A man in a long tasselled coat crouches on top of an electrical pole above a lamplit mansion at night, mist filling the streets below. — Wax keeps watch on the governor’s mansion from the top of an electrical pole, waiting for a killer who could be wearing anyone.

The Mistborn Saga · Era Two, Book 2 · 2015

Shadows of Self

A year after the Vanishers, a string of murders pushes Elendel toward riot — and in the crowd Wax sees the face of a man he killed in the Roughs.

Shadows of Self (Tor, 6 October 2015) is the fifth Mistborn novel and the second about Waxillium Ladrian, the Roughs lawman turned Elendel lord. It opens a year after The Alloy of Law: Wax is engaged to Steris, Marasi is now a constable, and Wayne has moved into the Ladrian mansion. Sanderson wrote about the first third of it in 2012, between drafts of A Memory of Light, set it aside, and drafted The Bands of Mourning before coming back to finish it.

It is a detective story in a city on the edge: men put out of work by new machines, a corrupt governor, motorcars and twenty-storey towers, and a killer who stages murders to tip Elendel into riot. Sanderson has said the title points to the many roles a person plays over a life, and to the book’s kandra, the shape-shifters who take the bones of the dead and wear them.

Its prologue, set seventeen years earlier, plays like a romantic caper; its last chapter turns that prologue, and the opening of The Alloy of Law, inside out. The book debuted at number five on the New York Times combined print and e-book list and won r/Fantasy’s Stabby Award for best novel of 2015. Sanderson has said that its villain took him about as dark as he has gone.

Movement 1

Prologue · Weathering

Seventeen years before the main story, Wax has spent five years in the Roughs, mostly as a clerk, and is a few months into a new career as a “lawman for hire”. He rides into Weathering with a seventeen-year-old Wayne after the koloss-blooded outlaw Granite Joe, and in a small room by the stairs he watches a young woman with a rifle and an unlit cigar climb in through the window. She is Lessie. After a standoff (she knows him as the man who killed Peret the Black) they agree to split the bounty; she calls him “Mister Cravat” and points out that everyone in the saloon belongs to Joe.

Sharpshooters and crossbowmen carrying no metal tell Wax that Joe knows he is a Coinshot. Guessing that Joe is in the basement, Wax grabs Lessie, taps his stored weight and crashes through two floors onto Granite Joe’s dinner table. He downs both bodyguards and turns to find Lessie’s little hand-crossbow pointed at him: she did warn him that everyone in the saloon was in Joe’s employ. He tells her he still likes her legs. She sighs, turns the crossbow, and shoots Joe in the neck. Wax lifts himself and Lessie out of the hole on a line of blue light.

Readers of The Alloy of Law know where this partnership ends: in a ruined chapel in Feltrel, with Wax’s own bullet. Here it is all banter and plaster dust, every line worth remembering.

A young man in a city suit and a teenager in dusty clothes dismount before a frontier saloon, with acacias and giraffes on the plain behind. — **V · 1 Lawman for Hire** Prologue, seventeen years before the main story. Wax, five years in the Roughs and only a few months into bounty hunting, rides into the frontier town of Weathering after Granite Joe, an outlaw with koloss blood. A seventeen-year-old Wayne minds the horses, among them Wax’s placid mare, Destroyer. It is an early glimpse of the partnership, and the job is about to go sideways.

A young woman with a rifle and a cigar climbs in through a window while a young man levels a revolver at her, blue lines running from his chest. — **V · 2 Lessie Through the Window** Parked in a small room by the stairs, Wax watches a young woman with a rifle and an unlit cigar lift the latch and climb in. After a standoff (she knows him as the man who killed Peret the Black) they agree to split the bounty. She is Lessie, quick and profane, and she calls him “Mister Cravat.” Readers of *The Alloy of Law* know how this partnership ends.

A young man and a young woman rise from a wrecked dinner table under a hole in the ceiling while a huge blue-grey-skinned man stares at them. — **V · 3 Through Two Floors** Sharpshooters and crossbowmen carrying no metal tell Wax that Joe knows he is a Coinshot. Guessing Joe is downstairs, he grabs Lessie, taps his stored weight and crashes through two floors onto Granite Joe’s dinner table. He downs the bodyguards, then finds Lessie’s hand-crossbow aimed at him: she works for Joe. “I still think your legs are pretty,” he tells her. She sighs, turns the crossbow, and shoots Joe.

