Over the next two hours, he told her more about the medallions they wore, and the legends of the Bands of Mourning. In Allik’s lore, the Lord Ruler had filled them with a great deal of every attribute—but had also crafted them to grant any person who used them the ability to draw those forth. A kind of challenge to mankind to find them, along with a warning not to. Allik didn’t seem to consider this a contradiction at all.
He also spent more time telling her about life where he was from—a place over the mountains, across the entire Southern Roughs and the wastelands beyond. A distant, wonderful place where everyone wore masks, though not everyone wore them in the same way.
Allik’s own people preferred to change masks according to their professions or moods. Not each day, certainly, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to change their mask as often as a lady in Elendel might change her hairstyle. There were other groups though. One gave a mask to each child, and those only changed once, when they reached adulthood. Allik claimed that these people—called Hunters—even grew into their masks somehow, though Marasi found that difficult to believe. Still other people, to whom he referred derisively, wore only plain, unpainted masks until they did something to earn a more ornate one.
“They are the Fallen,” he explained to her, wagging one hand before himself in a gesture she didn’t understand. “They were our kings, yah? Before the world froze. They offended the Jaggenmire, which is why everything went wrong, and—”
“Wait,” Marasi said, speaking softly so the others could sleep, “the … yayg—”
“Jaggenmire?” he asked. “It didn’t translate? You don’t have a word for it in your language, then. It’s like a god, only not.”
“Very descriptive.”
Surprisingly he lifted his mask, something she’d only seen him do that once, when he’d knelt before the masks of his friends. He didn’t seem to consider it an infraction of any sort, and kept talking. She liked being able to see his face, even if his wispy beard and mustache looked a little ridiculous—it made him look younger than he really was, unless he was lying about being twenty-two.
“It’s like…” he said, grimacing, “like a thing that runs the world, yah? When something grows, or dies, the Jaggenmire make that happen. There is Herr, and his sister Frue, who is also his wife. And she makes things stop, and he makes things go, but neither can—”
“—make life on their own,” Marasi said.
“Yah!” he said.
“Ruin and Preservation,” she said. “The old Terris gods. They’re one now. Harmony.”
“No, they were always one,” Allik said. “And always apart. Very odd, very complex. But anyway, we were talking about the Fallen, yah? They work doing anything they can to relieve their burden of failure. A compliment means a lot to them, but you have to be careful, because if you tell them they did well, they might take your compliment to heart and travel back to their people to tell everyone. Then you might be called in to testify about how good a job they did, so they can change their mask. And their language, that’s a real pain. I speak a smattering of it—always useful, so you don’t have to wear the medallion—and it makes my head spin as if I’d been flying too high for way too long.”
She smiled, listening to him go on, gesturing wildly as he spoke—which she figured was only natural, if everyone’s faces were covered all the time.
“Do you speak many languages?” she asked, as he took a breath, finally pausing his narrative.
“I don’t even speak my own that well,” he said with a grin. “But I’m trying. Seems like a good skill for a skimmer pilot to have, since it’s often my job to pilot Wilg and take people between ships or towers. And if I’m going to sit half the day in a class, I figure it should be something useful. Though mathematics has—”
“Class?” Marasi asked, frowning.
“Sure. What do you think we do all day on the ship?”
“I don’t know,” Marasi said. “Swab decks? Tie ropes. Um … trim … stuff. Deckhand types of things.”
He looked at her, eyes bulging, then slapped his mask down. “I’m going to pretend that you did not just compare me to a common lowshipman, Miss Marasi.”
“Ummm…”
“You have to be something more special than that, if you want to fly. We’re expected to be gentlemen and ladies. We’ve thrown people overboard for not knowing the proper dance moves.”
“What, really?”
“Yah, really.” He hesitated. “All right, so we tied a rope to his foot first.” He made a gesture she had started to realize was something like a smile or a laugh. “He dangled there below Brunstell for a good five minutes, cursing up a storm. He never got the cistern three-step wrong again, though! And Svel always said to him…”
Allik trailed off, growing silent.
“And?” Marasi prodded.
“Sorry. His mask … Svel, I mean. On the wall…”
Oh. The conversation died, Allik staring out the front of the ship, then making a few adjustments to their heading. Outside, the landscape was dark save for a few pinpricks of towns, now far to their left. Though they’d initially skirted the Seran Range, Allik had moved the skimmer into the mountains about a half hour back. Now they flew over the tops of the peaks, having ascended higher than they’d been when flying over the Basin.
“Allik,” Marasi said, resting her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t respond. And so, hesitantly—fully aware that she was probably doing something taboo—she reached out and lifted his mask. He didn’t stop her, and the motion revealed eyes staring sightlessly, a tear trickling down each cheek.
“I’m never going to see them again,” he said softly. “Brunstell is crashed; I’ll never serve on him again. Hell, I’m never going to see home again, am I?”
“Of course you will,” Marasi said. “You can fly there.”
“Wilg won’t last on the stone I’ve got,” he said, wiping the tears from first one cheek, then the other.
“The stone?”
