“I’d think that you would appreciate the opportunity simply to be yourself.”
“I feel naked,” OreSeur said. He sat quietly for a moment; then he bowed his head. “But…I have to admit that there are advantages to these bones. I didn’t realize how unobtrusive they would make me.”
Vin nodded. “There were times in my life when I would have given anything to be able to take the form of a dog and just live my life being ignored.”
“But not anymore?”
Vin shook her head. “No. Not most of the time, anyway. I used to think that everyone was like you say—hateful, hurtful. But there are good people in the world, OreSeur. I wish I could prove that to you.”
“You speak of this king of yours,” OreSeur said, glancing toward the keep.
“Yes,” Vin said. “And others.”
“You?”
Vin shook her head. “No, not me. I’m not a good person or a bad person. I’m just here to kill things.”
OreSeur watched her for a moment, then settled back down. “Regardless,” he said, “you are not my worst master. That is, perhaps, a compliment among our people.”
Vin smiled, but her own words left her a bit haunted. Just here to kill things….
She glanced toward the light of the armies outside the city. A part—the part that had been trained by Reen, the part that still occasionally used his voice in the back of her mind—whispered that there was another way to fight these armies. Rather than rely on politics and parlays, the crew could use Vin. Send her on a quiet visit into the night that left the kings and generals of the armies dead.
But, she knew that Elend wouldn’t approve of something like that. He’d argue against using fear to motivate, even on one’s enemies. He’d point out that if she killed Straff or Cett, they’d just be replaced by other men, men even more hostile toward the city.
Even so, it seemed like such a brutal, logical answer. A piece of Vin itched to do it, if only to be doing something other than waiting and talking. She was not a person meant to be besieged.
No, she thought. That’s not my way. I don’t have to be like Kelsier was. Hard. Unyielding. I can be something better. Something that trusts in Elend’s way.
She shoved aside that part of her that wanted to just go assassinate both Straff and Cett, then turned her attention to other things. She focused on her bronze, watching for signs of Allomancy. Though she liked to jump around and “patrol” the area, the truth was that she was just as effective staying in one place. Assassins would be likely to scout the front gates, for that was where patrols began and the largest concentration of soldiers waited.
Still, she felt her mind wandering. There were forces moving in the world, and Vin wasn’t certain if she wanted to be part of them.
What is my place? she thought. She never felt that she’d discovered it—not back when she’d been playing as Valette Renoux, and not now, when she acted as the bodyguard to the man she loved. Nothing quite fit.
She closed her eyes, burning tin and bronze, feeling the touch of wind-borne mist on her skin. And, oddly, she felt something else, something very faint. In the distance she could sense Allomantic pulsings. They were so dull she almost missed them.
They were kind of like the pulses given off by the mist spirit. She could hear it, too, much closer. Atop a building out in the city. She was getting used to its presence, not that she had much choice. Still, as long as it only watched….
It tried to kill one of the Hero’s companions, she thought. It knifed him, somehow. Or so the logbook claimed.
But…what was that pulsing in the far distance? It was soft…yet powerful. Like a faraway drum. She squeezed her eyes shut, focusing.
“Mistress?” OreSeur said, suddenly perking up.
Vin snapped her eyes open. “What?”
“Didn’t you hear that?”
Vin sat up. “Wha—” Then she picked it out. Footsteps outside the wall a short distance away. She leaned closer, noticing a dark figure walking down the street toward the keep. She’d been so focused on her bronze that she’d completely tuned out real sounds.
“Good job,” she said, approaching the edge of the guard station’s roof. Only then did she realize something important. OreSeur had taken the initiative: he’d alerted her of the danger without specifically being ordered to listen.
It was a small thing, but it seemed important.
“What do you think?” she asked quietly, watching the figure approach. He carried no torch, and he seemed very comfortable in the mists.
“Allomancer?” OreSeur asked, crouching beside her.
Vin shook her head. “There’s no Allomantic pulse.”