Movement 2

Part One · The Marksman and the auction

Seventeen years later, at sunset, Lord Winsting Innate, senator, brother of the governor and secretly a Rioter, prepares to sell his Senate vote to a room of crime lords and nobles under cover of auctioning one of his own paintings. Shots break out from several parts of the room at once. His bodyguard Flog hustles him down to the saferoom, goes back to look, and returns to say that everyone upstairs is dead. Winsting lets him in, and someone takes him by the hair and cuts his throat.

At the Ladrian mansion, Steris is drafting wedding invitations when Wayne bursts in: the Marksman has made his move. Marasi, now a constable and aide to Constable-General Aradel, waits at the wheel of a gasoline motorcar: he has robbed the First Union bank. Wax bounds from car to car after him, stops a runaway motorcar short of a canal by landing on its hood at twenty times his weight, and corners the thief, in red with a black busker’s mask, in a skyscraper, where a hazekiller round through a plaster wall finds him. Marks leaps from a window trailing banknotes. Chasing him, Wax sees in the crowd the face of Bloody Tan, the man he killed on the day Lessie died. He falls, and loses the thief.

Wayne finishes the job his own way. In the Breakouts, the slum that covers for the Marksman, he trades his flask for an old man’s hat and accent, follows a local to the hideout, knocks Marks out inside a speed bubble and strolls off carrying him, eating an apple. On the way out a crossbow bolt kills the prisoner, and the assassin doubles back and seizes Marasi with a glass knife at her throat. She forgets her hostage training entirely, pulls a small pistol from her purse and shoots her captor through the head.

At Winsting’s mansion, among nearly thirty dead criminals of note, Wax reads the bodies: the factions were set on one another, and Winsting was killed by a Feruchemist Steelrunner he knew and let into the saferoom, who killed the guards on the way out.

A heavyset nobleman with a glass stands on a high balcony at sunset over canals and a park with two statues, a bodyguard in a frontier hat behind him. — **V · 4 An Auction at Sunset** Seventeen years later, Lord Winsting Innate, senator, the governor’s brother and secretly a Rioter, watches the mists rise over the Field of Rebirth from his balcony. “It was an ideal evening to auction himself off”: tonight his Senate vote goes to crime lords and nobles, disguised as the sale of one of his own paintings. His bodyguard calls the mists Harmony’s eyes. By the end of the night Winsting is dead.

A composed blonde woman sits among stacks of papers as a man by the window turns and a grinning man in a duster tumbles through the door. — **V · 5 Wedding Plans, Interrupted** At the Ladrian mansion, Steris is sorting wedding invitations, working out which of Wax’s enemies to invite so that she can plan for the ceremony being interrupted. Then Wayne bursts in with news: the Marksman, a thief they have been hunting, has made his move. Wax is engaged, a lord and a deputized lawman, and still the first man out of the door when there is a chase.

A woman in lavender drives a motorcar through traffic while a man crouches on its roof and another leans out of the window, a masked figure in red leaping ahead. — **V · 6 The Motorcar Chase** Marasi, now a constable and aide to Constable-General Aradel, is waiting at the wheel of a gasoline motorcar; Wax would rather have horses. Overruling Captain Reddi, he sends her toward the Breakouts, then leaps onto the car’s wooden roof and bounds off over the traffic after the Marksman, a thief in red and a black busker’s mask with white tusks. On the way he stops a runaway car short of a canal by landing on its hood at twenty times his weight.

A man in a long coat lies sprawled on cobblestones staring up at a gaunt, skull-faced man standing calmly in a crowd. — **V · 7 A Face in the Crowd** Wax corners the Marksman in a skyscraper and wounds him with a hazekiller round fired through a plaster wall, but Marks leaps from a window trailing banknotes. Chasing him toward the slums, Wax sees a face among the bystanders: Bloody Tan, the killer he shot in Feltrel on the day Lessie died. He falls, and by the time he is up the thief is gone. A dead man is walking the streets of Elendel.

A dark-haired woman in a lavender dress, held from behind with a glass knife near her throat, draws a small pistol from her purse. — **V · 8 Hostage Training Forgotten** Wayne has caught the Marksman his own way, in a borrowed hat and a borrowed accent. As they leave the slums a crossbow bolt kills Marks, and the assassin doubles back and seizes Marasi with a glass knife at her throat. She forgets every rule of her hostage training, pulls a small pistol from her purse and shoots her captor through the head. Deafened and bloodied, she goes to report to Aradel.

