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.
Marasi felt about a thousand times better when she arrived at the Fourth Octant Constabulary headquarters, showered and cleaned up, wearing her preferred uniform of a vest and jacket over a calf-length skirt.
As a special detective, she technically wasn’t required to be in uniform, but she usually wore one anyway. The uniform was a symbol. It meant she represented something bigger than herself: the people of the Basin and the good of all. The uniform comforted those who saw her—at least those who were happy to have a constable around. And if it gave warning to those who were up to something, then that was part of the reason for the law.
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The Lost Metal
As she entered, younger constables in the main headquarters room lowered their reports and conversations hushed, all eyes turning to Marasi. Then came the applause.
Rusts, that always felt so weird. You weren’t supposed to be applauded by your coworkers, were you? More than one new constable—most of them women—watched her with wide eyes as she passed. Marasi knew that she had specifically inspired both Wilhelmette and Gemdwyn to join up last year.
That left her conflicted. On one hand, she’d rather the broadsheets stop writing stories about her. On the other hand, if it was inspiring other women…
Either way, she was glad to stride into the back rooms, passing the offices of the higher-ranked constables. Even a few of these called out congratulations. She stopped and chatted with a few, asking after their own investigations. Though she just wanted to be on with her work, this was important too. You never knew when you’d need another constable’s expertise.
Besides. It was good to have friends among her peers. Finally.
Eventually she neared Reddi’s office. She passed Constable Gorglen on his way out—the tall man’s head almost brushed the ceiling. He nodded to her and made way, and she found Reddi inside the large rear office, frowning at his desk. His drooping mustaches had greyed in recent years, and she knew the uniform of the constable-general weighed on him. He was more politician than officer these days, spending half his time in meetings with the city leaders.
“Constable Colms,” he said, scratching his chin. “Can you make any sense of this?” He showed her the drawing, which proved to be a crude sketch of Constable Gorglen as a giraffe hiding in a constable’s uniform. It said Approved by Expert Types at the bottom.
“I’ll talk to Wayne,” she promised.
Reddi sighed, then slipped the paper into a very large folder on the corner of his desk—the one where he kept complaints about Wayne. Reddi had evidently stopped returning it to the cabinet.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said.
“Sorry?” he asked. “Rusts, constable. Sorry? How many people did you two bring in today? At any rate, don’t apologize for him—I’ve got a feeling if you weren’t keeping Constable Wayne in check, this folder would be ten times as thick.”
She smiled. “He does do best when channeled toward… productive activities.”
Reddi grunted, picking up another folder. “Don’t tell him this, but his imitation of me is amusing. Though you should know, those two men with the bowler hats were looking for him again.”
“Any idea who they are?” she asked.
“Some accounting firm, probably their collections department,” Reddi said. “It… seems Wayne owes money to some important people this time, Marasi. The kind of people that even I can’t dissuade.”
“I’ll figure it out,” she said with a sigh. Harmony’s Bands… she hoped Wayne hadn’t stolen something truly valuable.
“I’ll leave that to you then.” Reddi rapped the folder with his knuckles. “The governor has been breathing down my neck asking for evidence the Outer Cities were siphoning off weapons, and you provided it. Thank you, Marasi. Really.”
“I hope to deliver even more, sir,” she said. “I have a notebook from their leader, and it has some interesting shipping manifest information.” She pulled the book out, then held it open to show him. “We’ll want to make copies, get it through research and code cracking in case I’ve missed something, but I’ve already read some curious things.”
She tapped a list near the front. “This,” she said, “is a series of tests the Cycle was overseeing to determine what can be shipped into Elendel without being stopped by customs or raising red flags with inspection agents.”
“Wait,” Reddi said. “Into Elendel?”
“Exactly,” Marasi said.
“It’s not illegal to ship things into Elendel,” he said. “This group was breaking the law by smuggling things out.”
“Which is why this is so intriguing,” she said. “The shipping list is all very mundane, too. Foodstuffs, lumber… but they’ve noted which ones were inspected, which package sizes were suspicious, all of that.”
“I find this… vaguely unnerving,” he said. “I don’t have any idea what it means, and that’s even worse.”
