“It gets better,” she said softly, leaning down on the stool, their lantern burning low. “Because the ending has a surprise.”
“What surprise?”
“Once Jak was through the canyon—what now smelled like dead snakes and melted bones—he spotted the final challenge: the Lone Mesa. A giant plateau in the center of an otherwise flat plain.”
“That’s not much of a challenge,” Wayne said. “He could fly to the top.”
“Well he tried to,” she whispered. “But the mesa was Blatant Barm.”
“WHAT?”
“That’s right,” Ma said. “Barm had joined up with the koloss—the ones that change into big monsters, not the normal ones like old Mrs. Nock. And they showed him how to turn into a monster of humongous size. So when Jak tried to land on it, the mesa done gobbled him up.”
Wayne gasped. “And then,” he said, “it mashed him beneath its teeth, crushing his bones like—”
“No,” Ma said. “It tried to swallow him. But Jak, he wasn’t only smart and a good shot. He was something else.”
“What?”
“A big damn pain in the ass.”
“Ma! That’s swearin’.”
“It’s okay in stories,” Ma said. “Listen, Jak was a pain. He was always going about doing good. Helping people. Making life tough for bad people. Asking questions. He knew exactly how to ruin a bandit’s day.
“So as he was swallowed, Jak stretched out his arms and legs, then pushed—making himself a lump in Blatant Barm’s throat, so the monster couldn’t breathe. Monsters like that needs lotsa air, you know. And so, Allomancer Jak done choked Barm from the inside. Then, when the monster was dead on the ground, Jak sauntered out down its tongue—like it was some fancy mat set outside a carriage for a rich man.”
Whoa. “That’s a good story, Ma.”
She smiled.
“Ma,” he said. “Is the story … about the mine?”
“Well,” she said, “I suppose we all gotta walk into the beast’s mouth now and then. So … maybe, I guess.”
“You’re like the lawman then.”
“Anyone can be,” she said, blowing out the lantern.
“Even me?”
“Especially you.” She kissed him on the forehead. “You are whatever you want to be, Wayne. You’re the wind. You’re the stars. You are all endless things.”
It was a poem she liked. He liked it too. Because when she said it, he believed her. How could he not? Ma didn’t lie. So, he snuggled deeper into his blankets and let himself drift off. A lot was wrong in the world, but a few things were right. And as long as she was around, stories meant something. They was real.
Until the next day, when there was another collapse at the mine. That night, his ma didn’t come home.
PART ONE
1
TWENTY-NINE YEARS LATER
Marasi had never been in a sewer before, but it was exactly as awful as she’d imagined. The stench was incredible, of course. But worse was the way her booted feet would occasionally slip for a heart-stopping moment, threatening to plunge her down into the “mud” underneath.
At least she’d had the foresight to wear a uniform with trousers today, along with knee-high leather work boots. But there was no protection from the scent, the feel, or—unfortunately—the sound of it. When she took a step—map in one hand, rifle in the other—each boot would pull free with a squelch of mythical proportions. It would have been the worst sound ever, if not overmatched by Wayne’s complaining.
“Wax never brought me into a rusting sewer,” he muttered, raising the lantern.
“Are there sewers in the Roughs?”
“Well, no,” he admitted. “Pastures smell almost as bad, and he did make me march through those. But Marasi, they didn’t have spiders.”
“They probably did,” she said, angling the map toward his lantern. “You just couldn’t see them.”
“Suppose,” he grumbled. “But it’s worse when you can see the webs. Also there’s, you know, the literal sewage.”
Marasi nodded to a side tunnel and they started in that direction. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What?” he demanded.
“Your mood.”
“Nothing’s wrong with my rusting mood,” he said. “It’s precisely the mood you’re supposed to have when your partner forces you to stick your frontside into a buncha stuff that comes out of your backside.”
“And last week?” she asked. “When we were investigating a perfume shop?”
“Rusting perfumers,” Wayne said, his eyes narrowing. “Never can tell what they’re hiding with those fancy smells. You can’t trust a man what doesn’t smell like a man should.”
“Sweat and booze?”
“Sweat and cheap booze.”
“Wayne, how can you complain about someone putting on airs? You put on a different personality every time you change hats.”
“Does my smell change?”
“I suppose not.”
“Argument won. There are literally no holes in it whatsoever. Conversation over.”
They shared a look.
“I should get me some perfumes, eh?” Wayne said. “Someone might spot my disguises if I always smell like sweat and cheap booze.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“What’s hopeless,” he said, “is my poor shoes.”
“Could have worn boots like I suggested.”
“Ain’t got no boots,” he said. “Wax stole them.”
“Wax stole your boots. Really.”
“Well, they’re in his closet,” Wayne said. “Instead of three pairs of his poshest shoes. Which somehow ended up in my closet, completely by happenstance.” He glanced at her. “It was a fair trade. I liked those boots.”
Marasi smiled. They’d been working together for almost six years now, since Wax’s retirement following the discovery of the Bands of Mourning. Wayne was an official constable, not some barely-within-the-law deputized citizen. He even wore a uniform once in a while. And—
—and Marasi’s boot slipped again. Rusting hell. If she fell, he would never stop laughing. But this did seem the best way. Construction on the citywide underground train tunnels was ongoing, and two days ago a demolitions man had filed a curious report. He didn’t want to blast the next section, as seismic readings indicated they were near an unmapped cavern.
This area underneath the city of Elendel was peppered with ancient caves. And it was the same region where a local group of gang enforcers kept vanishing and reappearing. As if they had a hidden entrance into an unknown, unseen lair.
She consulted the map, marked with the construction notes—and older annotations indicating a nearby oddity that the sewer builders had found years ago, but which had never been properly investigated.
“I think MeLaan is going to break up with me,” Wayne said softly. “That’s why maybe I’ve been uncharacteristically downbeat in my general disposition as of late.”