“My strength,” she whispered, “never came from Allomancy. Rusts … I learned that lesson as a child. It doesn’t come from weapons, or even the credentials I carry.”
Please …
Entrone raised her into the air as a distinct clink sounded. He froze, then turned to see Armal. The source of the sound was a jar she’d dropped to the ground. Once full of light. Now empty.
A replacement for metal, Moonlight had said. But supercharged.
“I’m a constable, Entrone,” Marasi whispered. “My strength isn’t in myself. It comes from the people.”
A Rioting, with the power of a thousand Allomancers, hit their emotions like a physical wave of force.
60
Shame hit Marasi like a wave.
The Rioter’s art. Pick an emotion, then blast it into a person on full automatic. It was easier for emotional Allomancers to target their powers in a direction instead of at a specific individual.
It caught Entrone, judging by his stumble, but it also pounded Marasi with a sense of worthlessness. A sure knowledge of her own irrelevance and insignificance. Memories bubbled out from her souclass="underline" times she’d failed, times she’d fallen short. Had she ever not failed? Had she ever not been worthless?
She’d spent her childhood hidden away by a father who was embarrassed by her. She’d spent her youth dreaming of far-off legends, only to make an utter fool of herself when one of those legends walked into her life. Though Marasi’s romantic feelings for Wax were long since abandoned, the shame of how she’d thrown herself at him — to be rebuffed — was oppressive.
She gasped, rolling to her knees, head bowed, with drips of blood from a slice on her scalp trickling down her cheek.
She was nothing. She’d always been nothing.
Wax let her join him because he felt bad for her. She’d lived in his shadow for years. Unable to find her own constable partner, so she’d needed to borrow his. Unable to solve important cases without his help.
The weight of it smothered her, reminding her of everything she was not. And everything she would never be. And …
And it was nothing new.
She’d felt it all before. Less powerfully, yes, but none of this was novel. She’d lived with some of these fears for her entire life. Others she’d pushed through during her professional years. They were illogical.
Logic didn’t matter. Just emotion. But she could handle that emotion. She took a deep breath, whispered that it would soon pass, and shouldered it.
She could weather this.
Entrone wasn’t so capable. He curled up on the green-painted stone patio and whimpered softly. All the regeneration powers in the world wouldn’t help if he couldn’t move — and without his aluminum-lined hat he was completely subject to Armal’s control.
Some soldiers came running up, but one of the other townspeople dealt with them using what appeared to be a Soothing. It seemed that Armal had spread the Investiture around as Marasi had suggested.
Ultimately, the plan had worked. Marasi had succeeded in her primary job: empowering the people. She could rest now, and ride out the Rioting.
Except …
Except that portal was still opening. The invasion force was still coming.
This worry — narrow, focused, cutting through her shame like a knife — drove Marasi to focus. Because Marasi …
Marasi could function.
She began moving, feeling as if she were crawling away from it: her pain, her sorrow, her shame. With each grueling inch, she felt herself growing stronger. Shrugging off those lies. Embracing the person she’d become. A woman who didn’t care whose shadow she stood in — as long as the job got done. A woman who didn’t care if her father, or society, was ashamed of her — as long as she was confident in herself.
A woman who could, painfully but determinedly, pass Entrone huddled on the floor. And — with a breath of relief — get outside the directional force of Armal’s Rioting. The emotions vanished like smoke on a windy day. Marasi breathed out a long sigh, but there was no time to relax.
“Be careful,” she said to one of the others as they came up to her. “Entrone is Metalborn. He can heal and has incredible strength.”
Marasi wasn’t certain how long Armal’s power would last, but it seemed that she’d been granted exceptional abilities — like when Vin had drawn in the mists, as recorded in scripture.
Rusts. Could that glowing light be the body of a god, just like the mists had been? Marasi limped back into the mansion. She ignored the frozen guard. For him, this would all have passed in seconds. Perhaps he was still responding to her dodging out of the way of his bubble — or maybe Entrone had just ordered him to block the doorway.
Fortunately, the lord mayor had ripped her a new path. She pushed through the broken remnants of the wall, limped past the radio station, and stumbled up to the portal doorway. Most of the mansion, it turned out, was a sham. The vast majority of the space was taken up by this one room with the glowing floor. Radiant light had been poured into a pool twenty feet wide, and it was beginning to churn. Glowing brightly. Lighting the walls a ghostly white.
She didn’t have to think hard to grasp the mythological implications of this place. Rusts. That was raw, concentrated power. A single jar had given TwinSoul the power to create a stone body twelve feet tall, a second had transformed Moonlight into another person, and a third had given Armal the power to Riot emotions like the Lord Ruler himself.
This pool had to hold thousands of jars’ worth of the power. She stepped forward, then felt the most awful premonition: she was close enough that she saw them, in a place with a dark sky and misty ground. Thousands of inhuman soldiers with golden skin and glowing red eyes. Living statues. They carried rifles of an advanced design, and their stares seemed to bore holes in her mind. The men of gold and red had arrived. Bearers of the final metal, Miles had called them. Destroyers.
Marasi stumbled back from the pool, daunted, as the pains of the fight started to flare up; the bruises and cuts from being thrown by Entrone.
But before the call of that power, her pain seemed distant. Inconsequential. Once upon a time, she’d given up the Bands of Mourning. She didn’t need to hold power like that.
Today, she realized something else. She didn’t need power like that, but duty wasn’t about what you needed. It was about what was needed from you.
Centuries ago, the Last Emperor Elend Venture had been faced with a similar problem: how to dispose of a great deal of power. She knew what she needed to do.
A second later, she burst out of the building to find the clustered men and women of the Community speaking with the guards — calming them. Armal had finished tying up Entrone. He struggled, but strangely was unable to break free.
“Macil is a Leecher,” Armal said, gesturing to one of the nearby women. “He might be able to heal, but we’ve sucked the strength out of him.”
Marasi nodded, teeth gritted against the pain and the echoes of the Rioting she’d survived. “I need every Allomancer in this cavern gathered here, right now.”
“Why?” Armal said, walking up to her.
“There’s a well of power in the room nearby, and it’s opening a portal to something terrible,” Marasi said. “We’re going to stop it the old-fashioned way. By burning up all of the power with our abilities.”
61
With Wayne clinging to his back, Wax bounded across the city to the Shaw. He made one last jump from the top of a nearby skyscraper — one that was half as high as the Shaw — and launched them toward destiny, mists curling in their passing.