“I’m going to dig into it,” Marasi promised. “For now, I’ll get some of these other pages copied by the scribes. They’ll give you hard evidence that the explosives and weapons we found today were going to be smuggled to Bilming. That shipment was leaving the city, as have many others.” She hesitated. “I’ve had an idea.”
“Go on…”
“I’ll need authorization to work outside the city for a while… and if possible, we need to keep this news from the press for a few days. That means quieting the other constables. I know it will be hard, but it will help me chase down the people these men were going to supply.”
“What are you planning?”
“According to this book, someone in Bilming is expecting a shipment soon. Weapons, explosives, and… food.”
“That matches what we found in the cavern,” Reddi said, looking at the initial reports. “Lots of food.”
That was curious. Why would they be smuggling dried foods to the Outer Cities? Were these soldier or sailor rations?
“Regardless,” Marasi said, “the Set tends to run silent in times like this. I didn’t see any radio equipment down there—they were deep enough that a signal couldn’t get out anyway. So our enemies probably don’t know their team has fallen. Which means…”
“…We could send in the shipment,” Reddi said. “And perhaps capture the people who are behind all of this.”
“Or at least move one step farther up the chain.”
“They’d be expecting to meet with one of their own,” Reddi said, rubbing his chin. “We couldn’t maintain the subterfuge for long.”
“Well, sir,” Marasi said, “we do have the Cycle’s corpse.”
“There are a lot of people who don’t believe in this shadowy organization you’re chasing, Colms,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“What do you believe, sir?”
“All those people we interviewed six years ago were certainly up to something,” he said. “I’m still not a hundred percent sure it wasn’t merely an Outer Cities plot—and the idea of some kind of evil god doesn’t sit well with me. But honestly, I’ve learned not to bet against you.”
“You do have to admit,” Marasi said, “at the very least, that Waxillium’s uncle was involved in some kind of paramilitary group.”
“Yes,” Reddi said, “and someone assassinated him in prison—along with the others who followed him. If you say that was the Set, I believe you. But I need you to be aware—the governor and his people want our official focus to be on the Outer Cities and the threat they present to Elendel supremacy, not on some secret society that might be pulling their strings.”
“Understood, sir,” she said. “But I think this could accomplish both goals. Most of the people we caught were common street thugs—not actual Set members. I’ll bet the only one down there who had any real contact with the Set was the man who had this book. It mandates radio silence from inside the city, to not be overheard, in the days leading up to a drop-off—so no one in Bilming is expecting to hear from him. I believe we can surprise them. Particularly since we have that corpse.”
“Wait,” Reddi said, “how does a corpse help us?”
“I figured I’d ask Harmony to lend us a kandra to imitate the dead man for the operation. Wayne could be a generic lackey, speaking with a Bilming accent, to help shore up the subterfuge.”
“Oh. Um. Right.” Reddi got uncomfortable when she implied she was close with Harmony—and doing so was a little cheeky on her part, since she’d never met him herself. She knew Death far better than she knew God.
Regardless, Reddi didn’t like being involved with the kandra—Faceless Immortals had made him uncomfortable ever since the business with Bleeder. He’d probably prefer she did her thing and didn’t mention how. But, well, she wanted everything to be on the up-and-up.
The department deserved to know how she got her results—she didn’t accomplish them without things like Malwish tech on loan from Allik, or access to Faceless Immortals. She’d originally hoped that by making all this clear, her reputation would drop to more reasonable levels. She’d been wrong. Still, that had its advantages.
“My reform suggestions?” Marasi asked. “About how we police slums, and the proper training of constables? How is that going?”
“The other constables-general have agreed to the articles,” he said. “All but Jamms, but I think after today he’ll listen. Just need to get the governor to sign off on the ideas.” He narrowed his eyes. “I like this shipment plan of yours. Get me a detailed proposal.”
“Will do, sir. We’ll need to move quickly.”
“You will have the full support of the department,” Reddi said. “The governor is going to be so pleased with today’s results that I can all but guarantee you extra funding if your operation requires it. I’ll wait for that proposal, but in the meantime I’ll have some people get to work on replacing the supplies that were destroyed today.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, taking a deep, satisfied breath.
“Something wrong, constable?” he asked.
“No, sir,” she said. “Just… appreciating the path I’ve walked, and where it’s led me.”
“Appreciate it on your own time, constable!”
