn when entering one.
“Guy in the suit is escaping out the back,” Wayne said. “You want to grab him, or do you want to stay here and fight the rest of them?”
She bit her lip, considering. “We’ll have to split up,” she said. “You’re better with groups. You think you can handle this lot?”
“Aren’t most of these boxes full of stuff what goes boom?”
“Yes…”
“Sounds like fun to be had!”
“You should have another eight minutes or so on the grenades.”
“Great,” he said. “I’ll see if I can take those sods alive. I can grab them one at a time from their slowness bubbles, using my bubbles to counteract. See, I’ve been practicing, been gettin’ good at making mine bigger and smaller. Should be able to walk to the edge of one of your bubbles, put up mine in a way to overlap one person, then pull them out.”
“Wayne!” she said. “That’s amazing. Have you told Wax? It’s really hard to control the size of your bubbles like that.”
He shrugged. “You ready?”
She retrieved the flash-bangs from her pouch and handed one to him. Then she pulled the pin on the other to light the fuse. “Ready,” she said. Even if he had “plenty,” bendalloy was rare and expensive. They needed to be careful with it.
Wayne dropped the bubble, and she tossed the flash-bang. After it detonated, they scrambled out on opposite sides of the machine. Wayne went for the last group of gangsters while she dashed after the Cycle, who vanished through a reinforced metal door at the rear of the cavern. She reached it a moment later and picked the lock fairly easily. She spared a glance for Wayne—who was quickly being surrounded by enemies. He’d found cover behind a box marked explosives. He winked at her, then pulled the pin on his flash-bang and dropped it inside.
Delightful. Hopefully he knew what he was doing. Wayne’s healing abilities were extraordinary—but it was still possible for him to take so much damage he couldn’t heal. Any blast that separated his metalminds from the bulk of his body would leave Wayne dead, just like the Lord Ruler when he’d lost the Bands of Mourning centuries before.
Well, she couldn’t monitor Wayne all the time. And she most certainly couldn’t survive an explosion of… well, of any size. She slipped through the door and pulled it closed with a loud thump. The entire cavern complex shook a few moments later, but she focused on her task: heading into the dark cavern tunnel after the Cycle, who—among everyone in the cavern—was most likely to have answers for her.
Excerpted from The Lost Metal, copyright © 2022 by Brandon Sanderson.
