Armal shook her head. “Marasi, we can help each other. Don’t do anything rash. We don’t like the lord mayor, but we don’t want violence. There has been too much death already. If we hide you, we can talk, plan.”
“No time for planning,” Marasi said, hurrying back across the room and seizing her rucksack. “Go ahead and rough up this room. Tell them I’m extremely dangerous — tell them at length. Maybe it will delay them a little.” She fished a pistol out of her rucksack — making them gawk at her. All but Armal, who took it in with a disappointed expression.
“Look,” Marasi said to them, “things are about to get very dangerous and very confusing in here. My friends have dealt with a large number of their soldiers, so there’s a chance I can handle Entrone alone. But if I don’t come back, you need to overthrow him. Millions of lives might depend on it.”
“We can’t do that,” Armal said. “Even if we wanted to, we don’t have weapons.”
“You are weapons,” Marasi said. “If we can just get you…”
Metals. That was why there weren’t any down here. The Set had imprisoned a large group of people who either had extraordinary abilities, or were likely to give birth to people with them. Telsin and the others knew that unless they were careful, they’d be overpowered by their own captives. Hence the lack of metals and the story of “mutants” who could sense it.
How did you keep a bunch of dangerous people captive? You convinced them that they weren’t actually captives.
Marasi turned and met Armal’s eyes. “Which way to the lord mayor’s home?”
“I…”
Marasi held her gaze until Armal glanced back down — at Marasi’s credentials — and then looked to the side.
“You know, don’t you,” Marasi said. “That what I’m saying is true? Or at least you suspect. You’ve always known something was wrong.”
“I have a family,” Armal said. “Children and a husband I love.”
“And if Entrone wins,” Marasi said, “they are doomed to a life in darkness. Armal, he is planning to take your children from you. You need to find yourselves some metals and fight back with everything you have.”
“Find metals,” one of the women said, with a sniff. “What do you want us to do? Lick rocks, hoping there’s some iron in them?”
“I don’t know if I believe you or not,” Armal said. “And I’m … I’m not going to fight, even if I had the weapons. Maybe I can take you to where Entrone lives. But that’s all.”
Idiot people, Marasi thought, grinding her teeth. Then she felt foolish. They weren’t idiots because they were scared. They had been abused, lied to, locked away without the sun.
She shouldn’t be berating them. Indeed, in her shame at having done so, she felt an odd moment of clarity. These people, and those like them, were the reason she did what she did. Her reason for being a constable. It was her job to rescue them.
“Just take me to Entrone,” Marasi said. “I’ll find a way to handle him.” She lifted the rucksack to her shoulder.
Then froze as she heard it clink.
58
Wayne watched as Wax held the bottles over his head, then Pushed the caps off with a quick flip of Allomancy. Handy, that. When God had been designin’ Allomancy, had he considered that Coinshots would make good bottle openers?
Wax held one out to Wayne, who wiped his runny nose on his handkerchief, then took the bottle. He sighed, his head pounding, his body aching. Damn, he hated storing health. Made you feel like the stuff a fellow found between his toes after wearin’ his shoes too long.
He lounged back against the support running alongside the front of the billboard. They’d flown up here, naturally, because Coinshots liked being in the sky. Plus, Wax liked bein’ blatant. And what was more blatant than havin’ a beer in front of the city’s stupid propaganda poster?
The thing had a ledge in the front, so sitting was comfortable enough. This was presumably for the workers to erect the image: a nauseating picture of a fellow looking toward the sky, with lines of light spreading out behind him. INDEPENDENCE THROUGH SHARED STRUGGLE, it said. Wayne could have eaten the beer bottle wrapper and dumped a load the next day that made more sense than that.
The offending billboard was up high, pointed inward across the main highway. Toward the city’s central spire, Independence Tower, nicknamed the Shaw. After old Kredik Shaw.
Wax held his bottle out, and Wayne reached forward to clink the necks together. Then Wayne tipped his head back and drank, welcoming the strong taste. Hoppy, bitter. Like a good beer should be. Out in the Roughs they knew that. Why clean it all up, make it taste like somethin’ other than it was? City beers … they were for people that didn’t actually like beer.
The suds felt good on his throat, which turned all scratchy when he stored health. Like he was perpetually sick all the time, every day — but normally didn’t notice it because his body was good at covering it up. Only the moment he started storing health, the sickness got the upper hand.
Wax took a long pull on his own beer and relaxed into the taste, his eyes distant. Content.
“Remember that time,” Wayne said, “when you went to take the tops offa the bottles, but I’d smacked the beers on the table first, so they squirted out all over your head?”
“Which time?” Wax said.
“Heh,” Wayne said. “That joke never gets old.”
“Because it was ancient the first time you tried it.”
Wayne grinned. “I was thinkin’ of the first time, after you caught Icy Ben Oldson. You know, when Blinker was your deputy?”
“I remember.”
“Can’t believe you worked with that guy,” Wayne said, taking another drink. “He couldn’t shoot worth a bean.”
“He had other skills,” Wax said. “You can’t shoot worth a bean either, it should be noted.”
That was true. But honestly, Wax had terrible taste in deputies.
“I do remember that first time you got me by shaking the bottles,” Wax said, sipping his beer. “I remember it well. It was the first time you really seemed to smile.”
“Yeah, well,” Wayne said, “I’m good at pretendin’ to be things I ain’t, you know? I eventually put together how to feign bein’ a person who was worth somethin’. It’s a good lie. Still manage to believe it.” He took a drink. “Mosta the time.”
“Wayne…”
“I don’t need a speech, Wax.” Wayne rested his head back against the metal support, closing his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Just gotta put on the hat…”
“You’ve been feeling worse lately, haven’t you?” Wax asked. Annoying, perceptive fellow. “This isn’t only about MeLaan.”
Wayne shrugged, his eyes still closed.
“Out with it,” Wax said. “I gave you a beer. You owe me an answer — those are the rules.”
Ruin that man. He knew the rules.
“I’ve just been thinkin’,” Wayne said softly. “Rememberin’ my family, and how ashamed my ma would be of me for turnin’ out to be a murderer. I’ve been workin’ all these years to pay it off, but I don’t feel no better. So I guess I’m beginnin’ to wonder: Maybe I can’t ever do enough good to balance the bad I done. Maybe I’ll always be worthless.”
“You can’t pay it off, Wayne,” Wax whispered. “That much is true.”
Wayne opened his eyes.
“Durkel, that man you killed,” Wax said, “he’s always going to be dead. Nothing you can do will change that. No number of good deeds will bring him back or earn you forgiveness.”