She eyed him, and he returned a rare grin.
“It’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say,” he explained. “The governor likes it when I’m gruff. Fits his expectations better, I suppose. Oh, before I forget. Constable Matieu says you had something specific you wanted to show me? Something that’s not in the reports. Was that the book?”
“That and a little more, sir,” she said, taking the spikes from her shoulder bag. “I want you to turn these three in to the scientists at the university.” She held up the thinner fourth one. “I’m going to keep this one for a bit though.”
“Ruin…” Reddi whispered. “Is that… atium?”
“No, though it’s nearly as mythical. We think it’s trellium, a metal from offworld.”
He eyed her. Talk of other worlds didn’t sit right with him either, and she suspected he’d never fully accepted what she said about Trell.
“Isn’t that the stuff they used to blow up the prison?” Reddi asked.
“I don’t know if I believe that story,” Marasi said. “There’s no proof Wax’s uncle had any of this on him.”
“Still,” Reddi said, “be careful with that. If it’s half as bad as ettmetal…”
“I’ll be careful,” she said. “I plan to deliver it to Lord Ladrian for study.”
Reddi grunted. “I thought he was retired.”
“Depends,” Marasi said, tucking the trellium spike back into her shoulder bag. “For this, you should consider him on the case.”
“Well, I never revoked his constable privileges.” Reddi wiped his brow with his handkerchief. “Just try to keep him from… causing any incidents. When he’s involved, things tend to get… unsettling.”
“I’ll do what I can, sir.”
“He doesn’t have any other hidden apocalyptic family members or half-sane wives with mystical powers, does he?”
“If any show up, I’ll have him file a report. And maybe move confrontations with them to next quarter, for budgetary reasons.”
Reddi smiled. “I’m glad you’re out there, Colms. Not just for my career. I’m glad there’s someone rational around, to… you know, balance the insanity. Go. Chase your mysteries, and let me know what you need.”
She nodded, feeling a deep satisfaction as she left his office and walked back down the hallway. She had achieved so much—both in life and in this case. She had done it; she’d arrived.
And is this all? She tucked that annoying thought away and hurried to the commissary, where she grabbed a sandwich and began stuffing it down. She didn’t have long until her meeting with Wax. Still, Marasi was only halfway done when the cleaning lady came to take her tray.
“Actually, I still have half,” Marasi said, holding up the rest of her sandwich.
“Thanks,” the lady said, taking the sandwich from Marasi’s hand and taking a bite. “I was hungry.”
“Wayne,” Marasi said with a sigh, looking closer at his face. “What are you doing?”
“Hidin’ from those bean counters.”
“The two men with the suits and bowlers?” Marasi said. “They bothered Captain Reddi about you again, Wayne. Who do you owe money to this time?”
“None of your business,” he said around another bite of her sandwich. One might have thought he’d look silly in a serving woman’s apron and cap, but—with the fake breasts—he wore it well. Wayne could never be accused of poor fashion sense. Just poor taste.
“I think it is my business,” Marasi said.
“No, it ain’t,” Wayne said. “I’ll make sure they don’t bother old Reddi no more. You contacted Wax?”
“I sent him a note. Meeting at three o’clock.”
“Then why are we wasting time playin’ dress-up?” Wayne said. “We got work to do!”
Wax landed at the front doors to Ladrian Mansion, his ancestral home. Steris let go of his waist—as always, she’d clung to him with a death grip while flying, but had worn a gleeful grin the entire time.
They walked up the steps, and Wax undid the locks with a few Steelpushes in a specific sequence, causing the door to swing open before them. Others could use a set of keys, but few occupied the place any longer. The staff had moved to the tower along with Wax and Steris. These days the place had a single tenant, who stayed there off and on.
Wax called out, “It’s just us, Allik!”
Aside from giving the Malwish man a place to stay, the mansion had—over the years—undergone a small transformation. Space in the Ahlstrom Tower penthouse was tight, so Wax and Steris kept their projects and hobbies here.
Upstairs, Steris had three rooms for her ledgers, notebooks, and catalogues—which she liked to look through in her spare time. The things she thought they’d need—delivered these days via mail order—might have overwhelmed a lesser household. However, having repeatedly benefited from her preparations, Wax didn’t feel he had reason to object.