Movement 3

Part Two, i · Someone else moves us

Wayne notices that the first shots came from the direction of each group’s enemies: someone was sowing chaos. Marasi reads the papers and sees a city near breaking: idle men whose jobs went to machines, a workers’-rights bill the governor vetoed, floods that leave the grain supply perilously thin.

In the Terris Village, Wax’s grandmother Vwafendal asks him to find Idashwy, a Steelrunner who left the Village behaving strangely, and bring her back rather than kill her. Wayne, on the first of the month, sneaks into the university to give Allriandre her stipend; she makes him repeat what he did (he killed her father) and tells him he is not forgiven. Wax and Wayne find Idashwy dead in her kitchen with a hole in her chest, and, with a book on Hemalurgy from Marsh, work out that the killer spiked her to steal her Steelrunning. In her pocket is a note, in the words Bloody Tan spoke before Lessie died:

“Someone else moves us, lawman.”

At the governor’s address, Marasi sees a guardsman whisper to no one and draw a revolver; nobody hears her scream, so she grabs him and burns cadmium, and his shot goes wild. The guardsman, Rian, carries an old coin for Wax, a message from Bleeder; a small spike is later found in his chest.

Riding in his carriage, Wax puts in his Pathian earring and wonders whether it was made by killing someone. A voice answers. It is Harmony, and the earring is a Hemalurgic spike, which lets the god hear Wax’s thoughts and speak into his mind. The killer is a kandra called Bleeder, wearing Bloody Tan’s body; she is beyond Harmony’s control and may have gone mad. His hands are tied, but he will send help, and Marasi, it turns out, is his agent too.

Wax tells Steris how, at twelve, he saw his uncle Edwarn arrange a predatory loan for a poor man, who signed despite the boy’s warning and later killed himself still in debt: one reason Wax left for the Roughs. Then, with the carriages queued for Lady ZoBell’s party, he takes her up the face of a twenty-storey tower on Ranette’s new tether, exactly as her notebook had planned.

In a cramped, dim kitchen a man in a duster hands a folded slip of paper to a grey-streaked man whose face goes hard. — **V · 9 Someone Else Moves Us** Wax’s grandmother in the Terris Village has asked him to bring home Idashwy, a Steelrunner who left behaving strangely. He and Wayne find her dead in her kitchen with a hole in her chest; with the book on Hemalurgy that Marsh sent Wax, they reason that her killer spiked her to steal her speed. In her pocket is a note in the words Bloody Tan spoke before Lessie died.

A man alone in a dark carriage starts upright with one hand at his ear and a revolver half drawn, as if hearing a voice. — **V · 10 A Voice in the Earring** In his carriage, Wax puts in his Pathian earring, wondering whether it was made by killing someone, and a voice answers. It is Harmony: the earring is a Hemalurgic spike, through which a god can hear his thoughts and speak into his mind. The killer, Harmony says, is a kandra called Bleeder, wearing Bloody Tan’s body; he cannot control her and fears she has gone mad. Help is coming.

A man in a long coat carries a composed woman in a white gown up the sheer face of a skyscraper on a taut rope, carriages queued far below. — **V · 11 Up ZoBell Tower** Wax has told Steris about a day at twelve in his uncle Edwarn’s carriage, watching Edwarn explain how a poor man’s loan would ruin him; the man signed anyway and later killed himself. It is one reason Wax left for the Roughs. Now, stuck in a queue of carriages, he Pushes himself and Steris up the face of ZoBell Tower on Ranette’s new tether, exactly as Steris’s notebook had planned.

Movement 4

Part Two, ii · ZoBell Tower

Turned away by the governor’s do-not-admit list, Wayne gets in as Professor Hanlanaze, a mathematician, with Marasi as his assistant. Wax wears his mistcoat (Steris disapproves), keeps a steel bubble up and tints his water to pass for liquor; Steris’s prepared witty remarks charm him. A very tall woman calling herself Milan flirts with Wax, and he stares her down. Then a new voice speaks through the earring, soft and mocking, calling the nobles actors on a stage. Bleeder can reach him on the same channel as his god.

A server moving against the flow bolts through a window, and Wax follows into the mists, landing on a fleeing motorcar only to find a cab driver: Bleeder got out on Tage Street. At a warehouse a dozen gunmen are waiting, and an aluminum bullet slips through Wax’s steel bubble into his arm. MeLaan, a kandra sent by Harmony (she was the tall “Milan” at the party), fights through beside him. The aluminum rounds point to Edwarn and the Set. Wax gets away down a canal, Pushing on the mooring rings.

