Maybe …
He knelt beside the opening, peering down. There had been a ladder here once, but it had rotted away—the remnants were visible below in a pile of old splinters. The air smelled musty and wet … with a hint of smoke. Someone had been burning a torch down there.
Wax dropped a bullet into the hole, then leaped in, gun out. As he fell, he filled his iron metalmind, decreasing his weight. He was Twinborn—a Feruchemist as well as an Allomancer. His Allomantic power was Steelpushing, and his Feruchemical power, called Skimming, was the ability to grow heavier or lighter. It was a powerful combination of talents.
He Pushed against the round below him, slowing his fall so that he landed softly. He returned his weight to normal—or, well, normal for him. He often went about at three-quarters of his unadjusted weight, making himself lighter on his feet, quicker to react.
He crept through the darkness. It had been a long, difficult road, finding where Bloody Tan was hiding. In the end, the fact that Feltrel had suddenly emptied of other bandits, wanderers, and unfortunates had been a major clue. Wax stepped softly, working his way deeper into the cellar. The scent of smoke was stronger here, and though the light was fading, he made out a firepit beside the earthen wall. That and a ladder that could be moved into place at the entrance.
That gave him pause. It indicated that whoever was making their hideout in the cellar—it could be Tan, or it could be someone else entirely—was still down here. Unless there was another way out. Wax crept forward a little farther, squinting in the dark.
There was light ahead.
Wax cocked his gun softly, then drew a little vial out of his mistcoat and pulled the cork with his teeth. He downed the whiskey and steel in one shot, restoring his reserves. He flared his steel. Yes … there was metal ahead of him, down the tunnel. How long was this cellar? He had assumed it would be small, but the reinforcing wood timbers indicated something deeper, longer. More like a mine adit.
He crept forward, focused on those metal lines. Someone would have to aim a gun if they saw him, and the metal would quiver, giving him a chance to Push the weapon out of their hands. Nothing moved. He slid forward, smelling musty damp soil, fungus, potatoes left to bud. He approached a trembling light, but could hear nothing. The metal lines did not move.
Finally, he got close enough to make out a lamp hanging by a hook on a wooden beam near the wall. Something else hung at the center of the tunnel. A body? Hanged? Wax cursed softly and hurried forward, wary of a trap. It was a corpse, but it left him baffled. At first glance, it seemed years old. The eyes were gone from the skull, the skin pulled back against the bone. It didn’t stink, and wasn’t bloated.
He thought he recognized it. Geormin, the coachman who brought mail into Weathering from the more distant villages around the area. That was his uniform, at least, and it seemed like his hair. He’d been one of Tan’s first victims, the disappearance that sent Wax hunting. That had only been two months back.
He’s been mummified, Wax thought. Prepared and dried like leather. He felt revolted—he’d gone drinking with Geormin on occasion, and though the man cheated at cards, he’d been an amiable enough fellow.
The hanging wasn’t an ordinary one, either. Wires had been used to prop up Geormin’s arms so they were out to the sides, his head cocked, his mouth pried open. Wax turned away from the gruesome sight, his eye twitching.
Careful, he told himself. Don’t let him anger you. Keep focused. He would be back to cut Geormin down. Right now, he couldn’t afford to make the noise. At least he knew he was on the right track. This was certainly Bloody Tan’s lair.
There was another patch of light in the distance. How long was this tunnel? He approached the pool of light, and here found another corpse, this one hung on the wall sideways. Annarel, a visiting geologist who had vanished soon after Geormin. Poor woman. She’d been dried in the same manner, body spiked to the wall in a very specific pose, as if she were on her knees inspecting a pile of rocks.
Another pool of light drew him onward. Clearly this wasn’t a cellar—it was probably some kind of smuggling tunnel left over from the days when Feltrel had been a booming town. Tan hadn’t built this, not with those aged wooden supports.
Wax passed another six corpses, each lit by its own glowing lantern, each arranged in some kind of pose. One sat in a chair, another strung up as if flying, a few stuck to the wall. The later ones were more fresh, the last one recently killed. Wax didn’t recognize the slender man, who hung with hand to his head in a salute.
Rust and Ruin, Wax thought. This isn’t Bloody Tan’s lair … it’s his gallery.
Sickened, Wax made his way to the next pool of light. This one was different. Brighter. As he approached, he realized that he was seeing sunlight streaming down from a square cut in the ceiling. The tunnel led up to it, probably to a former trapdoor that had rotted or broken away. The ground sloped in a gradual slant up to the hole.
Wax crawled up the slope, then cautiously poked his head out. He’d come up in a building, though the roof was gone. The brick walls were mostly intact, and there were four altars in the front, just to Wax’s left. An old chapel to the Survivor. It seemed empty.
Wax crawled out of the hole, his Sterrion at the side of his head, coat marred by dirt from below. The clean, dry air smelled good to him.
“Each life is a performance,” a voice said, echoing in the ruined church.
Wax immediately ducked to the side, rolling up to an altar.
“But we are not the performers,” the voice continued. “We are the puppets.”
