The Hero of Ages

34

MARSH STRODE INTO THE SMALL TOWN. Workers atop the makeshift gate – which looked flimsy enough that a determined knock would send it toppling – froze in place. Ash sweepers noticed him pass with shock, then horror. It was odd, how they watched, too terrified to flee. Or, at least, too terrified to be the first one to flee.

Marsh ignored them. The earth trembled beneath him in a beautiful song – quakes were common, here, in the shadow of Mount Tyrian. It was the ashmount closest to Luthadel. Marsh walked through Elend Venture’s own territory. But, of course, the emperor had abandoned it. That seemed an invitation to Marsh, and to the one who controlled him. They were really the same. Marsh smiled as he walked.

A small piece of him was still free. He let it sleep, however. Ruin needed to think he had given up. That was the point. And so, Marsh held back only a tiny bit, and he did not fight. He let the ashen sky become a thing of bespeckled beauty, and treated the death of the world as a blessed event.

Biding his time. Waiting.

The village was an inspiring sight. The people were starving here, even though they were within the Central Dominance: Elend Venture’s “protected” area. They had the wonderful, haunted expressions of those who were close to giving up hope. The streets were barely maintained, the homes – which had once been the dwellings of noblemen, but were now filled with hungry skaa – covered in ash, their gardens stripped and their structures cannibalized to feed fires during the winter.

The gorgeous sight made Marsh smile with satisfaction. Behind him, people finally started to move, fleeing, doors slamming. There were probably some six or seven thousand people living in the town. They were not Marsh’s concern. Not at the moment.

He was interested only in a single, specific building. It looked little different from the others, a mansion in a fine row. The town had once been a stopping place for travelers, and had grown to be a favored place for nobility to construct second homes. A few noble families had lived here permanently, overseeing the many skaa who had worked the plantations and fields on the plains outside.

The building Marsh chose was slightly better maintained than those around it. The garden was, of course, more weeds than cultivation, and the outer mansion walls hadn’t seen a good scrubbing in years. However, fewer sections of it looked to have been broken apart for firewood, and a guard actually stood watch at the front gate.

Marsh killed him with one of the razor-sharp metal triangles that had once been used in the Lord Ruler’s ceremonies. Marsh Pushed it through the guard’s chest even as the man opened his mouth in challenge. The air was oddly still and quiet as the guard’s voice cut off, and he toppled to the side in the road. The skaa who watched from nearby homes knew better than to react, and didn’t stir.

Marsh hummed to himself as he strolled up the front walk to the mansion, startling a small flock of ravens who had come to roost. Once this path would have been a calming stroll through gardens, the way marked by flagstones. Now it was simply a hike through a weed-filled field. The man who owned the place obviously couldn’t afford more than the lone gate guard, and nobody raised an alarm at Marsh’s approach. He was actually able to walk right up to the front doors. Smiling to himself, he knocked.

A maidservant opened the doors. She froze when she saw Marsh, taking in his spiked eyes, his unnaturally tall figure, his dark robes. Then she began to tremble.

Marsh held out a hand, palm up, with another of the triangles. Then he Pushed it straight into her face. It snapped out the back of the skull, and the woman toppled. He stepped over her body and entered the house.

It was far nicer inside than the exterior had led him to expect. Rich furnishings, freshly painted walls, intricate ceramics. Marsh raised an eyebrow, scanning the room with his spiked eyes. The way his sight worked, it was hard for him to distinguish colors, but he was familiar enough with his powers now that he could pick them out if he wanted. The Allomantic lines from the metals inside of most things were really quite expressive.

To Marsh, the mansion was a place of pristine whiteness and bright blobs of expensive color. Marsh searched through it, burning pewter to enhance his physical abilities, allowing him to walk much more lightly than would otherwise have been possible. He killed two more servants in the course of his exploration, and eventually moved up to the second floor.

He found the man he wanted sitting at a desk in a top-floor room. Balding, wearing a rich suit. He had a petite mustache set in a round face, and was slumped, eyes closed, a bottle of hard liquor empty at his feet. Marsh saw this with displeasure.

“I come all this way to get you,” Marsh said. “And when I finally find you, I discover that you have intoxicated yourself into a stupor?”

The man had never met Marsh, of course. That didn’t stop Marsh from feeling annoyed that he wouldn’t be able to see the look of terror and surprise in the man’s eyes when he found an Inquisitor in his home. Marsh would miss out on the fear, the anticipation of death. Briefly, Marsh was tempted to wait until the man sobered up so that the killing could be performed properly.

But, Ruin would have none of that. Marsh sighed at the injustice of it, then slammed the unconscious man down against the floor and drove a small bronze spike through his heart. It wasn’t as large or thick as an Inquisitor spike, but it killed just as well. Marsh ripped it out of the man’s heart, leaving the former nobleman dead, blood pooling on the floor.

Then, Marsh walked out, leaving the building. The nobleman – Marsh didn’t even know his name – had used Allomancy recently. The man was a Smoker, a Misting who could create copperclouds, and the use of his ability had drawn Ruin’s attention. Ruin had been wanting an Allomancer to drain.

And so, Marsh had come to harvest the man’s power and draw it into the spike. It seemed something of a waste to him. Hemalurgy – particularly Allomantic imbues – was much more potent when one could drive the spike through the victim’s heart and directly into a waiting host. That way, very little of the Allomantic ability was lost. Doing it this way – killing the Allomancer to make a spike, then traveling somewhere else to place it – would grant the new host far less power.

But, there was no getting around it in this case. Marsh shook his head as he stepped over the maidservant’s body again, moving out into the unkempt gardens. No one accosted, or even looked at, him as he made his way to the front gates. There, however, he was surprised to find a couple of skaa men kneeling on the ground.

“Please, Your Grace,” one said as Marsh passed. “Please, send the obligators back to us. We will serve better this time.”

“You have lost that opportunity,” Marsh said, staring at them with his spike-heads.

“We will believe in the Lord Ruler again,” another said. “He fed us. Please. Our families have no food.”

“Well,” Marsh said. “You needn’t worry about that for long.”

The men knelt, confused, as Marsh left. He didn’t kill them, though part of him wished to. Unfortunately, Ruin wanted to claim that privilege for himself.

Marsh walked across the plain outside the town. After about an hour’s time he stopped, turning to look back at the community and the towering ashmount behind it.

At that moment, the top left half of the mountain exploded, spewing a deluge of dust, ash, and rock. The earth shook, and a booming sound washed over Marsh. Then, flaming hot and red, a large gout of magma began to flow down the side of the ashmount toward the plain.

Marsh shook his head. Yes. Food was hardly this town’s biggest problem. They really needed to get their priorities straight.

35

“YOU’LL BE ALL RIGHT HERE?” Spook asked.

Breeze turned away from the brightened tavern, raising an eyebrow. Spook had brought him – along with several of Goradel’s soldiers in street clothing – to one of the larger, more reputable locations. Voices rang within.

“Yes, this should be fine,” Breeze said, eyeing the tavern. “Skaa out at night. Never thought I’d see that. Perhaps the world really is ending…”

“I’m going to go to one of the poorer sections of town,” Spook said quietly. “There are some things I want to check on.”

“Poorer sections,” Breeze said musingly. “Perhaps I should accompany you. I’ve found that the poorer people are, the more likely they are to let their tongues wag.”

Spook raised an eyebrow. “No offense, Breeze, but I kind of think you’d stand out.”

“What?” Breeze asked, nodding toward his utilitarian brown worker’s outfit – quite a change from his usual suit and vest. “I’m wearing these dreadful clothes, aren’t I?”

“Clothing isn’t everything, Breeze. You’ve kind of got a… bearing about you. Plus, you don’t have much ash on you.”

“I was infiltrating the lower ranks before you were born, child,” Breeze said, wagging a finger at him.

“All right,” Spook said. He reached to the ground, scooping up a pile of ash. “Let’s just rub this into your clothing and on your face…”

Breeze froze. “I’ll meet you back at the lair,” he finally said.

Spook smiled, dropping the ash as he disappeared into the mists.

“I never did like him,” Kelsier whispered.

Spook left the richer section of town, moving at a brisk pace. When he hit the streetslot, he didn’t stop, but simply leaped off the side of the road and plummeted twenty feet.

His cloak flapped behind him as he fell. He landed easily and continued his quick pace. Without pewter, he would certainly have broken some limbs. Now he moved with the same dexterity he’d once envied in Vin and Kelsier. He felt exhilarated. With pewter flaring inside of him, he never felt tired – never even felt fatigued. Even simple acts, like walking down the street, made him feel full of grace and power.

He moved quickly to the Harrows, leaving behind the streets of better men, entering the cluttered, overpacked alley-like streetslot, knowing exactly where he’d find his quarry. Durn was one of the leading figures in the Urteau underworld. Part informant, part beggar lord, the unfulfilled musician had become a sort of a mayor of the Harrows. Men like that had to be where people could find – and pay – them.

Spook still remembered that first night after waking from his fevers a few weeks back, the night when he’d visited a tavern and heard men talking about him. Over the next few days, he’d visited several other taverns, and had heard others mention rumors that spoke of Spook. Sazed and Breeze’s arrival had kept Spook from confronting Durn – the apparent source of the rumors – about what he’d been telling people. It was time to correct that oversight.

Spook picked up his pace, leaping heaps of discarded boards, dashing around piles of ash, until he reached the hole that Durn called home. It was a section of canal wall that had been hollowed out to form a kind of cave. Though the wooden framing around the door looked as rotted and splintered as everything else in the Harrows, Spook knew it to be reinforced on the back with a thick oaken bar.

Two brutes sat watch outside. They eyed Spook as he stopped in front of the door, cloak whipping around him. It was the same one he’d been wearing when he’d been tossed into the fire, and it was still spotted with burn marks and holes.

“The boss isn’t seeing anyone right now, kid,” said one of the big men, not rising from his seat. “Come back later.”

Spook kicked the door. It broke free, its hinges snapping, the bar shattering its mountings and tumbling backward.

Spook stood for a moment, shocked. He had too little experience with pewter to gauge its use accurately. If he was shocked, however, the two brutes were stunned. They sat, staring at the broken door.

“You may need to kill them,” Kelsier whispered.

No, Spook thought. I just have to move quickly. He dashed into the open hallway, needing no torch or lantern by which to see. He whipped spectacles and a cloth out of his pocket as he approached the door at the end of the hallway, fixing them in place even as the guards called out behind him.

He threw his shoulder against the door with a bit more care, slamming it open but not breaking it. He moved into a well-lit room where four men sat playing chips at a table. Durn was winning.

Spook pointed at the men as he skidded to a stop. “You three. Out. Durn and I have business.”

Durn sat at the table, looking genuinely surprised. The brutes rushed up behind Spook, and he turned, falling to a crouch, reaching under his cloak for his dueling cane.

“It’s all right,” Durn said, standing. “Leave us.”

The guards hesitated, obviously angry at being passed so easily. Finally, however, they withdrew, Durn’s gambling partners going with them. The door closed.

“That was quite the entrance,” Durn noted, sitting back down at his table.

“You’ve been talking about me, Durn,” Spook said, turning. “I’ve heard people discussing me in taverns, mentioning your name. You’ve been spreading rumors about my death, telling people that I was on the Survivor’s crew. How did you know who I was, and why have you been using my name?”

“Oh, come now,” Durn said, scowling. “How anonymous did you think you were? You’re the Survivor’s friend, and you spend a good half your time living in the emperor’s own palace.”

“Luthadel’s a long way from here.”

“Not so far that news doesn’t travel,” Durn said. “A Tineye comes to town, spying about, flaunting seemingly endless funds? It wasn’t really that hard to figure out who you were. Besides, there’s your eyes.”

“What about them?” Spook asked.

The ugly man shrugged. “Everyone knows that strange things happen around the Survivor’s crew.”

Spook wasn’t certain what to make of that. He walked forward, looking over the cards on the table. He picked one up, feeling its paper. His heightened senses let him feel the bumps on the back.

“Marked cards?” he asked.

“Of course,” Durn said. “Practice game, to see if my men could read the patterns right.”

Spook tossed the card onto the table. “You still haven’t told me why you’ve been spreading rumors about me.”

“No offense, kid,” Durn said. “But… well, you’re supposed to be dead.”

“If you believed that, then why bother talking about me?”

“Why do you think?” Durn said. “The people love the Survivor – and anything related to him. That’s why Quellion uses his name so often. But, if I could show that Quellion killed one of Kelsier’s own crew… well, there are a lot of people in this city who wouldn’t like that.”

“So, you’re just trying to help,” Spook said flatly. “Out of the goodness of your heart.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks that Quellion is killing this city. If you’re really of the Survivor’s crew, you’ll know that sometimes, people fight.”

“I find it difficult to think of you as an altruist, Durn. You’re a thief.”

“So are you.”

“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” Spook said. “Kelsier promised us riches. How do you gain from all this?”

Durn snorted. “The Citizen is very bad for business. Venture red wine being sold for a fraction of a clip? Our smuggling has been choked to a trickle because everyone fears buying our goods. Things were never this bad under the Lord Ruler.” He leaned in. “If your friends staying in the old Ministry building think they can do something about that lunatic running this city, then tell them they’ll have my support. There isn’t a large underground left in this city, but Quellion will be surprised at the damage it can do if manipulated the right way.”

Spook stood quietly for a moment. “There’s a man milking for information in the tavern on Westbrook Lane. Send someone to contact him. He’s a Soother – the best one you’ll ever meet – but he stands out a bit. Make your offer to him.”

Durn nodded.

Spook turned to go, then glanced back at Durn. “Don’t mention my name to him, or what happened to me.”

With that, he left through the hallway, passing the guards and the displaced crooks from the card game. Spook pulled off his blindfold as he stepped into the daylight-like brightness of the starlit night.

He strolled through the Harrows, trying to decide what he thought of the meeting. Durn hadn’t revealed anything all that important. Yet, Spook felt as if something were happening around him, something he hadn’t planned on, something he couldn’t quite decipher. He was becoming more comfortable with Kelsier’s voice, and with his pewter, but he was still worried that he wouldn’t be able to live up to the position he’d fallen into.

“If you don’t get to Quellion soon,” Kelsier said, “he’s going to find your friends. He’s already preparing assassins.”

“He won’t send them,” Spook said quietly. “Especially if he’s heard Durn’s rumors about me. Everyone knows that Sazed and Breeze were on your crew. Quellion won’t take them out unless they prove to be such a threat that he has no other choice.”

“Quellion is an unstable man,” Kelsier said. “Don’t wait too long. You don’t want to find out how irrational he can be.”

Spook fell silent. Then, he heard footsteps, approaching quickly. He felt the vibrations in the ground. He spun and loosened his cloak, reaching for his weapon.

“You’re not in danger,” Kelsier said quietly.

Spook relaxed as someone rushed around the alley corner. It was one of the men from Durn’s chips game. The man was puffing, his face flush with exhaustion. “My lord!” he said.

“I’m no lord,” Spook said. “What happened? Is Durn in danger?”

“No, sir,” the man said. “I just… I…”

Spook raised an eyebrow.

“I need your help,” the man said between breaths. “When we realized who you were, you were already gone. I just…”

“Help with what?” Spook said tersely.

“My sister, sir,” the man said. “She got taken by the Citizen. Our… father was a nobleman. Durn hid me, but Mailey, she got sold by the woman I’d left her with. Sir, she’s only seven. He’s going to burn her in a few days!”

Spook frowned. What does he expect me to do? He opened his mouth to ask that very question, but then stopped. He wasn’t the same man anymore. He wasn’t limited as the old Spook would have been. He could do something else.

What Kelsier would have done.

“Can you gather ten men?” Spook asked. “Friends of yours, willing to take part in some late-night work?”

“Sure. I guess. Does this have to do with saving Mailey?”

“No,” Spook said. “It has to do with your payment for saving Mailey. Get me those workers, and I’ll do what I can to help your sister.”

The man nodded eagerly.

“Do it now,” Spook said, pointing. “We start tonight.”

36

“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GONE IN,” Cett said flatly.

Elend raised an eyebrow, riding his stallion through the center of his camp. Tindwyl had taught him that it was good to be seen by one’s people, especially in situations where he could control the way he was perceived. He happened to agree with this particular lesson, and so he rode, wearing a black cloak to mask the ash’s smudges, making certain his soldiers knew that he was among them. Cett rode with him, tied into his specially made saddle.

“You think I put myself in too much danger by entering the city?” Elend asked, nodding to a group of soldiers who had paused in their morning labors to salute him.

“No,” Cett said, “we both know that I don’t give a damn whether you live or die, boy. Besides, you’re Mistborn. You could have gotten out if things turned dangerous.”

“Why, then?” Elend asked. “Why was it a mistake?”

“Because,” Cett said. “You met the people inside. You talked with them, danced among them. Hell, boy. Can’t you see why that’s such a problem? When the time comes to attack, you’ll worry about people you’re going to hurt.”

Elend rode in silence for a moment. The morning mists were a normal thing to him now. They obscured the camp, masking its size. Even to his tin-enhanced eyes, distant tents became silhouetted lumps. It was as if he rode through some mythical world, a place of muffled shadows and distant noises.

Had it been a mistake for him to enter the city? Perhaps. Elend knew the theories Cett spoke of – he understood how important it was for a general to view his enemies not as individuals, but as numbers. Obstacles.

“I’m glad for my choice,” Elend said.

“I know,” Cett said, scratching at his thick beard. “That’s what frustrates me, to be honest. You’re a compassionate man. That’s a weakness, but it isn’t the real problem. The problem is your inability to deal with your own compassion.”

Elend raised an eyebrow.

“You should know better than to let yourself grow attached to your enemy, Elend,” Cett said. “You should have known how you would react, and planned so that you could avoid this very situation! Hell, boy, every leader has weaknesses – the ones who win are the ones who learn how to smother those weaknesses, not give them fuel!” When Elend didn’t respond to that, Cett simply sighed. “All right, then, let’s talk about the siege. The engineers have blocked off several streams that lead into the city, but they don’t think those were the primary sources of water.”