Then the news: Father Bin, the Survivorist priest who was to marry Wax and Steris, is dead. A Pathian “priest” preached to the mistdawn congregation, then dropped a drape to show Bin nailed to the church wall by two spikes, one through each eye. Interviewing the churchworkers, Marasi argues that the murders, the unrest and even the flood are one design.

In a chandeliered penthouse ballroom, a man in a long coat stares levelly at a very tall woman in red while a blonde woman in white stands at his elbow. — **V · 12 Actors on a Stage** At the penthouse ball Wax keeps his steel bubble up, wears his mistcoat to Steris’s disapproval and tints his water to pass for liquor; Steris’s notebook of prepared witty remarks charms him. A very tall woman calling herself Milan flirts with him, and he stares her down. Then a second voice speaks through the earring, soft and mocking: “All actors on a stage. That’s what you are too, Waxillium Ladrian.”

At night a man swims through a misty canal, glowing blue lines running from his chest to iron rings set in the stone wall. — **V · 13 Out Through the Canal** Chasing a fleeing server into the mists, Wax pops a motorcar’s tyres only to find a cab driver; Bleeder got out on Tage Street. At a warehouse a dozen gunmen are waiting, and an aluminum bullet slips through his steel bubble into his arm. MeLaan, the kandra Harmony promised, fights through beside him, and the aluminum rounds point to Edwarn’s Set. Wax gets away down a canal, Pushing on the mooring rings.

In a grey dawn church, a dark-haired constable sits on a pew beside an elderly woman, listening, while two officers talk further down the nave. — **V · 14 Mistdawn at the Church** Father Bin, the Survivorist priest who was to marry Wax and Steris, is found nailed to the wall of a Survivorist church, a spike through each eye, after a Pathian “priest” preached to the mistdawn congregation and dropped a drape to reveal him. Interviewing the churchworkers, Marasi argues that the murders, the unrest and even the flood are one design. Aradel resents Wax for doing as he likes while others clean up.

Movement 5

Part Two, iii · The faceless trail

At the Counselor’s Cup, which Wayne calls the temple of the common man (its “deity” is Breeze), Wayne meets MeLaan over a belching contest. MeLaan explains Bleeder. Her name is Paalm, and she was once the Lord Ruler’s own kandra. Kandra are made sentient by a pair of spikes; Paalm has pulled one, which frees her from Harmony at the price of her mind. The best answer is to pull the other and leave her a mistwraith. MeLaan gives Wax a syringe that makes a kandra lose its shape, and would kill a human.

The clues pile up. A dam file shows that a farmer blew a dam with far too much dynamite, acted like a madman and had his grave disturbed after burial: Bleeder’s work, flood and all. Silver paint leads Wax to coach sixteen, whose driver says he saw himself; in it are a set of bones, a Pathian robe with a glowing hem, and a bloody mallet. On a precinct roof, while Aradel plans martial law, MeLaan proves that a kandra is loose by turning her face translucent.

Wax perches on an electrical pole outside the governor’s mansion. Bleeder taunts him (why didn’t Harmony save Lessie?), then runs through the guards at Feruchemical speed, cloaked and masked. Wayne’s speed bubble lets Wax match her; his bullets wound her, but the syringe he sends with them misses. She vanishes into the saferoom, a single shot sounds, and Wax finds the governor alive beside his head bodyguard, Drim, shot in the neck; her bloody cloak lies in the open escape tunnel. Why she spared the governor, Wax cannot work out. MeLaan, now in a dead guard’s body, names the glowing residue perchwither, a fungus that grows only in the kandra Homeland, and Harmony, through her, lets Wax go there.

Edwarn, “Mister Suit”, refuses to help against Bleeder and warns that Wax’s sister Telsin will die if Wax kills him. In the governor’s saferoom Marasi finds a hidden safe full of cash and letters proving his corruption. Wax walks alone along the top of the Eastbridge, resenting Harmony for not saving Lessie, and picks the burden up again, because ducking it would be cowardice.

