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.
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.
Wayne ducked into the alley just in time. Those two fellows with the bowler hats passed by on the sidewalk a moment later. Wayne crouched there, heart pounding, and counted to a hundred before letting himself relax. Close call.
He’d mostly recovered from the meeting with MeLaan. In fact, he figured he’d handled it quite well. Nothing was broken, nobody was broken but him, and he’d only needed three shots of whiskey to get moving after. Plus, he’d realized what his day was going to be.
It was a rusting funeral.
You could take quests and flush them away. He was having a funeral today, and that was that. He had worn his nice jacket and a matching hat, all fancy and proper. He even had a flower in the lapel, which he’d paid for. With actual money. Fancy is as fancy does.
He rejoined the procession on the street outside. Yes, they all seemed to know it was a funeral day, they did. So many heads down rather than looking up at the sun. So many dull faces, like they were the dead, still up and moving because… well, in the city, there were jobs to do.
Did dead people think funerals were celebrations? Initiation parties?
Reverse birthdays?
He kept his head down, acting like a member of the masses on the sidewalk. This city, it just had so many people. Floods of them on the streets in this part of the octant, the financial district, all in their funeral finest. It should have been easy for anyone to fit in since there was basically every sort of person you might want to meet. But somehow the financial district mashed people up into a similar ball of cravats and heels. You could almost not notice that some were Terris and others were koloss-blooded.
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The Lost Metal
Hard to miss that rusting airship dominating the sky, but keeping your head down helped. Maybe today’s funeral was for the city itself. Or at least its naiveté.
The Drunken Spur was on Feder Way, right on the corner of Seventy-Third. You couldn’t miss it, what with the swinging wooden sign outside and the mannequins in Roughs gear in the window. Not a lot of upscale cafés used mannequins, but this place was special. Kind of like how a kid who ate mud was special. But Jaxy liked it, so one made accommodations. Wayne was an accommodating kind of person, he was.
He stepped inside and tried not to cringe too hard at what the serving staff was wearing. Roughs hats. Bright red shirts. Chaps? Oh, Ruin. He was going to gag. At least the greeter at the host’s stand was in a proper suit.
“Your hat, sir?” the man said, and Wayne handed it over, then swiped the bell off the stand.
“Um, sir?” the greeter asked, looking at the bell.
“You’ll get it back when you return my hat,” Wayne said. “A man gots to have insurance.”
“Uh…”
“Where’s my table? It’s got two pretty women at it, and one of them’s nice, but the other probably threatened to shoot you when she was bein’ seated.”
The host pointed. Ah, there they were. Wayne nodded and stalked that direction. Rusting terrible attire for them to all wear on a day like this. You didn’t go to a funeral in chaps unless you rode there on a horse. Or unless you were old Three-Tooth Dag, who liked that sort of thing.
Ranette was Ranette: curvaceous—though he wasn’t supposed to talk about it—and wearing slacks. Jaxy was in a fine white dress, with short white-blonde hair in very tight curls, accented by diamond barrettes. She liked sparkles. He didn’t blame her. Far too few sparkles in life. Adults was supposed to be able to wear what they wanted, so why did so few choose sparkles?
He sat down with Ranette and Jaxy, then thumped his forehead down on the table, making the silverware rattle.
“Oh, delightful,” Ranette said in a dry voice. “Drama.”
“Wayne?” Jaxy asked. “You all right?”
“Mumble mumble,” he said into the tablecloth. “Mumble.”
“Don’t humor him,” Ranette said.
“Yes, humor him,” Wayne grumbled. “He needs it right now.”
“What happened?” Jaxy asked.
“I am officially dumped,” he said. “And my whiskey is wearing off. Stupid body. Metabolizing and neutralizing poisons as if I didn’t dump ’em in there on purpose.” He looked up. “You think I could cut out my liver and stay drunk forever?”
“I’ll humor him on that one,” Ranette said.