Steris went to the washroom to fix her hair after the flight, but Wax paused next to the door, where a pair of long Roughs dusters hung on the wall. One was white, and the other—his old one—was sliced into two layers of thick ribbons. A mistcoat. Each coat had a Roughs hat on a peg above it. It wasn’t quite a shrine. Because one of the people it represented wasn’t dead; he’d just moved on to a different kind of adventure. Still, Wax paused, kissed his fingertips, then pressed them to the wood beneath Lessie’s hat. Again, it wasn’t quite a ritual. It was merely something he did.
A moment later, a masked head popped out above the banister on the second level. “Oh, hi!” Allik said. His current mask was bright red, with flakes of yellow paint radiating from the center. It always made him look eager, like his face was sweating sunlight. Then he raised it, and his toothy grin beamed even more brightly.
For all his short, spindly figure and somewhat embarrassing beard, Allik was a force to be reckoned with. At least when it came to his pastries.
“A new batch is almost done!” he called to Wax. “O Hungry One!”
“Don’t start that again, Allik,” Wax snapped. “And I didn’t come here because I’m hungry.”
“But you’ll still eat, yah?”
“Yah,” Wax admitted.
“Great!” He slammed his mask back down and disappeared into his room on the second floor, where he kept the fireplace running overtime. He’d had an oven installed as well, because the Malwish could never have too much heat. He was technically a “junior goodwill ambassador” to the Basin, a title he’d earned two years ago by being willing to take up semipermanent residence in Elendel. Wax had been glad to see it. Allik had been fooling no one with his constant “coincidental” trips up here to see Marasi.
Besides. His pastries were… well, they were really good.
Marasi and Wayne were apparently running late, so Wax went to brew some tea while Steris fetched “a few” of her ledgers from upstairs. She came wobbling back balancing some two dozen of them, then plopped down on a couch in the sitting room. Wax gave her a cup of tea, then—frowning— went looking for the source of an odd smell.
He’d just found half an old meat bun in the pocket of his mistcoat when a dog came trotting in through the front door. A large grey-and-white short-haired animal that almost reached Wax’s waist.
“Hey,” it said with a feminine voice. “Did you bring Max?”
“No,” Wax said. “I wanted to run some experiments, and you know how those get.”
“Explody?” the dog—MeLaan—asked. “Well, damn. I kept this body on for no good reason.”
“Do you actually like playing fetch?” Wax asked, disposing of the moldy meat bun. “From what I can gather, most of you hate nonhuman bodies.”
“Yeah, they’re demeaning,” MeLaan said, settling down on her haunches. “Except a body… influences you. It’s hard to explain to mortals. Think of it like an outfit. If you’re dressed up all fancy in a glittering gown, you want to dance and twirl. If you’re wearing trousers with an axe over your shoulder, well, you’re going to want to smash something. I only put bodies like this on when a mission requires it. But once I’ve got it on…” She shrugged, a gesture that looked distinctly odd in the dog’s body. “But no fetch for me today. I’ll go change.”
She wandered off toward the room where Wax let her store her other bodies: bones, hair, nails. Most of the bones weren’t real, fortunately. She much preferred what the kandra called True Bodies, made of stone, crystal, or metal.
He had joined Steris in the sitting room and was halfway through the latest broadsheet—a boy delivered some each day for Allik—when he heard Marasi and Wayne tromp into the foyer. Loud as a freight train, those two could be. He shook his head, sipping his tea.
“In here!” Steris called, and Wayne burst in a moment later. “Wayne. Could you sometime remember to brush your feet off before you track mud in? This isn’t the Roughs.”
“Be glad it’s just mud,” he said. “We been through the bowels of the earth today, Steris, and it was full o’ stuff what’s normally in bowels.”
“A perfectly awful description,” she said.
“Oh, stop complainin’ at me,” he said, hopping from one foot to the other. “We got news. We got news!”
Marasi strode up and pulled something long and thin from her pouch. A single delicate spike, like a long nail with a needle point. The otherwise silvery metal had reddish patches to it, especially visible when it caught the light.
Wax breathed in sharply. “You got one. How?”
“Remember that lead in the sewers I told you about?” Marasi said. “Found a member of the Set there, augmented with Hemalurgy, heading up a gang of ruffians.”