In a gaslit pub under a portrait of a portly gentleman, a man in a duster and a very tall woman laugh over tankards while a man builds a coaster house and a woman takes notes. — **V · 15 The Temple of the Common Man** The Counselor’s Cup keeps a picture of Breeze behind the bar; Wayne calls it the temple of the common man and cheers its glum drinkers by doctoring their drinks. Here he meets MeLaan, and they hold a belching contest. MeLaan tells Wax what Bleeder is: Paalm, once the Lord Ruler’s own kandra, who has pulled one of her two spikes to slip Harmony’s control, and is losing her mind.

On a rooftop, a very tall woman’s face has turned clear as glass over a green crystal skull while a weathered officer and a young constable stare. — **V · 16 A Skull of Emerald** On a precinct roof, Aradel is planning martial law and needs convincing that a kandra is loose. MeLaan settles it by turning her face translucent over a skull of carved crystal, a vivid emerald. Aradel then asks Marasi to report on Wax; she agrees, and says she will tell Wax. The trail meanwhile runs through coach sixteen, a cab driver who saw himself, and a robe whose hem glows.

A stocky bearded man in a fine suit sits at ease in a carriage across from a tense man leaning forward on his knees. — **V · 17 Mister Suit** Bleeder has struck at the governor’s mansion at Feruchemical speed, in an attack that leaves the head bodyguard dead and the governor, strangely, alive. Now Wax’s uncle Edwarn, leader of the Set, meets him in a carriage. He likens his crew to Kelsier’s, refuses to help against Bleeder, and warns that Wax’s sister Telsin will die if Wax kills him. Wax promises to deal with Bleeder, and someday with him.

Movement 6

Part Two, iv · Beneath the Field of Rebirth

MeLaan tells Wayne that kandra can choose to die; Ranette delivers a special bullet Wax ordered. Wax bluffs his way into the museum-tomb at the Field of Rebirth, drops into a pit and walks caverns of relics to the atium chamber and its secret door. A growl comes out of the dark: TenSoon, in the body of a huge grey wolfhound. They pass the remains of Kredik Shaw. Bleeder has been here first, leaving a copy of The Words of Founding scrawled in blood as a distraction; she means to “free” people from Harmony, and she has anticipated the other kandra. Five howling creatures, human in shape but running on all fours and built to beat Wax, attack; TenSoon takes a superhuman body from his store of bones and together they kill all five. From one, TenSoon pulls a red-tinged spike.

In the city, Wayne watches a rabble-rouser inject a Survivorist priest who is calming a mob, exposing a kandra. Recognized, he slips away in a quick disguise and, back at the mansion, hears that the governor’s accent is wrong. Climbing out through a crevice, Wax drops his lantern and finds he does not need it: glowing fungus, spread by Harmony so the place would never be dark again, lines the walls of the Pits of Hathsin. Out in a sewer, Wax thinks he sees her plan: she has spared the governor to kill him before the crowd.

A man holding a lantern in a dark stone corridor faces an enormous mottled grey wolfhound padding out of the blackness ahead. — **V · 18 Waiting in the Dark** With Harmony’s leave, Wax bluffs past the caretaker of the museum-tomb beneath the Field of Rebirth, walks caverns of relics, and finds the secret door in the atium chamber. Out of the dark comes a growl: TenSoon, the kandra who once served Vin, the Ascendant Warrior, in the body of a huge mottled wolfhound. Bleeder has been here before them, and has left them a desecrated book.

A man climbs a narrow rock crevice lit only by patches of softly glowing blue fungus on the walls. — **V · 19 Light in the Pits** TenSoon has taken a superhuman body from his store of bones, and together he and Wax have killed five howling creatures built to beat Wax. Climbing out through a crevice, Wax drops his lantern and finds he does not need it: glowing fungus lines the walls, spread there by Harmony so the place would never be dark again. It is the Pits of Hathsin. Out in a sewer, Wax guesses that Bleeder has spared the governor so as to kill him in front of the crowd.

Movement 7

Part Three · Eastbridge

Wax blasts open the governor’s study. Innate argues that no one can stop Bleeder; then Wax spots a wad of gum on the window, Wayne’s sign. The governor is Bleeder, and the attack on the mansion was staged: under the cloak she wore his clothes. She draws an aluminum gun but does not kill him; when the guards turn on Wax she shoots them down, overpowers MeLaan with Wax’s last syringe and leaves by the window. Wayne, found tied up in a closet, hands Wax Ranette’s special bullet. In a garden shed Bleeder, changing bodies, promises to free Wax, then blasts out a wall and flies off as a Coinshot. There Wayne, Marasi and MeLaan find the governor’s bones; the real Replar Innate has been dead for some time. Marasi talks MeLaan into wearing him to calm the crowd, instead of the inflammatory speech Bleeder had planned.

