The Hero of Ages m-3

by Brandon Sanderson

  Spook leaned back, legs up on the windowsill, back against the frame. The window contained neither glass nor shutters, though there were nail holes on the side of the wood, indicating that there had once been something there. The reason the shutters had been removed didn't matter to Spook-the lack of them meant that this room was unlikely to be entered at night. Mists had already claimed the room, though they were so faint to Spook's eyes that he had had trouble seeing them.

  For a while, nothing happened. The building and grounds below remained silent and still in the night air. Eventually, however, she appeared.

  Spook perked up, watching the young woman leave the house and enter the garden. She had on a light brown skaa's dress-a garment she somehow wore with striking elegance. Her hair was darker than the dress, but not by much. Spook had seen very few people with her shade of deep auburn hair-at least, few people who had been able to keep it clean of ash and soot.

  Everyone in the city knew of Beldre, the Citizen's sister, though few had ever seen her. She was said to be beautiful-and in this case, the rumors were true. However, nobody had ever mentioned her sadness. With his tin flared so high, Spook felt like he was standing next to her. He could see her deep, sorrowful eyes, reflecting light from the shining building behind her.

  There was a bench in the yard. It sat before a small shrub. It was the only plant left in the garden; the rest had been torn up and plowed under, leaving behind blackish brown earth. From what Spook had heard, the Citizen had declared that ornamental gardens were of the nobility. He claimed that such places had only been possible through the sweat of skaa slaves-just another way the nobility had achieved high levels of luxury by creating equally high levels of work for their servants.

  When the people of Urteau had whitewashed the city's murals and shattered its stained-glass windows, they had also torn up all the ornamental gardens.

  Beldre sat down on her bench, hands held motionless in her lap, looking down at the sad shrub. Spook tried to convince himself that she wasn't the reason why he made certain to always sneak in and listen to the Citizen's evening conferences, and he was mostly successful. These were some of the best spying opportunities Spook got. Being able to see Beldre was simply a bonus. Not that he cared that much, of course. He didn't even know her.

  He thought that even as he sat there, staring down at her, wishing he had some way to talk to her.

  But, this wasn't the time for that. Beldre's exile to the garden meant that her brother's meeting was about to start. He always kept her near, but apparently didn't want her hearing state secrets. Unfortunately for him, his window opened toward Spook's vantage point. No normal man-not even an ordinary Tineye or Mistborn-could have heard what was being said inside. But Spook wasn't, by any stretched definition of the word, normal.

  I won't be useless anymore, he thought with determination as he listened for words spoken in confidence. They passed through the walls, across the short space, and arrived at his ears.

  "All right, Olid," said a voice. "What news?" The voice was, by now, familiar to Spook. Quellion, the Citizen of Urteau.

  "Elend Venture has conquered another city," said a second voice-Olid, the foreign minister.

  "Where?" Quellion demanded. "What city?"

  "An unimportant one," Olid said. "To the south. Barely five thousand people."

  "It makes no sense," said a third voice. "He immediately abandoned the city, taking its populace with him."

  "But he got another koloss army, somehow," Olid added.

  Good, Spook thought. The fourth storage cavern was theirs. Luthadel wouldn't starve for a while yet. That only left two to secure-the one here in Urteau, and the last one, wherever that turned out to be.

  "A tyrant needs no real reason for what he does," Quellion said. He was a young man, but not foolish. At times, he sounded like other men Spook had known. Wise men. The difference, then, was one of extremity.

  Or, perhaps, timing?

  "A tyrant simply conquers for the thrill of control," Quellion continued. "Venture isn't satisfied with the lands he's taken-he never will be. He'll just keep on conquering. Until he comes for us."

  The room fell silent.

  "He's reportedly sending an ambassador to Urteau," the third voice said. "A member of the Survivor's own crew."

  Spook perked up.

  Quellion snorted. "One of the liars? Coming here?"

  "To offer us a treaty, the rumors say," Olid said.

