The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel (20 page)

“What?”

“Give me until evening,” Wayne said. “I’ll go back to the base and clear the place out. Once that’s done, you can sing to the conners, tell them everything you know. Don’t worry, you weren’t told enough to get us into real trouble. Our contingency plans will protect us. I’ll tell the boss I told you to do it, and so you’ll be all right.

“But don’t talk to them until they promise to let you go free in return. Get a solicitor into the room; ask for one by the name of Arintol. He’s supposed to be honest.” At least, that was what people on the streets had told Wayne. “Get the conners to promise you freedom with Arintol in the room. Then, tell them everything you know.

“Once you’re out, get away from the City. Some of the gang may not believe that I told you to talk, so it could be dangerous for you. Go to the Roughs and become a millworker. Nobody will care, there. Either way, kid, stay out of crime. You’ll just end up getting someone killed. Maybe you.”

“I…” The youth looked relieved. “Thank you.”

Wayne winked. “Now, resist everything I ask you from here out.” He started coughing and dropped the speed bubble.

“—that I can’t hear,” Brettin said, “I’m stopping this right here.”

“Fine!” Wayne yelled. “Boy, tell me who you work for.”

“I ain’t giving you anything, conner!”

“You’ll talk, or I’ll have your toes!” Wayne yelled back.

The kid got into it, and Wayne gave the constables a good five minutes of arguing before throwing up his hands and storming out.

“I told you,” Brettin said.

“Yeah,” Wayne said, trying to sound dejected. “Guess you’ll just have to keep working on them.”

“It won’t work,” Brettin said. “I’ll be dead and buried before these men talk.”

“We could only be so lucky,” Wayne said.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Wayne said, sniffing the air. “I believe that the scones have arrived. Excellent! At least this trip won’t be a complete waste.”

9

“So we aren’t sure yet what happened,” Waxillium said, sitting on the floor beside the long sheet of paper covered with his genealogical results. “The Words of Founding included a reference to two more metals and their alloys. But the ancients believed in sixteen metals, and the Law of Sixteen holds so strongly in nature that it can’t be disregarded. Either Harmony changed the way that Allomancy itself works, or we never really understood it.”

“Hmmm,” Marasi said, sitting on the floor with her knees to the side. “I would not have expected that from you, Lord Waxillium. Lawman I had anticipated. Metallurgist, perhaps. But philosopher?”

“There is a link between being a lawman and a philosopher,” Waxillium said, smiling idly. “Lawkeeping and philosophy are both about questions. I was drawn to law by a need to find the answers nobody else could, to capture the men everyone considered uncatchable. Philosophy is similar. Questions, secrets, puzzles. The human mind and the nature of the universe—the two great riddles of time.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“What was it for you?” Waxillium asked. “One does not often meet a young woman of means studying law.”

“My means are not so … meaningful as they may seem at first,” she said. “I would be nothing without my uncle’s patronage.”

“Still.”

“Stories,” she said, smiling wistfully. “Stories of the good and the evil. Most people you meet, they aren’t quite either one.”

Waxillium frowned. “I’d disagree. Most people seem basically good.”

“Well, perhaps by one definition. But it seems that either one—good or evil—has to be pursued for it to be significant. People today … it seems they are good, or sometimes evil, mostly by
inertia
, not by choice. They act as their surroundings prepare them to act.

“It’s like … well, think of a world where everything is lit with the same modest light. All places, outside or inside, lit by a uniform light that cannot be changed. If, in this world of common light, someone suddenly produced a light that was significantly brighter, it would be remarkable. By the same token, if someone managed to create a room that was dim, it would be remarkable. In a way, it doesn’t matter how strong the initial illumination was. The story works regardless.”

“The fact that most people are decent does not make their decency any less valuable to society.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, blushing. “And I’m not saying I wish that everyone were less decent. But … those bright lights and those dim places fascinate me, Lord Waxillium—particularly when they’re dramatically out of order. Why is it that in one instance, a man raised in a basically good family—surrounded by basically good friends, with good employment and satisfactory means—starts strangling women with copper wires and sinking their bodies in the canals?

“And conversely, consider that most men who go to the Roughs adapt to the general climate of lax sensibilities there. But some others—a few remarkable individuals—determine to bring civilization with them. A hundred men, convinced by society that ‘everybody does it this way,’ will go along with the most crude and despicable of acts. But one man says no.”

“It’s really not as heroic as all that,” Waxillium said.

“I’m certain it doesn’t look that way to you.”

“Have you ever heard the story of the first man I brought in?”

She blushed. “I … yes. Yes, let’s just say that I’ve heard it. Peret the Black. A rapist and an Allomancer—Pewterarm, I believe. You walked into the lawkeeper station, looked at the board, ripped his picture off and took it with you. Came back three days later with him over the saddle of your horse. Of all the men on the board, you picked the most difficult, most dangerous criminal of the bunch.”

“He was worth the most money.”

Marasi frowned.

“I looked at that board,” Waxillium said, “and I thought to myself, ‘Well, any of these blokes is right likely to kill me. So I might as well pick the one worth the most.’ I needed the money. I hadn’t had anything to eat in three days but jerky and a few beans. And then there was Taraco.”

“One of the great bandits of our era.”

“With him,” Waxillium said, “I figured I could get some new boots. He’d robbed a cobbler just a few days earlier, and I thought if I brought the man in, I might manage to get a new pair of boots out of it.”

“I thought you’d picked him because he’d shot a lawkeeper over in Faradana the week before.”

Waxillium shook his head. “I didn’t hear that until after I brought him in.”

“Oh.” Then, remarkably, she smiled in eagerness. “And Harrisel Hard?”