“They weren’t,” Elend said. “Vin has located six main wells within the city itself.”

“We should poison them,” Cett said.

Elend fell silent. The two halves of him still warred inside. The man he had been just wanted to protect as many people as possible. The man he was becoming, however, was more realistic. It knew that sometimes he had to kill – or at least discomfort – in order to save.

“Very well,” Elend said. “I’ll have Vin do it tonight – and I’ll have her leave a message written on the wells saying what we’ve done.”

“What good will that do?” Cett asked, frowning.

“I don’t want to kill the people, Cett,” Elend said, “I want to worry them. This way, they’ll go to Yomen for water. With the entire city making demands, he should go through the water supply in his storage cache pretty quickly.”

Cett grunted. He seemed pleased, however, that Elend had taken his suggestion. “And the surrounding villages?”

“Feel free to bully them,” Elend said. “Organize a force of ten thousand, and send them out to harass – but not kill. I want Yomen’s spies in the area to send him worried notes about his kingdom collapsing.”

“You’re trying to play this halfway, lad,” Cett said. “Eventually, you’ll have to choose. If Yomen doesn’t surrender, you’ll have to attack.”

Elend reined in his horse outside the command tent. “I know,” he said softly.

Cett snorted, but he fell silent as servants came out of the tent to unstrap him from the saddle. As they started, however, the earth began to tremble. Elend cursed, struggling to maintain control of his horse as it grew skittish. The shaking rattled tents, knocking poles free and collapsing a couple of them, and Elend heard the clang of metal as cups, swords, and other items were knocked to the ground. Eventually, the rumbling subsided, and he glanced to the side, checking on Cett. The man had managed to keep control of his mount, though one of his useless legs swung free from the saddle, and he looked as if he was about to fall off. His servants rushed to his side to help.

“Damn things are growing more and more frequent,” Cett said.

Elend calmed his horse, which stood puffing in the mists. Around the camp, men cursed and yelled, dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake. They were indeed growing more frequent; the last one had only been a few weeks before. Earthquakes weren’t supposed to be common in the Final Empire – during his youth, he’d never heard of one happening in the inner dominances.

He sighed, climbing from his horse and handing the beast off to an aide, then followed Cett into the command tent. The servants sat Cett in a chair, then retreated, leaving the two of them alone. Cett glanced up at Elend, looking troubled. “Did that fool Ham tell you about the news from Luthadel?”

“Or the lack of it?” Elend asked, sighing. “Yes.” Not a peep had come from the capital city, let alone the supplies Elend had ordered brought down the canal.

“We don’t have that much time, Elend,” Cett said quietly. “A few months, at most. Time enough to weaken Yomen’s resolve, perhaps make his people get so thirsty that they begin to look forward to invasion. But, if we don’t get resupplied, there’s no way we’ll be able to maintain this siege.”

Elend glanced at the older man. Cett sat in his chair with an arrogant expression, looking back at Elend, meeting his eyes. So much about what the crippled man did was about posturing – Cett had lost the use of his legs to disease long ago, and he couldn’t intimidate people physically. So, he had to find other ways to make himself threatening.

Cett knew how to hit where it hurt. He could pick at the very faults that bothered people and exploit their virtues in ways that Elend had rarely seen even accomplished Soothers manage. And he did all this while covering up a heart that Elend suspected was far softer than Cett would ever admit.

He seemed particularly on edge this day. As if worried about something. Something important to him – something he’d been forced to leave behind, perhaps?

“She’ll be all right, Cett,” Elend said. “Nothing will happen to Allrianne while she’s with Sazed and Breeze.”

Cett snorted, waving an indifferent hand – though he did look away. “I’m better off without the damn fool of a girl around. Let that Soother have her, I say! Anyway, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you and this siege!”

“Your points have been noted, Cett,” Elend said. “We will attack if I deem it necessary.” As he spoke, the tent flaps parted, and Ham sauntered in, accompanied by a figure Elend hadn’t seen in several weeks – at least not out of bed.

“Demoux!” Elend said, approaching the general. “You’re up and about!”

“Barely, Your Majesty,” Demoux said. He did still look pale. “However, I have recovered enough strength to move around a bit.”

“The others?” Elend asked.

Ham nodded. “Mostly up and about as well. Demoux is among the last batch. A few more days, and the army will be back to full strength.”

Minus those who died, Elend thought.

Cett eyed Demoux. “Most of the men recovered weeks ago. A bit weaker in the constitution than one might expect, eh, Demoux? That’s what I’ve been hearing, at least.”

Demoux blushed.

Elend frowned at this. “What?”

“It is nothing, Your Majesty,” Demoux said.

“It’s never ‘nothing’ in my camp, Demoux,” Elend said. “What am I missing?”

Ham sighed, pulling over a chair. He sat on it backward, resting his muscular arms across its back. “It’s just a rumor moving through the camp, El.”

“Soldiers,” Cett said. “They’re all the same – superstitious as housewives.”

Ham nodded. “Some of them have gotten it into their heads that the men who got sick from the mists were being punished.”

“Punished?” Elend asked. “For what?”

“Lack of faith, Your Majesty,” Demoux said.

“Nonsense,” Elend said. “We all know that the mists struck randomly.”

The others shared looks, and Elend had to pause and reconsider. No. The strikes weren’t random – at least, the statistics surrounding them weren’t. “Regardless,” he said, deciding to change the subject, “what are your daily reports?”

The three men took turns talking about their various duties in the bivouac. Ham saw to morale and training, Demoux to supplies and camp duties, Cett to tactics and patrols. Elend stood with hands clasped behind his back, listening to the reports, but only with half an ear. They weren’t much different from the previous day, though it was good to see Demoux back at his duties. He was far more efficient than his assistants.

As they talked, Elend’s mind wandered. The siege was going fairly well, but a part of him – the part trained by Cett and Tindwyl – chafed at the waiting game. He might just be able to take the city straight out. He had koloss, and all accounts said that his troops were far more experienced than those inside of Fadrex. The rock formations would provide cover for the defenders, but Elend wasn’t in so bad a position that he couldn’t win.

But doing so would cost many, many lives.

That was the step he balked at – the last step that would take him from defender to aggressor. From protector to conqueror. And he was frustrated at his own hesitation.

There was another reason going into the city had been bad for Elend. It had been better for Elend to think of Yomen as an evil tyrant, a corrupt obligator loyal to the Lord Ruler. Now, unfortunately, he knew Yomen to be a reasonable man. And one with very good arguments. In a way, his indictment of Elend was true. Elend was a hypocrite. He spoke of democracy, yet he had taken his throne by force.

It was what the people had needed from him, he believed. But it did make him a hypocrite. Still, by that same logic, he knew he should send Vin to assassinate Yomen. But, could Elend order the death of a man who had done nothing wrong besides getting in his way?

Assassinating the obligator seemed as twisted an action as sending his koloss to attack the city. Cett is right, Elend thought. I’m trying to play both sides on this one. For a moment, while talking to Telden during the ball, he had felt so sure of himself. And, in truth, he still believed what he’d claimed. Elend wasn’t the Lord Ruler. He did give his people more freedom and more justice.

However, he realized that this siege could tip the balance between who he was and who he feared he would become. Could he really justify invading Fadrex, slaughtering its armies and pillaging its resources, all ostensibly in the name of protecting the people of the empire? Could he dare do the opposite: back away from Fadrex, and leave the secrets in that cavern – the secrets that could potentially save the entire empire – to a man who still thought the Lord Ruler would return to save his people?

He wasn’t ready to decide. For now, he was determined to exhaust every other option. Anything that would keep him from needing to invade the city. That included besieging the city to make Yomen more pliant. That also included sneaking Vin into the storage cavern. Her reports indicated that the building was very heavily guarded. She wasn’t certain if she could get into it on an ordinary night. However, during a ball, defenses might be more porous. It would be the perfect time to try to get a glimpse at what was hidden in that cavern.

Assuming Yomen hasn’t simply removed the Lord Ruler’s last inscription, Elend thought. Or that there was even something there in the first place.

Yet, there was a chance. The Lord Ruler’s final message, the last bit of help he had left for his people. If Elend could find a way to get that help without breaking his way into the city, killing thousands, he would take it.

Eventually, the men finished with their reports, and Elend dismissed them. Ham went quickly, wanting to get in on a morning sparring session. Cett was gone a few moments later, carried back to his own tent. Demoux, however, lingered. It was sometimes hard to remember just how young Demoux was – barely older than Elend himself. The balding scalp and numerous scars made the man look much older than he was, as did the still-visible effects of his extended illness.

Demoux was hesitant about something. Elend waited, and finally the man dropped his eyes, looking embarrassed. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I feel that I must ask to be released from my post as general.”

“And why do you say that?” Elend asked carefully.

“I don’t think I’m worthy of the position anymore.”

Elend frowned.

“Only a man trusted by the Survivor should command in this army, my lord,” Demoux said.

“I’m sure that he does trust you, Demoux.”

Demoux shook his head. “Then why did he give me the sickness? Why pick me, of all the men in the army?”

“I’ve told you, it was random luck, Demoux.”

“My lord,” Demoux said, “I hate to disagree, but we both know that isn’t true. After all, you were the one who pointed out that those who fell sick did so at Kelsier’s will.”

Elend paused. “I did?”

Demoux nodded. “On that morning when we exposed our army to the mists, you shouted out for them to remember that Kelsier is the Lord of the Mists, and that the sickness must – therefore – be his will. I think you were right. The Survivor is Lord of the Mists. He proclaimed it so himself, during the nights before he died. He’s behind the sickness, my lord. I know he is. He saw those who lacked faith, and he cursed them.”

“That isn’t what I meant, Demoux,” Elend said. “I was implying that Kelsier wanted us to suffer this setback, but not that he was targeting specific individuals.”

“Either way, my lord, you said the words.”

Elend waved his hand dismissively.

“Then how do you explain the strange numbers, my lord?” Demoux asked.

“I’m not sure,” Elend said. “I’ll admit that the number of people who fell sick does produce an odd statistic, but that doesn’t say anything about you specifically, Demoux.”

“I don’t mean that number, my lord,” Demoux said, still looking down. “I mean the number who remained sick while the others recovered.”

Elend paused. “Wait. What is this?”

“Haven’t you heard, my lord?” Demoux asked in the quiet tent. “The scribes have been talking about it, and it’s gotten around to the army. I don’t think that most of them understand the numbers and such, but they understand that something strange is happening.”

“What numbers?” Elend asked.

“Five thousand people got taken by the sickness, my lord,” Demoux said.

Exactly sixteen percent of the army, Elend thought.

“Of those, some five hundred died,” Demoux said. “Of those remaining, almost everyone recovered in one day.”

“But some didn’t,” Elend said. “Like you.”

“Like me,” Demoux said softly. “Three hundred and twenty-seven of us remained sick when the others got better.”

“So?” Elend asked.

“That’s exactly one-sixteenth of those who fell to the sickness, my lord,” Demoux said. “And we stayed sick exactly sixteen days. To the hour.”

The tent flap rustled quietly in the breeze. Elend fell quiet, and couldn’t completely suppress a shiver. “Coincidence,” he finally said. “Statisticians looking for connections can always find odd coincidences and statistical anomalies, if they try hard enough.”

“This doesn’t seem like a simple anomaly, my lord,” Demoux said. “It’s precise. The same number keeps showing up, over and over. Sixteen.”

Elend shook his head. “Even if it does, Demoux, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a number.”

“It’s the number of months the Survivor spent in the Pits of Hathsin,” Demoux said.

“Coincidence.”

“It’s how old Lady Vin was when she became Mistborn.”

“Again, coincidence,” Elend said.

“There seem to be an awful lot of coincidences related to this, my lord,” Demoux said.

Elend frowned, folding his arms. Demoux was right on that point. My denials are getting us nowhere. I need to know what people are thinking, not just contradict them.

“All right, Demoux,” Elend said. “Let’s say that none of these things are coincidences. You seem to have a theory of what they mean.”

“It’s what I said earlier, my lord,” Demoux said. “The mists are of the Survivor. They take certain people and kill them, others of us they make sick – leaving the number sixteen as a proof that he really was behind the event. So, therefore, the people who grow the most sick are the ones who have displeased him the most.”

“Well, except for the ones who died from the sickness,” Elend noted.

“True,” Demoux said, looking up. “So… maybe there’s hope for me.”

“That wasn’t supposed to be a comforting comment, Demoux. I still don’t accept all of this. Perhaps there are oddities, but your interpretation is based on speculation. Why would the Survivor be displeased with you? You’re one of his most faithful priests.”

“I took the position for myself, my lord,” Demoux said. “He didn’t choose me. I just… started teaching what I’d seen, and people listened to me. That must be what I did to offend him. If he’d wanted that from me, he’d have chosen me when he was alive, don’t you think?”

I don’t think the Survivor cared much about this when he was alive, Elend thought. He just wanted to stir up enough anger in the skaa that they would rebel.

“Demoux,” Elend said, “you know that the Survivor didn’t organize this religion when he was alive. Only men and women like you – those who looked toward his teachings after he died – have been able to build up a community of the faithful.”

“True,” Demoux. “But he did appear to some people after his death. I wasn’t one of those people.”

“He didn’t appear to anyone,” Elend said. “That was OreSeur the kandra wearing his body. You know that, Demoux.”

“Yes,” Demoux said. “But, that kandra acted at the Survivor’s request. And, I wasn’t on the list to get visited.”

Elend laid a hand on Demoux’s shoulder, looking in the man’s eyes. He had seen the general, worn and grizzled beyond his age, determinedly stare down a savage koloss a full five feet taller than he was. Demoux was not a weak man, either in body or in faith.

“Demoux,” Elend said, “I mean this in the kindest way, but your self-pity is getting in the way. If these mists took you, then we need to use that as proof that their effects have nothing to do with Kelsier’s displeasure. We don’t have time for you to question yourself right now – we both know you’re twice as devoted as any other man in this army.”

Demoux flushed.

“Think about it,” Elend said, giving Demoux a little extra Allomantic shove in the emotions, “in you, we have obvious proof that a person’s faithfulness has nothing to do with whether or not they’re taken by the mists. So, rather than letting you mope, we need to move on and find the real reason the mists are behaving as they are.”

Demoux stood for a moment, then finally nodded. “Perhaps you’re right, my lord. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.”

Elend smiled. Then, he paused, thinking about his own words. Obvious proof that a person’s faithfulness has nothing to do with whether they’re taken by the mists…

It wasn’t exactly true. Demoux was one of the strongest believers in the camp. What of the others who had been sick as long as he? Had they been, perhaps, men of extreme faith as well? Elend opened his mouth to ask the question of Demoux. That was when the shouting started.

37

SCREAMS ROSE IN THE DISTANCE. Vin started upright in her cabin. She hadn’t been sleeping, though she’d been close. Another night of scouting Fadrex City had left her tired.

All fatigue was forgotten, however, as the sounds of battle clanged from the north. Finally! she thought, throwing off her blankets and dashing from the cabin. She wore her standard trousers and shirt, and – as always – carried several vials of metals. She downed one of these as she scrambled across the deck of the narrow-boat.

“Lady Vin!” one of the bargemen called through the daymists. “The camp has been attacked!”

“And about time, too,” Vin said as she Pushed herself off the boat’s cleats, hurling herself into the air. She shot through the morning mists, curls and wisps of white making her feel as a bird might flying through a cloud.

With tin, she soon found the battle. Several groups of men on horseback had ridden into the north section of camp, and were apparently trying to make their way toward the supply barges, which floated in a well-protected bend in the canal. A group of Elend’s Allomancers had set up a perimeter at one side, Thugs in the front, Coinshots picking off the riders from behind. The regular soldiers held the middle, fighting well, since the horsemen were slowed by the camp’s barricades and fortifications.

Elend was right, Vin thought with pride, descending through the air. If we hadn’t exposed our men to the mists, we’d be in trouble right now.

The king’s planning had saved their supplies and baited out one of Yomen’s harrying forces. The riders had probably expected to run easily through the camp – catching the soldiers unaware and trapped by mist – then set fire to the supply barges. Instead, Elend’s scouts and patrols had provided enough warning, and the enemy cavalry was bogged down in a head-on fight.

Yomen’s soldiers were punching through into the camp on the south side. Though Elend’s soldiers fought well, their enemies were mounted. Vin plunged down through the sky, flaring pewter and strengthening her body. She tossed a coin, Pushing on it to slow herself, and hit the dark ground, throwing up a huge spray of ash. The southern bank of riders had penetrated as far as the third line of tents. Vin chose to land right in the middle of them.

No horseshoes, Vin thought as soldiers began to turn toward her. And spears – stone-tipped – instead of swords. Yomen certainly is careful.

It almost felt like a challenge. Vin smiled, the adrenaline feeling good after so many days spent waiting. Yomen’s captains began to call out, turning their attack toward Vin. In seconds, they had a force of some thirty riders galloping straight at her.

Vin stared them down. Then she jumped. She didn’t need steel to get herself high – her pewter-enhanced muscles were enough for that. She crested the lead soldier’s spear, feeling it pass through the air beneath her. Ash swirled in the morning mists as Vin’s foot took the soldier in the face, throwing him backward from the saddle. She landed beside his rolling body, then dropped a coin and Pushed herself to the side, out of the way of galloping hooves. The unfortunate rider she’d unhorsed cried out as his friends inadvertently trampled him.

Vin’s Push carried her through the open flaps of a large canvas sleeping tent. She rolled to her feet, and then – still in motion – Pushed against the tent’s metal stakes, ripping them from the ground.

The walls shook, and there was a snap of canvas as the tent shot upward into the air, spread taut as its stakes all went different directions. Ash blew outward from the burst of air, and soldiers on both sides of the conflict turned toward Vin. She allowed the tent to fall down in front of her, then Pushed. The canvas caught the air, puffing out, and the stakes ripped free from the tent, shooting forward to spear horses and riders.