“Fuel,” Allik said, glancing at her. “What, you think Wilg flies on clouds and dreams?”
“I thought it flew on Allomancy.”
“Allomancy Pushes the impellers,” Allik said. “But ettmetal is what supports it.”
“I don’t think that one translated either,” Marasi said, frowning.
“Here, see,” Allik said, kneeling down and opening the compartment where he’d put the little cube that Waxillium called an Allomantic grenade. It was attached to a metal shell, which glowed softly at the center. Allik pointed, and to the side she could see a greater light blazing with a pure whiteness. A stone, burning like a limelight.
Or like Allomancy itself, Marasi realized. “What kind of metal is it, though?”
“Ettmetal,” Allik said, shrugging. “There’s a little bit in the primer cube too, to make it work. A lot more to make a ship like Wilg go, and a lot, lot more to get Brunstell into the air. You don’t have this metal?”
“I don’t think so,” Marasi said.
“Well, what we have in Wilg, it’ll be enough to fly us a day or two. After that, we’d need an Allomancer Pushing full-time. So unless His Greatness the Drowsy One back there wants to fly with me all the way back, I’m stuck, yah?”
“You said there was more on Brunstell.”
“Yah, but they have it.” He grinned. “At first, the evil ones didn’t know how to care for it. Got some wet. That was a good day.”
“Wet?”
“Ettmetal explodes if it gets wet.”
“What kind of metal explodes if you put it in water?”
“This kind,” he said. “Anyway, your evil men, they got most of ours.”
“And we’re going to stop them,” Marasi said firmly. “We’ll get your crewmates back, stick you on your ship—or some of these skimmers, if the big one won’t fly anymore—and send you home.”
He settled back in his seat, closing the panel under the dash. “That’s what we’re going to
do,” he agreed, nodding. Then he eyed her, his mask still up. “Of course, your people don’t have what we do. No airships at all. So they’ll simply let me and mine soar away, no information demanded, with this technology?”
Rusts. He was clever. “Maybe we can give the governor some technology,” she said, “like a few medallions. Then promise him trade between our two peoples, fueled by the goodwill of having helped you and yours get home. That will erase some of the shame of what Suit did.”
“There are those from my lands who might find your Basin up here … tempting, with no defenses against attack from above.”
“All the more important to have allies among your people.”
“Maybe,” he said, pulling his mask back down. “I appreciate your genuine nature. You have no mask to hide your emotions. So odd, but welcome in this case. Still, I have to wonder if this will be more complicated than you say. If we do find the relics, what you call the Bands of Mourning, who keeps those? They are ours, yet I cannot see your Metalborn lord letting them slip away from him.”
Another difficult question. “I … I honestly don’t know,” Marasi said. “But you could say we have as much a claim to them as you, since it was our ruler who created them.”
“A ruler you killed,” he pointed out. “But let us not argue about it, yah? We will find what we find, and then determine what to do.” He hesitated. “I must tell you something, Miss Marasi. It is possible we will find nothing at the temple but destruction.”
She frowned, settling on her seat, wishing he still had the mask up so she could read his face. “What do you mean?”
“I told you of the ones who came seeking the temple,” Allik said.
“The Hunters,” Marasi said.
He nodded. “They were warriors, in the time before the freezing. Now they hunt answers to what happened to us, and secrets to making it never happen again. Miss Marasi, I have known many, and they can be a good people—but very, very stern. They believe that the Bands of Mourning were left with us as a test—but opposite the one we all assume. They think the Sovereign intended to see if we would take the power when we should not. And so…”
“What?” Marasi asked.
“Their ship,” he said, looking toward her, “that came up here first. It carried bombs, great ones, made from the ettmetal. Intended to destroy the Bands. They did not succeed, it is said. But anything could have happened. The place of the temple is said to be frozen beyond anything else in this world. A dangerous place for my kind.” He shivered visibly, then looked longingly at the medallion set on the desk before him.
“Go ahead,” Marasi said, “put it on.”
He nodded. They’d had to do this several times during the flight so far, letting Allik warm himself with the Feruchemical device. Marasi wore one herself, comfortably warm—though up this high, the air was probably freezing.
Allik settled back, and Marasi—curious—picked up the Connection medallion that he had set down. She turned it over in her fingers, noting the sinuous lines down the center, dividing it into separate metals. Iron for weight, duralumin for Connection, and most importantly nicrosil, to give her the ability to tap metals in the first place.
She knew enough Metallic theory to identify the metals, but Connection … what did it actually do? And how did that make him speak a language of all things?
Suddenly feeling foolish, she smiled and took off her medallion. The ship immediately dipped due to her restored weight. She let out a squeal of alarm and immediately donned the weight/Connection one instead, then blushed—making herself light again—as Waxillium whipped his gun out and leaped to his feet. So he hadn’t been sleeping, but eavesdropping. He looked around to see what had caused the lurch.
None of the others stirred. Wayne kept snoring.
Marasi held up the disc to Allik, then tapped Connection. She waited for some reaction inside of her, but it didn’t seem to do anything.
