Lost Metal : A Mistborn Novel (9780765391209) Read online

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  FOR ETHAN SKARSTEDT

  Who is a man of Honor.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sixteen years ago, sitting in a dim booth at a local steakhouse, I first pitched to my wife an audacious idea I’d been developing: taking an epic fantasy world, and then expanding it through different eras into the future. I’d seen mashups of fantasy and science fiction before, and I’d seen epic fantasy inch toward industrial technology. But I’d never seen an author develop a world in quite this way—giving an expansive view of a planet moving into the future, using the lore of earlier book series as the foundation of religion and myth.

  It was a gamble. Readers tend to like their genres well delineated. Here, I was pitching something that broke apart those genre lines in ways that historically did not sell well. Yet I was convinced that the larger-scale project (the vision of a planet and its magic throughout various eras) was worth the risk. That brings us here, to the final book of Era Two of Mistborn and my grand experiment with genre.

  Whether I’ve been successful or not so far is up to you, the reader. But I can say this: I certainly wouldn’t have gotten where I am without the help of a large number of people. I know these acknowledgments are a bit of a blur of names, but I’m so grateful to each and every one of them. These are the people who, when I come up with some new audacious plan, don’t roll their eyes—they instead roll up their sleeves and make it happen.

  For this book, Joshua Bilmes did his usual excellent job as my agent. On his team, Susan Velazquez and Christina Zobel were also a great deal of help, managing all the different overseas contracts and subagents.

  Speaking of across the pond, I had some extra-special help from Gillian Redfearn on this book—she’s my UK editor, and took the lead on this book performing the line edit work that often is shouldered by the US publisher. She did a fantastic job, and I’m lucky to have her help. In addition, I’d like to thank Emad Akhtar and Brendan Durkin at Gollancz in the UK, as well as my UK agents, John Berlyne and Stevie Finegan at the Zeno Agency.

  Over in the US, Devi Pillai was the lead editor on this project, offering her excellent editorial eye for story and character as she always does. Also at Tor, I’d like to thank Molly McGhee, Tessa Villanueva, Lucille Rettino, Eileen Lawrence, Alexis Saarela, Heather Saunders, Rafal Gibek, Felipe Cruz, Amelie Littell, and Hayley Jozwiak. The copyeditor was our longtime collaborator in that field, Terry McGarry.

  As for the audiobook, the irreplaceable Michael Kramer is once again giving voice to my characters and making me sound good. I appreciate you, Michael. Thank you for all you do. At Macmillian Audio, I’d like to thank Steve Wagner, Samantha Edelson, and Drew Kilman.

  Increasingly these days, my books take a ton of extra work in the art department. So we’ll give these gunslingers their own section—even though some of them could overlap with other sections. For instance, Peter Lutjen is Tor’s art director, and deserves a hearty thanks. Chris McGrath did our jacket illustration. My internal art director at Dragonsteel is ᛁᛉᚲ—the artist formerly known as Isaac Stewart. He did the maps, symbols, and a lot of the work (including the writing) on the broadsheets. Keep an eye out for books by ᛁᛉᚲ in the future. (Yes, I did just make up that whole symbol thing. I can do that. I have a literary license.) Our good friend and longtime collaborator Ben McSweeney did most of the art you find in the broadsheets. Rachael Lynn Buchanan was our art assistant, and Jennifer Neal provided some additional help in creating the broadsheets.

  In my company, Dragonsteel, our in-house Editorial department is headed by the Insatiable Peter Ahlstrom, with Karen Ahlstrom running continuity and various additional editorial help being provided by Betsey Ahlstrom. And Kristy S. Gilbert has just come on as our Production Editor.

  Dragonsteel’s Fulfillment and Events team is headed by Kara Stewart, and that team includes Christi Jacobsen, Lex Willhite, Kellyn Neumann, Mem Grange, Michael Bateman, Joy Allen, Katy Ives, Richard Rubert, Sean VanBuskirk, Isabel Chrisman, Tori Mecham, Ally Reep, Jacob Chrisman, Alex Lyon, and Owen Knowlton.