Men and beasts fell. Canvas fluttered to the ground before Vin. She smiled, then jumped over the discarded tangle as the riders tried to organize another assault. She didn’t give them time. Elend’s soldiers in the area had pulled back, shoring up the center of the defensive line, leaving Vin free to attack without fear of harming her own men.

She dashed between the horsemen, their massive mounts hindering them as they tried to keep track of her. Men and horses spun, and Vin Pulled, tearing tents out of the ground and using their metal stakes like arrows. Dozens fell before her.

The sound of galloping came from behind, and Vin spun to see that one of the enemy officers had managed to organize another charge. Ten men came straight at her, some with spears leveled, others drawing bows.

Vin didn’t like killing. But she loved Allomancy – loved the challenge of using her skills, the strength and thrill of the Pushes and Pulls, the electric sense of power that came only from a body flared with pewter. When men such as these gave her an excuse to fight, she didn’t restrain herself.

The arrows didn’t have a chance against her. Pewter gave her speed and balance as she spun out of the way, Pulling on a metal source behind her. She jumped into the air as a rippling tent passed beneath her, carried forward by her Pull a moment before. She landed, then Pushed on several of its stakes – a couple on each of two tent corners. The tent folded upon itself, looking a bit like a napkin with someone pulling tightly on opposite corners.

And this hit the legs of the horses like a tripwire. Vin burned duralumin, then Pushed. The horses in front screamed, the improvised weapon scattering them to the ground. The canvas ripped, and the stakes pulled free, but the damage was done – those in front tripped those behind, and men tumbled beside their beasts.

Vin downed another vial to replenish her steel. Then she Pulled, whipping another tent toward her. As it grew close, she jumped, then spun and Pushed the tent toward another group of mounted men behind. The tent’s stakes struck one of the soldiers in the chest, throwing him backward. He crashed through the other soldiers, causing chaos.

The man hit the ground, slumping lifeless into the ash. Still tied to him by the stakes in his chest, the canvas tent fluttered down, covering his body like a funeral shroud. Vin spun, seeking more enemies. The riders, however, were beginning to withdraw. She stepped forward, intending to chase them down, but stopped. Someone was watching her – she could see his shadow in the mist. She burned bronze.

The figure thumped with the power of metals. Allomancer. Mistborn. He was far too short to be Elend, but she couldn’t tell much more than that through the shadow of mist and ash. Vin didn’t pause to think. She dropped a coin and shot herself toward the stranger.

He leaped backward, Pushing himself into the air as well. Vin followed, quickly leaving the camp behind, bounding after the Allomancer. He quickly made his way to the city, and she followed, moving in vast leaps over an ashen landscape. Her quarry crested the rock formations at the front of the city, and Vin followed, landing just a few feet from a surprised guard patrol, then launching herself over crags and windswept rocks into Fadrex proper.

The other Allomancer stayed ahead of her. There was no playfulness to his motions, as there had been with Zane. This man was really trying to escape. Vin followed, now leaping over rooftops and streets. She gritted her teeth, frustrated at her inability to catch up. She timed each jump perfectly, barely pausing as she chose new anchors and Pushed herself from arc to arc.

Yet, he was good. He rounded the city, forcing her to push herself to keep up. Fine! she finally thought, then prepared her duralumin. She’d gotten close enough to the figure that he was no longer shadowed in mist, and she could see that he was real and corporeal, not some phantom spirit. She was increasingly certain that this was the man she’d sensed watching her when she’d first come into Fadrex. Yomen had a Mistborn.

However, to fight the man, she’d first need to catch him. She waited for the right moment, just when he was beginning to crest one of his arcing jumps, then extinguished her metals and burned duralumin. Then she Pushed.

A crash sounded behind her as her unnatural Push shattered the door she’d used as an anchor. She was thrown forward with a terrible burst of speed, like an arrow released from a bow. She approached her opponent with awesome speed.

And found nothing. Vin cursed, turning her tin back on. She couldn’t leave it on while burning duralumin – otherwise, her tin would burn away in a single flash, leaving her blinded. But, she’d effectively done the same thing by turning it off. She Pulled herself down from her duralumin Push to land maladroitly atop a nearby roof. She crouched as she scanned the misty air.

Where did you go? she thought, burning bronze, trusting in her innate – yet still unexplained – ability to pierce copperclouds to reveal her opponent. No Allomancer could hide from Vin unless he completely turned off his metals.

Which, apparently this man had done. Again. This was the second time he’d eluded her.

It bespoke a disquieting possibility. Vin had tried very hard to keep her ability to pierce copperclouds a secret, but it had been nearly four years since her discovery of it. Zane had known about it, and she couldn’t know who else had guessed, based on things she could do. Her secret could very well be out.

Vin remained on that rooftop for a few moments, but knew she’d find nothing. A man clever enough to escape her at the exact moment when her tin was down would also be clever enough to remain hidden until she was gone. In fact, it made her wonder why he had let her see him in the first…

Vin stood bolt upright, then downed a metal vial and Pushed herself off the rooftop, jumping with a furious anxiety back toward the camp.

She found the soldiers cleaning up the wreckage and bodies at the camp’s perimeter. Elend was moving among them calling out orders, congratulating the men, and generally letting himself be seen. Indeed, sight of his white-clothed form immediately brought Vin a sense of relief.

She landed beside him. “Elend, were you attacked?”

He glanced at her. “What? Me? No, I’m fine.”

Then the Allomancer wasn’t sent to distract me from an attack on Elend, she thought, frowning. It had seemed so obvious. It–

Elend pulled her aside, looking worried. “I’m fine, Vin, but there’s something else – something’s happened.”

“What?” Vin asked.

Elend shook his head. “I think this all was just a distraction – the entire attack on the camp.”

“But, if they weren’t after you,” Vin said, “and they weren’t after our supplies, then what was there to distract us from?”

Elend met her eyes. “The koloss.”

“How did we miss this?” Vin asked, sounding frustrated.

Elend stood with a troop of soldiers on a plateau, waiting as Vin and Ham inspected the burned siege equipment. Down below, he could see Fadrex City, and his own army camped outside it. The mists had retreated a short time ago. It was disturbing that from this distance he couldn’t even make out the canal – the falling ash had darkened its waters and covered the landscape to the point that everything just looked black.

At the base of the plateau’s cliffs lay the remnants of their koloss army. Twenty thousand had become ten thousand in a few brief moments as a well-laid trap had rained down destruction on the beasts while Elend’s troops were distracted. The daymists had kept his men from seeing what was going on until it was too late. Elend himself had felt the deaths, but had misinterpreted them as koloss sensing the battle.

“Caves in the back of those cliffs,” Ham said, poking at a bit of charred wood. “Yomen probably had the trebuchets stored in the caves in anticipation of our arrival, though I’d guess they were originally being built for an assault on Luthadel. Either way, this plateau was a perfect staging area for a barrage. I’d say Yomen set them up here intending to attack our army, but when we camped the koloss just beneath the plateau…”

Elend could still hear the screams in his head – the koloss, full of bloodlust and frothing to fight, yet unable to attack their enemies, which were high atop the plateau. The falling rocks had done a lot of damage. And then the creatures had slipped away from him. Their frustration had been too powerful, and for a time, he hadn’t been able to keep them from turning on each other. Most of the deaths had come as the koloss attacked each other. Roughly one of every two had died as they had paired off and killed each other.

I lost control of them, he thought. It had only been for a short while, and it had only happened because they hadn’t been able to get at their enemies. However, it set a dangerous precedent.

Vin, frustrated, kicked a large chunk of burned wood, sending it tumbling down the side of the plateau.

“This was a very well-planned attack, El,” Ham said, speaking in a soft voice. “Yomen must have seen us sending out extra patrols in the mornings, and correctly guessed that we were expecting an attack during those hours. So, he gave us one – then hit us where we should have been the strongest.”

“It cost him a lot, though,” Elend said. “He had to burn his own siege equipment to keep it away from us, and he has to have lost hundreds of soldiers – plus their mounts – in the attack on our camp.”

“True,” Ham said. “But would you trade a couple dozen siege weapons and five hundred men for ten thousand koloss? Plus, Yomen has to be worried about keeping that cavalry mobile – the Survivor only knows where he got enough grain to feed those horses as long as he did. Better for him to strike now and lose them in battle than to have them starve.”

Elend nodded slowly. This makes things more difficult. With ten thousand fewer koloss… Suddenly, the forces were much more evenly matched. Elend could maintain his siege, but storming the city would be far more risky.

He sighed. “We shouldn’t have left the koloss so far outside of the main camp. We’ll have to move them in.”

Ham didn’t seem to like that.

“They’re not dangerous,” Elend said. “Vin and I can control them.” Mostly.

Ham shrugged. He moved back through the smoking wreckage, preparing to send messengers. Elend walked forward, approaching Vin, who stood at the very edge of the cliff. Being up so high still made him a bit uncomfortable. Yet, she barely even noticed the sheer drop in front of her.

“I should have been able to help you regain control of them,” she said quietly, staring out into the distance. “Yomen distracted me.”

“He distracted us all,” Elend said. “I felt the koloss in my head, but even so, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I’d regained control of them by the time you got back, but by then, a lot of them were dead.”

“Yomen has a Mistborn,” Vin said.

“You’re sure?”

Vin nodded.

One more thing, he thought. He contained his frustration, however. His men needed to see him confident. “I’m giving a thousand of the koloss to you,” he said. “We should have split them up earlier.”

“You’re stronger,” Vin said.

“Not strong enough, apparently.”

Vin sighed, then nodded. “Let me go down below.” They’d found that proximity helped with taking control of koloss.

“I’ll pull off a section of a thousand or so, then let go. Be ready to grab them as soon as I do.”

Vin nodded, then stepped off the side of the plateau.

I should have realized that I was getting caught up in the excitement of the fighting, Vin thought as she fell through the air. It seemed so obvious to her now. And, unfortunately, the results of the attack left her feeling even more pent-up and anxious than she had before.

She tossed a coin and landed. Even a drop of several hundred feet didn’t bother her anymore. It was odd to think about. She remembered timidly standing atop the Luthadel city wall, afraid to use her Allomancy to jump off, despite Kelsier’s coaxing. Now she could step off a cliff and muse thoughtfully to herself on the way down.

She walked across the powdery ground. The ash came up to the top of her calves and would have been difficult to walk in without pewter to give her strength. The ashfalls were growing increasingly dense.

Human approached her almost immediately. She couldn’t tell if the koloss was simply reacting to their bond, or if he was actually aware and interested enough to pick her out. He had a new wound on his arm, a result of the fighting. He fell into step beside her as she moved up to the other koloss, his massive form obviously having no trouble with the deep ash.

As usual, there was very little emotion to the koloss camp. Just a short time before, they had been screaming in bloodlust, attacking each other as stones crashed down from above. Now they simply sat in the ash, gathered in small groups, ignoring their wounds. They would have had fires going if there had been wood available. Some few dug, finding handfuls of dirt to chew on.

“Don’t your people care, Human?” Vin asked.

The massive koloss looked down at her, ripped face bleeding slightly. “Care?”

“That so many of you died,” Vin said. She could see corpses lying about, forgotten in the ash save for the ritual flaying that was the koloss form of burial. Several koloss still worked, moving between bodies, ripping off the skin.

“We take care of them,” Human said.

“Yes,” Vin said. “You pull their skin off. Why do you do that, anyway?”

“They are dead,” Human said, as if that were enough of an explanation.

To the side, a large group of koloss stood up, commanded by Elend’s silent orders. They separated themselves from the main camp, trudging out into the ash. A moment later, they began to look around, no longer moving as one.

Vin reacted quickly. She turned off her metals, burned duralumin, then flared zinc in a massive Pull, Rioting the koloss emotions. As expected, they snapped under her control, just as Human was.

Controlling this many was more difficult, but still well within her abilities. Vin ordered them to be calm, and to not kill, then let them return to the camp. From now on, they would remain in the back of her mind, no longer requiring Allomancy to manipulate. They were easy to ignore unless their passions grew strong.

Human watched them. “We are… fewer,” he finally said.

Vin started. “Yes,” she said. “You can tell that?”

“I…” Human trailed off, beady little eyes watching his camp. “We fought. We died. We need more. We have too many swords.” He pointed in the distance, to a large pile of metal. Wedge-shaped koloss swords that no longer had owners.

You can control a koloss population through the swords, Elend had once told her. They fight to get bigger swords as they grow. Extra swords go to the younger, smaller koloss.

But nobody knows where those come from.

“You need koloss to use those swords, Human,” Vin said.

Human nodded.

“Well,” she said. “You’ll need to have more children, then.”

“Children?”

“More,” Vin said. “More koloss.”

“You need to give us more,” Human said, looking at her.

“Me?”

“You fought,” he said, pointing at her shirt. There was blood there, not her own.

“Yes, I did,” Vin said.

“Give us more.”

“I don’t understand,” Vin said. “Please, just show me.”

“I can’t,” Human said, shaking his head as he spoke in his slow tone. “It’s not right.”

“Wait,” Vin said. “Not right?” It was the first real statement of values she’d gotten from a koloss.

Human looked at her, and she could see consternation on his face. So, Vin gave him an Allomantic nudge. She didn’t know exactly what to ask him to do, and that made her control of him weaker. Yet, she Pushed him to do as he was thinking, trusting – for some reason – that his mind was fighting with his instincts.

He screamed.

Vin backed away, shocked, but Human didn’t attack her. He ran into the koloss camp, a massive blue monster on two legs, kicking up ash. Others backed away from him – not out of fear, for they wore their characteristic impassive faces. They simply appeared to have enough sense to stay out of the way of an enraged koloss of Human’s size.

Vin followed carefully as Human approached one of the dead bodies of a koloss who still wore his skin. Human didn’t rip the skin off, however, but flung the corpse over his shoulder and took off running toward Elend’s camp.

Uh, oh, Vin thought, dropping a coin and taking to the air. She bounded after Human, careful not to outpace him. She considered ordering him back, but did not. He was acting unusually, true, but that was a good thing. Koloss generally didn’t do anything unusual. They were predictable to a fault.

She landed at the camp’s guard post and waved the soldiers back. Human continued on, barreling into the camp, startling soldiers. Vin stayed with him, keeping the soldiers away.

Human paused in the middle of camp, a bit of his passion wearing off. Vin nudged him again. After looking about, Human took off toward the broken section of camp, where Yomen’s soldiers had attacked.

Vin followed, growing more and more curious. Human hadn’t taken out his sword. Indeed, he didn’t seem angry at all, just… intense. He arrived at a section where tents had fallen and men had died. The battle was still only a few hours old, and soldiers moved about, cleaning up. Triage tents had been set up just beside the battlefield. Human headed for those.

Vin rushed ahead, cutting him off just as he reached the tent with the wounded. “Human,” she said warily. “What are you doing?”

He ignored her, slamming the dead koloss down on the ground. Now, finally, Human ripped the skin off the corpse. It came off easily – this was one of the smaller koloss, whose skin hung in folds, far too large for its body.

Human pulled the skin free, causing several of the watching guards to groan in disgust. Vin watched closely despite the stomach-wrenching sight. She felt like she was on the verge of understanding something very important.

Human reached down, and pulled something out of the koloss corpse.

“Wait,” Vin said, stepping forward. “What was that?”

Human ignored her. He pulled out something else, and this time Vin caught a flash of bloodied metal. She followed his fingers as he moved, and this time saw the item before he pulled it free and hid it in his palm.

A spike. A small metal spike driven into the side of the dead koloss. There was a rip of blue skin beside the spikehead, as if…

As if the spikes were holding the skin in place, Vin thought. Like nails holding cloth to a wall.

Spikes. Spikes like…

Human retrieved a fourth spike, then stepped forward into the tent. Surgeons and soldiers moved back in fear, crying out for Vin to do something as Human approached the bed of a wounded soldier. Human looked from one unconscious man to another, then reached for one of them.

Stop! Vin commanded in her mind.

Human froze in place. Only then did the complete horror of what was happening occur to her. “Lord Ruler,” she whispered. “You were going to turn them into koloss, weren’t you? That’s where you come from. That’s why there are no koloss children.”

“I am human,” the large beast said quietly.

38

SOMETIMES, SPOOK FORGOT THE MIST was even there. It had become such a pale, translucent thing to him. Nearly invisible. Stars in the sky blazed like a million limelights shining down on him. It was a beauty only he could see.

He turned, looking across the burned remains of the building. Skaa workers carefully sifted through the mess. It was hard for Spook to remember that they couldn’t see well in the night’s darkness. He had to keep them packed closely together, working as much by touch as by sight.

The scent was, of course, terrible. Yet, burning pewter seemed to help mitigate that. Perhaps the strength it gave him extended to his ability to avoid unintentional reactions, such as retching or coughing. During his youth, he had wondered about the pairing of tin and pewter. Other Allomantic pairs were opposites – steel Pushed on metals, iron Pulled on them. Copper hid Allomancers, bronze revealed Allomancers. Zinc enflamed emotions, brass depressed them. Yet, tin and pewter didn’t seem opposites – one enhanced the body, the other the senses.

And yet, these were opposites. Tin made his sense of touch so sharp that each step had once been uncomfortable. Pewter enhanced his body, making it resistant to pain – and so as he picked his way across the blackened ruin, his feet didn’t hurt as much. In a similar way, where light had once blinded him, pewter let him endure far more before needing his blindfold.

The two were opposites, yet complements – just like the other pairs of Allomantic metals. He felt right having the one to go with the other. How had he survived without pewter? He had been a man with only one half of an ability. Now he was complete.

And yet, he did wonder what it would be like to have the other powers too. Kelsier had given him pewter. Could he, perhaps, bless Spook with iron and steel as well?

A man directed the line of working figures. His name was Franson; he was the one who had asked Spook to rescue his sister. The execution was only a day away. Soon, the child would be thrown into a burning building of her own, but Spook was working on ways to stop that. There wasn’t much he could do at the moment. So, in the meantime, Franson and his men dug.

