“I’ll go,” Breeze said, looking at Sazed. “Is it too early to volunteer?”
“Um, actually, Lord Breeze,” Sazed said, “I wasn’t—”
Breeze held up a hand. “It’s all right, Sazed. I believe it’s obvious whom you think should be sent away. You didn’t invite them to the meeting.”
Dockson frowned. “We’re going to defend Luthadel to the death, and you want to send away our only Mistborn?”
Sazed nodded his head. “My lords,” he said softly, “the men of this city will need our leadership. We gave them this city and put them in this predicament. We cannot abandon them now. But…there are great things at work in this world. Greater things than us, I think. I am convinced that Mistress Vin is part of them.
“Even if these matters are delusions on my part, then Lady Vin still must not be allowed to die in this city. She is the people’s most personal and powerful link to the Survivor. She has become a symbol to them, and her skills as a Mistborn give her the best chance of being able to get away, then survive the attacks Straff will undoubtedly send. She will be a great value in the fight to come—she can move quickly and stealthily, and can fight alone, doing much damage, as she proved last night.”
Sazed bowed his head. “My lords, I called you here today so that we could decide how to convince her to run, when the rest of us stay to fight. It will not be an easy task, I think.”
“She won’t leave Elend,” Ham said. “He’ll have to go, too.”
“My thoughts as well, Lord Hammond,” Sazed said.
Clubs chewed his lip in thought. “That boy won’t be easily convinced to flee. He still thinks we can win this fight.”
“And we may yet,” Sazed said. “My lords, my purpose is not to leave you without any hope at all. But, the dire circumstances, the likelihood of success…”
“We know, Sazed,” Breeze said. “We understand.”
“There have to be others of the crew who can go,” Ham said, looking down. “More than just the two.”
“I would send Tindwyl with them,” Sazed said. “She will carry to my people many discoveries of great importance. I also plan to send Lord Lestibournes. He would do little good in the battle, and his abilities as a spy could be of help to Lady Vin and Lord Elend as they try to rally resistance among the skaa.
“However, those four will not be the only ones who survive. Most of the skaa should be safe—Jastes Lekal seems to be able to control his koloss somehow. Even if he cannot, then Straff should arrive in time to protect the city’s people.”
“Assuming Straff is planning what Clubs thinks he is,” Ham said. “He could actually be withdrawing, cutting his losses and leaving Luthadel behind.”
“Either way,” Clubs said. “Not many can get out. Neither Straff nor Jastes are likely to allow large groups of people to flee the city. Right now, confusion and fear in the streets will serve their purposes far better than depopulation. We might be able to get a few riders on horseback out—especially if one of those riders is Vin. The rest of the people will have to take their chances with the koloss.”
Breeze felt his stomach turn. Clubs spoke so bluntly…so callously. But that was Clubs. He wasn’t even really a pessimist; he just said the things that he didn’t think others wanted to acknowledge.
Some of the skaa will survive to become slaves for Straff Venture, Breeze thought. But those who fight—and those who have led the city this last year—are doomed. That includes me.
It’s true. This time there really is no way out.
“Well?” Sazed asked, hands spread before him. “Are we in agreement that these four should go?”
The members of the group nodded.
“Let us discuss, then,” Sazed said, “and devise a plan for sending them away.”
“We could just make Elend think that the danger isn’t that great,” Dockson said. “If he believes that the city is in for a long siege, he might be willing to go with Vin on a mission somewhere. They wouldn’t realize what was happening back here until it was too late.”
“A good suggestion, Lord Dockson,” Sazed said. “I think, also, that we could work with Vin’s concept of the Well of Ascension.”
The discussion continued, and Breeze sat back, satisfied. Vin, Elend, and Spook will survive, he thought. I’ll have to convince Sazed to let Allrianne go with them. He glanced around the room, noticing a release of tension in the postures of the others. Dockson and Ham seemed at peace, and even Clubs was nodding quietly to himself, looking satisfied as they talked through suggestions.