“I’m sorry, Wayne,” Jaxy said, patting him on the hand.
“ ’S all right,” he said. “At least you dressed up fer the funeral.”
“The…?” Jaxy asked.
“Ignore him,” Ranette said. But then she softened her voice. “Hey. You’ll live, Wayne. I’ve seen you get through worse.”
“When?”
“That one time you literally got a cannonball through the stomach.”
He looked up. “Oh yeah. That was something else.”
Jaxy had gone pale. “Did it hurt?”
“Not as much as you’d think,” he said. “Like, yeah, I got torn in half. But I think my body was just kinda confused, you know? Not every day you’re in two pieces.”
“Fortunately,” Ranette said, “his metalminds were on the piece with his head. Otherwise…”
He forced himself to sit up, then sighed and put the bell on the table, then rang it. Then rang it again. Seriously, what was the point of these things if people didn’t pay attention? The third ring finally got a server to step over.
“Vodka,” Wayne said to her. “Worst you got. Closer to piss it tastes, the better.”
“Wayne,” Ranette said, “this is an upscale restaurant.”
“Right,” he said. “Putta olive in it or somethin’.”
“Was that even our server?” Jaxy asked as the woman moved off.
“I try not to look too closely,” Ranette said. “Given the awful outfits.”
“I hear you,” Wayne said. “Who thought a Roughs-themed restaurant was a good idea? Like, to be authentic you’d have to have only stew on the menu. Then when people ordered it, you’d be out of stew and just give them beans.”
“I like it,” Jaxy said. “It’s amusing.”
“It’s insulting,” Ranette said.
“Can we talk more about me?” Wayne said. “Because I’m still over here feeling like what’s left of the grapes after the wine’s been made.”
“Poor dear,” Jaxy said.
“You’re too good to him, Jax,” Ranette said.
“He’s one of your oldest friends.”
“Only because he can’t die.”
“Ranette…” Jaxy said.
“Fine,” Ranette said, then put her hand on Wayne’s shoulder. “You’re strong, Wayne. You can get through this.” She took the glass from the tray when the server came back, and handed it to him. “Look, here’s your alcohol.”
“Thanks, Ranette,” he said, accepting it. “You really know how to make a fellow feel better.”
“To be honest,” she said, “I’m proud of you, Wayne. How you’re handling this. It’s relatively mature.”
“This is mature?” he asked, then downed the vodka.
“Relatively.”
“Suppose you gotta be an adult to get booze,” Wayne admitted. “But… it’s just…” He sighed and sat back. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet someone who understood what it was like to have to be another person most of the time. And she did. She did, Ranette.”
“You’ll… uh, find someone else?” Ranette said. “Someone better? That’s what I’m supposed to say, right? Even if it’s probably not true, since I doubt there are many people who are better than a Faceless Immortal. And—”
“Oh, Ranette,” Jaxy said, shaking her head.
“What?” she said. “I don’t do comforting, all right?”
“Wayne,” Jaxy said, “it will hurt. That’s okay. Pain is just your body and your mind acknowledging that this is awful.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled. “You’re a good friend, Jaxy. Even if you have terrible taste in women.”
“Hey!” Ranette said. “You chased me for the better part of fifteen years.”
“Yeah? And how’s my taste, on average?”
“I…” Ranette said. “Damn. Stop aiming for the vital bits, Wayne. This is supposed to be a friendly meal.”
“Sorry,” he said, then put his elbows on the table, holding his head in his hands. They still hadn’t seen their actual server, which made sense. This was a seriously fancy place; you could tell by their contempt for their customers.
“I meant it though, about being proud of you,” Ranette told him. “You’ve grown, Wayne. A lot. We’ve been going to dinner for years now, and you haven’t hit on me once.”
“I promised. Besides, you’re taken. I ain’t a poacher.” He slumped back in his seat. “This wouldn’t be so bad if that day weren’t coming up.”
