The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson [98]
Either way, he liked to think that burning his gold on occasion helped him—that each time he did it, it let him take the best of what he had been and mix it with the best of what he could be. An alloy of himself, then.
It disturbed him how much the two people he became hated each other. He could almost feel it like an oven’s heat, radiating from coal and stone.
He stood back up. Some of the men were staring at him, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t like the criminal bosses he’d often arrested in the Roughs. They had to worry about looking strong in front of their men, lest they be killed by someone who wanted to seize power.
Miles couldn’t be killed, and his men knew it. He’d once put a shotgun to his own head in front of them to prove it.
He walked over to a pile of trunks and boxes. A few were full of things Mister Suit had ordered stolen from Wax’s mansion, effects the man hoped would help them fight—or perhaps frame—the former lawkeeper. Suit had resisted killing Wax at first, for some reason.
Miles left them and walked around to the back side, where his own trunks had been deposited following the hasty evacuation of their old hideout. He picked through a few, then opened one. His white duster was inside. He took it out, shaking it, then got out a pair of sturdy Roughs trousers and a matching shirt. He slipped his tinted spectacles into the pocket, then went to change.
He’d been worried about hiding, worried that he’d be recognized and branded an outlaw. Well, an outlaw was what he had become. If this was the path he had chosen, he could at least walk it with pride.
Let them see me for what I am.
He would not turn from his course. It was too late to change one’s aim when the hammer was already falling. But it wasn’t too late to straighten his back.
* * *
Waxillium stared at the wall of Ranette’s sitting room. One side was piled with furniture, where she’d put things out of the way to make a handier pathway between her workshop and her bedroom. The other half of the room was strewn with boxes of various kinds of ammunition, bits of scrap metal, and cast barrels for gun making. There was dust everywhere. Very like her. He’d asked her for a way to prop up his paper pad, expecting her to find him an easel. She’d absently handed him some nails and pointed toward a hammer. So he’d just hung it on the wall, wincing as he drove the nails into the fine wood.
He stepped up, using a pencil to scribble a note to himself in the corner. The pile of shipping manifests that Wayne had brought lay to the side. Apparently, Wayne had left a gun he’d borrowed from Ranette in place of the manifests, considering it a fair trade. It had probably never occurred to him that a group of train engineers would be completely baffled to find their manifests gone and a pistol in their place.
Miles will strike at Carlo’s Bend, Wax thought, tapping the paper.
It had been easy to locate a shipment of aluminum. House Tekiel, tired of being robbed, was indeed making a large fuss over their new vault-style railway car. Wax could understand the reasoning; the Tekiels were best known as bankers, and their business relied on security and asset protection. The robberies been become a major embarrassment to them. They were intending to recover in a visible way.
It was almost like a dare to Miles and his Vanishers. Wax made another notation on his paper. The Tekiel shipment would follow a very direct route toward Doxonar. He’d mapped it, noting locations where the railway tracks wound close to one of the canals.
I won’t be able to watch where we’re going, Wax thought, making another notation. I need to know exactly how far from the previous stop Carlo’s Bend is.…
There wasn’t much time to prepare. He fingered the earring in his left hand, running his thumb along its smooth side as he thought.
The door opened. Wax didn’t look up, but the sound of the footsteps was enough to tell him it was Marasi. Soft shoes. Ranette and Wayne both wore boots.
Marasi cleared her throat.
“Nets?” Wax asked, distractedly