  Our in-house Publicity and Marketing team is headed by Adam Horne, with Jeremy Palmer as our marketing director. Our Operations team is headed by Mat “My name is actually Matt with two T’s” Hatch, with Jane Horne, Emma Tan-Stoker, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Makena Saluone, and Hazel Cummings.

  And, of course, my wonderful wife, Emily Sanderson, is our COO at Dragonsteel. And is the cutest person on this list.

  Less cute, but still very helpful, are the members of the writing group. On this book they include: Kaylynn ZoBell, Peter Ahlstrom, Karen Ahlstrom, Alan Layton, Eric James Stone, Darci Stone, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Emily Sanderson, and Ben “Rick Stranger” Olsen. Also, of course, there is Ethan Skarstedt—to whom this book is dedicated. The real-life inspiration for Skar from Bridge Four, Ethan has been helping me get my soldiering and gunplay right for some twenty years now. Many thanks, Ethan, for helping me pretend I know what I’m talking about.

  Mi’chelle Walker created our beta reader feedback database, which was super useful. The beta readers included Trae Cooper, Tim Challener, Ted Herman, Suzanne Musin, Sumejja Muratagić-Tadić, Paige Phillips, Shannon Nelson, Sean VanBuskirk, Ross Newberry, Rosemary Williams, Richard Fife, Rahul Pantula, Poonam Desai, Philip Vorwaller, Paige Vest, Mi’chelle Walker, Megan Kanne, Matt Wiens, Mark Axies Lindberg, Marnie Peterson, Lyndsey Luther, Linnea Lindstrom, Lauren McCaffrey, Kendra Wilson, Kendra Alexander, Kellyn Neumann, Kalyani Poluri, Joy Allen, Joshua Harkey, Jory “Chief Chicken Head Scratcher” Phillips, Jessie Lake, Jessica Ashcraft, Jennifer Neal, Ian McNatt, Chris “Gunner” McGrath, Gary Singer, Frankie Jerome, Evgeni “Argent” Kirilov, Erika Kuta Marler, Eric Lake, Drew McCaffrey, Deana Covel Whitney, David Fallon, David Behrens, Darci Cole, Craig Hanks, Christina Goodman, Christopher Cottingham, Chana Oshira Block, Brian T. Hill, Brandon Cole, Lingting “Botanica” Xu, Bob Kluttz, Ben Marrow, Becca Reppert, Bao Pham, Anthony Acker, Alyx Hoge, Alice Arneson, Alexis Horizon, Aaron Biggs, Joe Deardeuff, Rob West, and Jayden King.

  Gamma readers included many of the above, plus Sam Baskin, Glen Vogelaar, Dale Wiens, Billy Todd, Ari Kufer, Matthew Sorensen, Ram Shoham, Eliyahu Berelowitz Levin, and Aaron Ford.

  We got some detailed help from a particular group on this book, people who I have asked to keep an eye on my magic systems and offer feedback on where I might need more explanations or might be in danger of contradicting myself. We’re calling them our Magic System Continuity team, but I’m officially dubbing them Arcanists going forward. They are Joshua Harkey, Eric Lake, Evgeni Kirilov, David Behrens
, Ian McNatt, and Ben Marrow.

  I would like to extend a special thanks to my good friends Kalyani and Rahul, longtime beta readers, who have been encouraging me for years to look into Indian mythology and lore for inspiration for fantasy storytelling. They provided excellent consultation in this book on a certain character who the three of us worked on together to try to expand the Cosmere a little bit in this direction.

  Thank you to everyone on this list. And, of course, to the readers. Mistborn has been a strange journey these last sixteen years, and I feel it’s about to get even stranger—as well as (with a little luck) even more incredible.

  PROLOGUE

  Wayne knew about beds. Other kids in Tinweight Settlement had them. A bed sounded much better than a mat on the ground—especially one he had to share with his ma when the nights were cold, because they didn’t have any coal.

  Plus there were monsters under beds.

  Yeah, he’d heard stories of mistwraiths. They’d hide unner your bed and steal the faces of people you knew. Which made beds soft and squishy on top, with someone underneath you could talk to. Sounded like rustin’ heaven.

