There were some balconies over halfway up the tower, just inside a strong Coinshot’s reach. If the enemy had any measure of foresight, they’d be ready for incursions at those locations. They were still his best choice. The higher he got, the less ground he’d need to cover inside, where he’d likely have to fight for every inch.
Wax angled them toward a wide balcony with two broad, dark windows looking into the structure. Wax’s Push — the anchor too far away — was barely enough to get them to it, and they landed lightly amid some small planters.
“Aw…” Wayne said, dropping off his back. “We was supposed to go smashing through that glass! All dramatic-like!”
“That’s an excellent way to get cut to shreds,” Wax said, ducking to the side — out of sight of those windows. “I can’t heal. You can barely heal. And there’s a door right there.”
“The Ascendant Warrior did it,” Wayne grumbled.
“When?”
“Right before killin’ the Lord Ruler.”
“Since when have you known that sort of thing?”
“It’s in a little kids’ book that Max and I read sometimes,” he said. “Right about my level.”
Wax tried the door in the wall to the left of the large windows, but it was locked. “Assassinating the Lord Ruler?” Wax asked. “Isn’t that a little violent for a children’s book?”
“Mate,” Wayne said, “it ain’t violence if it’s religion. Don’t you know anythin’?”
“Apparently not,” Wax said. “I—”
He cut off as floodlights turned on in the room beyond, shining through the windows with blazing intensity. Wax pulled up against the wall, Wayne next to him. He dared a glance inside, and saw figures behind and between the lights, their silhouettes raising weapons.
Gunfire cracked like thunder, shattering the window.
“Damn,” Wayne said as the gunfire tapered off. “Those are soldiers, mate. I came down here to the Basin all those years ago ’cuz of a cute little case involvin’ train cars what got robbed in a funny way. How in Ruin’s own name did I end up getting mixed up with dark gods, armies, bombs destroyin’ cities, and … and ghosts, Wax. We still ain’t talked about the ghosts.”
Wax unhooked the Big Gun from inside his coat, where he carried larger weapons while flying. “Can you keep their attention while I try to flank them?”
Wayne smiled. “Scary Tree? We could do Scary Tree!”
“Do you have enough health stored for Scary Tree?”
“Mate, I don’t need health for Scary Tree,” Wayne said. “Just you watch.”
Wax nodded, whipping off his mistcoat and handing it to Wayne along with a spare gun — which Wayne took with a shocking level of calm. Usually they needed to throw some bullets in the fire or something to do Scary Tree.
Wayne proceeded to shoot the weapon from beside the window into the room beyond — mistcoat tassels waving — persuading everyone he was Wax. Wayne even did some eerily impressive vocal imitation.
People fixated upon Wax. They had tunnel vision about fighting the infamous lawman Coinshot. It was even worse these days — where news of his exploits had been exaggerated by the broadsheets. He supposed that finding and using the Bands of Mourning themselves hadn’t hurt his reputation.
While everyone was distracted by Wayne, Wax unlocked the door with a quick Push from the side on the deadbolt. When he’d glanced in through the window earlier, he’d noticed that a wall separated the room with the soldiers from wherever this door led. On cracking it open, he found a small hallway.
If he guessed right, their enemies would soon use this hallway to try reaching the balcony. So he slipped inside and Pushed himself up to the ceiling directly above the door on the other side. He held there, using nails in the floor. As anticipated, a small group of armed men snuck into the darkened hallway, light from the floodlights in the room beyond spilling in around them. Blinding them.
In the old days, Allomancers — Mistborn in particular — had been regarded like shadows. Or the mists themselves. Silent, hidden, practically formless. Wax could well understand the origins of those myths as the three soldiers passed underneath him in a tight cluster. He dropped and disposed of them the old-fashioned way: a few coins flung in the air, delivered noiselessly into their brains from behind. No crack of gunfire. No shouts of pain. Just the thump of bodies on the floor.
They’d left the door open, and he peeked into the main room. Those floodlights had been prepared for this and could move on wheels. Likely they’d had scouts watching for Wax bounding over the buildings below, and positioned their ambush where they thought he’d enter.
Wayne’s distraction was working well. The soldiers had pushed the floodlights into a line across the middle of the room and were arrayed in the gaps between them, shooting aluminum bullets.
As Wayne had noted, these people weren’t like the common street criminals Wax and Wayne had fought earlier in the day, with their rough clothing, mismatched and rugged gear. These wore red uniforms and carried sleek weapons — modern rifles. They knelt with precise postures, firing carefully. Several were slipping forward along the left side of the room to get an angle on Wayne.
Unfortunately for them, they weren’t watching their own flanks. And while aluminum guns might not be affected by Steelpushes, the enormous floodlights were. Tapping weight to make himself sturdier, Wax Pushed into the room, smashing the lights into one another — and crushing the soldiers who had set up between them.
He crashed all of this into a mess against the far wall, then decreased his weight and slid across the ground, using nails in the wall behind as an anchor. On the other side of the room, he positioned himself and Pushed again, sending some of the wreckage sweeping outward to catch the remaining soldiers — and sending them and the broken lights out the window into the mists.
A moment later, Wayne sauntered into the now-darker room and tossed Wax his mistcoat. “Sorry for the bullet holes.”
“A few holes won’t…” Wax said, then noticed — in the weak light of the room’s flickering ceiling light — that there had to be at least sixteen holes in it, even in some of the tassels. “How did you not get shot?”
“By not bein’ where the bullets was,” Wayne said.
Wax threw on the mistcoat duster. He had three guns on him. The Big Gun in his left hand. The Steel Survivor, aluminum but loaded with normal lead slugs. And Vindication, with aluminum bullets in the ordinary chambers and two hazekiller rounds ready for dealing with Metalborn.
“We’re really going up the inside?” Wayne said.
Wax nodded. They would need proper climbing equipment to scale the outside, even if there weren’t Set sharpshooters around.
Wayne pulled out a dueling cane. Wax met his eyes and shook his head.
“But—” Wayne said.
“Harmony knew,” Wax said softly. “He knew what I’d need to become.”
It seemed he had a moment to pause, though more enemies would undoubtedly be on the way. So he reached into his pocket and took out a small sliver of metal. He slipped it into his ear, then carefully — ritualistically — checked Vindication’s chambers to be certain there was a round in each.
As before, he felt a faint disconnect from the trellium earring. But he didn’t see visions. He felt Telsin’s attention come on him, and heard — faintly — what she was doing. Giving orders. Sounding frantic.