Free The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

said. “Breeze did say I could have them after he died. Excellent metacarpals. I bring them out for special occasions.”
    Wax stood still for a moment, holding the book in his hand, trying to digest what the kandra had just said. His ancestor, the first Lord Ladrian, Counselor of Gods … had given this creature his hands.
    In a way, Wax had shaken hands with Breeze’s corpse. He stared at his glass, surprised to find it empty, and poured some more whiskey.
    “This has been a very enlightening lesson,” Marasi said. “But pardon, Your Holiness, you still haven’t explained what you need from me.”
    VenDell changed the picture to one of an illustration. A man with long dark hair and a bare chest, wearing a cloak that extended behind him into eternity. His arms, crossed before him, were wrapped with intricate bracers in a fanciful design. Wax recognized the iconography, if not the specific image. Rashek. The First Emperor.
    The Lord Ruler.
    “What do you know of the Bands of Mourning, Miss Colms?” VenDell asked.
    “The Lord Ruler’s metalminds,” Marasi said with a shrug. “Relics from mythology, like the Lady Mistborn’s knives, or the Lance of the Fountains.”
    “There are four individuals,” VenDell said, “who, to our knowledge, have held the power of Ascension. Rashek, the Survivor, the Ascendant Warrior, and Lord Harmony Himself. Harmony’s Ascension granted Him a precise and in-depth knowledge of the Metallic Arts. It stands to reason that the Lord Ruler gained the same information. He understood Identity as a Feruchemical ability, and knew the hidden metals. Indeed, he gave aluminum to his Inquisitors.”
    VenDell flipped the image to a more detailed illustration of those arms wrapped in bands of metal. “Curiously, nobody knows exactly what happened to the Bands of Mourning. Back when the Lord Ruler fell, TenSoon had not yet joined the Ascendant Warrior, and though he swears he heard them mentioned, the holes in his memory prevent him from saying how or when.
    “The mythology surrounding the Bands is quite extensive. You can find myths about them dating back to before the Catacendre, and you can find someone telling new ones in a pub around the corner, invented on the spot for your amusement. But a theme runs through them all—if you held the Lord Ruler’s bracers, you supposedly gained his powers.”
    “That’s just fancy,” Wax said. “It’s a natural thing to wish for, to make stories about. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    “Doesn’t it?” VenDell asked. “Lore says the Bands have the very power that science has only now determined is plausible to assemble?”
    “Coincidence,” Wax said. “And just because he might have created something doesn’t mean he did, and just because you think Identity works like you say, doesn’t mean you’re right. Besides, the Bands would have been destroyed when Harmony remade the world. And that’s not even considering that it would be foolish for the Lord Ruler to create weapons someone else could use against him.”
    VenDell clicked his machine. The image changed to another evanotype, this one of a mural on a wall. It depicted a room with a central dais in the shape of a truncated pyramid. Set upon a pedestal on the dais was a pair of bracers made of delicate, curling metal, shaped in spirals.
    Only a mural. But it did seem like it was depicting the Bands of Mourning.
    “What is that?” Marasi asked.
    “One of our brothers,” MeLaan said, sitting up in her chair, “a kandra named ReLuur, took this image.”
    “The Bands of Mourning fascinated him,” VenDell said. “ReLuur spent the last two centuries chasing them. He recently returned to Elendel bearing an evanotype camera in his pack and these pictures.” VenDell clicked to the next image, a picture of a large metal plate set into a wall and inscribed with a strange script.
    Wax narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know that language.”
    “Nobody does,” VenDell said. “It’s