It had been some time since Spook had gone to spy on the Citizen and his councillors. He’d shared the information he’d gleaned with Sazed and Breeze, and they’d seemed appreciative. However, with the increased security around the Citizen’s home, they’d suggested that it was foolhardy to risk more spying until they’d figured out their plans for the city. Spook had accepted their guidance, though he felt himself growing anxious. He missed going to see Beldre, the quiet girl with the lonely eyes.

He didn’t know her. He couldn’t fool himself that he did. Yet, when they’d met and spoken that once, she hadn’t screamed or betrayed him. She’d seemed intrigued by him. That was a good sign, right?

Fool, he thought. She’s the Citizen’s own sister! Talking to her nearly got you killed. Focus on the task at hand.

Spook watched the work for a time longer. Finally, Franson – dirty and exhausted in the starlight – approached him. “My lord,” Franson said, “we’ve gone over this section four times now. The men in the basement pit have moved all the debris and ash to the sides, and have sifted through it twice. Whatever we were going to find, we’ve found it.”

Spook nodded. Franson was probably right. Spook removed a small pouch from his pocket, handing it to Franson. It clinked, and the large skaa man raised an eyebrow.

“Payment,” Spook said, “for the other men. They’ve worked here for three nights.”

“They’re friends, my lord,” he said. “They just want to see my sister rescued.”

“Pay them anyway,” Spook said. “And tell them to spend the coins on food and supplies as soon as they can – before Quellion abolishes coinage in the city.”

“Yes, my lord,” Franson said. Then, he glanced to the side, where a mostly burned banister still stood upright. This is where the workers had placed the objects they had located in the wreckage: nine human skulls. They cast eerie shadows in the starlight. Leering, burned, and blackened.

“My lord,” Franson said. “May I ask the point of this?”

“I watched this building burn down,” Spook said. “I was there when these poor people were herded into the mansion, then locked inside. I couldn’t do anything.”

“I’m… sorry, my lord,” Franson said.

Spook shook his head. “It’s past now. However, there is something their deaths can teach us.”

“My lord?”

Spook regarded the skulls. The day Spook had watched this building burn – the first time he had witnessed one of the Citizen’s executions – Durn had told him something. Spook had wanted information about the Citizen’s weaknesses, something to help him beat the man. Durn had only said one thing in response to this.

Count the skulls.

Spook had never had the chance to investigate that tip. He knew Durn would probably explain himself if pushed, but they both seemed to understand something important. Spook needed to see it for himself. He needed to know what the Citizen was doing.

And now he did. “Ten people were sent into this building to die, Franson,” Spook said. “Ten people. Nine skulls.”

The man frowned. “What does that tell us?”

“It tells us there’s a way to get your sister out.”

“I’m not certain what to make of this, Lord Breeze,” Sazed said. They sat at a table in one of Urteau’s skaa bars. The alcohol flowed freely, and skaa workers packed the place, despite the darkness and the mists.

“What do you mean?” Breeze asked. They sat alone, though Goradel and three of his toughs sat wearing street clothing at the next table over.

“This is very strange to me,” Sazed said. “Skaa having their own bars is odd enough. But, skaa going out at night?”

Breeze shrugged. “Perhaps their fear of the night was more a product of the Lord Ruler’s influence than the mists. With his troops on the streets watching for thieves, there were reasons other than mist to stay inside at night.”

Sazed shook his head. “I have studied these things, Lord Breeze. The skaa fear of the mists was an ingrained superstitious mindset – it was a part of their lives. And, Quellion has broken it down in little over a year.”

“Oh, I think the wine and beer probably did the breaking,” Breeze noted. “You’d be surprised at what men will go through in order to get themselves properly intoxicated.”

Sazed eyed Breeze’s own cup – the man had taken quite a liking to the skaa bars, despite the fact that he was forced to wear very mundane clothing. Of course, the clothing probably wasn’t necessary anymore. If the city had even a halfway decent rumor mill, people would have already connected Breeze to the visitors who had met with Quellion a few days before. And, now that Sazed had come to the bar, any suspicions would have been confirmed. There was no way to hide Sazed’s identity. His nationality was obvious. He was too tall, too bald, and he had the typical Terris long face with drooping features and earlobes stretched out by the application of numerous earrings.

The time for anonymity had passed, though Breeze had used it well. During the few days when people hadn’t known who he was, he’d managed to build both goodwill and contacts in the local underground. Now, he and Sazed could sit and enjoy a quiet drink without really drawing much attention. Breeze would, of course, be Soothing the people to ensure that – but, even so, Sazed was impressed. For one as fond of high society as Breeze, the man did a remarkable job of relating to ordinary skaa workers.

A group of men laughed at the next table, and Breeze smiled, then stood and made his way over to join them. Sazed remained where he was, a mug of untouched wine on the table before him. In his opinion, there was an obvious reason why the skaa were no longer afraid to go out in the mists. Their superstitions had been overcome by something stronger: Kelsier. The one they were now calling the Lord of the Mists.

The Church of the Survivor had spread much further than Sazed had expected. It wasn’t organized the same way in Urteau as in Luthadel, and the focus seemed to be different, but the fact remained that men were worshipping Kelsier. In fact, the differences were part of what made the whole phenomenon fascinating.

What am I missing? Sazed thought. What is the connection here?

The mists killed. Yet, these people went out in the mists. Why weren’t the people terrified of them?

This is not my problem, Sazed told himself. I need to remain focused. I’ve let my studies of the religions in my portfolio lapse. He was getting close to being finished, and that worried him. So far, every single religion had proven full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and logical flaws. He was growing more and more worried that, even among the hundreds of religions in his metalminds, he would never be able to find the truth.

A wave from Breeze distracted him. So, Sazed stood – forcing himself not to show the despair he felt – and moved over to the table. The men there made room.

“Thank you,” Sazed said, sitting.

“You forgot your cup, friend Terrisman,” one of the men pointed out.

“I apologize,” Sazed said. “I have never been one fond of intoxicants. Please, do not take offense. Your thoughtful gift was nevertheless appreciated.”

“Does he always talk like that?” one of the men asked, looking at Breeze.

“You’ve never known a Terrismen, have you?” asked another.

Sazed flushed, to which Breeze chuckled, laying a hand on Sazed’s shoulder. “All right, gentlemen. I’ve brought you the Terrisman, as requested. Go ahead, ask your questions.”

There were six local men at the table – all mine workers, from what Sazed could tell. One of the men leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him, knuckles scarred by rock. “Breeze here says a lot of things,” the man said in a low voice. “But people like him always make promises. Quellion said a lot of the same things a year ago, when he was taking control after Straff Venture left.”

“Yes,” Sazed. “I can understand your skepticism.”

“But,” the man said, raising a hand. “Terrismen don’t lie. They’re good people. Everyone knows that – lords, skaa, thieves, and obligators.”

“So, we wanted to talk to you,” another of the men said. “Maybe you’re different; maybe you’ll lie to us. But, better to hear it from a Terrisman than a Soother.”

Breeze blinked, revealing just a faint hint of surprise. Apparently, he hadn’t realized they’d been aware of his abilities.

“Ask your questions,” Sazed said.

“Why did you come to this city?” one of the men asked.

“To take control of it,” Sazed said.

“Why do you care?” another asked. “Why does Venture’s son even want Urteau?”

“Two reasons,” Sazed said. “First, because of the resources it offers. I cannot go into details, but suffice it to say that your city is very desirable for economic reasons. The second reason, however, is equally important. Lord Elend Venture is one of the best men I have ever known. He believes he can do better for this people than the current government.”

“That wouldn’t be hard,” one of the men grumbled.

Another man shook his head. “What? You want to give the city back to the Ventures? One year, and you’ve forgotten the things that Straff used to do in this city?”

“Elend Venture is not his father,” Sazed said. “He is a man worthy of being followed.”

“And the Terris people?” one of the skaa asked. “Do they follow him?”

“In a way,” Sazed said. “Once, my people tried to rule themselves, as your people now do. However, they realized the advantages of an alliance. My people have moved to the Central Dominance, and they accept the protection of Elend Venture.” Of course, Sazed thought, they’d rather follow me. If I would be their king.

The table fell silent.

“I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What business do we have even talking about this? I mean, Quellion is in charge, and these strangers don’t have an army to take his throne away from him. What’s the point?”

“The Lord Ruler fell to us when we had no army,” Breeze pointed out, “and Quellion himself seized the government from noble rule. Change can occur.”

“We’re not trying to form an army or rebellion,” Sazed quickly added. “We just want you to start… thinking. Talking with your friends. You are obviously influential men. Perhaps if Quellion hears of discontent among his people, he will begin to change his ways.”

“Maybe,” one of the men said.

“We don’t need these outsiders,” the other man repeated. “The Survivor of the Flames has come to deal with Quellion.”

Sazed blinked. Survivor of the Flames? He caught a sly smile on Breeze’s lips – the Soother had apparently heard the term before, and now he appeared to be watching Sazed for a reaction.

“The Survivor doesn’t enter into this,” one of the men said. “I can’t believe we’re even thinking of rebellion. Most of the world is in chaos, if you hear the reports! Shouldn’t we just be happy with what we’ve got?”

The Survivor? Sazed thought. Kelsier? But, they seem to have given him a new title. Survivor of the Flames?

“You’re starting to twitch, Sazed,” Breeze whispered. “You might as well just ask. No harm in asking, right?”

No harm in asking.

“The… Survivor of the Flames?” Sazed asked. “Why do you call Kelsier that?”

“Not Kelsier,” one of the men said. “The other Survivor. The new one.”

“The Survivor of Hathsin came to overthrow the Lord Ruler,” one of the men said. “So, can’t we assume the Survivor of the Flames has come to overthrow Quellion? Maybe we should listen to these men.”

“If the Survivor is here to overthrow Quellion,” another man said, “then he won’t need the help of these types. They just want the city for themselves.”

“Excuse me,” Sazed said. “But… might we meet this new Survivor?”

The group of men shared looks.

“Please,” Sazed said. “I was a friend to the Survivor of Hathsin. I should very much like to meet a man whom you have deemed worthy of Kelsier’s stature.”

“Tomorrow,” one of the men said. “Quellion tries to keep the dates quiet, but they get out. There will be executions near Marketpit. Be there.”

39

TENSOON SAT ON HIS HAUNCHES. Horrified.

Ash rained down like shards of a broken sky, floating, making the very air look pocked and sickly. Even where he sat, atop a windswept hill, there was a layer of ash smothering the plant life. Some trees had branches broken by the weight of repeated ash pileups.

How could they not see? he thought. How can they hide in their hole of a Homeland, content to let the land above die?

Yet, TenSoon had lived for hundreds of years, and a part of him understood the tired complacency of the First and Second Generations. At times he’d felt the same thing himself. A desire to simply wait. To spend years idly, content in the Homeland. He’d seen the outside world – seen more of it than any human or koloss would ever know. What need had he of experiencing more?

The Seconds had seen him as more orthodox and obedient than his brethren, all because he had continually wanted to leave the Homeland and serve Contracts. The Second Generation had always misunderstood him. TenSoon hadn’t served out of a desire to be obedient. He’d done it out of fear: fear that he’d become content and apathetic like the Seconds and begin to think that the outside world didn’t matter to the kandra people.

He shook his head, then rose to all fours and loped off down the side of the hill, scattering ash into the air with each bound. As frightening as things had gotten, he was happy for one thing. The wolfhound’s body felt good on him. There was such a power in it – a capacity for movement – that no human form could match. It was almost as if this were the form he always should have worn. What better body for a kandra with an incurable wanderlust? A kandra who had left his Homeland behind more often than any other, serving under the hated hands of human masters, all because of his fear of complacency?

He made his way through the thin forest cover, over hills, hoping that the blanket of ash wouldn’t make it too difficult for him to navigate. The falling ash did affect the kandra people – it affected them greatly. They had legends about this exact event. What good was the First Contract, what good was the waiting, the protection of the Trust? To most of the kandra, apparently, these things had become a point unto themselves.

Yet, these things meant something. They had an origin. TenSoon hadn’t been alive back then. However, he had known the First Generation and been raised by the Second. He grew up during days when the First Contract – the Trust, the Resolution – had been more than just words. The First Contract was a set of instructions. Actions to take when the world began to fall. Not just ceremony, and not just metaphor. He knew that its contents frightened some of the kandra. For them, it was better that the First Contract be a philosophical, abstract thing – for if it were still concrete, still relevant, it would require great sacrifices of them.

TenSoon stopped running; he was up to his wolfhound knees in deep black ash. The location looked vaguely familiar. He turned south, moving through a small rocky hollow – the stones now just dark lumps – looking for a place he had been over a year before. A place he’d visited after he had turned against Zane, his master, and left Luthadel to return to the Homeland.

He scrambled up a few rocks, then rounded the side of a stone outcrop, knocking lumps of ash off with his passing. They broke apart as they fell, throwing more flakes into the air.

And there it was. The hollow in rock, the place where he had stopped a year before. He remembered it, despite how the ash had transformed the landscape. The Blessing of Presence, serving him again. How would he get along without it?

I would not be sentient without it, he thought, smiling grimly. It was the bestowing of a Blessing on a mistwraith that brought the creature to wakefulness and true life. Each kandra got one of the four: Presence, Potency, Stability, or Awareness. It didn’t matter which one a kandra gained; any of the four would give him or her sentience, changing the mistwraith into a fully conscious kandra.

In addition to sentience, each Blessing gave something else. A power. But there were stories of kandra who had gained more than one by taking them from others.

TenSoon stuck a paw into the depression, digging out the ash, working to uncover the things he had hidden a year before. He found them quickly, rolling one – then the other – out onto the rock shelf in front of him. Two small, polished iron spikes. It took two spikes to form a single Blessing. TenSoon didn’t know why this was. It was simply the way of things.

TenSoon lay down, commanding the skin of his shoulder to part, and absorbed the spikes into his body. He moved them through muscles and ligaments – dissolving several organs, then re-forming them with the spikes piercing them.

Immediately, he felt power wash through him. His body became stronger. It was more than the simple adding of muscles – he could do that by re-forming his body. No, this gave each muscle an extra innate strength, making them work much better, much more powerfully, than they would have otherwise.

The Blessing of Potency. He’d stolen the two spikes from OreSeur’s body. Without this Blessing, TenSoon would never have been able to follow Vin as he had during their year together. It more than doubled the power and endurance of each muscle. He couldn’t regulate or change the level of that added strength – this was not Feruchemy or Allomancy, but something different. Hemalurgy.

A person had died to create each spike. TenSoon tried not to think about that too much; just as he tried not to think about how he only had this Blessing because he had killed one of his own generation. The Lord Ruler had provided the spikes each century, giving the number requested, so that the kandra could craft a new generation.

He now had four spikes, two Blessings, and was one of the most powerful kandra alive. His muscles strengthened, TenSoon jumped confidently from the top of the rock formation, falling some twenty feet to land safely on the ash-covered ground below. He took off, running far more quickly now. The Blessing of Potency resembled the power of an Allomancer burning pewter, but it was not the same. It would not keep TenSoon moving indefinitely, nor could he flare it for an extra burst of power. On the other hand, it required no metals to fuel it.

He made his path eastward. The First Contract was very explicit. When Ruin returned, the kandra were to seek out the Father to serve him. Unfortunately, the Father was dead. The First Contract didn’t take that possibility into consideration. So – unable to go to the Father – TenSoon did the next best thing. He went looking for Vin.

40

“NOBODY KNOWS PRECISELY how Inquisitors are made,” Elend said from the front of the tent, addressing a small group, which included Ham, Cett, the scribe Noorden, and the mostly recovered Demoux. Vin sat at the back, still trying to sort through what she had discovered. Human… all koloss… they had once been people.

“There are lots of theories about it, however,” Elend said. “Once the Lord Ruler fell, Sazed and I did some research, and discovered some interesting facts from the obligators we interviewed. For instance, Inquisitors are made from ordinary men – men who remember who they were, but gain new Allomantic abilities.”

“Our experience with Marsh proves that as well,” Ham said. “He remembered who he was, even after he had all of those spikes driven through his body. And he gained the powers of a Mistborn when he became an Inquisitor.”

“Excuse me,” Cett said, “but will someone please explain what the hell this has to do with our siege of the city? There aren’t any Inquisitors here.”

Elend folded his arms. “This is important, Cett, because we’re at war with more than just Yomen. Something we don’t understand, something far greater than those soldiers inside of Fadrex.”

Cett snorted. “You still believe in this talk of doom and gods and the like?”

“Noorden,” Elend said, looking at the scribe. “Please tell Lord Cett what you told me earlier today.”

The former obligator nodded. “Well, my lord, it’s like this. Those numbers relating to the percentage of people who fall ill to the mists, they’re just too regular to be natural. Nature works in organized chaos – randomness on the small scale, with trends on the large scale. I cannot believe that anything natural could have produced such precise results.”

“What do you mean?” Cett asked.

“Well, my lord,” Noorden said. “Imagine that you hear a tapping sound somewhere outside your tent. If it repeats occasionally, with no exact set pattern, then it might be the wind blowing a loose flap against a pole. However, if it repeats with exact regularity, you know that it must be a person, beating against a pole. You’d be able to make the distinction immediately, because you’ve learned that nature can be repetitive in a case like that, but not exact. These numbers are the same, my lord. They’re just too organized, too repetitive, to be natural. They had to have been crafted by somebody.”

“You’re saying that a person made those soldiers sick?” Cett asked.

“A person?… No, not a person, I’d guess,” Noorden said. “But something intelligent must have done it. That’s the only conclusion I can draw. Something with an agenda, something that cares to be precise.”

The room fell silent.

“And, this relates to Inquisitors somehow, my lord?” Demoux asked carefully.

“It does,” Elend said. “At least, it does if you think as I do – which, I’ll admit, not many people do.”

“For better or for worse…” Ham said, smiling.

“Noorden, what do you know of how Inquisitors are made?” Elend asked.

The scribe grew uncomfortable. “I was in the Canton of Orthodoxy, as you may know, not the Canton of Inquisition.”

“Surely there were rumors,” Elend asked.