The disaster was still coming. But, somehow, the possibility that some would escape—the youngest crewmembers, the ones still inexperienced enough to hope—made everything else a little easier to accept.
Vin stood quietly in the mists, looking up at the dark spires, columns, and towers of Kredik Shaw. In her head, two sounds thumped. The mist spirit and the larger, vaster sound.
It was growing more and more demanding.
She continued forward, ignoring the thumps as she approached Kredik Shaw. The Hill of a Thousand Spires, once home of the Lord Ruler. It had been abandoned for well over a year, but no vagrants had made their home here. It was too ominous. Too terrible. Too much a reminder of him.
The Lord Ruler had been a monster. Vin remembered well the night, over a year before, when she had come to this palace intending to kill him. To do the job that Kelsier had unwittingly trained her to do. She had walked through this very courtyard, had passed guards at the doors before her.
And she had let them live. Kelsier would have just fought his way in. But Vin had talked them into leaving, into joining the rebellion. That act had saved her life when one of those very men, Goradel, had led Elend to the palace dungeons to help rescue Vin.
In a way, the Final Empire had been overthrown because she hadn’t acted like Kelsier.
And yet, could she base future decisions upon a coincidence like that? Looking back, it seemed too perfectly allegorical. Like a neat little tale told to children, intended to teach a lesson.
Vin had never heard those tales as a child. And, she had survived when so many others had died. For every lesson like the one with Goradel, it seemed that there were a dozen that ended in tragedy.
And then there was Kelsier. He’d been right, in the end. His lesson was very different from the ones taught by the children’s tales. Kelsier had been bold, even excited, when he executed those who stood in his path. Ruthless. He had looked toward the greater good; he’d always had his eyes focused on the fall of the empire, and the eventual rise of a kingdom like Elend’s.
He had succeeded. Why couldn’t she kill as he had, knowing she was doing her duty, never feeling guilt? She’d always been frightened by the edge of danger Kelsier had displayed. Yet, wasn’t that very edge the thing that had let him succeed?
She passed into the tunnel-like corridors of the palace, feet and mistcloak tassels trailing marks in the dust. The mists, as always, remained behind. They didn’t enter buildings—or, if they did, they usually didn’t remain for long. With them, she left behind the mist spirit.
She had to make a decision. She didn’t like the decision, but she was accustomed to doing things she didn’t like. That was life. She hadn’t wanted to fight the Lord Ruler, but she had.
It soon became too dark even for Mistborn eyes, and she had to light a lantern. When she did, she was surprised to see that her footsteps weren’t the only ones in the dust. Apparently, someone else had been haunting the corridors. However, whoever it was, she didn’t encounter them as she walked through the hallways.
She entered the chamber a few moments later. She wasn’t sure what had drawn her to Kredik Shaw, let alone the hidden chamber at its center. It seemed, however, that she had been feeling a kinship with the Lord Ruler lately. Her walkings had brought her here, to a place she hadn’t visited since that night when she’d slain the only God she’d ever known.
He had spent a lot of time in this hidden chamber, a place he
had apparently built to remind him of his homeland. The chamber had a domed roof that arced overhead. The walls were filled with silvery murals and the floor was filled with metallic inlays. She ignored these, walking forward toward the room’s central feature—a small stone building that had been built within the larger chamber.
It was here that Kelsier and his wife had been captured many years before, during Kelsier’s first attempt to rob the Lord Ruler. Mare had been murdered at the Pits. But Kelsier had survived.
It was here, in this same chamber, that Vin had first faced an Inquisitor, and had nearly been killed herself. It was also here that she had come months later in her first attempt to kill the Lord Ruler. She had been defeated that time, too.
She stepped into the small building-within-a-building. It had only one room. The floor had been torn up by Elend’s crews, searching for the atium. The walls were still hung, however, with the trappings the Lord Ruler had left behind. She raised her lantern, looking at them.