“The day…” Ranette said. “When you have to deliver payment to that girl?”
Wayne nodded. “Allriandre,” he said. “She and her sisters don’t have a daddy because of me.” His day of trials was the worst day of the month, where he had to go face her. And admit what he’d done: murdering her daddy over twenty years ago.
You know you aren’t forgiven.
I know.
You will never be forgiven.
I… I know.
Ranette leaned forward, tapping on the saltshaker with her fingernail. It was in the shape of a Roughs-style boot. So fancy that the awful decor somehow wrapped around to being tasteful.
“What if,” Ranette said to him, “you didn’t see her this month?”
“I’ve gotta,” Wayne said.
“Why?”
“It’s my punishment.”
“Says who?”
“The cosmere,” Wayne said. “I took her daddy from her, Ranette. I gotta remember. What I am. I gotta look her in the eyes and let her know I ain’t forgotten.”
The two women shared a look.
“Wayne,” Jaxy said, “I’ve… wanted to talk to you about that. The way you treat that girl. I realize today might not be the best day…”
“Nah,” he said. “Hit me, Jaxy. I’m mostly numb already. It’s a good day to get punched.”
“Why do you insist,” Jaxy said, “on seeing her in person?”
“So she can punish me.”
“Does she want to punish you?”
“She seems to enjoy it when it happens.”
“Does she? Does she really, Wayne? Because the way you tell it, sounds like she asks you not to come see her.”
“Because she’s bein’ too nice,” Wayne explained. “But I don’t deserve anyone bein’ nice to me.”
“I told you, Jax,” Ranette said. “He’s got the self-awareness of a half-eaten sandwich.”
Wayne frowned. What was she on about?
“I’ve never met anyone,” Jaxy said, “who can get inside the heads of other people as well as Wayne can. He’ll understand.”
“He gets in their heads when it suits him,” Ranette said. “Not when it means seeing things he doesn’t want to see.”
Wayne looked away. Ranette said a lot of mean things, but they weren’t… well, they weren’t actually mean. He joked, and she joked. And sure, sometimes there was an edge of truth to it, but that’s what friends was about. Making you look a little silly when you were together, so that you didn’t look really stupid when you were apart.
But the way she said that last bit… it stung. He understood people, didn’t he? Wax and Marasi, they were great at the investigating part. But they needed someone like Wayne who really knew the people who lived in the dirt—and counted themselves lucky, because at least it wasn’t mud. Currently.
“Wayne,” Jaxy said, “what do you imagine that girl wants? Can you think like her? Does she really want you to come remind her of her pain each month?”
“I… I want her to be happy. And beating up a fellow like me who made her unhappy… well, that’s the best way.”
“Is it?” Jaxy asked softly. “Or is it about you? Doing some kind of penance? Wayne, each time you ignore what that girl asks of you, you take a little joy from her and turn it into your own suffering.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“You can see it,” Jaxy said, patting his hand. “I know you can.”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” he said, shoving back from the table and stalking off through the restaurant.
From behind, Ranette’s voice chased him. “I told you. He might not be as bad as I pretend, Jax. But he’s not as good as you want to pretend either.”
He traded the bell for his hat back, and only took one of the fellow’s cufflinks in the exchange—a fair trade for them keeping his hat over some stupid bell that barely even worked. Outside, unfortunately, he all but collided with two men in bowler hats and vests.
Rust and Ruin! They’d found him.
“Sir,” the taller of the two bean counters said, “we need to talk about your finances.”
“Whataboutem?” Wayne said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“You have far too much money,” the shorter one said. “Please, sir. We have to talk about your investment strategy! Your current lack of diversification is a crime.”
Well, to ashes with him, then. This day had actually found a way to get worse. He let them shove him into their hearse of a car, off to the mortuary. Or, well, the accounting firm that kept track of his wealth. Same difference.