“We’ve been foolish,” she said. “I could have been wearing this all along, and speaking your language. Then you could have been warm the entire time.”
Allik grinned at her, then said something completely unintelligible.
“What’s going on?” Waxillium said from behind her.
“Nothing,” Marasi said, blushing again. It wasn’t working. Why wasn’t it working?
Allik gestured to her, and she switched back to her previous medallion—working very carefully this time to avoid causing a jolt, but mostly failing. How did he transition between them so smoothly?
He made a gesture, like a hand drawn across his face, that she thought indicated a smile. “Clever, but it won’t work on you.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re in your lands,” he said. “The visitor always has to wear the medallion. It’s filled with Connection, yah? Blank Connection, to no place. But Connection can’t just be connected to nothing, so when you tap it, it reaches out and connects you to the place where you are. Makes your soul think you were raised in this place instead, so your language changes.”
Marasi frowned, though Waxillium perked up, pulling up between their two seats. “Curious,” he said. “Very curious.”
“It is the way of the world,” Allik said with a shrug.
“Then why do you have an accent still?” Marasi asked. “If your brain thinks it was raised here?”
“Ah,” Allik said, raising his finger. “My soul thinks I was raised here, in your lands, but it knows that I am Malwish by descent, and that parents are from Wiestlow, so I cannot help but have an accent, yah? I got it from them. It is how the medallions always work.”
“Strange,” Marasi repeated.
“Yah,” Allik agreed. But Waxillium was nodding, as if it made perfect sense to him.
“Those mountains to the right,” Waxillium said, pointing. “Those are some taller peaks than the ones we’ve been passing.”
“Yah!” Allik said. “Good eye, O Observan—”
“Stop with the titles.”
“Yes, um, O Confusing … er…” Allik took a deep breath. “Those are the peaks we’re seeking. Getting close. We’ll have to climb Wilg up even higher. Cold temperatures, dangerous altitudes.”
He hesitated as Waxillium pointed at something ahead. Difficult to see, but distinct once Marasi noticed it. Light, hovering in the darkness—only a glimmer, but stark against the blackness.
“The Seran Range is uninhabited,” Waxillium said, “except in a few of the valleys. Too cold, too many storms.”
“So if there’s a light…” Marasi said.
“Suit has left on his expedition,” Waxillium said, standing up straight. “Time to wake the others.”
23
Wayne was awakened quite rough-like, in a manner unbefitting his grand dreams, in which he was king of the dogs. Had a crown shaped like a bowl and everything. He blinked his eyes, feeling nice and warm, and got hit with a blast of air. Drowsy, he remembered he was flying in some kind of rusting airship with a fellow what had no face. And that was almost as good as that dog thing.
“Can you bring us down closer?” Telsin asked.
“If I do,” the masked guy said, “they’ll hear us, even with Wilg’s fans on low speed. We need to pass over those people below, but I will keep us very high.”
Rusts! Wax’s sister hung half out of the machine’s open side, looking down, though Wayne could barely make her out with the light so low. He hadn’t figured that Telsin would be the adventurous type, what with Wax being all calm and careful most of the time. Yet there she was, doing her best imitation of a pub sign flapping in the wind. He nodded in appreciation, then untied his little belt thing, and got up to look at what she was seeing.
He stepped over their packs, which had toppled from the neat stack Steris had made, then leaned out next to Telsin. That let him look down at a long line of people—lit by lanterns—trudging through what appeared to be waist-high snow. Poor sods.
Wax stepped up to the other opening, looking down with h
is spyglass. Wayne couldn’t see much, himself. He held on with one hand and took out his box of gum, shaking it. Only one ball left. Damn. Well, at least it had plenty of powder on it. That would help perk him up, it would.
“Do you see him?” Telsin asked.
“I think so,” Wax said. “Wait. Yes, that’s him. I’ll bet they left on their expedition the moment they got word of what happened with us at the warehouse.” He reached into his holster and took out one of his guns. He gave the rusting things names, but Wayne could never keep them straight. It was one of the ones with the long tubey thing on the front what spat bits of metal at the bad guys.
“Let me do it,” Telsin said, voice passionate.
Wayne hesitated, ball of gum halfway to his mouth. That was quite the bloodthirst this woman had.
“You can’t make a shot like this,” Wax said. “Not sure if I can either.”
“Let me try,” Telsin begged. “I don’t care what it takes. I want him dead. Another will take his place, but I want him dead.”
Wax sighted for a long moment, and everyone in the ship seemed to hold their breath. Finally, Wax lowered his gun. “No,” he said. “Your testimony in court will do more against the Set than killing a man for no reason other than vengeance. And I’d rather have him to interrogate anyway.” He holstered the gun.
Wayne nodded. Reliable chap, that Wax. Steady. The same on a good day and a bad. Wayne moved to retreat into the ship’s interior, but as he scrambled over the seats, he somehow got tangled a little with Telsin and, in the process, kicked one of the packs out the opening.
Wayne stared down, aghast, as it fell and actually hit one of the men on the head.
“What did you do?” Telsin demanded.
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