Marasi edged along the outside of a battlefield.
It was a very small battlefield, true, but the ferocity of the conflict stunned her. She felt she could—for the first time—imagine what it had been like to live during the War of Ash, so long ago.
But surely wars back then had been more thought-out, more deliberate. Not this mixed jumble of figures beating on one another, breaking bones, cursing, stepping on the fallen. Watching it made her sick, anxious. Those men were her colleagues, struggling frantically to push through the Set’s thugs. All night they’d been forced to stand and watch the city decompose around them, the situation growing worse and worse as they felt helpless.
This was something they could fight, so fight they did, cracking heads, shoving down enemies, grunting in the dirty, dark alleyway in an effort to reach the carriage. Thankfully, the Set troops here didn’t appear to include any Coinshots or Pewterarms.
Her men were still outnumbered, and for all their determination they weren’t making much headway. Outside the alleyway, the crowd was growing restless. The kandra’s speech turned toward the words Marasi had written for her, words promising social reform, legislation to cut down work hours and improve conditions in the factories. What Marasi was able to hear of the echoing voice, unfortunately, had a sense of desperation to it. It sounded fake, inauthentic.
That wasn’t MeLaan’s fault. She had said she didn’t have time to prepare this imitation properly, and it wasn’t her specialty in the first place. Rusts. The crowd started to shout, cursing the governor’s lies. MeLaan’s voice faltered. Was this the Rioter, whipping the crowd into a frenzy? Or were the people so angry, they were overcoming the Allomancy?
Either way, Marasi couldn’t help feeling desperate as her men struggled and fell, the crowd building toward a full-on riot. She made her way along the side of the alley, hoping that if she got to that carriage she could make a difference. Unfortunately, the alley’s confines were too narrow, and combatants filled the entire thing. Already half her men were down. Those who fought looked like wraiths, shifting and undulating in the mists. Shadows trying to consume shadows.
Nobody on either side seemed to pay her much attention. That was common. For most of her life, her father had wished that she would vanish. Those in high society were very good at pretending she didn’t exist. Even Waxillium seemed to forget she was along sometimes.
Well, so be it. She took a deep breath, and strode directly into the fight. As she neared two struggling men, she dodged in, as if trying to do something to help—then flung herself to the side as if she’d been hit. It was a fair impression, in her opinion.
She heard Reddi curse her name from somewhere in the alleyway, but nobody came to her rescue. They kept trying very assiduously to kill one another, and so Marasi crept along the ground, crawling in the shadows until she neared the carriage.
Two guards stood here. Drat. She needed to get past them. How?
She glanced back toward the fight. It had moved farther up the alley, the constables being forced to retreat before superior numbers. They were probably far enough away that Marasi could try something truly desperate.
She used her Allomancy.
For a brief moment, she engaged a speed bubble that caught herself and just the two guards. She extinguished her metal immediately. Only seconds had passed outside.
It was still jarring. The mists seemed to zip with sudden speed around them, and the combatants lurched in their motions. The two guards jumped in surprise, looking around. Marasi did her best impression of a corpse.
Then she flicked on the Allomancy again.
“Ruin!” one of the guards said. “You see that?”
“There’s Metalborn among them,” the other said. They both sounded very nervous.
Marasi gave them another jolt of distorted time. The two guards held a hushed, frantic argument; then they knocked on the door of the carriage and spoke through the window. Marasi waited, sweating, her nerves taut. Her men didn’t have much time.…
The two guards ran down the alleyway, leaving the carriage and carrying orders to the other combatants to be wary of Metalborn. Marasi got to her feet and slipped around to the other side of the carriage, which had no driver, then pulled open the door and slipped inside, seating herself.
A pudgy woman sat on the bench within, wearing a lavish gown of three silken layers. A man beside her sat with a hand on her wrist, his eyes closed, his suit very stylish and modern. The handgun Marasi leveled at them was, on the other hand, quite traditional. And quite functional.
The woman blinked, breaking her concentration to regard Marasi with a look of horror. She nudged the man, who opened his eyes, startled. One Soother and one Rioter, Marasi would guess.