“So if he is one, he’s Mistborn,” OreSeur said. He still didn’t know she could pierce copperclouds. “He’s too tall to be your friend Zane. Be careful, Mistress.”
Vin nodded, dropped a coin, then threw herself into the mists. Behind her, OreSeur jumped down from the guardhouse, then leapt off the wall and dropped some twenty feet to the ground.
He certainly does like to push the limits of those bones, she thought. Of course, if a fall couldn’t kill him, then she could perhaps understand his courage.
She guided herself by Pulling on the nails in a wooden roof, landing just a short distance from the dark figure. She pulled out her knives and prepared her metals, making certain she had duralumin. Then she moved quietly across the street.
Surprise, she thought. Ham’s suggestion still left her nervous. She couldn’t always depend on surprise. She followed the man, studying him. He was tall—very tall. And in robes. In fact, those robes…
Vin stopped short. “Sazed?” she asked with shock.
The Terrisman turned, face now visible to her tin-enhanced eyes. He smiled. “Ah, Lady Vin,” he said with his familiar, wise voice. “I was beginning to wonder how long it would take you to find me. You are—”
He was cut off as Vin grabbed him in an excited embrace. “I didn’t think you were going to come back so soon!”
“I was not planning to return, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “But events are such that I could not avoid this place, I think. Come, we must speak with His Majesty. I have news of a rather disconcerting nature.”
Vin let go, looking up at his kindly face, noting the tiredness in his eyes. Exhaustion. His robes were dirty and smelled of ash and sweat. Sazed was usually very meticulous, even when he traveled. “What is it?” she asked.
“Problems, Lady Vin,” he said quietly. “Problems and troubles.”
23
The Terris rejected him, but he came to lead them.
“King Lekal claimed that he had twenty thousand of the creatures in his army,” Sazed said quietly.
Twenty thousand! Elend thought in shock. That was easily as dangerous as Straff’s fifty thousand men. Probably more so.
The table fell silent, and Elend glanced at the others. They sat in the palace kitchen, where a couple of cooks hurriedly prepared a late-night dinner for Sazed. The white room had an alcove at the side with a modest table for servant meals. Not surprisingly, Elend had never dined in the room, but Sazed had insisted that they not wake the servants it would require to prepare the main dining hall, though he apparently hadn’t eaten all day.
So, they sat on the low wooden benches, waiting while the cooks worked—far enough away that they couldn’t hear the hushed conversation in the alcove. Vin sat beside Elend, arm around his waist, her wolfhound kandra on the floor beside her. Breeze sat on the other side of him, looking disheveled; he’d been rather annoyed when they’d woken him. Ham had already been up, as had Elend himself. Another proposal had needed work—a letter he would send to the Assembly explaining that he was meeting with Straff informally, rather than in official parlay.
Dockson pulled over a stool, choosing a place away from Elend, as usual. Clubs sat slumped on his side of the bench, though Elend couldn’t tell if the posture was from weariness or from general Clubs grumpiness. That left only Spook, who sat on one
of the serving tables a distance away, legs swinging over the side as he occasionally pilfered a tidbit of food from the annoyed cooks. He was, Elend noticed with amusement, flirting quite unsuccessfully with a drowsy kitchen girl.
And then there was Sazed. The Terrisman sat directly across from Elend with the calm sense of collectedness that only Sazed could manage. His robes were dusty, and he looked odd without his earrings—removed to not tempt thieves, Elend would guess—but his face and hands were clean. Even dirtied from travel, Sazed still gave off a sense of tidiness.
“I do apologize, Your Majesty,” Sazed said. “But I do not think that Lord Lekal is trustworthy. I realize that you were friends with him before the Collapse, but his current state seems somewhat…unstable.”
Elend nodded. “How is he controlling them, you think?”
Sazed shook his head. “I cannot guess, Your Majesty.”
Ham shook his head. “I have men in the guard who came up from the South after the Collapse. They were soldiers, serving in a garrison near a koloss camp. The Lord Ruler hadn’t been dead a day before the creatures went crazy. They attacked everything in the area—villages, garrisons, cities.”