“Fortunately,” Wayne said, “he didn’t have any use for the spike once Marasi was finished with him.”
“Technically, he did still have a use for it,” she said. “Which is why I had to remove it. Wax, he had four spikes. Isn’t that supposed to give Harmony control over a person?”
“Supposedly,” he said. That had been the whole issue with Lessie. Though the numbers varied by species, the principle was the same: spike yourself too many times, and Harmony could control you. It was an exploit to Hemalurgy that went back to the ancient days, when Ruin had directly controlled the Inquisitors, like Death himself.
But lately, Marasi had begun to encounter members of the Set with too many powers. Wax hadn’t believed at first, but if she’d confirmed it…
“The limitation has been circumvented somehow,” Wax said, inspecting the trellium spike. “Perhaps it has to do with the placement of this spike, as a linchpin?”
“Wax,” Marasi said, “this group was packing supplies for Bilming. Weapons and field rations.”
He shared a look with Steris. Rusts… the Outer Cities apparently thought war was inevitable. And with the vote today, it very well might be.
Still, to have another trellium spike after all these years… It reminded him of what had happened to Lessie, but he forced himself to hold it anyway. This wasn’t from her body. They didn’t know if her strange trellium spikes had influenced her madness. The kandra all said the spikes hadn’t been to blame, but something had turned her against Harmony, sent her down a paranoid path. Something had taken the woman he loved and turned her into Bleeder. He refused to accept that she’d been fully in control of herself.
Those old pains were dead and buried these days, so he was able to pick up the spike and inspect it. This metal was a manifestation— presumably—of the body of a god. Much like harmonium, also called ettmetal. What could he learn from this new sample?
The door swung open, revealing MeLaan wearing stylish blue trousers and a buttoned shirt. She’d been going for an androgynous look these days, with very short blonde hair and almost no hint of breasts. For her friends, she often maintained relatively similar features. This face, for example, looked like her—just thinner, less overtly feminine.
As usual she had picked a tall, limber body—this one was at least six foot four. She was toweling off her hair—she liked to wash it after putting on a new body, to better style it and make sure she’d got the grain right.
“Hey!” she said, seeing the spike in Wax’s fingers. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup,” Wayne said. “Marasi turned some bloke into hamburger to get it.”
“Nice!” MeLaan said.
“I did not turn anyone into hamburger,” Marasi said.
“She’s more a fan of liver,” Wayne said, and earned a glare.
“Speaking of meat,” Wax said, “did you leave a meat bun in the pocket of my mistcoat?”
“Uh…” Wayne said. “It was… um…”
“You realize I’ll have to get that thing laundered,” Wax said. “And you’re going to pay.”
“Hey,” Wayne said. “You don’t got no proof I did that.”
Wax gave him a flat stare.
“You can’t convict me on a hunch,” Wayne said, folding his arms. “I know my rights. Marasi’s always quoting them to people once we finish beating them up. I get a trial by my peers, I do.”
“Yes,” Steris said, “but where would we find so many slugs on short notice?”
Wayne spun toward her, then—after just a brief pause—grinned widely. Those two were getting along better these days, which Wax enjoyed seeing. For now, he kept inspecting the spike. What were its properties? Could it be melted? Could it…
He paused, then reached to his back pocket. There, nearly forgotten, was the envelope he’d found on his desk earlier. He opened it again and slid out the iron earring, a traditional accoutrement of the Pathian religion—and a means of communing with Harmony. Piercing your body with metal was a way to connect to God and give him some measure of influence over you.
He read the note again: You’ll need to make a second, once the proper metal arrives.
Rusts. Why would Harmony tell him to make a second earring, presumably out of Trell’s metal?
There was no explanation in the envelope, of course. Harmony knew Wax far too well. A mystery was a better way to get his attention than an explanation.
Damn him.
He tucked that envelope away again. “Nice work,” he said to Marasi. “Very nice work.”
“Thank you,” she said. “We should have a chance at some more members of the Set soon. I’m planning a sting.”
She turned toward MeLaan, who was leaning against the wall, arms folded. For someone who spent her life in subterfuge—imitating others and doing missions for God himself—she certainly did like to stand out. Today she had left her cheeks faintly transparent to allow the emerald of her skeleton to show through.
