POV: wax
Summary
Wax steps out onto the temple landing under the spike-eye statue. His uncle Edwarn stands at the top of the steps with snow in his beard, gloved hands resting on an ivory walking stick, hooded and parka-bundled — a man Wax is used to seeing in tailored suits and crystal lamplight. Behind him on the rock approach, at least a hundred men setting up tents. Marasi kneels in the doorway with her rifle trained directly on Edwarn the whole time.
Edwarn asks to come in out of the cold. Wax lets him; Marasi lowers the rifle on his nod. In the vestibule Edwarn doffs his hood, peels off his parka, and casually warms his cheeks back to colour with the medallion under his shirt. *You do know what the medallions do*, Wax says. *Certainly*, Edwarn answers — but they didn't know how to recharge the southern ones, so they had to ration the heat for the worst-suffering. He acknowledges Allik at Marasi's shoulder cheerfully as *one of my savages* — and Allik stares death back.
Wax tries to play arrest. Edwarn sniffs. *No need, no need. I am not in your custody, Nephew.* He has, by his own count, twenty trained Allomancers and Feruchemists outside, *all ready to kill*, who would shoot through him without hesitation. He came inside under a parley flag because he wants to make a deal. The Set already dug out Wax's buried flier; Wax isn't getting out without his uncle's permission. Edwarn settles on the stone shelf, Steris moves away from him, and he lights a pipe off her offered lantern.
He has, he says, the key to the inner door — passed from a dying temple priest to a doomed Hunter to Brunstell's captain in her cups and at last to him; Brunstell's captain *lives*, he tells the suddenly-pleading Allik, without elaboration. Wax cannot get through the door without him; Edwarn cannot get past Wax's guns in the entryway without losing the prize to a stray bullet. The deal: Edwarn opens the door and goes in past it with the rest of them, under guard. *You'll be under guard. I'll have a gun to your head.* *I have no objection to this.* Wax frisks him — metal-banded cane, no aluminum — and the party walks back down the trap corridor in convoy: Edwarn first, Wax gun on his back, Marasi beside, Allik and Steris and MeLaan behind, Wayne herding Telsin as far from her uncle as the corridor allows.
At the door Edwarn tells Wax which silver-inlaid circle to Push first (a click), then the triangular one (a click), then the third. *Get them wrong and the thing freezes shut, I'm told. Clockwork timer. Ten years.* Wax holds his breath and Pushes the last. The whole door grinds aside on stone. Edwarn steps for the gap; Wax levels his gun and stops him, grabs Telsin by the shoulder as she tries to slip past as well, and sends MeLaan in first. The kandra limps across the threshold into a soft blue glow, walks a careful circle. *Nothing hit me on the way in.* *All clear.*
Wax waves the others through and turns on his uncle one more time before they cross. *I care for the people in that room more than a monster like you can ever know.* Edwarn answers with the practiced edge he reserves for family. *You think me emotionless. I tried to spare your life. I argued before the Set on your behalf. There was a time when I loved you like a son.* Wax raises Vindication; tells him that when this is over there will be names. Edwarn meets the muzzle and tells him the difference between good and evil men is not in what they do but only in the names they are willing to do it in. *Waxillium?* Marasi calls from the inner doorway. *You'll want to see this.*
Wax follows his uncle through into the central chamber of the temple — a single room, no other doors, the gilded dais from the mural rising at the centre under a column of soft white light. Steps. A square velvet pedestal. A golden rack for a relic. Shattered glass on the floor around it, the broken corners of a display case. Frost in patches on the stone. Dust disturbed by the opening of the door drifting in the air.
*Gone*, Wax whispers. *Someone beat us here.*