Free The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson

took another sip of the tea. The strong, minty scent seemed to clear his nose and mind. “I need paper.”
    “What—”
    “A large sheet,” Waxillium continued. “As big as you can find.”
    “I will see what is available, my lord,” Tillaume said. Waxillium caught a faint sigh of exasperation from the man, though he left the room to do as asked.
    How long had it been since Waxillium had started his research? He glanced at the clock, and was surprised at the time. Well into the night already.
    Well, he was into it now. He’d never sleep until he’d worked it through. He rose and began to pace, holding his teacup and saucer before him. He stayed away from the windows. He was backlit, and would make an excellent target for a sniper outside. Not that he really thought there would be one, but … well, he felt more comfortable working this way.
    Wool, he thought. He walked over and opened a ledger, looking up some figures. He grew so absorbed that he didn’t notice the passing of time until Tillaume returned.
    “Will this do, my lord?” he asked, bringing in an artist’s easel with a large pad of paper clipped to it. “The old Lord Ladrian kept this for your sister. She did love to draw.”
    Waxillium looked at it, and felt his heart clench. He hadn’t thought of Telsin in ages. They had been so distant most of their lives. Not by intent, like his distance from his uncle; Waxillium and the previous Lord Ladrian had often been at odds. No, his distance from Telsin had been one born more of laziness. Twenty years apart, only seeing his sister occasionally, had let him slide along without much contact.
    And then she’d died, in the same accident as his uncle. He wished the news had been harder for him to hear. It should have been harder for him to hear. She’d been a stranger by then, though.
    “My lord?” the butler asked.
    “The paper is perfect,” Waxillium said, rising and fetching a pencil. “Thank you. I was worried we’d have to hang the paper on the wall.”
    “Hang it?”
    “Yes. I used to use some bits of tar.”
    That idea seemed to make Tillaume very uncomfortable. Waxillium ignored him, walking over and beginning to write on the pad. “This is nice paper.”
    “I’m pleased, my lord,” Tillaume said uncertainly.
    Waxillium drew a little train in the top left corner, putting in a track ahead of it. He wrote a date beneath it. “First robbery. Fourteenth of Vinuarch. Target: wool. Supposedly.” In like manner, he added more trains, tracks, dates, and details down the paper.
    Wayne had always mocked him when he’d sketched out crimes to help him think. But it worked, though he frequently had to put up with Wayne’s playful additions of little stick-figure bandits or mistwraiths rampaging across the otherwise neat and orderly sketchwork and notes.
    “Second robbery happened much later,” Waxillium continued. “Metals. For the first robbery, Lord Tekiel didn’t make any kind of fuss until months had passed.” He tapped the paper, then crossed out the word “wool.” “He didn’t lose a shipment of wool. It was early summer then, and wool prices would be too low to justify the freight charges. As I recall, the rates were unusually high in Vinuarch because the eighteenth railway line was out of service. It would take a man with breadcrumbs for brains to pay a premium to ship out-of-season wares to people who didn’t want them.”
    “So…” Tillaume said.
    “Just a moment,” Waxillium said. He walked over and pulled a few ledgers off the shelf beside his desk. His uncle had some shipping manifests here.…
    Yes. The old Lord Ladrian had kept very good track of what his competitor houses had been shipping. Waxillium scanned the lists for oddities. It took him a little while, but he eventually came up with a theory.
    “Aluminum,” Waxillium said. “Tekiel was probably shipping aluminum, but avoiding taxes by claiming it as something else. In here, his stated aluminum shipments