“The same happened in the Northwest,” Breeze said. “Lord Cett’s lands were being flooded with refugees running from rogue koloss. Cett tried to recruit the koloss garrison near his own lands, and they followed him for a time. But then, something set them off, and they just attacked his army. He had to slaughter the whole lot—and lost nearly two thousand soldiers killing a small garrison of five hundred koloss.”
The group grew quiet again, the clacking and talking of the cooking staff sounding a short distance away. Five hundred koloss killed two thousand men, Elend thought. And the Jastes force contains twenty thousand of the beasts. Lord Ruler…
“How long?” said Clubs. “How far away?”
“It took me a little over a week to get here,” Sazed said. “Though it looked as if King Lekal had been camped there for a time. He is obviously coming this direction, but I don’t know how quickly he intends to march.”
“Probably wasn’t expecting to find that two other armies beat him to the city,” Ham noted.
Elend nodded. “What do we do, then?”
“I don’t see that we can do anything, Your Majesty,” Dockson said, shaking his head. “Sazed’s report doesn’t give me much hope that we’ll be able to reason with Jastes. And, with the siege we’re already under, there is little we can do.”
“He might just turn around and go,” Ham said. “With two armies already here…”
Sazed looked hesitant. “He knew about the armies, Lord Hammond. He seemed to trust in his koloss over the human armies.”
“With twenty thousand,” Clubs said, “he could probably take either of those other armies.”
“But he’d have trouble with both of them,” Ham said. “That would give me pause, if I were him. By showing up with a pile of volatile koloss, he could easily worry Cett and Straff enough that they would join forces against him.”
“Which would suit us just fine,” Clubs said. “The more that other people fight, the better off we are.”
Elend sat back. He felt a looming anxiety, and it was good to have Vin next to him, arm around him, even if she didn’t say much. Sometimes, he felt stronger simply because of her presence. Twenty thousand koloss. This single threat scared him more than either of the other armies.
“This could be a good thing,” Ham said. “If Jastes were to lose control of those beasts near Luthadel, there’s a good chance they’d attack one of those other armies.”
“Agreed,” Breeze said tiredly. “I think we need to keep stalling, draw out this siege until the koloss army arrives. One more army in the mix means only more advantage for us.”
“I don’t like the idea of koloss in the area,” Elend said, shivering slightly. “No matter what advantage they offer us. If they attack the city…”
“I say we worry about that when, and if, they arrive,” Dockson said. “For now, we have to continue our plan as we intended. His Majesty meets with Straff, trying to manipulate him into a covert alliance with us. With luck, the imminent koloss presence will make him more willing to deal.”
Elend nodded. Straff had agreed to meet, and they’d set a date for a few days away. The Assembly was angry that he hadn’t consulted with them about the time and place, but there was little they could do about the matter.
“Anyway,” Elend finally said, sighing. “You said you had other news, Saze? Better, hopefully?”
Sazed paused. A cook finally walked over, setting a plate of food before him: steamed barley with strips of steak and some spiced lagets. The scents were enough to make Elend a little hungry. He nodded thankfully to the palace chef, who had insisted on preparing the meal himself despite the late hour, and who waved to his staff and began to withdraw.
Sazed sat quietly, waiting to speak until the staff were again out of earshot. “I hesitate to mention this, Your Majesty, for your burdens already seem great.”
“You might as well just tell me,” Elend said.
Sazed nodded. “I fear that we may have exposed the world to something when we killed the Lord Ruler, Your Majesty. Something unanticipated.”
Breeze raised a tired eyebrow. “Unanticipated? You mean other than ravaging koloss, power-hungry despots, and bandits?”
Sazed paused. “Um, yes. I speak of items a little more nebulous, I fear. There is something wrong with the mists.”
Vin perked up slightly beside Elend. “What do you mean?”