“Tan,” Wax said. “Come out.”
“I have seen God, lawkeeper,” Tan whispered. Where was he? “I have seen Death himself, with the nails in his eyes. I have seen the Survivor, who is life.”
Wax scanned the small chapel. It was cluttered with broken benches and fallen statues. He rounded the side of the altar, judging the sound to come from the back of the room.
“Other men wonder,” Tan’s voice said, “but I know. I know I’m a puppet. We all are. Did you like my show? I worked so hard to build it.”
Wax continued along the building’s right wall, his boots leaving a trail in the dust. He breathed shallowly, a line of sweat creeping down his right temple. His eye was twitching. He saw corpses on the walls in his mind’s eye.
“Many men never get a chance to create true art,” Tan said. “And the best performances are those which can never be reproduced. Months, years, spent preparing. Everything placed right. But at the end of the day, the rotting will begin. I couldn’t truly mummify them; I hadn’t the time or resources. I could only preserve them long enough to prepare for this one show. Tomorrow, it will be ruined. You were the only one to see it. Only you. I figure … we’re all just puppets … you see…”
The voice was coming from the back of the room, near some rubble that was blocking Wax’s view.
“Someone else moves us,” Tan said.
Wax ducked around the side of the rubble, raising his Sterrion.
Tan stood there, holding Lessie in front of him, her mouth gagged, her eyes wide. Wax froze in place, gun raised. Lessie was bleeding from her leg and her arm. She’d been shot, and her face was growing pale. She’d lost blood. That was how Tan had been able to overpower her.
Wax grew still. He didn’t feel anxiety. He couldn’t afford to; it might make him shake, and shaking might make him miss. He could see Tan’s face behind Lessie; the man held a garrote around her neck.
Tan was a slender, fine-fingered man. He’d been a mortician. Black hair, thinning, worn greased back. A nice suit that now shone with blood.
“Someone else moves us, lawman,” Tan said softly.
Lessie met Wax’s eyes. They both knew what to do in this situation. Last time, he’d been the one captured. People always tried to use them against each other. In Lessie’s opinion, that wasn’t a disadvantage. She’d have explained that if Tan hadn’t known the two of them were a couple, he’d have killed her right off. Instead, he’d kidnapped her. That gave them a chance to get out.
Wax sighted down the barrel of his Sterrion. He drew in the trigger until he balanced the weight of the sear right on the edge of firing, and Lessie blinked. One. Two. Three.
Wax fired.
In the same instant, Tan yanked Lessie to the right.
The shot broke the air, echoing against clay bricks. Lessie’s head jerked back as Wax’s bullet took her just above the right eye. Blood sprayed against the clay wall beside her. She crumpled.
Wax stood, frozen, horrified. No … that isn’t the way … it can’t …
“The best performances,” Tan said, smiling and looking down at Lessie’s figure, “are those that can only be performed once.”
Wax shot him in the head.
1
Five months later, Wax walked through the decorated rooms of a large, lively party, passing men in dark suits with tailcoats and women in colorful dresses with narrow waists and lots of folds through long pleated skirts. They called him “Lord Waxillium” or “Lord Ladrian” when they spoke to him.
He nodded to each, but avoided being drawn into conversation. He deliberately made his way to one of the back rooms of the party, where dazzling electric lights—the talk of the city—produced a steady, too-even light to ward off the evening’s gloom. Outside the windows, he could see mist tickling the glass.
Defying decorum, Wax pushed his way through the room’s enormous glass double doors and stepped out onto the mansion’s grand balcony. There, finally, he felt like he could breathe again.
He closed his eyes, taking the air in and out, feeling the faint wetness of the mists on the skin of his face. Buildings are so … suffocating here in the city, he thought. Have I simply forgotten about that, or did I not notice it when I was younger?
He opened his eyes, and rested his hands on the balcony railing to look out over Elendel. It was the grandest city in all the world, a metropolis designed by Harmony himself. The place of Wax’s youth. A place that hadn’t been his home for twenty years.
Though it had been five months since Lessie’s death, he could still hear the gunshot, see the blood sprayed on the bricks. He had left the Roughs, moved back to the city, answering the desperate summons to do his duty to his house at his uncle’s passing.
Five months and a world away, and he could still hear that gunshot. Crisp, clean, like the sky cracking.
Behind him, he could hear musical laughter coming from the warmth of the room. Cett Mansion was a grand place, full of expensive woods, soft carpets, and sparkling chandeliers. No one joined him on the balcony.
From this vantage, he had a perfect view of the lights down Demoux Promenade. A double row of bright electric lamps with a steady, blazing whiteness. They glowed like bubbles along the wide boulevard, which was flanked by the even wider canal, the still and quiet waters reflecting the light. An evening railway engine called a greeting as it chugged through the distant center of the city, hemming the mists with darker smoke.
Down Demoux Promenade, Wax had a good view of both the Ironspine Building and Tekiel Tower, one on either side of the canal. Both were unfinished, but their steelwork lattices already rose high into the sky. Mind-numbingly high.