  "So?" Quellion asked. "Why do you mention this, Olid? Do you think we should make a pact with the tyrant?"

  "We can't fight him, Quellion," Olid said.

  "The Survivor couldn't fight the Lord Ruler," Quellion said. "But he did anyway. He died, but still won, giving the skaa courage to rebel and overthrow the nobility."

  "Until that bastard Venture took control," the third voice said.

  The room fell silent again.

  "We can't give in to Venture," Quellion finally said. "I will not hand this city to a nobleman, not after what the Survivor did for us. Of all the Final Empire, only Urteau achieved Kelsier's goal of a skaa-ruled nation. Only we burned the homes of the nobility. Only we cleansed our town of them and their society. Only we obeyed. The Survivor will watch over us."

  Spook shivered quietly. It felt very strange to be hearing men he didn't know speak of Kelsier in such tones. Spook had walked with Kelsier, learned from Kelsier. What right did these men have to speak as if they had known the man who had become their Survivor?

  The conversation turned to matters more mundane. They discussed new laws that would forbid certain kinds of clothing once favored by the nobility, and then made a decision to give more funding to the genealogical survey committee. They needed to root out any in the city who were hiding noble parentage. Spook took notes so he could pass them on to the others. However, he had trouble keeping his eyes from trailing back down to the young woman in the garden.

  What brings her such sorrow? he wondered. A part of him wanted to ask-to be brash, as the Survivor would have been, and hop down to demand of this solemn, solitary girl why she stared at that plant with such melancholy. In fact, he found himself moving to stand before he caught himself.

  He might be unique, he might be powerful, but-as he had to remind himself again-he was no Mistborn. His was the way of silence and stealth.

  So, he settled back. Content, for the moment, to lean down and watch her, feeling that somehow-despite their distance, despite his ignorance-he understood that feeling in her eyes.

  The ash.

  I don't think the people really understood how fortunate they were. During the thousand years before the Collapse, they pushed the ash into rivers, piled it up outside of cities, and generally just let it be. They never understood that without the microbes and plants Rashek had developed to break down the ash particles, the land would quickly have been buried.

  Though, of course, that did eventually happen anyway.

  15

  The mists burned. Bright, flaring, lit by the red sunlight, they seemed a fire that enveloped her.

  Mist during the day was unnatural. But even the nightmists didn't seem to be Vin's anymore. Once, they had shadowed and protected her. Now she found them increasingly alien. When she used Allomancy it seemed that the mists pulled away from her slightly-like a wild beast shying away from a bright light.

  She stood alone before the camp, which was silent despite the fact that the sun had risen hours ago. So far, Elend continued to keep his army protected from the mists by ordering them to remain in their tents. Ham argued that exposing them wasn't necessary, but Vin's instinct said that Elend would stick to his plan to order his soldiers into the mist. They needed to be immune.

  Why? Vin thought, looking up through the sunlit mists. Why have you changed? What is different? The mists danced around her, moving in their usual, strange pattern of shifting streams and swirls. It seemed to Vin that they began to move more rapidly. Quivering. Vibrating.

  The sun seemed
to grow hotter, and the mists finally retreated, vanishing like water evaporating on a warming pan. The sunlight hit her like a wave, and Vin turned, watching the mists go, their death like an echoing scream.

  They're not natural, Vin thought as guards called the all clear. The camp immediately began to shift and move, men striding from tents, going about the morning's activity with a flair of urgency. Vin stood at the head of the camp, dirt road beneath her feet, motionless canal to her right. Both seemed more real now that the mists were gone.

  She had asked Sazed and Elend their opinions of the mists-whether they were natural or. . something else. And both men, like the scholars they were, had quoted theories to support both sides of the argument. Sazed, at least, had eventually made a decision-he'd come down on the side of the mists being natural.

  Even the way that the mists choke some people, leaving others alive, could be explained, Lady Vin, he had explained. After all, insect stings kill some people, while barely bothering others.