“Well, of course,” Noorden said. “More than rumors, actually. The higher obligators were always trying to discover how the Inquisitors got their power. There was a rivalry between the Cantons, you see, and… well, I supposed you don’t care about that. Regardless, we did have rumors.”

“And?” Elend asked.

“They said…” Noorden began. “They said that an Inquisitor was a fusion of many different people. In order to make an Inquisitor, the Canton of Inquisition had to get a whole group of Allomancers, then combine their powers into one.”

Again, silence in the room. Vin pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees. She didn’t like talking about Inquisitors.

“Lord Ruler!” Ham swore quietly. “That’s it! That’s why the Inquisitors were so keen on hunting down skaa Mistings! Don’t you see! It wasn’t just because the Lord Ruler ordered half-breeds to be killed – it was so that the Inquisitors could perpetuate themselves! They needed Allomancers to kill so that they could make new Inquisitors!”

Elend nodded from his place at the front of the room. “Somehow, those spikes in the Inquisitors’ bodies transfer Allomantic ability. You kill eight Mistings, and you give all their powers to one other man, such as Marsh. Sazed once told me that Marsh was always hesitant to speak of the day he was made an Inquisitor, but he did say that it was… ‘messy.’ ”

Ham nodded. “And when Kelsier and Vin found his room the day he was taken and made an Inquisitor, they found a corpse in there. One they initially assumed was Marsh!”

“Later, Marsh said that more than one person had been killed there,” Vin said quietly. “There just hadn’t been enough… left of them to tell.”

“Again,” Cett said, “does this all have a point?”

“Well, it seems to be doing a good job of annoying you,” Ham said lightly. “Do we need any other point?”

Elend gave them both hard looks. “The point is, Cett, that Vin discovered something earlier this week.”

The group turned toward her.

“Koloss,” Vin said. “They’re made from humans.”

“What?” Cett asked, frowning. “That’s absurd.”

“No,” Vin said, shaking her head. “I’m sure of it. I’ve checked living koloss. Hidden in those folds and rips of skin on their bodies, they are pierced by spikes. Smaller than the Inquisitor spikes, and made from different metals, but all of the koloss have them.”

“Nobody has been able to figure out where new koloss come from,” Elend said. “The Lord Ruler guarded the secret, and it’s become one of the great mysteries of our time. Koloss seem to kill each other with regularity when someone isn’t actively controlling them. Yet, there always seem to be more of the creatures. How?”

“Because they are constantly replenishing their numbers,” Ham said, nodding slowly. “From the villages they pillage.”

“Did you ever wonder,” Elend said, “back during the siege of Luthadel, why Jastes’s koloss army attacked a random village before coming for us? The creatures needed to replenish their numbers.”

“They always walk about,” Vin said, “wearing clothing, talking about being human. Yet, they can’t quite remember what it was like. Their minds have been broken.”

Elend nodded. “The other day, Vin finally got one of them to show her how to make new koloss. From what he did, and from what he’s said since, we believe that he was going to try to combine two men into one. That would make a creature with the strength of two men, but the mind of neither.”

“A third art,” Ham said, looking up. “A third way to use the metals. There is Allomancy, which draws power from the metals themselves. There is Feruchemy, which uses metals to draw power from your own body, and there is…”

“Marsh called it Hemalurgy,” Vin said quietly.

“Hemalurgy…” Ham said. “Which uses the metals to draw power from someone else’s body.”

“Great,” Cett said. “Point?”

“The Lord Ruler created servants to help him,” Elend said. “Using this art… this Hemalurgy… he made soldiers, which we call koloss. He made spies, which we call kandra. And he made priests, which we call Inquisitors. He built them all with weaknesses, so that he could control them.”

“I first learned how to take control of the koloss because of TenSoon,” Vin said. “He inadvertently showed me the secret. He mentioned that the kandra and koloss were cousins, and I realized I could control one just as I had the other.”

“I… still don’t see where you’re heading with this,” Demoux said, glancing from Vin to Elend.

“The Inquisitors must have the same weakness, Demoux,” Elend said. “This Hemalurgy leaves the mind… wounded. It allows an Allomancer to creep in and take control. The nobility always wondered what made the Inquisitors so fanatically devoted to the Lord Ruler. They weren’t like regular obligators – they were far more obedient. Zealous to a fault.”

“It happened to Marsh,” Vin whispered. “The first time I met him after he’d been made an Inquisitor, he seemed different. But, he only grew even odder during the year following the Collapse. Finally, he turned on Sazed, tried to kill him.”

“What we’re trying to suggest,” Elend said, “is that something is controlling the Inquisitors and the koloss. Something is exploiting the weakness the Lord Ruler built into the creatures and is using them as its pawns. The troubles we’ve been suffering, the chaos following the Collapse – it’s not simply chaos. No more than the patterns of people who fall sick to the mists are chaotic. I know it seems obvious, but the important thing here is that we now know the method. We understand why they can be controlled and how they’re being controlled.”

Elend continued to pace, his feet marking the dirty tent floor. “The more I think about Vin’s discovery, the more I come to believe that this is all connected. The koloss, the kandra, and the Inquisitors are not three separate oddities, but part of a single cohesive phenomenon. Now, on the surface, knowledge of this third art… this Hemalurgy… doesn’t seem like much. We don’t intend to use it to make more koloss, so what good is the knowledge?”

Cett nodded, as if Elend had spoken the man’s own thoughts. Elend, however, had drifted off a bit, staring out the open tent flaps, losing himself in thought. It was something he’d once done frequently, back when he spent more time on scholarship. He wasn’t addressing Cett’s questions. He was speaking his own concerns, following his own logical path.

“This war we’re fighting,” Elend continued, “it isn’t just about soldiers. It isn’t just about koloss, or about taking Fadrex City. It’s about the sequence of events we inadvertently started the moment we struck down the Lord Ruler. Hemalurgy – the origins of the koloss – is part of a pattern. The percentages that fall sick from the mists are also part of the pattern. The less we see chaos, and the more we see the pattern, the better we’re going to be at understanding just what we fight – and just how to defeat it.”

Elend turned toward the group. “Noorden, I want you to change the focus of your research. Up until now, we’ve assumed that the movements of the koloss were random. I’m no longer convinced that is true. Research our old scout reports. Draw up lists and plot movements. Pay particular attention to bodies of koloss that we specifically know weren’t under the control of an Inquisitor. I want to see if we can discover why they went where they did.”

“Yes, my lord,” Noorden said.

“The rest of you stay vigilant,” Elend said. “I don’t want another mistake like last week’s. We can’t afford to lose any more troops, even koloss.”

They nodded, and Elend’s posture indicated the end of the meeting. Cett was carried away to his tent, Noorden bustled off to begin this new research, and Ham went in search of something to eat. Demoux, however, stayed. Vin stood and trailed forward, stepping up to Elend’s side and taking his arm as he turned to address Demoux.

“My lord…” Demoux said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I assume General Hammond has spoken to you?”

What’s this? Vin thought, perking up.

“Yes, Demoux,” Elend said with a sigh. “But I really don’t think it’s something to worry about.”

“What?” Vin asked.

“There is a certain level of… ostracism happening in the camp, my lady,” Demoux said. “Those of us who fell sick for two weeks, rather than a few days, are being regarded with a measure of suspicion.”

“Suspicion that you no longer agree with, right, Demoux?” Elend punctuated this remark with a very kingly stern look.

Demoux nodded. “I trust your interpretation, my lord. It’s just that… well, it is difficult to lead men who distrust you. And, it’s much harder for the others like me. They’ve taken to eating together, staying away from the others during their free time. It’s reinforcing the division.”

“What do you think?” Elend asked. “Should we try to force reintegration?”

“That depends, my lord,” Demoux said.

“On?”

“On several factors,” Demoux said. “If you’re planning to attack soon, then reintegrating would be a bad idea – I don’t want men fighting alongside those they don’t trust. However, if we’re going to continue the siege for some time, then forcing them back together might make sense. The larger segment of the army would have time to learn to trust the mistfallen again.”

Mistfallen, Vin thought. Interesting name.

Elend looked down at her, and she knew what he was thinking. The ball at the Canton of Resource was only a few days away. If Elend’s plan went well, then perhaps they wouldn’t have to attack Fadrex.

Vin didn’t have great hopes for that option. Plus, without resupply from Luthadel, they couldn’t count on much anymore. They could continue the siege as planned for months, or they might end up having to attack within a few weeks.

“Organize a new company,” Elend said, turning to Demoux. “Fill it with these mistfallen. We’ll worry about dealing with superstition after we hold Fadrex.”

“Yes, my lord,” Demoux said. “I think that…”

They continued talking, but Vin stopped paying attention as she heard voices approaching the command tent. It was probably nothing. Even so, she moved around so that she was between the approaching people and Elend, then checked her metal reserves. Within moments, she could determine who was talking. One was Ham. She relaxed as the tent flap opened, revealing Ham in his standard vest and trousers, leading a wearied red-haired soldier. The exhausted man had ash-stained clothing and wore the leathers of a scout.

“Conrad?” Demoux asked with surprise.

“You know this man?” Elend asked.

“Yes, my lord,” Demoux said. “He’s one of the lieutenants I left back in Luthadel with King Penrod.”

Conrad saluted, though he looked rather the worse for the wear. “My lord,” the man said. “I bring news from the capital.”

“Finally!” Elend said. “What word from Penrod? Where are those supply barges I sent for?”

“Supply barges, my lord?” Conrad asked. “My lord, King Penrod sent me to ask you for resupply. There are riots in the city, and some of the food stores have been pillaged. King Penrod sent me to ask you for a contingent of troops to help him restore order.”

“Troops?” Elend asked. “What of the garrison I left with him? He should have plenty of men!”

“They’re not enough, my lord,” Conrad said. “I don’t know why. I can only relay the message I was sent to deliver.”

Elend cursed, slamming his fist against the command tent’s table. “Can Penrod not do the one thing I asked of him? All he needed to do was hold lands we already have secure!”

The soldier jumped at the outburst, and Vin watched with concern. Elend, however, managed to keep his temper under control. He took a deep breath, waving to the soldier. “Rest yourself, Lieutenant Conrad, and get some food. I will want to speak with you further about this later.”

Vin found Elend later that night, standing on the perimeter of the camp, looking up at the Fadrex watch fires on the cliffs above. She laid a hand on his shoulder, and the fact that he didn’t jump indicated that he’d heard her coming. It was still a little strange to her that Elend, who had always seemed slightly oblivious of the world around him, was now a capable Mistborn, with tin to enhance his ears that let him hear even the softest footsteps approaching.

“You talked to the messenger?” she asked as he put his arm around her, still looking up at the night sky. Ash fell around them. A couple of Elend’s soldier Tineyes passed on patrol, carrying no lights, silently walking the perimeter of the camp. Vin herself had just gotten back from a similar patrol, though hers had been around the perimeter of Fadrex. She did a couple of rounds every night, watching the city for unusual activity.

“Yes,” Elend said. “Once he’d had some rest, I spoke to him in depth.”

“Bad news?”

“Much of what he said before. Penrod apparently never got my orders to send food and troops. Conrad was one of four messengers Penrod sent to us. We don’t know what happened to the other three. Conrad himself was chased by a group of koloss, and he only got away by baiting them with his horse, sending it one direction and hiding as they chased it down and butchered it. He slipped away while they were feasting.”

“Brave man,” Vin said.

“Lucky as well,” Elend said. “Either way, it seems unlikely that Penrod will be able to send us support. There are food stores in Luthadel, but if the news of riots is true, Penrod won’t be able to spare the soldiers it would take to guard supplies on their way to us.”

“So… where does that leave us?” Vin asked.

Elend looked at her, and she was surprised to see determination in his eyes, not frustration. “With knowledge.”

“What?”

“Our enemy has exposed himself, Vin. Attacking our messengers directly with hidden pockets of koloss? Trying to undermine our supply base in Luthadel?” Elend shook his head. “Our enemy wants this to look random, but I see the pattern. It’s too focused, too intelligent, to be happenstance. He’s trying to make us pull away from Fadrex.”

Vin felt a chill. Elend made to say more, but she reached up and laid a hand on his lips, quieting him. He seemed confused, but then apparently understood, for he nodded. Whatever we say, Ruin can hear, Vin thought. We can’t give away what we know.

Still, something passed between them. A knowledge that they had to stay at Fadrex, that they had to find out what was in that storage cavern. For their enemy was working hard to keep them from doing so. Was Ruin, indeed, behind the chaos in Luthadel? A ploy to draw Elend and his forces back to restore order, thereby abandoning Fadrex?

It was only speculation, but it was all they had. Vin nodded to Elend, indicating that she agreed with his determination to stay. Still, she worried. Luthadel was to have been their rock in all of this – their secure position. If it was falling apart, what did they have?

More and more, she was beginning to understand that there would be no falling back. No retreat to develop alternative plans. The world was collapsing around them, and Elend had committed himself to Fadrex.

If they failed here, there would be nowhere else to go.

Eventually, Elend squeezed her shoulder, then walked off into the mists to check on some of the guard posts. Vin remained alone, staring up at those watch fires, feeling a worrisome sense of foreboding. Her thoughts from before, in the fourth storage cavern, returned to her. Fighting wars, besieging cities, playing at politics – it wasn’t enough. These things wouldn’t save them if the very land itself died.

But, what else could they do? The only option they had was to take Fadrex and hope the Lord Ruler had left them some clue to help. She still felt an inexplicable desire to find the atium. Why was she so certain it would help?

She closed her eyes, not wanting to face the mists, which – as always – pulled away from her, leaving a half-inch or so of empty air around her. She’d drawn upon them once, back when she’d fought the Lord Ruler. Why had she been able to fuel her Allomancy with their power that one time?

She reached out to them, trying again, as she had so many times. She called to them, pleaded with them in her mind, tried to access their power. And, she felt as if she should be able to. There was a strength to the mists. Trapped within them. But it wouldn’t yield to her. It was as if something kept them back, some blockage perhaps? Or, maybe, a simple whim on their part.

“Why?” she whispered, eyes still closed. “Why help me that once, but never again? Am I mad, or did you really give me power when I demanded it?”

The night gave her no answers. Finally, she sighed and turned away, seeking refuge inside of the tent.

41

“DON’T YOU SEE, BREEZE?” Sazed said eagerly. “This is an example of what we call ostention – a legend being emulated in real life. The people believed in the Survivor of Hathsin, and so they have made for themselves another survivor to help them in their time of need.”

Breeze raised an eyebrow. They stood near the back of a crowd gathering in the market district, waiting for the Citizen arrive.

“It is fascinating,” Sazed said. “This is an evolution of the Survivor legend that I never anticipated. I knew that they might deify him – in fact, that was almost inevitable. However, since Kelsier was once an ‘ordinary’ person, those who worship him can imagine other people achieving the same status.”

Breeze nodded distractedly. Allrianne stood beside him, looking quite petulant that she’d been required to wear drab skaa clothing.

Sazed ignored their lack of excitement. “I wonder what the future of this will be. Perhaps there will be a succession of Survivors for this people. This could be the foundation of a religion with true lasting potential, since it could reinvent itself to suit the needs of the populace. Of course, new Survivors mean new leaders – each one with different opinions. Rather than a line of priests who promote orthodoxy, each new Survivor would seek to establish himself as distinct from those he succeeded. It could make for numerous factions and divisions in the body of worshippers.”

“Sazed,” Breeze said. “What ever happened to not collecting religions?”

Sazed paused. “I’m not really collecting this religion. I’m just theorizing about its potential.”

Breeze raised an eyebrow.

“Besides,” Sazed said. “It might have to do with our current mission. If this new Survivor is indeed a real person, he may be able to help us overthrow Quellion.”

“Or,” Allrianne noted, “he might present a challenge to us for leadership of the city once Quellion does fall.”

“True,” Sazed admitted. “Either way, I do not see why you are complaining, Breeze. Did you not want me to become interested in religions again?”

“That was before I realized you’d spend the entire evening, then the next morning, chattering about it,” Breeze said. “Where is Quellion, anyway? If I miss lunch because of his executions, I’ll be rather annoyed.”

Executions. In his excitement, Sazed had nearly forgotten just what it was they had come to see. His eagerness deflated, and he remembered why Breeze was acting so solemnly. The man spoke lightly, but the concern in his eyes indicated that he was disturbed by the thought of the Citizen burning innocent people to death.

“There,” Allrianne said, pointing toward the other side of the market. Something was making a stir: the Citizen, wearing a bright blue costume. It was a new “approved” color – one only he was allowed to wear. His councillors surrounded him in red.

“Finally,” Breeze said, following the crowd as they bunched up around the Citizen.

Sazed followed, his steps growing reluctant. Now that he thought about it, he was tempted to use his troops to try to stop what was about to occur. Of course, he knew that would be foolish. Playing his hand now to save a few would ruin their chances of saving the entire city. With a sigh, he followed Breeze and Allrianne, moving with the crowd. He also suspected that watching the murders would remind him of the pressing nature of his duties in Urteau. Theological studies would wait for another time.

“You’re going to have to kill them,” Kelsier said.

Spook crouched quietly atop a building in the wealthier section of Urteau. Below, the Citizen’s procession was approaching; Spook watched it through cloth-wrapped eyes. It had taken many coins – nearly the last of what he’d brought with him from Luthadel – to bribe out the location of the executions sufficiently in advance so that he could get into position.

He could see the sorry individuals that Quellion had decided to murder. Many of them were like Franson’s sister – people who had been discovered to have noble parentage. Several others, however, were only spouses of those with noble blood. Spook also knew of one man in this group who had spoken out too loudly against Quellion. The man’s connection to the nobility was tenuous. He had once been a craftsman catering specifically to a noble clientele.

“I know you don’t want to do it,” Kelsier said. “But you can’t lose your nerve now.”

Spook felt powerful – pewter lent him an air of invincibility that he’d never before imagined. He had slept barely a few hours in the last six days, but he didn’t feel tired. He had a sense of balance that any cat would have envied, and he had strength his muscles shouldn’t have been able to produce.