Wax chases her, masked as the Marksman, across the city and catches her on the Eastbridge, the great suspension bridge over the Irongate, where she Pushes up to the top of a tower.

“Bleeder dropped the mask. She wore Lessie’s face.”

In Lessie’s voice she tells him that it takes strong emotion to break free of Harmony. Wax insists she is not Lessie, and she agrees: she was always Paalm the kandra, but she wanted to be Lessie. She has every one of Lessie’s mannerisms, and she says she loves him. Wax pleads with Harmony, but his earring is no longer in his ear.

In the city, as MeLaan speaks, Marasi feels the crowd’s calm and realizes someone is Soothing it. With Reddi and helmets lined with aluminum she finds a carriage in an alley and, bluffing with her cadmium bubbles, pulls a gun on the Soother and the Rioter inside. She offers the Soother immunity, the Soother quiets the crowd, and Aradel “arrests” the governor (MeLaan) and takes the city under martial law.

On the tower, Vindication is Pushed from Wax’s hand. He tackles Bleeder off the tower and is shot in the leg; fires are burning across the city. She begs him to stop obeying Harmony. Wax shoots her in the head with Ranette’s round, made from his own earring: a second spike, and Harmony takes control of her. Screaming that she will not be controlled again, she chooses to die. Wax, pitying her, holds her as she does; she repeats a joke Lessie made the day they met, and he understands that she was Lessie. She asks why Harmony would use him to kill her. When she is gone he howls, and the mists draw back.

He is still holding her body an hour later when TenSoon lopes out of the mists. Harmony sent Paalm to watch over Wax in the Roughs: the Lessie he loved, and shot in Feltrel, was a kandra from the start. Harmony did not tell him whom he was hunting because he foresaw disaster if Wax knew. As Wax sees it, he has now killed her twice, and he hates Harmony for it.

In a lamplit study with a shattered door, a man at a window turns his revolver toward a spectacled man seated calmly at a desk. — **V · 20 Wayne’s Gum** Wax blasts into the governor’s study, where Innate insists that no one can stop Bleeder. Then he sees a wad of gum stuck to the window, Wayne’s sign, and understands: the governor is Bleeder. She draws an aluminum gun and does not use it on him. When the guards turn on Wax she shoots them down, overpowers MeLaan with Wax’s last syringe and leaves by the window. The attack on the mansion was hers, staged in the governor’s clothes.

In a misty alley, a helmeted constable yanks open a carriage door and levels a pistol at two people inside while a helmeted officer stands behind her with a cane. — **V · 21 Aluminum Helmets** MeLaan, wearing the governor’s face, is addressing the angry crowd, and it goes quiet; but Marasi feels the calm herself and realizes someone is Soothing it. With Reddi and helmets lined with aluminum she finds a carriage in an alley, and while Reddi’s men fight the thugs with dueling canes she pulls a gun on the Soother and Rioter inside. Her offer of immunity to the Soother quiets the crowd and lets Aradel take the city.

High on a misty suspension bridge at night, a dark-haired woman holding a tusked black mask looks down from a tower at a man with a revolver. — **V · 22 Lessie’s Face** Wax chases Bleeder across the city to the Eastbridge, the great suspension bridge over the Irongate, where she Pushes up to the top of a tower. She is wearing the Marksman’s mask, though Wax now judges she never was the Marksman. Then she drops it, and under it is Lessie’s face. In Lessie’s voice she tells him it takes strong emotion to break free of Harmony.

In thick mist on a bridge deck, a grief-stricken man kneels holding a dark-haired woman across his knees. — **V · 23 The Second Death** Wax shoots her with Ranette’s special round, his own earring reforged, and the second spike gives Harmony control. Screaming that she will not be controlled again, she chooses to die. Wax holds her; she repeats a joke Lessie made the day they met, and he understands that she was Lessie. He howls, and the mists draw back. An hour later TenSoon tells him: “The woman you knew as Lessie was always one of us.”

Movement 8

Epilogue · By the fire

At a gathering after the crisis, Wax sits by the fire in a deep depression, alone in a crowded room. Elendel has a new governor without noble blood: Aradel. Steris keeps the guests away and has given Wax a fire and a traditional lamp in place of electric light. Wayne offers Sophi Tarcsel venture capital for electricity.