  Vin wasn't that interested in theories and arguments. She had spent most of her life thinking of the mists like any other weather pattern. Reen and the other thieves had mostly scoffed at tales that made the mists out to be supernatural. Yet, as Vin had become an Allomancer, she had grown to know the mists. She felt them, a sense that seemed to have grown even more potent on the day she'd touched the power of the Well of Ascension.

  They disappeared too quickly. When they burned away in the sunlight, they withdrew like a person fleeing for safety. Like. . a man who used all of his strength fighting, then finally gave up to retreat. In addition, the mists didn't appear indoors. A simple tent was enough to protect the men inside. It was as if the mists somehow understood that they were excluded, unwelcome.

  Vin glanced back toward the sun, glowing like a scarlet ember behind the dark haze of the upper atmosphere. She wished TenSoon were there, so she could talk to him about her worries. She missed the kandra a great deal, more than she'd ever assumed that she would. His simple frankness had been a good match to her own. She still didn't know what had happened to him after he'd returned to his people; she'd tried to find another kandra to deliver a message for her, but the creatures had become very scarce lately.

  She sighed and turned, walking quietly back into camp.

  It was impressive how quickly the men managed to get the army moving. They spent the mornings sequestered inside their tents, caring for armor and weapons, the cooks preparing what they could. By the time Vin had crossed a short distance, cooking fires had burst alight, and tents began to collapse, soldiers working quickly to prepare for departure.

  As she passed, some of the men saluted. Others bowed their heads in reverence. Still others glanced away, looking uncertain. Vin didn't blame them. Even she wasn't sure what her place was in the army. As Elend's wife, she was technically their empress, though she wore no royal garb. To many, she was a religious figure, the Heir of the Survivor. She didn't really want that title either.

  She found Elend and Ham conversing outside of the imperial tent, which was in an early stage of disassembly. Though they stood out in the open, their mannerisms completely nonchalant, Vin was immediately struck by how far the two men were standing from the workers, as if Elend and Ham didn't want the men to hear. Burning tin, she could make out what they were saying long before she reached them.

  "Ham," Elend said quietly, "you know I'm right. We can't keep doing this. The further we penetrate into the Western Dominance, the more daylight we'll lose to the mists."

  Ham shook his head. "You'd really stand by and watch your own soldiers die, El?"

  Elend's face grew hard, and he met Vin's eyes as she joined them. "We can't afford to wait out the mists every morning."

  "Even if it saves lives?" Ham asked.

  "Slowing down costs lives," Elend said. "Each hour we spend out here brings the mists closer to the Central Dominance. We're planning to be at siege for some time, Ham-and that means we need to get to Fadrex as soon as possible."

  Ham glanced at Vin, looking for support. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Ham. Elend is right. We can't have our entire army dependent upon the whims of the mists. We'd be exposed-if someone attacked us in the morning, our men would either have to respond and get struck down by the mists, or hide in their tents and wait."

  Ham frowned, then excused himself, tromping through the fallen ash to help a group of soldiers pack away their tents. Vin stepped up beside Elend, watching the large soldier go.

  "Kelsier was wrong about him," she finally said.

  "Who?" Elend asked. "Ham?"

  Vin nodded. "At the end-after Kelsier died-we found a last note from him. He said that he'd chosen the members of the crew to be leaders in his new government. Breeze to be an ambassador, Dockson to be a bureaucrat, and Ham to be a general. The other two fit their roles perfectly, but Ham. ."

  "He gets too involved," Elend said. "He has to know each man he commands personally or it makes him uncomfortable. And, when he knows them all that well, he grows attached."

  Vin nodded quietly, watching Ham begin to laugh and work with the soldiers.

  "Listen to us," Elend said, "callously talking about the lives of those who follow us. Perhaps it would be better to grow attached, like Ham. Maybe then I wouldn't be so quick to order people to their deaths."

  Vin glanced at Elend, concerned at the bitterness in his voice. He smiled, trying to cover it up, then glanced away. "You need to do something with that koloss of yours. He's been poking around the camp, scaring the men."