And yet, power wasn’t everything. His palms were sweating beneath his cloak, and he felt beads of perspiration creeping down his brow. He was no Mistborn. He wasn’t Kelsier or Vin. He was just Spook. What was he thinking?

“I can’t do it,” he whispered.

“You can,” Kelsier said. “You’ve practiced with the cane – I’ve watched. Plus, you stood against those soldiers in the market. They nearly killed you, but you were fighting two Thugs. You did very well, considering.”

“I…”

“You need to save those people, Spook. Ask yourself: What would I do if I were there?”

“I’m not you.”

“Not yet,” Kelsier whispered.

Not yet.

Below, Quellion preached against the people about to be executed. Spook could see Beldre, the Citizen’s sister, at his side. Spook leaned forward. Was that really a look of sympathy, even pain, in her eyes as she watched the unfortunate prisoners herded toward the building? Or, was that just what Spook wanted to see in her? He followed her gaze, watching the prisoners. One of them was a child, holding fearfully to a woman as the group was prodded into the building that would become their pyre.

Kelsier’s right, Spook thought. I can’t let this happen. I may not succeed, but at least I have to try. His hands continued to shake as he moved through the hatch atop his building and dashed down the steps, cloak whipping behind him. He rounded a corner, heading for the wine cellar.

Noblemen were strange creatures. During the days of the Lord Ruler, they had often feared for their lives as much as skaa thieves did, for court intrigue often led to imprisonment or assassination. Spook should have realized what he was missing from the beginning. No thieving crew would build a lair without a bolt-hole for emergency escapes.

Why would the nobility be any different?

He leaped, cloak flapping as he dropped the last few steps. He hit the dusty floor, and his enhanced ears heard Quellion begin to rant up above. The skaa crowds were murmuring. The flames had started. There, in the darkened basement of the building, Spook found a section of the wall already open, a secret passageway leading from the building next door. A group of soldiers stood in the passageway.

“Quickly,” Spook heard one of them say, “before the fire gets here.”

“Please!” another voice cried, her words echoing through the passageway. “At least take the child!”

People grunted. The soldiers moved on the opposite side of the passage from Spook, keeping the people in the other basement from escaping. They had been sent by Quellion to save one of the prisoners. On the outside, the Citizen made a show of denouncing anyone with noble blood. Allomancers, however, were too valuable to kill. And so, he chose his buildings carefully – only burning those with hidden exits through which he could carefully extract the Allomancers.

It was the perfect way to show orthodoxy, yet maintain a grip on the city’s most powerful resource. But it wasn’t this hypocrisy that made Spook’s hands stop shaking as he charged the soldiers.

It was the crying child.

“Kill them!” Kelsier screamed.

Spook whipped out his dueling cane. One of the soldiers finally noticed him, spinning in shock.

He fell first.

Spook hadn’t realized how hard he could swing. The soldier’s helmet flew through the hidden passageway, its metal crumpled. The other soldiers cried out as Spook leaped over their fallen companion in the close confines. They carried swords, but had trouble drawing them.

Spook, however, had brought daggers.

He pulled one free, wielding it with a swing powered by both pewter and fury, enhanced senses guiding his steps. He cut through two soldiers, elbowing their dying bodies aside, pressing his advantage. At the end of the passageway, four soldiers stood with a short skaa man.

Fear shone in their eyes.

Spook threw himself forward, and the shocked soldiers finally overcame their surprise. They pushed backward, throwing open the secret door and stumbling over themselves as they entered the building basement on the other side.

The structure was already well on its way to burning down. Spook could smell the smoke. The rest of the condemned people were in the room – they had probably been trying to get through the doorway to follow their friend who had escaped. Now they were forced backward as the soldiers shoved their way into the room, finally drawing their swords.

Spook gutted the slowest of the four soldiers, then left his dagger in the body, pulling out a second dueling cane. The firm length of wood felt good in his hand as he spun between shocked civilians, attacking the soldiers.

“The soldiers can’t be allowed to escape,” Kelsier whispered. “Otherwise, Quellion will know that the people were rescued. You have to leave him confused.”

Light flickered in a hallway beyond the well-furnished basement room. Firelight. Spook could feel the heat already. Grimly, the three backlit soldiers raised their swords. Smoke began to creep in along the ceiling, spreading like a dark black mist. Prisoners cringed, confused.

Spook dashed forward, spinning as he swung both of his canes at one of the soldiers. The man took the bait, sidestepping Spook’s attack, then lunging forward. In an ordinary fight, Spook would have been skewered.

Pewter and tin saved him. Spook moved on feet made light, feeling the wind of the oncoming sword, knowing where it would pass. His heart thudded inside his chest as the sword sliced through the fabric at his side, but missed the flesh. He brought a cane down, cracking the man’s sword arm, then smacked another into his skull.

The soldier fell, surprise visible in his dying eyes as Spook pushed past him.

The next soldier was already swinging. Spook brought up both of his canes, crossing them to block. The sword bit through one, spinning half of the cane into the air, but got caught in the second. Spook snapped his weapon to the side, pushing the blade away, then spun inside the man’s reach and took him down with an elbow to the stomach.

Spook punched the man’s head as he fell. The sound of bone on bone cracked in the burning room. The soldier slumped at Spook’s feet.

I can actually do this! Spook thought. I am like them. Vin and Kelsier. No more hiding in basements or fleeing from danger. I can fight!

He spun, smiling.

And found the final soldier standing with Spook’s own knife held to the neck of a young girl. The soldier stood with his back to the burning hallway, eyeing escape through the hidden passage. Behind the man, flames were curling around the wooden doorframe, licking the room.

“The rest of you, get out!” Spook said, not turning from the soldier. “Go out the back door of the building you find at the end of this tunnel. You’ll find men there. They’ll hide you in the underground, then get you out of the city. Go!”

Some had already fled, and those who remained moved at his command. The soldier stood, watching, obviously trying to decide his course. He must have known he was facing an Allomancer – no ordinary man could have taken down so many soldiers so quickly. Fortunately, it appeared that Quellion hadn’t sent his own Allomancers into the building. He likely kept them above, protecting him.

Spook stood still. He dropped the broken dueling cane, but held the other tightly to keep his hand from shaking. The girl whimpered quietly.

What would Kelsier have done?

Behind him, the last of the prisoners was fleeing into the passage. “You!” Spook said without turning. “Bar that door from the outside. Quickly!”

“But–”

“Do it!” Spook yelled.

“No!” the soldier said, pressing the knife against the girl’s neck. “I’ll kill her!”

“Do and you die,” Spook said. “You know that. Look at me. You’re not getting past me. You’re–”

The door thunked closed.

The soldier cried out, dropping the girl, rushing toward the door, obviously trying to get to it before the bar fell on the other side. “That’s the only way out! You’ll get us–”

Spook broke the man’s knees with a single crack of the dueling cane. The soldier screamed, falling to the ground. Flames burned on three of the walls, now. The heat was already intense.

The bar clicked into place on the other side of the door. Spook looked down at the soldier. Still alive.

“Leave him,” Kelsier said. “Let him burn in the building.”

Spook hesitated.

“He would have let all of those people die,” Kelsier said. “Let him feel what he would have done to these – what he has already done several times, at Quellion’s command.”

Spook left the groaning man on the ground, moving over to the secret door. He threw his weight against it.

It held.

Spook cursed quietly, raising a boot and kicking the door. It, however, remained solid.

“That door was built by noblemen who feared they would be pursued by assassins,” Kelsier said. “They were familiar with Allomancy, and would make certain the door was strong enough to resist a Thug’s kick.”

The fire was growing hotter. The girl huddled on the floor, whimpering. Spook whirled, staring down the flames, feeling their heat. He stepped forward, but his amplified senses were so keen that the heat seemed amazingly powerful to him.

He gritted his teeth, picking up the girl.

I have pewter now, he thought. It can balance the power of my senses.

That will have to be enough.

Smoke billowed out the windows of the condemned building. Sazed waited with Breeze and Allrianne, standing at the back of a solemn crowd. The people were oddly silent as they watched the flames claim their prize. Perhaps they sensed the truth.

That they could be taken and killed as easily as the poor wretches who died inside.

“How quickly we come around,” Sazed whispered. “It wasn’t long ago that men were forced to watch the Lord Ruler cut the heads from innocent people. Now we do it to ourselves.”

Silence. What sounded like yells came from inside the building. The screams of dying men.

“Kelsier was wrong,” Breeze said.

Sazed frowned, turning.

“He blamed the noblemen,” Breeze said. “He thought that if we got rid of them, things like this wouldn’t happen.”

Sazed nodded. Then, oddly, the crowd began to grow restless, shuffling about, murmuring. And, Sazed felt himself agreeing with them. Something needed to be done about this atrocity. Why did nobody fight? Quellion stood there, surrounded by his proud men in red. Sazed gritted his teeth, growing angry.

“Allrianne, dear,” Breeze said, “this isn’t the time.”

Sazed started. He turned, glancing at the young woman. She was crying.

By the Forgotten Gods, Sazed thought, finally recognizing her touch on his emotions, Rioting them to make him angry at Quellion. She’s as good as Breeze is.

“Why not?” she said. “He deserves it. I could make this crowd rip him apart.”

“And his second-in-command would take control,” Breeze said, “then execute these people. We haven’t prepared enough.”

“It seems that you’re never done preparing, Breeze,” she snapped.

“These things require–”

“Wait,” Sazed said, raising a hand. He frowned, watching the building. One of the building’s boarded windows – one high in a peaked attic section on top of the roof itself – seemed to be shaking.

“Look!” Sazed said. “There!”

Breeze raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps our Flame God is about to make his appearance, eh?” He smiled at what he obviously found a ridiculous concept. “I wonder what we were supposed to learn during this revolting little experience. Personally, I think the men who sent us here didn’t know what they–”

One of the planks suddenly flew off of the window, spinning in the air, swirling smoke behind it. Then the window burst outward.

A figure in dark clothing leaped through the shattering mess of boards and smoke, landing on the rooftop. His long cloak actually appeared to be on fire in places, and he carried a small bundle in his arms. A child. The figure rushed along the top of the burning rooftop, then leaped off the front of the building, trailing smoke as he fell to the ground.

He landed with the grace of a man burning pewter, not stumbling despite the two-story fall, his burning cloak billowing out around him. People backed away, surprised, and Quellion spun in shock.

The man’s hood fell back as he stood upright. Only then did Sazed recognize him.

Spook stood tall, seeming in the sunlight to be older than he really was. Or, perhaps, Sazed had never looked at him as anything but a child until that moment. Either way, the young man regarded Quellion proudly, eyes wrapped with a blindfold, his body smoking as he held the coughing child in his arms. He didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the troop of twenty soldiers that surrounded the building.

Breeze cursed quietly. “Allrianne, we’re going to need that Riot after all!”

Sazed suddenly felt a weight pressing against him. Breeze Soothed away his distracting emotions – his confusion, his concern – and left Sazed, along with the crowd, completely open to Allrianne’s focused burst of enraged anger.

The crowd exploded with motion, people crying out in the name of the Survivor, rushing the guards. For a moment, Sazed feared that Spook wouldn’t take the opportunity to run. Despite the strange bandage on Spook’s eyes, Sazed could tell that the boy was staring straight at Quellion – as if in challenge.

Fortunately, however, Spook finally turned away. The crowd distracted the advancing soldiers, and Spook ran on feet that seemed to move far too quickly. He ducked down an alleyway, carrying the girl he had rescued, his cloak trailing smoke. As soon as Spook had a safe head start, Breeze smothered the crowd’s will to rebel, keeping them from getting themselves cut down by the soldiers. The people backed away, dispersing. The Citizen’s soldiers, however, stayed close around their leader. Sazed could hear frustration in the Citizen’s voice as he called for the inevitable retreat. He couldn’t spare more than a few men to chase down Spook, not with the potential of a riot. He had to get himself to safety.

As soldiers marched away, Breeze turned an eye toward Sazed. “Well,” he noted, “that was somewhat unexpected.”

42

WHEN MARSH ENTERED LUTHADEL, he was far more careful than he had been when he’d entered the nameless town at the western border of the dominance. An Inquisitor moving through the capital of Elend’s empire would not go unreported, and might draw undue attention. The emperor was gone, and he had left his playground open to be used by others. No need to spoil that.

So, Marsh moved at night, hooded cloak up, burning steel and jumping about on coins. Even so, seeing the magnificent city – sprawling, dirty, yet still home – was hard for the watching, waiting part of Marsh. Once, Marsh himself had run the skaa rebellion in this city. He felt responsible for its occupants, and the thought of Ruin doing to them what he’d done to the people of the other town, the one where the ashmount had blown…

There was no ashmount that close to Luthadel. Unfortunately, there were things Ruin could do to a city that didn’t involve natural forces. On his way to Luthadel, Marsh had stopped at no fewer than four villages, where he had secretly killed the men guarding their food stores, then set fire to the buildings that contained them. He knew that the other Inquisitors went about the world, committing similar atrocities as they searched for the thing Ruin desired above all others. The thing Preservation had taken from him.

He had yet to find it.

Marsh leaped over a street, landing atop a peaked rooftop, running along its edge and making his way toward the northeastern side of the city. Luthadel had changed during the year since he’d last seen it. The Lord Ruler’s forced labor projects had brutalized the skaa, but had kept things clean of ash and given even the oversized city a sense of order. There was none of that now. Growing food was obviously a priority – and keeping the city clean could wait for later, if there was a later.

There were far more trash heaps now, and mounds of ash – which would have once been scraped into the river at the center of the city – slumped in alleys and against buildings. Marsh felt himself begin to smile at the beauty of the disrepair, and his little, rebellious part withdrew and hid.

He couldn’t fight. Now was not the time.

He soon arrived at Keep Venture, seat of Elend’s government. It had been invaded by koloss during the siege of Luthadel, its lower stained-glass windows shattered by the beasts. The windows had been replaced only by boards. Marsh smiled, then Steelpush-leaped up to a balcony on the second floor. He was familiar with this building. Before he’d been taken by Ruin, he had spent several months living here, helping Emperor Venture keep control in his city.

Marsh found Penrod’s rooms easily. They were the only ones occupied, and the only ones guarded. Marsh crouched a few corridors down, watching with his inhuman eyes as he considered his next course of action.

Impaling an unwilling subject with a Hemalurgic spike was a very tricky prospect. The spike’s size was, in this case, immaterial. Just as a pinch of metal dust could fuel Allomancy for a time, or a small ring could hold a small Feruchemical charge, a rather small bit of metal could work for Hemalurgy. Inquisitor spikes were made large to be intimidating, but a small pin could, in many instances, be just as effective as a massive spike. It depended on how long one wanted to leave the spike outside of a person’s body after using it to kill someone.

For Marsh’s purposes this day, a small spike was preferable; he didn’t want to give Penrod powers, just pierce him with metal. Marsh pulled out the spike he had made from the Allomancer in the doomed town a few days back. It was about five inches long – actually bigger than it needed to be, strictly speaking. However, Marsh would need to drive this spike forcefully into a man’s body, which meant it needed to be at least large enough to hold its shape. There were some two or three hundred bind points across a human’s body. Marsh didn’t know them all; Ruin would guide his hand when the time came to strike, making sure the spike was delivered to the right place. His master’s direct attention was focused elsewhere at the moment, and he was giving Marsh general commands to get into position and prepare for the attack.

Hemalurgic spikes. The hidden part of himself shivered, remembering the day when he had unexpectedly been made into an Inquisitor. He’d thought that he had been discovered. He’d been working as a spy for Kelsier in the Steel Priesthood. Little did he know that he hadn’t been singled out as suspicious – he’d been singled out as extraordinary.

The Inquisitors had come for him at night, while he’d waited nervously to meet with Kelsier and pass on what he assumed would be his final message to the rebellion. They’d burst through the door, moving more quickly than Marsh could react. They gave him no option. They’d simply slammed him down against the ground, then thrown a screaming woman on top of him.

Then, the Inquisitors had pounded a spike right through her heart and into Marsh’s eye.

The pain was too great for him to remember. That moment was a hole in his memory, filled with vague images of the Inquisitors repeating this process, killing other unfortunate Allomancers and pounding their powers – their very souls, it seemed – into Marsh’s body. When it was finished, he lay groaning on the floor, a new flood of sensory information making it difficult for him even to think. Around him, the other Inquisitors had danced about, cutting apart the other bodies with their axes, rejoicing in the addition of another member to their ranks.

That was, in a way, the day of his birth. What a wonderful day. Penrod, however, would not have such joy. He wasn’t to be made into an Inquisitor – he would get only a single, small spike. One that had been made days ago, and been allowed to sit outside a body – leaking power – all that time.

Marsh waited for Ruin to come to him in force. Not only would the spike have to be planted precisely, but Penrod would have to leave it in long enough for Ruin to begin influencing his thoughts and emotions. The spike had to touch the blood – at first, at least. After the spike was pounded in, the skin could heal around the metal, and the spike would still work. However, to begin with, there would be blood.

How did one make a person forget about five inches of metal sprouting from their body? How did one make others ignore it? Ruin had tried to get a spike into Elend Venture on several occasions now, and had always failed. In fact, most attempts failed. The few people claimed with the process, however, were worth the effort.

Ruin came upon him, and he lost control of his body. He moved without knowing what he was going to do, following direct orders. Down the corridor. Don’t attack the guards. In through the door.

Marsh shoved aside the two watching soldiers, kicking the door down and bursting into the antechamber.

Right. To the bedchamber.

Marsh was through the room in a heartbeat, the two soldiers belatedly screaming for help outside. Penrod was an aging man with a dignified air. He had the presence of mind to leap from his bed at the sounds, grabbing a hardwood dueling cane from its place atop his nightstand.

Marsh smiled. A dueling cane? Against an Inquisitor? He pulled his obsidian hand axe from the sheath at his side.

Fight him, Ruin said, but do not kill him. Make it a difficult battle, but allow him to feel that he’s holding you off.

