The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson [63]
“Why did they take you?” Waxillium asked Marasi. “There were better targets at that party. Women closer to the bloodlines they wanted.”
“You said she might have been a decoy to throw us off,” Wayne said, dumping some bendalloy into his teacup, then downing the entire thing in one draught.
“Yes,” Waxillium said, looking into her eyes and seeing a flash of something there. She turned away. “But if that were the case, they’d have wanted to take someone that wasn’t close to the same bloodline at all, not one who was a near cousin.” He pursed his lips, and then it clicked. “Ah. You’re illegitimate, then. Steris’s half sister, by Lord Harms, I assume.”
She blushed. “Yes.”
Wayne whistled. “Wonderful show, Wax. Usually I wait to call someone a bastard until the second date.” He eyed Marasi. “Third if she’s pretty.”
“I…” Waxillium felt a sudden burst of shame. “Of course. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s quite all right,” she said softly.
It made sense. Marasi and Lord Harms had grown so uncomfortable when Steris had spoken of mistresses. And then there was the specific clause about them in the contract; Steris was accustomed to infidelity on the part of a lord. That also explained why Harms was paying for the education and housing of Steris’s “cousin.”
“Lady Marasi,” Waxillium said, taking her hand. “Perhaps my years in the Roughs affected me more than I’d assumed. There was a time when I gave thought to my words before speaking them. Forgive me.”
“I am what I am, Lord Waxillium,” she said. “And I have grown comfortable with it.”
“It was still crude of me.”
“You needn’t apologize.”
“Huh,” Wayne said thoughtfully. “Tea’s poisoned.”
With that, he toppled to the ground.
Marasi gasped, immediately going to his side. Waxillium spun, looking at Tillaume just as the butler turned from his supposed tea preparations and leveled a pistol at Waxillium.
There was no time for thought. Waxillium burned steel—he kept it in him when he thought he might be in danger—and Pushed on the third button of his vest. He always wore one made of steel there, to use either for restoring his metal reserves or as a weapon.
It burst from his vest, streaking across the room and striking Tillaume in the chest just as he pulled the trigger. The shot went wild. Neither the bullet nor the gun registered as metal to Waxillium’s Allomantic senses. Aluminum, then.
Tillaume stumbled to the side and dropped the gun, pulling himself along the bookshelf in an attempt to flee. He left a line of blood on the floor before collapsing at the door.
Waxillium dropped to his knees beside Wayne. Marasi had jumped at the gunshot, and was staring at the gasping butler.
“Wayne?” Waxillium said, lifting his friend’s head.
Wayne’s eyes fluttered open. “Poison. I hate poison. Worse than losin’ a finger, I tell you.”
“Lord Waxillium!” Marasi said, alarmed.
“Wayne will be fine,” Waxillium said, relaxing back. “So long as he can talk and he has some Feruchemical reserves, he can pull through just about anything.”
“I’m not talking about him. The butler!”
Waxillium looked up with a start, realizing that the dying Tillaume was fiddling with the basket he’d brought in—the man reached a bloodied hand into it and pulled on something.
“Wayne!” Waxillium cried. “Bubble. Now!”
Tillaume fell back. The basket erupted in a blossoming ball of fire.
And then froze.
“Aw, hell,” Wayne said, rolling over to look at the explosion in progress. “I warned you. I said things are always blowing up around you.”
“I refuse to take responsibility for this one.”
“He’s your butler,” Wayne said, coughing and crawling to his knees. “Blarek! It wasn’t even good tea.”
“It’s getting bigger!” Marasi said, alarmed as she pointed at the explosion.
The fire blast had vaporized the basket before Wayne got his bubble up. The blast wave was slowly expanding outward, burning away the carpet, destroying the doorframe and the bookshelves. The butler himself had already been engulfed.
“Damn,” Wayne said. “That’s a big one.”
“Probably meant to look like an accident with my metallurgy equipment,