Such strength! He hadn’t thrown that rock with muscles, but with steel. His body reknit even as he launched himself to his feet by Pushing on tiny traces of metal in the ground beneath him. He landed and looked down at his left hand. The one that had been dangling, broken, before his face as he died.

Clutched in it was an oversized spearhead crafted from sixteen different metals melded together. He looked up from it and toward Marasi, who regarded him with tearstained eyes, but a broad smile.

“You found it,” Wax said.

She nodded eagerly. “Just took a little old-fashioned detective work.”

“You saved me,” Wax said.

Rust and Ruin… such power. He felt as if he could level cities or build them up anew.

“Suit and your sister are outside,” Marasi said. “I left the others there. I don’t— Well, I wasn’t thinking straight. Or maybe I was thinking too much. Here.” She handed him a vial of metals.

Wax took it, then held up the Bands. “You could have done this yourself.”

“No,” Marasi said. “I couldn’t have.”

“But—”

“I couldn’t have,” Marasi said. “It just… isn’t me.” She shrugged. “Does that make sense?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” He flexed his hand around the Bands.

“Go,” Marasi said. “Do what you do best, Waxillium Ladrian.”

“Which is what? Break things?”

“Break things,” Marasi said, “with style.”

He grinned, then downed the vial of metals.

29

“Waxillium’s followers have the Bands!” Suit whispered to himself as he crossed the dark, stony field. Snow had begun falling—a bitter, icy snow, nothing like the soft flakes he’d occasionally seen in the eastern Basin. “It is a crisis. They will be coming for us. We must move up our timetables!”

He chewed on the words, mulling them over as he pulled his coat tight. Warming device notwithstanding, that wind was annoying.

Would they buy his argument? No, not dire enough.

“Waxillium and his people have the Bands!” he whispered to himself. “This will undoubtedly let the kandra devise the means of creating metalminds anyone can use. We must move up our timetables and seize Elendel now, or we will find ourselves technologically outmatched!”

Yes. Yes, that was the idea. Even the most careful of the Series would be distressed by the prospect of being technologically outmaneuvered. This would convince them to give him the leeway he desired.

Anything could be an advantage. He’d wanted the Bands for himself, but in lieu of that, he’d find something else.

Suit always found the advantage.

He passed soldiers scurrying about and unloading weapons on the frozen plain of rock. They’d planned for a potential fight here, as he’d worried he might encounter more of the masked savages.

“Sir!” one of the men called. “Orders?”

He gestured toward the sky. “If anyone other than the Sequence drops from the air or approaches your position, shoot them. Then keep shooting, even after they are down.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldier said, waving to a group of his men. He turned toward an empty rack, then paused. “My rifle? Who took my rifle!”