“I could use your help, MeLaan,” Marasi said. “I have a corpse that needs to get up and walk around—just long enough to trick the Set.”
MeLaan grimaced. “I would love to, but… I’ve got a thing…”
“We could work around your schedule,” Marasi said.
“That might be hard,” MeLaan said. “Since it’s kind of on another planet…”
“Another planet?” Marasi said.
“Well, maybe between planets?” MeLaan said. “I’m not entirely sure. Harmony wants some of us to strike out, begin exploring, learning about the cosmere. It’s become evident that the cosmere knows about us.” She nodded toward the spike pinched between Wax’s fingers.
“What’s it like?” Marasi asked MeLaan, with a certain… hunger in her eyes. “Traveling out there. How… do you even do it?”
“It’s difficult,” she said. “Both to get to the other side—which is an inversion of the real world—and to travel while there. I’ll be leaving soon, I’m afraid, but finding out what’s happening with the Set is a priority for Harmony. I’ll ask him to get you one of us to help on your mission, Marasi.”
Wax glanced at Wayne. MeLaan was leaving. Soon? He’d have to corner his friend and ask how he felt about that.
At that moment however, Allik burst through the door bearing a tray full of steaming pastries. “Aha!” he said, mask up to show off his grin. “A full room. Who wants cinnamon puffs with hot chocolate for dipping! You are obviously planning to save the world again, with those concerned faces. This is an action that requires much choc, yah?”
Wax smiled, enjoying Allik’s enthusiasm. He’d bounced back from the tragedy of losing so many friends to the Set years ago—tortured for information about airships. People are elastic, Wax thought. We can keep reshaping ourselves. And if we’re not quite the same as before, well, that’s good. It means we can grow.
Allik handed Marasi a mug of hot chocolate—almost comically large—with a wink. She took his hand and smiled, squeezing it. Four years of flirting and two years of formal dating, and those two still acted like schoolkids sometimes. Wax knew more about it than he really cared to, because Steris tended to take notes, then ask if she should be acting in equally ridiculous ways.
“There’s one other thing, Wax,” Marasi said. “I took a notebook from the Cycle I killed today. What do you make of this page?”
She handed it over and Wax settled back in his seat, Steris peeking over his shoulder as he read through dated entries in the notebook. “Looks like…” he said. “Annotated shipping records, into Elendel? ‘Box one yard square, stamped with foodstuff labels, inspected four out of six times. Larger crate with warning labels, inspected and quarantined. Crate, two yards across, detained every time…’”
Steris frowned. “It looks like they’re recording what gets inspected when shipped into the city.”
“Which is odd, right?” Marasi said. “It’s not hard to get shipments into Elendel. Only outgoing shipments are taxed for using our railway stations. That’s the entire problem; the Outer Cities are tired of paying us to ship their goods to one another.”
“Right,” Wax said. “Why is the Set so interested in what they can get into the city?”
“Maybe they’re planning to supply a rebel force inside it?” Steris said.
“But the whole point of their smuggling operation,” Marasi said, “is to get weapons out of Elendel. They don’t have any trouble giving weapons to the people inside Elendel.”
They sat in silence, considering. Wax glanced at Steris, who shook her head. No thoughts at the moment. Finally, he returned the book to Marasi. As Allik continued distributing pastries, Wax went over to Wayne, who had uncharacteristically passed up a mug of chocolate. Allik handed it to Wax instead.
“Hey,” Wax said to Wayne. “How much health do you have stored up? I might need your help with some experiments today.”
“Sorry, mate,” he said. “I gots an appointment.”
“You’re not going to get into trouble, are you?”
“The reverse,” Wayne proclaimed, then checked his pocket watch. Which was one of Wax’s. “Actually, I gotta get moving. I don’t wanna get shot for arriving late.”
“A moment, Wayne?” MeLaan said.
“I really—” he began.
“It’s important. Very important.”
Wayne wilted, then nodded, his eyes sorrowful. Wax gripped his shoulder, as if to impart some strength. This had been coming. MeLaan was a wanderer.
Wayne and MeLaan left, and Wax tried to focus on the wonderful gift Marasi had brought him. A whole trellium spike.
“I,” he said, “am going to need my goggles.”
Excerpted from The Lost Metal, copyright © 2022 by Brandon Sanderson.