Marasi brings Wax a spike recovered from Paalm’s body, silvery with red spots, of a metal not even Harmony recognizes, and he does not care. Harmony sent a kandra to seduce him, he says. Marasi answers that Harmony sent a bodyguard, and that TenSoon told her the romance was Paalm’s own idea. Harmony knew, Wax answers, how it would end. MeLaan, still playing the arrested Innate, will fake his suicide in jail, and Marasi will start researching Trell, a thread the next book picks up.

Late, by the dying fire, Steris puts another log on, sits near him without a word, and puts her hand on his.

“Finally, he turned to the side, rested his head on her shoulder, and wept.”

By a fire in a crowded room, a young woman holds out a small silvery spike on her palm to a man slumped in an armchair who does not look at it. — **V · 24 A Spike of Unknown Metal** The epilogue finds Wax alone in a crowded room. Aradel is governor now, the first without noble blood, and Steris has given Wax a fire and an old-fashioned lamp in place of electric light. Marasi brings him a spike from Paalm’s body, silvery with red spots, of a metal not even Harmony knows. Wax does not care. Harmony, he says, sent a kandra to seduce him.

Late at night by a dying fire, a blonde woman sits beside a grieving man, her hand on his, as he rests his head on her shoulder. — **V · 25 By the Fire** Marasi answers that Harmony sent a bodyguard, and that TenSoon told her the romance was Paalm’s own idea. Harmony knew, Wax answers; he saw what would happen. Late, by the dying fire, Steris puts on another log, sits near him without a word and puts her hand on his. After a long while he turns, rests his head on her shoulder, and weeps.

The metals in this book

Hemalurgy drives the plot. Wax’s Pathian earring is a spike: through it Harmony hears his thoughts and speaks to him, and Bleeder, it turns out, can speak to him through it too, though she cannot hear him think. Bleeder kills Idashwy with a spike to steal her Feruchemical steel (speed); she wears only one spike at a time, and so one stolen power; by the end she has Allomantic steel and flies as a Coinshot.
Kandra. Each is made sentient by a pair of spikes; pulling one frees a kandra from Harmony at the cost of her sanity. The earring, reforged as a bullet, becomes Bleeder’s second spike and returns her to Harmony’s control. Kandra can also choose to die.
Other spikes. A small spike in the guardsman Rian’s chest makes him a pawn; each of the creatures beneath the city carries one, the one TenSoon pulls with a red cast to it; and the spike from Paalm’s body, silvery with dark red spots, is a metal Harmony does not know.
Allomancy: steel (Wax; the Marksman; Bleeder at the end); bendalloy (Wayne’s speed bubble); cadmium (Marasi’s slowness bubble, at the governor’s address and in the alley); zinc and brass (Winsting is a secret Rioter; the Rioter and Soother in the carriage); bronze (Winsting’s Seeker); aluminum (lined hats and helmets against emotional Allomancy, and the Set’s bullets, which pierce Wax’s steel bubble).
Feruchemy: iron (Wax’s stored weight, through two floors in Weathering and onto a car’s hood at twenty times his weight); gold (Wayne’s stored health, which makes him ill to fill); steel (Idashwy’s speed, then Bleeder’s); pewter (the Village’s guards).

Continuity notes

Wax: engaged to Steris at the start; shot in the arm (the warehouse) and the leg (the Eastbridge); his earring is gone, melted into the bullet that ends Paalm. He finishes the book knowing Lessie was a kandra, grieving, and hating Harmony. The wedding is postponed.
Wayne: lives at the Ladrian mansion; overpowered and tied in a closet by Bleeder, he recovers; begins a friendship with MeLaan; offers Sophi Tarcsel venture capital.
Marasi: a constable and Aradel’s aide, resented by colleagues; she kills an assassin, stops a shooting at the governor’s address, finds the governor’s letters and breaks the Soother’s hold on the crowd; at the end she means to research Trell.
Steris: her wedding plans are on hold; she runs Wax’s affairs and stays at his side.
Bleeder / Paalm: dead by her own choice on the Eastbridge; the red-spotted spike from her body goes forward into the next book.
MeLaan is alive, posing as the arrested governor, and will fake his death; TenSoon is alive.
Elendel: Winsting and Replar Innate are dead; Aradel is governor, the first without noble blood. Father Bin, Idashwy, Drim and the Marksman are dead.
The Set: Edwarn is free and untouched; he has warned that Wax’s sister Telsin will die if Wax kills him.

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