Page 165 of The Lost Metal

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He came out with a yellow handkerchief, a bunny sewn in the corner.

“I suggest,” Wayne called up to him, “taking up pickpocketing. It’s rusting useful!”

And with that, Wayne tossed the man’s aluminum flask full of metals away into the darkness.

The man watched it go, his eyes widening in horror. The wind picked up again as they fell. The man scrambled, searching his body frantically.

“No others?” Wayne shouted. “Too bad!”

Not-Wax reached for Wayne as the two of them plummeted, his eyes bloodshot and enraged. But fallin’, it happened fast. Faster and faster, the more you did it. Wayne had always wondered why that was.

“Hey!” Wayne shouted. “When you meet Death—”

They crashed through the skylight, then slammed to the floor with a crunch.

All went black.

A few minutes later, Wayne blinked open his eyes and groaned. Thehealing he’dstored had been enough. Barely. He rolled over and looked at the Coinshot’s crumpled, broken body.

“Aw, man,” he muttered. “We dropped too fast. I didn’t get to say my awesome line.”

He found the keys to the handcuffs in the man’s pocket, and unlocked himself. Ruin, his body hurt. He’dhave bruises something fierce in the morning. The metalmind had repaired the worst parts first, and saved him from dyin’. But it hadn’t been enough for anything more than an economy-class-type healing, and now he was all tapped out.

“When you see Death,” Wayne said, kicking the corpse in the side, “tell him he owes me fifty clips.”

He wandered over to Wax, who had removed the metalminds from the disembodied arm of the woman who absolutely wasnota clone of Wayne. Takin’ those out was smart. There were stories of Compounding Bloodmakers regrowing a whole damn body from a limb that got ripped off.

“We should remove their spikes too,” Wayne said. “Just in case.”

“Let’s stop the bomb first.”

“Your sister is up there,” Wayne warned. “With the rocket thing, ready to shoot off.”

“Right, then,” Wax said. They crossed the room to the skylight.

“Why’dyou keep so close to fight?” Wayne asked. “You shoulda stayed up high. Best way to fight someonemaybea little like me, in purely superficial ways.”

“I couldn’t. She would have run out the time. I needed to stay in close, force her to engage me.”

Huh. Well, maybe both of them had wanted things personal this time. They positioned themselves in the center of the room, ready for Wax to grab ahold and launch them both up into the open skylight—toward the mist, which cascaded down like a ghostly waterfall.

But Wax paused.

“Mate?” Wayne asked.

Still staring up, Wax fished in his pocket, then brought out a small earring. Shaped like a bent nail. A religious icon for a Pathian, but to him, so much more.

He rarely put it in, except when he had to. Tonight he hooked it into his ear, and then he whispered something.

66

“I did my part,” Wax whispered. “I became your sword. I want you to do your part now.”

My part,Harmony said in his head,is to put you where you can—

“No,” Wax said, reloading quickly while staring up at the mists. “Not good enough. Notdamn neargood enough, Sazed. I can kill men. I’m far too good at that. But I can’t kill a god. If Autonomy intervenes, I will need you.”

Autonomy won’t intervene,he said.It’s not our way, as it exposes us. She has Invested your sister, but mostly to let Telsin communicate with her followers and visualize plans in greater complexity than an ordinary human. She will not fight you. You won’t win this next part with bullets.


Tags: Brandon Sanderson Fantasy