It was an odd request, but Marsh’s mind was so directly controlled that he couldn’t even pause to think about it. He could simply leap forward to attack.

It was harder than it seemed. He had to make sure to strike with the axe in ways that Penrod could block. Several times, he had to tap speed from one of his spikes – which doubled as a Feruchemical metalmind – to suddenly inch his axe in the right direction, lest he accidentally behead the king of Luthadel.

Yet, Marsh did it. He cut Penrod a few times, fighting all the while with the small spike held hidden in his left palm, letting the king think he was doing well. Within moments, the guards had joined the fight, which allowed Marsh to keep up appearances even better. Three normal men against an Inquisitor was still no contest, but from their perspectives, maybe it would seem like one.

It wasn’t long before a troop of some dozen guards burst into the chamber outside the bedroom, coming to aid their king.

Now, Ruin said. Act frightened, get ready to put the spike in, and prepare to flee out the window.

Marsh tapped speed and moved. Ruin guided his hand precisely as he slammed his left hand into Penrod’s chest, driving the spike directly into the man’s heart. Marsh heard Penrod scream, smiled at the sound, and leaped out the window.

A short time later, Marsh hung outside that same window, unseen and unnoticed, even by the numerous guard patrols. He was far too skilled, far too careful, to be spotted listening with tin-enhanced ears, hanging underneath an outcropping of stone near the window. Inside, surgeons conferred.

“When we try to pull the spike out, the bleeding increases dramatically, my lord,” one voice explained.

“The shard of metal got dangerously close to your heart,” said another.

Dangerously close? Marsh thought with a smile from his upside-down perch. The spike pierced his heart. But, of course, the surgeons couldn’t know that. Since Penrod was conscious, they would assume that the spike had come close, but somehow just barely missed.

“We fear pulling it out,” the first surgeon said. “How… do you feel?”

“Remarkably good, actually,” said Penrod. “There is an ache, and some discomfort. But I feel strong.”

“Then let us leave the shard, for now,” the first surgeon said, sounding concerned. But, what else could he do? If he did pull the spike out, it would kill Penrod. A clever move by Ruin.

They would wait for Penrod to regain his strength, then try again to remove the spike. Again, it would threaten Penrod’s life. They’d have to leave it. And, with Ruin now able to touch his mind – not control him, just nudge things in certain directions – Penrod would soon forget about the spike. The discomfort would fade, and with the spike under his clothing, no one would find it irregular.

And then he would be Ruin’s as surely as any Inquisitor. Marsh smiled, let go of the outcropping, and dropped to the dark streets below.

43

VIN LANDED WITH A HUSHED rustle of cloth. She crouched in the night, holding up her dress to keep it from brushing the ashen rooftop, then peered into the mists.

Elend dropped beside her, then fell into a crouch, asking no questions. She smiled, noting that his instincts were getting better. He watched the mists too, though he obviously didn’t know what he was looking for.

“He’s following us,” Vin whispered.

“Yomen’s Mistborn?” Elend asked.

Vin nodded.

“Where?” he asked.

“Three houses back,” Vin said.

Elend squinted, and she felt one of his Allomantic pulses suddenly increase in speed. He was flaring tin.

“That lump on the right side?” Elend asked.

“Close enough,” Vin said.

“So…”

“So, he knows I’ve spotted him,” Vin said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stopped. Right now, we’re studying one another.”

Elend reached to his belt, slipping out an obsidian knife.

“He won’t attack,” Vin said.

“How do you know?”

“Because,” Vin said. “When he intends to kill us, he’ll try to do it when you and I aren’t together – or when we’re sleeping.”

That seemed to make Elend even more nervous. “Is that why you’ve been staying up all night lately?”

Vin nodded. Forcing Elend to sleep alone was a small price to pay for keeping him safe. Is it you back there following us, Yomen? she wondered. On the night of your own party? That would be quite the feat. It didn’t seem likely; but still, Vin was suspicious. She had a habit of suspecting everyone of being Mistborn. She still thought it was healthy, even if she had been wrong more often than not.

“Come on,” she said, rising. “Once we get into the party, we shouldn’t have to worry about him.”

Elend nodded, and the two continued along their path to the Canton of Resource.

The plan is simple, Elend had said just hours before. I’ll confront Yomen, and the nobility won’t be able to help gathering around to gawk. At that point, you sneak away and see if you can find your way to the storage chamber.

It really was a simple plan – the best ones usually were. If Elend confronted Yomen, it would keep the attention of the guards on him, hopefully letting Vin slip out. She’d have to move quickly and quietly, and would probably have to eliminate some guards – all without raising an alarm. Yet, this appeared to be the only way in. Not only was Yomen’s fortress-like building well lit and extremely well guarded, but his Mistborn was good. The man had detected her every other time she’d tried to sneak in – always remaining at a distance, his mere presence warning her that he could raise the alarm in a heartbeat.

Their best chance was the ball. Yomen’s defenses, and his Mistborn, would be focused on their master, keeping him safe.

They landed in the courtyard, causing carriages to stop and guards to turn in shock. Vin glanced to Elend in the misty darkness. “Elend,” she said quietly, “I need you to promise me something.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Eventually, I’m going to get spotted,” Vin said. “I’ll sneak as best I can, but I doubt we’ll get through this without creating a disturbance. When it hits, I want you to get out.”

“Vin, I can’t do that. I have to–”

“No,” Vin said sharply. “Elend, you don’t have to help me. You can’t help me. I love you, but you’re just not as good at this as I am. I can take care of myself, but I need to know that I won’t have to take care of you, too. If anything goes wrong – or, if things go right, but the building goes on alert – I want you to get out. I’ll meet you at the camp.”

“And if you get into trouble?” Elend said.

Vin smiled. “Trust me.”

He paused, then nodded. Trusting her was one thing he could obviously do – something he’d always done.

The two strode forward. It felt very strange to be attending a ball at a Ministry building. Vin was accustomed to stained glass and ornamentation, but Canton offices were generally austere – and this one was no exception. It was only a single story tall, and it had sharp, flat walls with very small windows. No limelights illuminated the outside, and while a couple of large tapestry banners fluttered against the stonework, the only indication that this night was special was the cluster of carriages and nobility in the courtyard. The soldiers in the area had noted Vin and Elend, but made no move to engage – or even slow – them.

Those watching – both nobility and soldiers – were interested, but few of them looked surprised. Vin and Elend were expected. Vin’s hunch about that was confirmed when she moved up the steps, and nobody moved to intercept them. The guards at the door watched suspiciously, but let her and Elend pass.

Inside, she found a long entry hall, lit by lamps. The flow of people turned left, so Vin and Elend followed, twisting through a few labyrinthine corridors until they approached a larger meeting hall.

“Not exactly the most impressive place for a ball, eh?” Elend said as they waited their turn to be announced.

Vin nodded. Most noble keeps had exterior entrances directly into their ballroom. The room ahead – from what she could see of it – had been adapted from a standard Ministry meeting room. Rivets covered the floor where benches had once been, and there was a stage on the far side of the room, where obligators had probably once stood to give instruction to their subordinates. This was where Yomen’s table had been set up.

It was too small to be a truly practical ballroom. The people inside weren’t cramped, exactly, but neither did they have the space the nobility preferred for forming separate little groups where they could gossip.

“Looks like there are other party rooms,” Elend said, nodding to several corridors leading from the main “ballroom.” People were trailing in and out of them.

“Places for people to go if they feel too crowded,” Vin said. “This is going to be a tough place to escape, Elend. Don’t let yourself get cornered. Looks like an exit over there to the left.”

Elend followed her gaze as they walked into the main room. Flickering torchlight and trails of mist indicated a courtyard or atrium. “I’ll stay close to it,” he said. “And avoid going to any of the smaller side rooms.”

“Good,” Vin said. She also noted something else – twice during the trip through the corridors to the ballroom, she’d seen stairwells leading down. That implied a fairly large basement, something uncommon back in Luthadel. The Canton building goes down, rather than up, she decided. It made sense, assuming that there really was a storage cache below.

The door herald announced them without needing a card to read from, and the two entered the room. The party was nowhere near as lavish as the one at Keep Orielle had been. There were snacks, but no dinner – likely because there wasn’t room for dining tables. There was music and dancing, but the room was not draped in finery. Yomen had elected to leave the simple, stark Ministry walls uncovered.

“I wonder why he even bothers to hold balls,” Vin whispered.

“He probably had to start them,” Elend said. “To prompt the other nobility. Now he’s part of the rotation. It’s smart of him, though. It gives a man some measure of power to be able to draw the nobility into his home and be their host.”

Vin nodded, then eyed the dance floor. “One dance before we split up?”

Elend wavered. “To tell you the truth, I feel a bit too nervous.”

Vin smiled, then kissed him lightly, completely breaking noble protocol. “Give me about an hour before the distraction. I want to get a feel for the party before I sneak away.”

He nodded, and they split, Elend heading directly for a group of men that Vin didn’t recognize. Vin herself kept moving. She didn’t want to get bogged down by conversation, so she avoided the women she recognized from Keep Orielle. She knew that she should probably have worked to reinforce her contacts, but the truth was that she felt a little bit of what Elend did. Not truly nervousness, but rather a desire to avoid typical ball activities. She wasn’t here to mingle. She had more important tasks to be concerned with.

So, she meandered through the ballroom, sipping a cup of wine and studying the guards. There were a lot of them, which was probably good. The more guards there were in the ballroom, the fewer there would be in the rest of the building. Theoretically.

Vin kept moving, nodding to people, but withdrawing anytime one of them tried to make conversation with her. If she had been Yomen, she would have ordered a few particular soldiers to keep watch on her, just to make certain that she didn’t stray anywhere sensitive. Yet, none of the men seemed to be all that focused on her. As the hour passed, she grew more and more frustrated. Was Yomen really so incompetent that he wouldn’t keep watch on a known Mistborn who entered his home base?

Annoyed, Vin burned bronze. Perhaps there were Allomancers nearby. She nearly jumped in shock when she felt the Allomantic pulsings coming from just beside her.

There were two of them. Courtly puffs – women whose names she didn’t know, but who looked distinctly dismissible. That was probably the idea. They stood chatting with a couple of other women a short distance from Vin. One was burning copper, the other was burning tin – Vin would never have picked them out if she hadn’t had the ability to pierce copperclouds.

As Vin drifted through the room, the two followed, moving with an impressive level of skill as they slid in and out of conversations. They always stuck close enough to Vin to be within tin-enhanced hearing range, yet stayed far enough away in the relatively crowded room that Vin would never have picked them out without Allomantic help.

Interesting, she thought, moving toward the perimeter of the room. At least Yomen wasn’t underestimating her. But now, how to give the women the slip? They wouldn’t be distracted by Elend’s disturbance, and they certainly wouldn’t let Vin sneak away without raising an alarm.

As she wandered, working on the problem, she noted a familiar figure sitting at the edge of the ballroom. Slowswift sat in his usual suit, smoking his pipe as he relaxed in one of the chairs set out for the elderly or the overdanced. She trailed over toward him.

“I thought you didn’t come to these things,” she noted, smiling. Behind, her two shadows expertly worked their way into a conversation a short distance away.

“I only come when my king holds them,” Slowswift said.

“Ah,” Vin said, then she drifted away. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Slowswift frowning. He’d obviously expected her to speak to him further, but she couldn’t risk his saying anything incriminating. At least, not yet. Her tails extricated themselves from their conversation, the speed of Vin’s departure forcing them to do so awkwardly. After walking for a bit, Vin paused, giving the women the chance to get themselves into yet another conversation.

Then, Vin spun and walked quickly back to Slowswift, trying to look as if she’d just remembered something. Her tails, intent on looking natural, had trouble following. They hesitated, and Vin gained just a few short breaths of freedom.

She leaned down to Slowswift as she passed. “I need two men,” she said. “Ones you trust against Yomen. Have them meet me in a part of the party that is more secluded, a place where people can sit and chat.”

“The patio,” Slowswift said. “Down the left corridor, then outside.”

“Good,” Vin said. “Tell your men to go there, but then wait until I approach them. Also, please send a messenger to Elend. Tell him I need another half hour.”

Slowswift nodded to the cryptic comment, and Vin smiled as her shadows trailed closer. “I hope you feel better soon,” she said, putting on a fond smile.

“Thank you, my dear,” Slowswift said, coughing slightly.

Vin trailed away again. She slowly made her way in the direction Slowswift had indicated, the exit she’d picked out earlier. Sure enough, a few moments later she passed into mist. The mist vanishes inside buildings, eventually, Vin thought. Everyone always assumes it has something to do with heat, or perhaps the lack of airflow…

In a few seconds, she found herself standing on a lantern-lit garden patio. Though tables had been set up for people to relax, the patio was sparsely populated. Servants wouldn’t go out in the mists, and most nobility – though they didn’t like to admit it – found the mists disconcerting. Vin wandered over to an ornate metal railing, then leaned against it, looking up at the sky, feeling the mists around her and idly fingering her earring.

Soon, her two shadows appeared, chatting quietly, and Vin’s tin let her hear that they were talking about how stuffy the other room had been. Vin smiled, maintaining her posture as the two women took chairs a distance away, continuing to chat. After that, two young men wandered in and sat down at another table. They weren’t as natural about the process as the women, but Vin hoped they weren’t suspicious enough to draw attention.

Then, she waited.

Life as a thief – a life spent preparing for jobs, watching in spy holes, and carefully choosing just the right opportunity to pick a pocket – had taught her patience. It was one urchin attribute she had never lost. She stood, staring at the sky, giving no indication at all that she intended to leave. Now, she simply had to wait for the distraction.

You shouldn’t have relied on him for the distraction, Reen whispered in her mind. He’ll fail. Never let your life depend on the competence of someone whose life isn’t also on the line.

It had been one of Reen’s favorite sayings. She didn’t think of him very often, anymore – or, really, anyone from her old life. That life had been one of pain and sorrow. A brother who beat her to keep her safe, a crazy mother who had inexplicably slaughtered Vin’s baby sister.

However, that life was only a faint echo, now. She smiled to herself, amused at how far she had come. Reen might have called her a fool, but she trusted Elend – trusted him to succeed, trusted him with her life. That was something she could never have done during her early years.

After about ten minutes, someone came out from the party and wandered over to the pair of women. He spoke with them just briefly, then returned to the party. Another man came twenty minutes after that, doing the same thing. Hopefully, the women were passing on the information Vin wished: that Vin had apparently decided to spend an indeterminate amount of time outside, staring at the mists. Those inside wouldn’t expect her to return anytime soon.

A few moments after the second messenger returned to the party, a man rushed out and approached one of the tables. “You have to come hear this!” he whispered to the people at the table – the only ones currently on the patio who had nothing to do with Vin. That group left. Vin smiled. Elend’s distraction had come.

Vin jumped into the air, then Pushed against the railing beside her, launching herself across the patio.

The women had obviously grown bored, chatting idly to themselves. It took them a few moments to notice Vin’s movement. In those moments, Vin shot across the now-empty patio, dress flapping as she flew. One of the women opened her mouth to yell.

Vin extinguished her metals, then burned duralumin and brass, Pushing on the emotions of both women.

She’d done this only once before, to Straff Venture. A duralumin-fueled Brass-push was a terrible thing; it flattened a person’s emotions, making them feel empty, completely void of all feeling. Both women gasped, and the one who had been standing stumbled to the ground instead, falling silent.

Vin landed hard, her pewter still off lest she mix it with duralumin. She put her pewter back on immediately, however, rolling up to her feet. She took one of the women with an elbow to the stomach, then grabbed her face and slammed it down into the table, knocking her out. The other woman sat dazedly on the ground. Vin grimaced, then grabbed the woman by the throat, choking her.

It felt brutal, but Vin didn’t let up until the woman fell unconscious – proven by the fact that she let her Allomantic coppercloud fall. Vin sighed, releasing the woman. The unconscious spy slumped to the floor.

Vin turned. Slowswift’s young men stood by anxiously. Vin waved them over.

“Stash these two in the bushes,” Vin said quickly, “then sit at the table. If anyone asks after them, say that you saw them follow me back into the party. Hopefully, that will keep everyone confused.”

The men flushed. “We–”

“Do as I say or flee,” Vin snapped. “Don’t argue with me. I left them both alive, and I can’t afford to let them report that I’ve escaped their watch. If they stir, you’ll have to knock them out again.”

The men nodded reluctantly.

Vin reached up and unbuttoned her dress, letting the garment fall to the ground and revealing the sleek, dark clothing she wore underneath. She gave the dress to the men to hide as well, then moved into the building, away from the party. Inside the misty corridor, she found a stairwell, and slipped down it. Elend’s distraction would be in full progress by now. Hopefully, it would last long enough.

“That’s right,” Elend said, arms folded, staring down Yomen. “A duel. Why make the armies fight for the city? You and I could settle this ourselves.”

Yomen didn’t laugh at the ridiculous idea. He simply sat at his table, his thoughtful eyes set in a bald, tattooed head, the single bead of atium tied to his forehead sparkling in the lantern-light. The rest of the crowd was reacting just as Elend had expected. Conversations had died, and people had rushed in, packing into the main ballroom to watch the confrontation between emperor and king.

“Why do you think that I would consent to such a thing?” Yomen finally asked.

“All accounts say that you are a man of honor.”

“But you are not,” Yomen said, pointing at Elend. “This very offer proves that. You are an Allomancer – there would be no contest between us. What honor would there be in that?”

Elend didn’t really care. He just wanted Yomen occupied as long as possible. “Then choose a champion,” he said. “I’ll fight him instead.”

“Only a Mistborn would be a match for you,” Yomen said.

“Then send one against me.”

“Alas, I have none. I won my kingdom through fairness, legality, and the Lord Ruler’s grace – not through threat of assassination, like yourself.”

No Mistborn, you say? Elend thought, smiling. So, your “fairness, legality, and grace” don’t preclude lying? “You would really let your people die?” Elend said loudly, sweeping his hand across the room. More and more people were gathering to watch. “All because of your pride?”