Rugs. Furs. A small wooden flute. The things of his people, the Terris people, from a thousand years before. Why had he built his new city of Luthadel here, to the south, when his homeland—and the Well of Ascension itself—had been to the north? Vin had never really understood that.
Perhaps it came down to decision. Rashek, the Lord Ruler, had been forced to make a decision, too. He could have continued as he was, the pastoral villager. He would probably have had a happy life with his people.
But he had decided to become something more. In doing so, he had committed terrible atrocities. Yet, could she blame him for the decision itself? He had become what he’d thought he needed to be.
Her decision seemed more mundane, but she knew that other things—the Well of Ascension, the protection of Luthadel—could not be considered until she was certain what she wanted and who she was. And yet, standing in that room where Rashek had spent much of his time, thinking about the Well, the demanding thumps in her head sounded louder than they ever had before.
She had to decide. Elend was the one she wanted to be with. He represented peace. Happiness. Zane, however, represented what she felt she had to become. For the good of everyone involved.
The Lord Ruler’s palace held no clues or answers for her. A few moments later, frustrated and baffled at why she had even come, she left it behind, walking back out into the mists.
Zane awoke to the sound of a tent spike being pounded in a specific rhythm. His reaction was immediate.
He burned steel and pewter. He always swallowed a new bit of each before sleeping. He knew the habit would probably kill him someday; metals were poisonous if allowed to linger.
Dying someday was better, in Zane’s opinion, than dying today.
He flipped out of his cot, tossing his blanket toward the opening tent flap. He could barely see in the darkness of night. Even as he jumped, he heard something ripping. The tent walls being slit.
“Kill them!” God screamed.
Zane thumped to the ground and grabbed a handful of coins from the bowl beside his bed. He heard cries of surprise as he spun, throwing coins in a spinning spray around him.
He Pushed. Tiny plunks of sound thumped around him as coins met canvas, then continued on.
And men began to scream.
Zane fell to a crouch, waiting silently as the tent collapsed around him. Someone was thrashing the cloth to his right. He shot a few coins, and heard a satisfying grunt of pain. In the stillness, canvas resting atop him like a blanket, he heard footsteps running away.
He sighed, relaxing, and used a dagger to slice away the top of his tent. He emerged to a misty night. He’d gone to sleep later today than he usually did; it was probably near midnight. Time to be up anyway.
He strode across the fallen top of his tent—moving over to the now cloaked form of his cot—and cut a hole so he could reach through and pluck out the vial of metal he’d stored in a pocket beneath it. He downed the metals, and tin brought near light to his surroundings. Four men lay dying or dead around his tent. They were soldiers, of course—Straff’s soldiers. The attack had come later than Zane had expected.
Straff trusts me more than I assumed. Zane stepped over the dead form of an assassin and cut his way into a storage chest, then pulled out his clothing. He changed quietly, then removed a small bag of coins from the chest. It must have been the attack on Cett’s keep, he thought. It finally convinced Straff that I was too dangerous to let live.
Zane found his man working quietly beside a tent a short distance away, ostensibly testing the strength of a tent cord. He watched every night, paid to pound on a tent spike should anyone approach Zane’s tent. Zane tossed the man a bag of coins, then moved off into the darkness, passing the canal waters with their supply barges on his way to Straff’s tent.
His father had some few limitations. Straff was fine at large-scale planning, but the details—the subtleties—often got away from him. He could organize an army and crush his enemies. He, however, liked to play with dangerous tools. Like the atium mines at the Pits of Hathsin. Like Zane.
Those tools often ended up burning him.
Zane walked up to the side of Straff’s tent, then ripped a hole in the canvas and strode in. Straff waited for him. Zane gave the man credit: Straff watched his death coming with defiance in his eyes. Zane stopped in the middle of the room, in front of Straff, who sat in his hard wooden chair.
“Kill him,” God commanded.