In either case Wayne, as everybody knew him, was dead.
The trellium was moving.
Steris had been getting out a harmonium sample for study in conjunction with the trellium spike. And the trellium did not seem to like it.
Wax moved the small bead of harmonium—suspended in a vial of oil—toward the trellium. It again rolled away.
“Curious,” Wax said. Then, on a hunch, he burned a little steel inside of him.
The trellium spike rolled away from him again. “I didn’t Push,” he said. “It responded to me burning steel.”
“That’s a result!” Steris said, scribbling furiously. “Wax, that’s actually useful.”
And… yes, it was, wasn’t it? A way to test if someone was burning their metals? Seekers could do that, but having a mechanical way to accomplish it…
“Oh!” Marasi said. “I should have mentioned. That spike had a similar reaction to the other spikes I harvested.”
“It’s like Allomancy,” Steris said. “Like the trellium spike is using Allomancy to Push.”
“No,” Wax said. “It’s more like magnetism. The trellium spike responds to other sources of Investiture in the way one magnet responds to another one.”
“It wants to stay apart from them,” Steris said.
“More like it has the same charge,” Wax said. “I doubt that it ‘wants’ anything.” Though, as this was part of a god, who knew? Particularly since, so far as he was aware, other Invested items with a similar charge didn’t repel one another.
A little experimenting showed him that the two metals—harmonium and trellium—repelled each other with increasing strength the more he tried to push them together. Again, like magnets. The response to harmonium was stronger than the response to him burning his metals.
Wax consulted a large chart on the wall; it displayed an extrapolation from a notebook that Death had given Marasi. Once upon a time, that event had been one of the most surreal Wax had ever heard described. These days it seemed almost commonplace.
The book detailed how to use Hemalurgy. He’d studied the notes in depth, and had created a chart of all the points on the body where spikes could be placed. A detailed list of the ways they worked, requiring linchpin spikes to coordinate and keep the network functioning.
The Set was experimenting further with Hemalurgy. And his sister, Telsin, was out there somewhere, high up in the leadership of the Set. Seven years ago, he’d thought she’d been kidnapped… but he should have seen. Telsin’s incredible ambition fit perfectly with the Set’s goals.
It had led her to spiking herself. Pinning pieces of souls to her own. It nauseated him to think of the people murdered for that purpose—to realize what Telsin and the Set were doing. In his fingers, he held not only a relic from a long-forgotten god; he held a tattered symbol of his sister’s rejected humanity.
Rusts. He really was going to have to talk to Harmony, wasn’t he? As little as Wax liked it, he was a part of this. He needed to finish what he’d begun all those years ago, when he’d fled Elendel—leaving his house to the machinations of his sister and uncle.
Footsteps on the stairs announced Allik, arriving with refreshments. Wax wasn’t certain if the former airman did that so assiduously because he thought of this mansion as his home and wanted to entertain, or if he just enjoyed having people around to try his baking. Nevertheless, the sight of him—mask up, grinning widely and bearing two plates of chocolate biscuits—did lighten Wax’s mood.
“You are being careful,” Allik said to Wax, “never to put too much ettmetal in one place, yah?”
“I don’t think I have enough to worry about.”
“Still, always good to remember,” Allik said. “One of the basic rules of handling it.”
They had all kinds of odd rules about the metal, and Wax had trouble separating the superstitions from the science. Supposedly, you couldn’t put a large concentration of ettmetal in one place, otherwise it caused strange reactions—though Allik didn’t know specifics.
The perky Southerner marched up to Marasi with his offerings and held them out.
“Oh!” Marasi said, snatching a biscuit. “My favorite.”
Wax took one too. He was accustomed to biscuits that could block a bullet in a pinch. It was the Basin way. Yet these were moist, even gooey. It was odd, but not unwelcome.