“Pride?” Yomen said, leaning forward. “You call it pride to defend your own rule? I call it pride to march your armies into another man’s kingdom, seeking to intimidate him with barbaric monsters.”

“Monsters your own Lord Ruler created and used to intimidate and conquer as well,” Elend said.

Yomen paused. “Yes, the Lord Ruler created the koloss,” he said. “It was his prerogative to determine how they were used. Besides, he kept them far away from civilized cities – yet you march them right up to our doorstep.”

“Yes,” Elend said, “and they haven’t attacked. That’s because I can control them as the Lord Ruler did. Wouldn’t that suggest that I have inherited his right to rule?”

Yomen frowned, perhaps noticing that Elend’s arguments kept changing – that he was saying whatever came to mind in order to keep the discussion going.

“You may be unwilling to save this city,” Elend said, “but there are others in it who are wiser. You don’t think I came here without allies, do you?”

Yomen paused again.

“Yes,” Elend said, scanning the crowd. “You’re not just fighting me, Yomen. You’re fighting your own people. Which ones will betray you, when the time comes? How well can you trust them, exactly?”

Yomen snorted. “Idle threats, Venture. What is this really about?” However, Elend could tell that his words bothered Yomen. The man didn’t trust the local nobility. He would have been a fool to do so.

Elend smiled, preparing his next argument. He could keep this discussion going for quite some time. For, if there was one thing in particular that he had learned by growing up in his father’s house it was this: how to annoy people.

You have your distraction, Vin, Elend thought. Let’s hope you can end the fight for this city before it really begins.

44

VIN CREPT DOWN THE STONE STAIRWELL, small sounds echoing eerily from below. She had no torch or lantern, and the stairwell was not lit, but enough light reflected up from below to let her tin-enhanced eyes see.

The more she thought about it, the more the large basement made sense. This was the Canton of Resource – the arm of the Ministry that had been in charge of feeding the people, maintaining the canals, and supplying the other Cantons. Vin supposed that this basement had once been well stocked with supplies. If the cache really was here, it would be the first that she had discovered hidden beneath a Canton of Resource building. Vin expected great things from it. What better place to hide your atium and your most important resources than with an organization that was in charge of transportation and storage across the entire empire?

The stairwell was simple, utilitarian, and steep. Vin wrinkled her nose at the musty air, which seemed all the more stuffy to her tin-enhanced sense of smell. Still, she was grateful for tin’s enhanced vision, not to mention the enhanced hearing, which let her hear clinking armor below – an indication that she needed to move quite carefully.

And so she did. She reached the bottom of the stairwell and peeked around the corner. Three narrow stone corridors split off from the stairwell landing, each heading in a different direction at ninety-degree angles. The sounds were coming from the right, and as Vin leaned out a bit more, she nearly jumped as she saw a pair of guards standing lazily against the wall a short distance away.

Guards standing in the corridors, Vin thought, ducking back into the stairwell. Yomen definitely wants to protect something down here.

Vin crouched down on the rough, cool stone. Pewter, steel, and iron were of relatively little use at the moment. She could take down both guards, but it would be risky, since she couldn’t afford to make any noise. She didn’t know where the cache was – and therefore couldn’t afford to make a disturbance, not yet.

Vin closed her eyes, burning brass and zinc. She carefully – and slowly – Soothed the emotions of the two soldiers. She heard them settle back, leaning against the side of the corridor. Then, she Rioted their sense of boredom, tugging on that single emotion. She peeked around the corner again, keeping the pressure on, waiting.

One of the men yawned. A few seconds later, the other one did. Then they both yawned at once. And Vin scuttled straight across the landing and into the shadowed hallway beyond. She pressed herself up against the wall, heart beating quickly, and waited. No cry came, though one of the guards did mumble something about being tired.

Vin smiled in excitement. It had been a long time since she’d had to truly sneak. She had spied and scouted, but had trusted on the mists, the darkness, and her ability to move quickly to protect her. This was different. It reminded her of the days when she and Reen had burgled houses.

What would my brother say now? she wondered, padding down the corridor on unnaturally light, quiet feet. He’d think I’ve gone crazy, sneaking into a building not for wealth, but for information. To Reen, life had been about survival – the simple, harsh facts of survival. Trust nobody. Make yourself invaluable to your team, but don’t be too threatening. Be ruthless. Stay alive.

She hadn’t abandoned his lessons. They’d always be part of her – they were what had kept her alive and careful, even during her years with Kelsier’s crew. She just no longer listened to them exclusively. She tempered them with trust and hope.

Your trust will get you killed someday, Reen seemed to whisper in the back of her mind. But, of course, even Reen himself hadn’t stuck to his code perfectly. He’d died protecting Vin, refusing to give her up to the Inquisitors, even though doing so might have saved his life.

Vin continued forward. It soon became evident that the basement was an extensive grid of narrow corridors surrounding larger rooms. She peeked into one, creaking the door open, and found some supplies. They were basic kinds of things, flour and the like – not the carefully canned, organized, and catalogued long-term supplies of a storage cache.

There must be a loading dock down one of these corridors, Vin guessed. It probably slopes up, leading to that subcanal that runs into the city.

Vin moved on, but she knew she wouldn’t have time to search each of the basement’s many rooms. She approached another intersection of corridors, and crouched down, frowning. Elend’s diversion wouldn’t last forever, and someone would eventually discover the women she’d knocked unconscious. She needed to get to the cache quickly.

She glanced around. The corridors were sparsely lit by the occasional lamp. Yet, there seemed to be more light coming from the left. She moved down this corridor, and the lamps became more frequent. Soon, she caught the sound of voices, and she moved more carefully, approaching another intersection. She peeked down it. To the left, she noted a pair of soldiers standing in the distance. To her right, there were four.

Right it is, then, she thought. However, this was going to be a little more difficult.

She closed her eyes, listening carefully. She could hear both groups of soldiers, but there seemed to be something else. Other groups in the distance. Vin picked one of these and begin to Pull with a powerful Riot of emotions. Soothing and Rioting weren’t blocked by stone or steel – during the days of the Final Empire, the Lord Ruler had set up Soothers in various sections of the skaa slums, letting them Soothe away the emotions of everyone nearby, affecting hundreds, even thousands, of people at once.

She waited. Nothing happened. She was trying to Riot the men’s sense of anger and irritability. However, she didn’t even know if she was Pulling in the right direction. In addition, Rioting and Soothing weren’t as precise as Pushing steel. Breeze always explained that the emotional makeup of a person was a complex jumble of thoughts, instincts, and feelings. An Allomancer couldn’t control minds or actions. He could only nudge.

Unless…

Taking a deep breath, Vin extinguished all of her metals. Then, she burned duralumin and zinc, and Pulled in the direction of the distant guards, hitting them with a powerfully enhanced burst of emotional Allomancy.

Immediately, a curse echoed through the hallway. Vin cringed. Fortunately, the noise wasn’t directed at her. The guards in the corridor perked up, and the argument in the distance grew louder, more fervent. Vin didn’t need to burn tin to hear when the scuffle broke out, men yelling at each other.

The guards to the left rushed away, moving to find out what the source of the disturbance was. The ones to her right left two men behind, however, and so Vin drank a vial of metal, then Rioted their emotions, enhancing their senses of curiosity to the point of breaking.

The two men left, rushing after their companions, and Vin scurried down the corridor. She soon saw that her instincts had proven right – the four men had been guarding a door into one of the storage rooms. Vin took a deep breath, then opened the door and ducked inside. The trapdoor inside was closed, but she knew what to look for. She pulled it open, then jumped into the darkness beneath her.

She Pushed down a coin as she fell, using the sound of its hitting to let her know how far down the floor was. She landed on rough stonework, standing in complete darkness – pitch black beyond even what tin would let her see in. She felt around, however, and found a lantern on the wall. She pulled out her flint, and soon had light.

And there it was, the door in the wall leading into the storage cavern. The rock mountings had been torn apart, the door forced. The wall was still there, and the door itself was intact, but getting it open had obviously taken some great amount of work. The door was open slightly, barely wide enough for a person to get through. It had obviously taken Yomen a lot of effort to even get it that far.

He must have known it was here, Vin thought, standing up straight. But… why break it open like this? He has a Mistborn who could have opened the door with a Steelpull.

Heart fluttering in anticipation, Vin slipped through the opening and into the silent storage cache. She immediately jumped down to the cache floor and began searching for the plate that would contain the Lord Ruler’s information. She just had to–

Stone scraped against stone behind her.

Vin spun, feeling an instant of sharp and dreadful realization.

The stone door shut behind her.

“… and that,” Elend said, “is why the Lord Ruler’s system of government had to fall.”

He was losing them. He could tell – more and more people were trailing away from the argument. The problem was, Yomen actually was interested.

“You make a mistake, young Venture,” the obligator said, tapping the table idly with his fork. “The sixth-century stewardship program was not even devised by the Lord Ruler. The newly formed Canton of Inquisition proposed it as a means of population control for the Terris, and the Lord Ruler agreed to it provisionally.”

“That provision turned into a means of subjugating an entire race of people,” Elend said.

“That subjugation started far earlier,” Yomen said. “Everyone knows the history of this, Venture. The Terris were a people who absolutely refused to submit to imperial rule, and they had to be strictly reined in. However, can you honestly say that Terris stewards were treated poorly? They’re the most honored servants in all of the empire!”

“I’d hardly call being made into a favored slave a fair return for losing one’s manhood,” Elend said, raising an eyebrow and folding his arms.

“There are at least a dozen sources I could quote you on that,” Yomen said with a wave of his hand. “What about Trendalan? He claimed that being made a eunuch had left him free to pursue more potent thoughts of logic and of harmony, since he wasn’t distracted by worldly lusts.”

“He didn’t have a choice in the matter,” Elend said.

“Few of us have choice in our stations,” Yomen replied.

“I prefer people to have that choice,” Elend said. “You’ll notice that I have given the skaa freedom in my lands, and given the nobility a parliamentary council by which they have a hand in ruling the city in which they live.”

“High ideals,” Yomen said, “and I recognize Trendalan’s own words in what you claim to have done. However, even he said that it would be unlikely for such a system to continue in stability for very long.”

Elend smiled. It had been a long time since he’d had such a good argument. Ham never delved deeply into topics – he liked philosophical questions, but not scholarly debates – and Sazed just didn’t like to argue.

I wish I could have met Yomen when I was younger, Elend thought. Back when I had time to simply worry about philosophy. Oh, the discussions we could have had…

Of course, those discussions probably would have ended up with Elend in the hands of the Steel Inquisitors for being a revolutionary. Still, he had to admit that Yomen was no fool. He knew his history and his politics – he just happened to have completely erroneous beliefs. Another day, Elend would have been happy to persuade him of that fact.

Unfortunately, this particular argument was growing increasingly tense for Elend. He couldn’t maintain both Yomen’s attention and that of the crowd. Each time he tried to do something to get the crowd back, Yomen seemed to get suspicious – and each time Elend actually tried to engage the king, the crowd itself grew bored with the philosophical debate.

So it was that Elend was actually relieved when the yells of surprise finally came. Seconds later, a pair of soldiers rushed into the room, carrying a dazed and bloodied young woman in a ball gown.

Lord Ruler, Vin! Elend thought. Was that really necessary?

Elend glanced back at Yomen, and the two shared a look. Then Yomen stood. “Where is the empress Venture?!” he demanded.

Time to go, Elend thought, remembering his promise to Vin. However, something occurred to him. I’ll probably never have another chance to get this close to Yomen, Elend thought. And there’s one sure way to prove whether or not he’s an Allomancer.

Try to kill him.

It was bold, perhaps foolish, but he was growing certain he’d never convince Yomen to surrender his city. He’d claimed that he wasn’t Mistborn; it was very important to see if he was lying or not. So, trusting his instincts in this matter, Elend dropped a coin and Pushed himself up onto the stage. Ballgoers began to cry out, their idyllic world shattering as Elend whipped out a pair of glass daggers. Yomen paled and backed away. Two guards who had been pretending to be Yomen’s dinner partners stood up from their seats, pulling staves from beneath the table.

“You liar,” Yomen spat as Elend landed on the dining table. “Thief, butcher, tyrant!”

Elend shrugged, then shot coins at the two guards, easily dropping them both. He jumped for Yomen, grabbing the man around the neck, yanking him backward. Gasps and screams came from the crowd.

Elend squeezed, choking Yomen. No strength flooded the man’s limbs. No Allomantic Pull or Push tried to shake him from Elend’s grasp. The obligator barely even struggled.

Either he’s no Allomancer, Elend thought, or he’s one hell of an actor.

He let Yomen go, pushing the king back toward his dining table. Elend shook his head – that was one mystery that was–

Yomen jumped forward, pulling out a glass knife, slashing. Elend started, ducking backward, but the knife hit, slicing a gash in his forearm. The cut blazed with pain, enhanced by Elend’s tin, and Elend cursed, stumbling away.

Yomen struck again, and Elend should have been able to dodge. He had pewter, and Yomen was still moving with the clumsiness of an unenhanced man. Yet, the attack moved with Elend, somehow managing to take him in the side. Elend grunted, blood hot on his skin, and he looked into Yomen’s eyes. The king pulled the knife free, easily dodging Elend’s counterstrike. It was almost like…

Elend burned electrum, giving himself a bubble of false atium images. Yomen hesitated immediately, looking confused.

He’s burning atium, Elend thought with shock. That means he is Mistborn!

Part of Elend wanted to stay and fight, but the cut in his side was bad – bad enough that he knew he needed to get it taken care of soon. Cursing his own stupidity, he Pushed himself into the air, dropping blood on the terrified nobility clustered below. He should have listened to Vin – he was going to get a serious lecture when he got back to camp.

He landed, and noted that Yomen had chosen not to follow. The obligator king stood behind his table, holding a knife red with Elend’s blood, watching with anger.

Elend turned, throwing up a handful of coins and Pushing them into the air above the heads of the ballgoers – careful not to hit any of them. They cowered in fear, throwing themselves to the ground. Once the coins landed, Elend Pushed off of them to send himself in a short, low jump through the room and toward the exit Vin had indicated. Soon, he entered an outdoor patio cloaked with mist.

He glanced back at the building, feeling frustrated, though he didn’t know why. He had done his part – he’d kept Yomen and his guests distracted for a good half hour. True, he’d gotten himself wounded, but he had discovered that Yomen was an Allomancer. That was worth knowing.

He dropped a coin and shot himself into the air.

Three hours later, Elend sat in the command tent with Ham, waiting quietly.

He got his side and arm patched. Vin didn’t arrive.

He told the others about what had happened. Vin didn’t arrive.

Ham forced him to get something to eat. Elend paced for an hour after that, and still Vin did not return.

“I’m going back,” Elend said, standing.

Ham looked up. “El, you lost a lot of blood. I’d guess that only pewter is keeping you on your feet.”

It was true. Elend could feel the edges of fatigue beneath his veil of pewter. “I can handle it.”

“You’ll kill yourself that way,” Ham said.

“I don’t care. I–” Elend cut off as his tin-enhanced ears heard someone approaching the tent. He pulled back the flaps before the man even arrived, startling him.

“My lord!” the man said. “Message from the city.”

Elend snatched the letter, ripping it open.

Pretender Venture, the note said, I have her, as you have probably guessed. There’s one thing I’ve always noted about Mistborn. To a man, they are overconfident. Thank you for the stimulating conversation. I’m glad I was able to keep you distracted for so long.

King Yomen.

Vin sat quietly in the dark cavern. Her back rested against the stone block that was the door to her prison. Beside her, on the rock floor, sat the dwindling lantern she’d brought into the massive room.

She’d Pushed and she’d Pulled, trying to force her way out. However, she’d soon realized that the broken stones she’d seen on the outside – the work project she’d assumed had been used to open the door – had actually had a different purpose. Yomen had apparently removed the metal plates inside the door, the ones that an Allomancer could Push or Pull on to open it. That left the door as simply a stone block. With duralumin-enhanced pewter, she should have been able to push even that open. Unfortunately, she found it difficult to get leverage on the floor, which sloped down away from the block. In addition, they must have done something to the hinges – or perhaps even piled up more rock against the other side – for she couldn’t get the door to budge.

She ground her teeth in frustration, sitting with her back to the stone door. Yomen had set an intentional trap for her. Had she and Elend been that predictable? Regardless, it was a brilliant move. Yomen knew he couldn’t fight them. So, instead, he’d simply captured Vin. It had the same effect, but without any of the risks. And she’d fallen right into the trap.

She’d searched the entire room, trying to find a way out, but had come up with nothing. Even worse, she’d located no hidden stock of atium. It was hard to tell with all the cans of food and other sources of metal, but her initial search hadn’t been promising.

“Of course it won’t be in here,” she muttered to herself. “Yomen wouldn’t have had time to pull out all of these cans, but if he were planning to trap me, he certainly would have removed the atium. I’m such an idiot!”

She leaned back, annoyed, frustrated, exhausted.

I hope Elend did what I said, Vin thought. If he had gotten captured too…

Vin knocked her head back against the obstinate stones, frustrated.

Something sounded in the darkness.

Vin froze, then quickly scrambled up into a crouch. She checked her metal reserves – she had plenty, for the moment.

I’m probably just–

It came again. A soft footfall. Vin shivered, realizing that she had only cursorily checked the chamber, and then she’d been searching for atium and other ways out. Could someone have been hiding inside the entire time?

She burned bronze, and felt him. An Allomancer. Mistborn. The one she had felt before; the man she had chased.

So that’s it! she thought. Yomen did want his Mistborn to fight us – but he knew he had to separate us first! She smiled, standing. It wasn’t a perfect situation, but it was better than thinking about the immobile door. A Mistborn she could beat, then hold hostage until they released her.

She waited until the man was close – she could tell by the beating of the Allomantic pulses that she hoped he didn’t know she could feel – then spun, kicking her lantern toward him. She jumped forward, guiding herself toward her enemy, who stood outlined by the lantern’s last flickers. He looked up at her as she soared through the air, her daggers out.

And she recognized his face.

Reen.