“I have been following a trail of events,” Sazed explained. He looked down as he spoke, as if embarrassed. “I have been performing an investigation, you might say. You see, I have heard numerous reports of the mists coming during the daytime.”
Ham shrugged. “That happens sometimes. There are foggy days, especially in the fall.”
“That is not what I mean, Lord Hammond,” Sazed said. “There is a difference between the mist and ordinary fog. It is difficult to spot, perhaps, but it is noticeable to a careful eye. The mist is thicker, and…well…”
“It moves in larger patterns,” Vin said quietly. “Like rivers in the sky. It never just hangs in one place; it floats in the breeze, almost like it makes the breeze.”
“And it can’t enter buildings,” Clubs said. “Or tents. It evaporates soon after it does.”
“Yes,” Sazed said. “When I first heard these reports of day mist, I assumed that the people were just letting their superstitions get out of control. I have known many skaa who refused to go out on a foggy morning. However, I was curious about the reports, so I traced them to a village in the South. I taught there for some time, and never received confirmation of the stories. So, I made my way from that place.”
He paused, frowning slightly. “Your Majesty, please do not think me mad. During those travels I passed a secluded valley, and saw what I swear was mist, not fog. It was moving across the landscape, creeping toward me. During the full light of day.”
Elend glanced at Ham. He shrugged. “Don’t look at me.”
Breeze snorted. “He was asking your opinion, my dear man.”
“Well, I don’t have one.”
“Some philosopher you are.”
“I’m not a philosopher,” Ham said. “I just like to think about things.”
“Well, think about this, then,” Breeze said.
Elend glanced at Sazed. “Have those two always been this way?”
“Honestly, I am not certain, Your Majesty,” Sazed said, smiling slightly. “I have known them for only slightly longer than yourself.”
“Yes, they’ve always been like this,” Dockson said, sighing quietly. “If anything, they’ve gotten worse over the years.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Elend asked, nodding to Sazed’s plate.
“I can eat once our discussion is finished,” Sazed said.
“Sazed, you’re not a servant anymore,” Vin said. “You don’t have
to worry about things like that.”
“It is not a matter of serving or not, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “It is a matter of being polite.”
“Sazed,” Elend said.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
He pointed at the plate. “Eat. You can be polite another time. Right now, you look famished—and you’re among friends.”
Sazed paused, giving Elend an odd look. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, picking up a knife and spoon.
“Now,” Elend began, “why does it matter if you saw mist during the day? We know that the things the skaa say aren’t true—there’s no reason to fear the mist.”
“The skaa may be more wise than we credit them, Your Majesty,” Sazed said, taking small, careful bites of food. “It appears that the mist has been killing people.”
“What?” Vin asked, leaning forward.
“I have never seen it myself, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “But I have seen its effects, and have collected several separate reports. They all agree that the mist has been killing people.”
“That’s preposterous,” Breeze said. “Mist is harmless.”
“That is what I thought, Lord Ladrian,” Sazed said. “However, several of the reports are quite detailed. The incidents always occurred during the day, and each one tells of the mist curling around some unfortunate individual, who then died—usually in a seizure. I gathered interviews with witnesses myself.”
Elend frowned. From another man, he’d dismiss the news. But Sazed…he was not a man that one dismissed. Vin, sitting beside Elend, watched the conversation with interest, chewing slightly on her bottom lip. Oddly, she didn’t object to Sazed’s words—though the others seemed to be reacting as Breeze had.
“It doesn’t make sense, Saze,” Ham said. “Thieves, nobles, and Allomancers have gone out in the mists for centuries.”
“Indeed they have, Lord Hammond,” Sazed said with a nod. “The only explanation I can think of involves the Lord Ruler. I heard no substantive reports of mist deaths before the Collapse, but I have had little trouble finding them since. The reports are concentrated in the Outer Dominances, but the incidents appear to be moving inward. I found one…very disturbing incident several weeks to the south, where an entire village seems to have been trapped in their hovels by the mists.”
Mistborn Trilogy Page 97