  Other kids were scared of mistwraiths, but Wayne figured they just didn’t know how to negotiate properly. He could make friends with something what lived unner a bed. You just had to give it something it wanted, like someone else to eat.

  Anyway, no bed for him. And no proper chairs. They had a table, built by Uncle Gregr. Back before he got crushed by a billion rocks in a landslide and mushed into a pulp what couldn’t hit people no more. Wayne kicked the table sometimes, in case Gregr’s spirit was watching and was fond of it. Rusts knew there was nothing else in this one-window home Uncle Gregr had cared about.

  Best Wayne had was a stool, so he sat on that and played with his cards—dealing hands and hiding cards up his sleeve—as he waited. This was a nervous time of day. Every evening he feared she wouldn’t come home. Not because she didn’t love him. Ma was a burst of sweet spring flowers in a sewage pit of a world. But because one day Pa hadn’t come home. One day Uncle Gregr—Wayne kicked the table—hadn’t come home. So Ma …

  Don’t think about it, Wayne thought, bungling his shuffle and spilling cards over the table and floor. And don’t look. Not until you see the light.

  He could feel the mine out there; nobody wanted to live nexta it, so Wayne and his ma did.

  He thought of something else, on purpose. The pile of laundry by the wall that he’d finished washing earlier. That had been Ma’s old job what didn’t pay well enough. Now he did it while she pushed minecarts.

  Wayne didn’t mind the work. Got to try on all the different clothes—whether they were from old gramps or young women—and pretend to be them. His ma had caught him a few times and grown angry. Her exasperation still baffled him. Why wouldn’t you try them all on? That’s what clothes was for. It wasn’t nothing weird.

  Besides, sometimes folks left stuff in their pockets. Like decks of cards.

  He fumbled the shuffle again, and as he gathered the cards up he did not look out the window, even though he could feel the mine. That gaping artery, like the hole in someone’s neck, red from the inside and spurting out light like blood and fire. His ma had to go dig at the beast’s insides, searchin’ for metals, then escape its anger. You could only get lucky so many times.

  Then he spotted it. Light. With relief, he glanced out the window and saw someone walking along the path, holding up a lantern to illuminate her way. Wayne scrambled to hide the cards under the mat, then lay on top, feigning sleep when the door opened. She’d have seen his light go out of course, but she appreciated the effort he put into pretending.

  She settled on the stool, and Wayne cracked an eye. His ma wore trousers and a buttoned shirt, her hair up, her clothing and face smudged. She sat staring at the flame in the lantern, watching it flicker and dance, and her face seemed more hollow than it had been before. Like someone was taking a pickaxe to her cheeks.

  That mine’s eatin’ her away, he thought. It hasn’t gobbled her up like it did Pa, but it’s gnawing on her.

  Ma blinked, then fixated on something else. A card he’d left on the table. Aw, hell.

  She picked it up, then looked right at him. He didn’t pretend to be asleep no more. She’d dump water on him.

  “Wayne,” she said, “where did you get these cards?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Wayne…”

  “Found ’em,” he said.

  She held out her hand, and he reluctantly pulled the deck out and handed it over. She tucked the card she’d found into the box. Damn. She’d spend a day searching Tinweight for whoever had “lost” them. Well, he wouldn’t have her losing more sleep on account of him.

  “Tark Vestingdow,” Wayne mumbled. “They was inna pocket of his overalls.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “Ma, I’ve gotta learn cards. That way I can earn a good livin’ and care for us.”

  “A good living?” she asked. “With cards?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “I’ll cheat! Can’t make a livin’ if you don’t win, see.”

  She sighed, rubbing her temples.

  Wayne glanced at the cards in their stack. “Tark,” he said. “He’s Terris. Like Pa was.”

  “Yes.”

  “Terris people always do what they’re told. So what’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with you, love,” she said. “You just haven’t got a good parent to guide you.”

  “Ma,” he said, scrambling off the mat to take her arm. “Don’t talk like that. You’re a great ma.”