Marasi in particular seemed to be infatuated by the way Allik put sweetened chocolate in everything. “They’re best when warm,” she said, munching as Allik sat across from her. Wax had wiped off that lab table, hadn’t he? “You know, you look more handsome when I’m eating choc. How curious.”
“You just say that,” Allik replied, “because you want me to make more.”
“Of course that’s why I say it,” she replied, seizing a second biscuit.
Wax sat back on his stool, enjoying his biscuit, thinking about the metals laid out on the table in front of him. Harmonium and trellium. They repelled each other. More and more violently, the closer together they were…
I wonder…
He gathered up the materials and was setting up a new experiment in the safe box as another set of footsteps started down the steps. This made them all pause. Wax carefully slipped some bullets from his pouch, ready to Push them. Though when the door opened, it revealed a prim man in a brown suit. He had stark blond hair—perfectly styled—and spectacles with wire frames. The type of person whose entire bearing screamed, “I fact-check people’s jokes.”
“VenDell?” Wax guessed, putting his bullets away. The kandra was wearing a new body, but the creature’s air was distinctive.
“Indeed, Lord Ladrian,” VenDell said, entering the room and undoing his satchel. “You’ll forgive me for letting myself in.” He set a piece of paper on the table beside Marasi. “This is for you, Miss Colms.”
“What is it?” she asked, wiping her fingers on a napkin that Steris materialized as if from nowhere.
“A note recovered from the site of your engagement with the Set,” VenDell said. “LeeMar recovered it before the other investigating constables could notice it.”
“Wait,” Marasi said. “You have kandra among the constables I don’t know about?”
“Several,” VenDell said.
“Who?”
“Cassileux, for one. LeeMar took over her life about sixteen months ago, after the real woman died in that raid on the Nomad Gang.”
Marasi’s jaw dropped. “But… Cassileux and I had lunch last week!”
“Yes, she keeps an eye on you,” VenDell said.
“She didn’t tell me!”
“Should she have?” he asked absently, then sniffed at the biscuits that Allik offered him. “How horrible.”
“Aw,” Allik said, his shoulders slumping.
“I’ve told you, Master Allik,” VenDell said. “I am a carrion feeder, and strictly carnivorous. These… creations… would not suit me. But if you are interested, I’ve been considering putting up good money for one of your masks.”
“What?” Allik said, hand going to his mask, which was still up on the top of his head. “My mask?”
“There has been discussion among the kandra lately,” he said, “about your masks. Many of us think they are as integral to your natures as hair or nails—virtually a part of your skeleton. As such, I have decided to start collecting them for future bodies. Do you have any for sale?”
“Uh…” Allik said. “You’re an odd man, yah?”
“I’m not a man at all,” VenDell said. “I’ll leave you with an offer; let me know if you’d entertain some negotiations. I would only require the mask after your death, of course. If you persist in spending time with this group of people, that might not be far off.”
He walked toward Wax next, then held out his hand. “May I see it, please?”
Wax sighed, then turned to the safe box where he’d been setting up his experiment. He took out the trellium spike and presented it to VenDell, who held it up toward the light.
“I thought you couldn’t touch those,” Steris said from the table beside Marasi.
“You are mistaken, Lady Ladrian,” VenDell said. “This is not a kandra’s spike, so touching it is not taboo.”
“I’m not going to let you take this one,” Wax warned. “It needs to be studied.”
“Unfortunately,” VenDell said, “I have no intention of recovering it, so we won’t get to see if you could actually prevent me or not.”
“You don’t want it,” Wax said, “because it’s not a kandra spike? Unlike the ones that belonged to Lessie, which you stole from us.”
“You gave those up willingly.”
“I was not in an emotional state to do anything willingly,” Wax said. “I still want to know how much that metal—trellium—had to do with what happened to her.”
“The way Paalm… acted was a direct result of her decision to remove one of her spikes,” VenDell said. “The trellium spikes may have exacerbated her ailment, but were not the root cause.”
“Harmony implied otherwise to me.”