“A bet with Wayne,” Waxillium said. “You don’t look disappointed.”

“This just makes it more real, Lord Waxillium,” she said. Her eager eyes glittered in an almost
predatory
way. “I need to write these down.” She fished in her handbag, pulling out a pad and pencil.

“So that’s what motivated you?” Waxillium asked as she scribbled notes. “You study out of a desire to be a hero, like in the stories?”

“No, no,” she said. “I just wanted to learn about them.”

“Are you sure?” he said. “You could become a lawkeeper, go out to the Roughs, live these same stories. Don’t think that you can’t because you’re a woman; high society might lead you to believe that, but it doesn’t matter out beyond the mountains. Out there, you don’t have to wear lacy dresses or smell like flowers. You can belt on some revolvers and make your own rules. Don’t forget, the Ascendant Warrior herself was a woman.”

She leaned forward. “Can I admit something to you, Lord Waxillium?”

“Only if it’s salacious, personal, or embarrassing.”

She smiled. “I
like
the lacy dresses and smelling like flowers. I
like
living in the city, where I can demand modern conveniences. Do you realize I can send for Terris food at
any hour
of the night, and have it delivered?”

“Incredible.” It actually was. He hadn’t realized that was possible.

“As much as I like reading about the Roughs, and though I may like to visit, I don’t think I’d take well to living there. I don’t mix well with dirt, grime, and an overall lack of personal hygiene.” She leaned in. “And, to be perfectly honest, I have no problem at all letting men like you be the ones to belt on revolvers and shoot people. Does that make me a terrible traitor to my sex?”

“I don’t think so. You
are
pretty good at shooting things, though.”

“Well, shooting
things
is okay. But people?” She shivered. “I know the Ascendant Warrior is a model for self-actualized women. We have classes on it at the university, for Preservation’s sake, and her legacy is written into the law. But I don’t really want to put on trousers and be her. I feel like a coward for admitting it sometimes.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “You have to be yourself. But none of that explains why you are studying law.”

“Oh, I do want to change the city,” she said, growing eager. “Though I feel that tracking down every criminal and punching holes in them with pieces of metal moving at high speeds is a terribly inefficient way to do it.”

“Sure can be fun, though.”

“Let me show you something.” She dug in her handbag a little more, and came out with some folded-up sheets of paper. “I spoke of how people generally act in response to their surroundings. Remember our discussion about the Roughs, and how there are often
more
lawkeepers per person there than here? And yet, crime is more prevalent. That’s the result of environment. Look here.”

She handed over some of the pages. “This is a report,” she said. “I’m putting it together myself. It’s about the nature of crime as related to environment. See here, this discusses the major factors that have decreased crime in some sections of the city. Hiring more constables, hanging more criminals, that sort of thing. They are of medium efficacy.”

“What’s this at the bottom?” Waxillium asked.

“Renovation,” she said with a deep smile. “This case is where a wealthy man, Lord Joshin himself, purchased several parcels of land in one of the less reputable areas. He began renovating and cleaning up. Crime went way down. The people didn’t change, just their environment. Now that area is a safe and respectable section of the city.

“We call it the ‘broken windows’ theory. If a man sees a broken window in a building, he’s more likely to rob or commit other crimes, since he figures nobody cares. If all the windows are maintained, all the streets clean, all the buildings washed, then crime goes down. Just as a hot day can make a person irritable, it appears that a run-down area can make an ordinary man into a criminal.”

“Curious,” Waxillium said.

“Of course,” she said, “this isn’t the only answer. There will always be people who don’t respond to their surroundings. They fascinate me, as I’ve mentioned. Anyway, I’ve always been good with numbers and figures. I see patterns like this and wonder. Cleaning up a few streets can be cheaper than employing more constables—but can actually decrease crime to a greater degree.”

Waxillium looked over the reports, then back at Marasi. She had a flush of excitement in her cheeks. There was something captivating about her. How long had they been here? He hesitated, then pulled out his pocket watch.

“Oh,” she said, glancing at the watch. “We shouldn’t be chatting like this. Not with poor Steris in their hands.”

“We can’t do more until Wayne returns,” Waxillium said. “In fact, he should have been back by now.”

“He is,” Wayne’s voice said from the hallway outside.

Marasi jumped, letting out a faint yelp.

Waxillium sighed. “How long have you been out there?”

Wayne’s head poked around the corner, wearing a constable’s hat. “Oh, a little while. Seemed like you two were having some kind of ‘smart people’ moment. Didn’t want to interfere.”

“Wise of you. Your stupidity can be infectious.”

“Don’t use your fancy words ’round me, son.” Wayne strolled in. Though he wore the constable’s hat, he was otherwise normally dressed in his duster and trousers, dueling canes at his hips.

“Did you succeed?” Waxillium asked, standing up, then reaching down to help Marasi to her feet.

“Sure did—I got some scones.” Wayne grinned. “And the dirty conners even paid for them.”

“Wayne?”

“Yes?”

“
We’re
dirty conners.”

“Not no more,” he said proudly. “We’re independent citizens with a mind toward civic duty. And eating the scones of dirty conners.”

Marasi grimaced. “They don’t sound that appetizing when described that way.”

“Oh, they were good.” Wayne reached into the pocket of his duster. “Here, I brought you some. Got a little mushed up in my pocket, though.”

“No, really,” she said, paling.

Wayne, however, chuckled and brought out a paper that he waved at Waxillium. “Location of the Vanishers’ hideout in the city. Along with the name of their recruiter.”

“Really?” Marasi said eagerly, rushing over to take the paper. “How did you do this?”