  Vin frowned. As soon as she thought of the creature, she became aware of where it was-near the edge of the camp. It was always under her command, but she could only take direct, full control of it when she concentrated. Otherwise, it would follow her general orders-staying in the area, not killing anything.

  "I should go make sure the barges are ready to move," Elend said. He glanced at her, and when she didn't indicate that she'd go with him, he gave her a quick kiss, then departed.

  Vin moved through the camp again. Most of the tents were down and stowed, and the soldiers were making quick work of their food. She passed out of the perimeter, and found Human sitting quietly, ash drifting slightly against his legs. He watched the camp with red eyes, his face broken by the ripped skin which hung from his right eye down to the corner of his mouth.

  "Human," she said, folding her arms.

  He looked over at her, then stood, ash falling from his eleven-foot, overly muscled blue figure. Even with the number of creatures she'd killed, even knowing she controlled this one completely, Vin had a moment of reflexive fear as she stood before the massive beast with its tightly stretched skin and bleeding rips.

  "Why did you come to camp?" she said, shaking off her panic.

  "I am human," he said with his slow, deliberate tone.

  "You're koloss," she said. "You know that."

  "I should have a house," Human said. "Like those."

  "Those are tents, not houses," Vin said. "You can't come to camp like this. You have to stay with the other koloss."

  Human turned, glancing toward the south, where the koloss army waited, separate from the humans. They remained under Elend's control, twenty thousand in number, now that they'd picked up the ten thousand that had been waiting with the main bulk of the army. It made more sense to leave them under Elend's control, since-in terms of raw power-he was a much stronger Allomancer than Vin.

  Human looked back at Vin. "Why?"

  "Why do you have to stay with the others?" Vin asked. "Because you make the people in the camp uncomfortable."

  "Then they should attack me," Human said.

  "That's why you're not a human," Vin said. "We don't attack people just because they make us uncomfortable."

  "No," Human said. "You make us kill them instead."

  Vin paused, cocking her head. Human, however, just looked away, staring at the human camp again. His beady red eyes made his face hard to read, but Vin almost sensed a. . longing in
his expression.

  "You're one of us," Human said.

  Vin looked up. "Me?"

  "You're like us," he said. "Not like them."

  "Why do you say that?" Vin asked.

  Human looked down at her. "Mist," he said.

  Vin felt a momentary chill, though she had no real idea why. "What do you mean?"

  Human didn't respond.

  "Human," she said, trying another tactic. "What do you think of the mists?"

  "They come at night."

  Vin nodded. "Yes, but what do you think of them. Your people. Do they fear the mists? Does it ever kill them?"

  "Swords kill," Human said. "Rain doesn't kill. Ash doesn't kill. Mist doesn't kill."

  Fairly good logic, Vin thought. A year ago, I would have agreed with it. She was about to give up on the line of reasoning, but Human continued.

  "I hate it," he said.

  Vin paused.

  "I hate it because it hates me," Human said. He looked at her. "You feel it."

  "Yes," Vin said, surprising herself. "I do."

  Human regarded her, a line of blood trailing out of the ripped skin near his eye, running stark down his blue skin, mixing with flakes of ash. Finally, he nodded, as if giving approval to her honest reply.

  Vin shivered. The mist isn't alive, she thought. It can't hate me. I'm imagining things.

  But. . once, years ago, she had drawn upon the mists. When fighting the Lord Ruler, she had somehow gained a power over them. It had been as if she'd used the mist itself to fuel her Allomancy instead of metals. It was only with that power that she'd been able to defeat the Lord Ruler.

  That had been a long time ago, and she'd never been able to replicate the event. She'd tried time and again over the years, and after so many failures, she was beginning to think that she must have been mistaken. Certainly, in more recent times, the mists had been unfriendly. She tried to keep telling herself that there was nothing supernatural about it, but she knew that wasn't true. What of the mist spirit, the thing that had tried to kill Elend-and then had saved him by showing her how to make him into an Allomancer? It was real, of that she was certain, even if she hadn't seen it in over a year.