VenDell turned the spike over in his fingers and didn’t reply. Instead he nodded toward the safe box. “What are you doing here?”
“Electric current to soften some harmonium,” Wax said, pointing at the equipment he’d set up: a system to deliver a powerful current through a tiny nugget of harmonium held at the center, coated in oil to prevent it from corroding. “That’s the closest we ever came to dividing it.”
“It cannot be divided,” VenDell said. “Not so long as Harmony remains Harmony. I’ve explained this.”
Steris trailed over with her clipboard, and they shared a look. It was true; harmonium wasn’t actually an alloy. Yet Harmony held both Ruin and Preservation—so somehow this metal was both atium and lerasium, blended in a way that defied ordinary scientific explanation.
It seemed reasonable there would be a way to split it. Yet, acids for selective dissolution had failed. Different heating methods to get the components to self-separate while fluid had failed. Electrolysis had failed.
A dozen other ideas had failed as well. There was a reason he’d lost momentum on the project. But of all they’d tried, electric currents seemed to have come the closest. He activated the machine, and didn’t bother closing the front of the safe box. He’d run this experiment often enough that he was comfortable doing it in the open.
The tiny bit of harmonium heated up. Marasi and Allik walked over, watching it glow with a powerful internal light. Then Wax activated the other component of the machine—which pulled the nugget apart.
Harmonium was pliable, more so when heated. When softened like this, it seemed to react differently to the air—no longer as volatile. As if… as if it were becoming something else.
This specialized machine continued to deliver electric current through the grips at the sides—but now those moved apart and stretched the metal. If he continued, he could divide it cleanly, making two pieces of harmonium. That itself wasn’t remarkable. But the machine was set to pull only a few sixteenths of an inch, then stop. The result was two globs of harmonium at the sides, with a narrower stringy bit between.
“What is this supposed to do?” VenDell asked.
“Watch,” Wax said. With his tinted goggles, it was probably easier to see—but after a few moments the metals started to rearrange. The glob of harmonium on the left side began to glow a blue-white. The one on the right adopted a stranger air, growing silvery and reflective. It almost seemed liquid, like mercury—the surface incredibly smooth.
“Is that…?” Marasi asked.
“No,” Wax said. “If you cut it in half right now, when the metals cool you’ll just have two bits of harmonium. Yet in this state, the metals almost separate. You can see the left bit taking on aspects of lerasium. The bead on the right… that’s how atium was described.”
“It always looks like it wants to divide,” Steris said. “That it’s arranging itself to do so.”
“Ruin and Preservation,” Marasi whispered. “Atium and lerasium.”
“I think that’s the reason harmonium is so unstable,” Wax explained. “Harmony has trouble acting, right? He’s mentioned it before: his two aspects work against one another, leaving him indecisive, impotent.”
“He’s merely in equilibrium,” VenDell said. “Equal parts the need to protect and the need to let things decay.”
“Well,” Wax said, “I’m increasingly certain we face a god who isn’t hindered by that kind of equilibrium. I was skeptical at first, but Marasi convinced me.”
“Trell is dangerous, VenDell,” Marasi said, squinting against the bright light. “We have to do something. We can’t wait for Harmony.”
“Almost I am persuaded,” VenDell said. “What did you think of the note?”
“It’s confusing,” Marasi said. “And vague.”
Wax shot her a glance.
“I’ll explain,” she promised. “But first… are we going further with this?” She nodded toward the safe box they were all crowded around.
“Well,” Wax said, taking the trellium spike back from VenDell, “we noticed that this metal repels all forms of Investiture—and it repels harmonium even harder. I thought… what if I stretched a nugget apart like this, then used trellium to try to split it? Might that repel the two sides harder, and actually separate out some atium and lerasium?”
He looked to the others in turn.
“What… are the chances that blows things up?” Allik asked.
