He frowned. Then the grenade went off.
Force transference. Every Push creates an equal and opposite Push. The grenade shoved the rifle barrel, which hurled her backward with enormous force — straight across the chasm.
She smashed back-first into the wall. That was enough to stun her, but then the grenade’s charge gave out. She dropped to the ground. Safely across the chasm as she’d planned, but winded and dazed.
Through teary eyes, she saw the Cycle run and leap across the chasm. So she scrambled, half-blinded by pain, searching the dusty stone, looking desperately for the pistol …
There!
He loomed overhead, a terrible shadow, his arm raised to smash her skull. In response, she delivered three shots straight into his face. He dropped.
Oh hell, she thought, sitting up despite the pain. Wax did things like this all the time. Leaping off cliffs, jumping around and slamming into things. How on Scadrial was his body not horribly ruined by it all?
She prodded at her ribs, hoping nothing was broken. Her left shoulder protested the most, and she winced. The pain was so distracting that she had to force herself to focus. A shot to the head should stop a Bloodmaker from healing, but some part of her insisted she should check anyway.
She lurched over to inspect the corpse. And found the bullet wounds pulling closed on the man’s head, the holes in the skull resealing.
Rusting hell.
She heaved the slumped-over body onto its back and scrambled to pull her knife from his belt. He was healing from bullets to the head? Something was very wrong here. She shot him again, but that would only be temporary.
Instead, she ripped aside his shirt — revealing four spikes pounded in deep between his ribs. As she had suspected. Knife in hand, she began the gruesome work of digging the spikes out. She dug faster as she realized at least one of them was made of a strange metal with dark red spots like rust. One they’d been searching for forever.
The Cycle’s eyes snapped open, despite his broken jaw and the holes in his skull. Marasi cursed and worked faster, bloodied fingers straining to pry out the first of the four spikes, which was so tightly embedded between his ribs it was difficult to yank free.
Those eyes. They were glowing a vivid red now.
“The ash comes again,” the man said through bloody lips, his voice strangely grating. “The world will fall to it. You will get what you deserve, and all will wither beneath a cloud of blackness and a blanket of burned bodies made ash.”
Marasi gritted her teeth, working on the rusty-looking spike, slick with blood.
“Your end,” the voice whispered. “Your end comes. Either in ash, or at the hands of the men of gold and red. Gold and—”
Marasi yanked the spike out. The red glow faded and the body slumped, the healing stopping. She felt at the throat anyway, and even when she found no pulse, she dug out the other three spikes.
Then she finally leaned against the wall, groaning softly. Wayne had better have found a way to deal with those other thieves — because Marasi doubted she had the strength to lift a gun at the moment. Instead she closed her eyes, and tried not to think about that terrible voice.
7
Max called for Wax to make each leap higher, faster. The boy’s shouts of glee carried over the rushing wind and flapping clothing. And rusts if that wasn’t infectious. Wax had been a solemn child, a trend that had continued into adulthood. But even he appreciated the rush that came from a well-executed Steelpush.
The sudden explosion of speed, the moment of stillness at the zenith. The lurch in the stomach as the plummet began. It wasn’t like any other experience a man could have — at least, not and survive.
In the distance a Malwish trade ship hovered into the city, flying using their strange ettmetal devices, as the two of them bounded across the city, afforded a view that was somehow reductive and expansive at once. From up so high, you could see the octant divisions along major roadways. You could understand and feel the different neighborhoods, the crunched-up forced familiarity of the slums, the expansive yet isolated grounds of the manors.
Once, Wax had assumed this kind of experience — not just the height, but the motion while traversing the city from above — would always be reserved for Coinshots. Then the Malwish airships had taken that assumption and tossed it out a window from three thousand feet.
Regardless, something about this perspective felt like it belonged to him. This was his city. He’d returned to it, and had — over the years — come to love it. It represented the best that people could achieve: a monument to ingenuity, a home to thousands of different ideas, types of people, and experiences.
At Max’s urging he took them higher, using skyscrapers as his anchors to Push upward, back and forth, until they landed near the top of one building in particular: Ahlstrom Tower. The penthouse was their home, and Wax had picked it specifically. It was tough getting to the peak of a too-tall building with Steelpushes as your anchors ran out below. Fortunately, this one had several tall skyscrapers unusually close, and that gave him anchors to Push himself inward.
Today Wax didn’t stop at their penthouse. He took them to the roof, where there was a little built-in platform for a worker to latch on and lower window-cleaning devices. Wax settled onto it and Max unhooked, though he was still tethered to the harness by a strong cord. Wax wasn’t worried about its reliability. Steris had designed it.
Max took out a pouch of twirly-seeds and began dropping them off the side of the building, watching them go spinning down toward the busy street below. Despite the height, Wax could hear cars honking on the roadway. Six years, and there was barely a horse-drawn carriage to be seen in the arteries below. Progress here was like a wrecking crew. You moved with it or you became rubble.
The platform faced north. To his left, the shimmering waters of Hammondar Bay were a vast highway toward … well, he didn’t rightly know what. The people of the Basin weren’t explorers. For all their love of stories about Wax in his young days, or worse that fool Jak, most were content to enjoy their city. That was a problem with Elendeclass="underline" it had everything you thought you’d need, so why go looking elsewhere? They hadn’t even realized there was an entire Southern Continent out there until an airship had sailed up to investigate the Basin.
Yes, there had been expeditions since then. But most people were content here, and he couldn’t blame them. His best efforts at improving life had been focused on the Basin. He didn’t know what to do about the Malwish. Six years, and he still found the suddenly expansive size of the world intimidating.
Max hopped up and down with glee, throwing out an entire handful of twirly-seeds. The boy’s fascination with heights made Kath uncomfortable — but that was what happened when, from infancy, you were often strapped to a father who found ordinary means of transportation too time-consuming.
Wax looked north toward the Roughs. Toward wonder, mystery, and a life he’d loved. He felt …
Rusts. He didn’t feel sad.
He blinked, cocking his head. Ever since his return, Elendel had felt like a duty to him. Adventure and comfort had both been outside the city, calling to him. Though things had improved over the years, he’d continued to feel it. That call. Until …
Until today. Today, he remembered the parts of his life he’d loved in the north — but he didn’t want them back. He had a life here he loved equally. Maybe more, judging by the warmth he felt as Max laughed. This … this was where he belonged. More, this was where he wanted to belong.