  She hugged him to her side, but he could feel her tension. “Wayne,” she asked, “did you take Demmy’s pocketknife?”

  “He talked?” Wayne said. “Rust that rustin’ bastard!”

  “Wayne! Don’t swear like that.”

  “Rust that rusting bastard!” he said in a railworker’s accent instead.

  He grinned at her innocently, and was rewarded with a smile she couldn’t hide. Silly voices always made her happy. Pa had been good at them, but Wayne was better. Particularly now that Pa was dead and couldn’t say them no more.

  But then her smile faded. “You can’t take things what don’t belong to you, Wayne. That’s somethin’ thieves do.”

  “I don’t wanna be a thief,” Wayne said softly, putting the pocketknife on the table beside the cards. “I want to be a good boy. It just … happens.”

  She hugged him closer. “You are a good boy. You’ve always been a good boy.”

  When she said it, he believed it.

  “Do you want a story, love?” she asked.

  “I’m too old for stories,” he lied, desperately wishing she’d tell one anyway. “I’m eleven. One more year and I can drink at the tavern.”

  “What? Who told you that!”

  “Dug.”

  “Dug is nine.”

  “Dug knows stuff.”

  “Dug is nine.”

  “So you’re sayin’ I’ll have to snitch booze for him next year, ’cuz he can’t get it himself yet?” He met her eyes, then started snickering.

  He helped her get dinner—cold oatmeal with some beans in it. At least it wasn’t only beans. Then he snuggled into his blankets on the mat, pretending he was a child again to listen. It was easy to feign that. He still had the clothes after all.

  “This is the tale,” she said, “of Blatant Barm, the Unwashed Bandit.”

  “Oooh…” Wayne said. “A new one?”

  His mother leaned forward, wagging her spoon toward him as she spoke. “He was the worst of them all, Wayne. Baddest, meanest, stinkiest bandit. He never bathed.”

  “’Cuz it takes too much work to get properly dirty?”

  “No, because he … Wait, it’s work to get dirty?”

  “Gotta roll around in it, you see.”

  “Why in Harmony’s name would you do that?”

  “To think like the ground,” Wayne
said.

  “To…” She smiled. “Oh, Wayne. You’re so precious.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Why ain’t you told me of this Blatant Barm before? If he was so bad wouldn’t he be the first one you told stories about?”

  “You were too young,” she said, sitting back. “And the story too frightening.”

  Ooooh … This was going to be a good one. Wayne bounced up and down. “Who got ’im? Was it a lawman?”

  “It was Allomancer Jak.”

  “Him?” Wayne said with a groan.

  “I thought you liked him.”

  Well, all the kids did. Jak was new and interesting, and had been solving all kinds of tough crimes this last year. Least according to Dug.

  “But Jak always brings the bad guys in,” Wayne complained. “He never shoots a single one.”

  “Not this time,” Ma said, digging into her oatmeal. “He knew Blatant Barm was the worst. Killer to the core. Even Barm’s sidekicks—Gud the Killer and Noways Joe—were ten times worse than any other bandit that ever walked the Roughs.”

  “Ten times?” Wayne said.

  “Yup.”

  “That’s a lot! Almost double!”

  His ma frowned for a moment, but then leaned forward again. “They’d robbed the payroll. Taking not just the money from the fat men in Elendel, but the wages of the common folk.”

  “Bastards!” Wayne said.

  “Wayne!”

  “Fine! Regular old turds then!”

  Again she hesitated. “Do you … know what the word ‘bastard’ means?”

  “It’s a bad turd, the kind you get when you’ve really got to go, but you hold it in too long.”

  “You know that because…”

  “Dug told me.”

  “Of course he did. Well, Jak, he wouldn’t stand for stealing from the common folk of the Roughs. Being a bandit is one thing, but everyone knows you take the money what goes toward the city.

  “Unfortunately, Blatant Barm, he knew the area real well. So he rode off into the most difficult land in the Roughs—and he left one of his two sidekicks to guard each of the key spots along the way. Fortunately, Jak was the bravest of men. And the strongest.”