“Considering harmonium is involved?” Steris said. “I’d say it’s incredibly likely. But worth a try.”
“That’s why we have the safe box, right?” Wax said. “Plus, that’s a very small bit of harmonium. How much energy could one piece of metal contain?”
The words hung in the air.
“So…” Allik said. “I think we should all go next door and be very far away when he does this, yah?”
“Yah,” Marasi agreed.
Wax took a deep breath, then nodded. “I’ll rig a timer,” he said. “This basement is reinforced with enough concrete to pave a highway, so we should be fine upstairs.”
“We could make the kandra do it,” Marasi said. “They’re basically indestructible.”
“Basically,” VenDell said, “is infinitely distant from ‘completely,’ Miss Colms. I have been instructed to help you with your little infiltration—I believe you have a corpse for me?—not to risk my life trying to accomplish the impossible.”
“Timer it is,” Wax said.
“I’ll get a tiny sliver of trellium,” Steris said, “so we don’t have to use the entire spike.”
“Good idea,” Wax said. He should be able to repurpose his hydraulic punch…
It took a good half hour to set the whole thing up. All the while, Wax wondered. What if he did split harmonium? He’d have two metals, the bodies of gods, each capable of incredible things from ancient lore, like manipulating time or creating beings with mythological Mistborn abilities. What if he had that power? What would that change about him?
Nothing, he thought to himself. I’ve held that power. And when I had it, I used it to save my friends.
He finished the calibrations, leaving a machine on a timer set for five minutes. Once the time was up, it would press the tiny trellium shard forward into the center of the heated and stretched harmonium bead.
He closed the safe box tight, and together they all fled up the stairs and secured the thick metal door at the top. And then… Wax realized five minutes had probably been excessive.
“So…” he said as he pulled out his watch, “what about that note?”
“It was in one of the boxes in the cavern,” VenDell explained. “One of the few that weren’t destroyed in the explosions.”
“During the mission earlier,” Marasi said, “I spotted a masked figure in dark clothing. I had a slowness bubble up at the time, and she approached as a blur. I got barely a glance at her before she left, but I think this must be from her.”
She turned the paper toward Wax, showing a simple message.
We are watching, Marasi, it read. And we are impressed.
It had a small symbol at the bottom, with three interlocking diamonds. It looked vaguely familiar to Wax, though he didn’t think he’d ever seen the symbol before. More, the pattern reminded him of something.
“You ever seen this?” Wax asked VenDell.
“Uh…” he said, “that is a question I’m forbidden to answer. My apologies, Lord Ladrian.”
“Forbidden?” Steris asked. “By whom?”
“Harmony himself, Lady Ladrian,” VenDell said. For the first time that Wax could remember, the creature looked uncomfortable. “I suggest you speak to him directly.”
“Great,” Marasi said. “Nice to know we’re working for the defense of the planet itself while God is acting like a child with a secret crush.”
“False gods are like that,” Allik said, and earned glares from all around the room. He just shrugged.
They all fell silent. Why, Wax thought, does a few minutes feel like forever when you’re waiting?
“So,” VenDell said. “Your bones, Lord Ladrian. Have you reconsidered—”
“Not for sale.”
“But—”
“Not for sale.”
“Ah well, then,” VenDell said. “Can’t blame a person for inquiring. Such a fine skeleton, and for it to go to waste…”
A sudden blast shook the entire building. Chandeliers rattled, the window to Wax’s right cracked, and he heard dishes fall somewhere in the kitchen.
“Rusts,” Marasi said. “They probably felt that in the next octant over. You… think the safe box held?”
“One way to find out,” Wax said, walking toward the door to the basement.
“At least,” Allik said to the others, “we planned for it this time, yah?”
“Always plan for an explosion around Wax,” Steris said. “It saves a ton of effort.”
Wax pulled the door open, then started down the steps.
Excerpted from The Lost Metal, copyright © 2022 by Brandon Sanderson.