Lamps burned in the corners, illuminating the canvas. The cushions and blankets in the corner were rumpled; Straff had taken one last romp with his favorite mistresses before sending his assassins. The king displayed his characteristic air of strong defiance, but Zane saw more. He saw a face too slick with sweat, and he saw hands trembling, as if from a disease.
“I have atium for you,” Straff said. “Buried in a place only I know.”
Zane stood quietly, staring at his father.
“I will proclaim you openly,” Straff said. “Name you my heir. Tomorrow, if you wish.”
Zane didn’t respond. Straff continued to sweat.
“The city is yours,” Zane finally said, turning away.
He was rewarded with a startled gasp from behind.
Zane glanced back. He’d never seen such a look of shock on his father’s face. That alone was almost worth everything.
“Pull your men back, as you are planning,” Zane said, “but don’t return to the Northern Dominance. Wait for those koloss to invade the city, let them take down the defenses and kill the defenders. Then, you can sweep in and rescue Luthadel.”
“But, Elend’s Mistborn…”
“Will be gone,” Zane said. “She’s leaving with me, tonight. Farewell, Father.” He turned and left through the slit he’d made.
“Zane?” Straff called from inside the tent.
Zane paused again.
“Why?” Straff asked, looking out through the slit. “I sent assassins to kill you. Why are you letting me live?”
“Because you’re my father,” Zane said. He turned away, looking into the mists. “A man shouldn’t kill his father.”
With that, Zane bid a final farewell to the man who had created him. A man whom Zane—despite his insanity, despite the abuse he’d known over the years—loved.
In the dark mists he threw down a coin and shot out over the camp. Outside its confines, he landed and easily located the bend in the canal he used as a marker. From the hollow of a small tree there, he pulled a bundle of cloth. A mistcloak, the first gift Straff had given him, years before when Zane had first Snapped. To him, it was too precious to wear around, to soil and use.
He knew himself a fool. However, he could not help how he felt. One could not use emotional Allomancy on one’s self.
He unwrapped the mistcloak and withdrew the things it protected—several vials of metal and a pouch filled with beads. Atium.
He knelt there for a long moment. Then, he reached up to his chest, feeling the space just above his rib cages. Wh
ere his heart thumped.
There was a large bump there. There always had been. He didn’t think about it often; his mind seemed to get distracted when he did. It, however, was the real reason he never wore cloaks.
He didn’t like the way that cloaks rubbed against the small point of the spike that stuck out of his back just between the shoulder blades. The head was against his sternum, and couldn’t be seen beneath clothing.
“It is time to go,” God said.
Zane stood, leaving the mistcloak behind. He turned from his father’s camp, leaving behind that which he had known, instead seeking the woman who would save him.
47
Alendi believes as they do.
A part of Vin wasn’t even bothered by how many people she had killed. That very indifference, however, terrified her.
She sat on her balcony a short time after her visit to the palace, the city of Luthadel lost in darkness before her. She sat in the mists—but knew better, now, than to think she’d find solace in their swirling patterns. Nothing was that simple anymore.
The mist spirit watched her, as always. It was too distant to see, but she could feel it. And, even stronger than the mist spirit, she could feel something else. That powerful thumping, growing louder and louder. It had once seemed distant, but no longer.
The Well of Ascension.
That was what it had to be. She could feel its power returning, flowing back into the world, demanding to be taken up and used. She kept finding herself glancing north, toward Terris, expecting to see something on the horizon. A burst of light, a blazing fire, a tempest of winds. Something. But there was just mist.
It seemed that she couldn’t succeed at anything, lately. Love, protection, duty. I’ve let myself get stretched too thin, she thought.
There were so many things that demanded her attention, and she’d tried to give heed to them all. As a result, she had accomplished nothing. Her research about the Deepness and the Hero of Ages lay untouched for days, still arranged in piles scattered across her floor. She knew next to nothing about the mist spirit—only that it watched her, and that the logbook author had thought it dangerous. She hadn’t dealt with the spy in her crew; she didn’t know if Zane’s claims regarding Demoux were true.
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