Kelsier was dead. Where did that leave Dockson? He wore a nobleman’s suit, as he always had—and of all the crewmembers, the suits seemed to fit him the best. If he shaved off the half beard, he could pass for a nobleman—not a rich high courtier, but a lord in early middle age who had lived his entire life trading goods beneath a great house master.
He wrote in his ledgers, but he had always done that. He still played the role of the responsible one in the crew. So, what was different? He was the same person, did the same things. He just felt different. The laughter was gone; the quiet enjoyment of the eccentricity in those around him. Without Kelsier, Dockson had somehow changed from temperate to…boring.
And that was what made her suspicious.
This has to be done, she thought, smiling at Dockson as he set down his pen and waved her to take a seat.
Vin sat down, OreSeur padding over to stand beside her chair. Dockson eyed the dog, shaking his head slightly. “That’s such a remarkably well-trained beast, Vin,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like it….”
Does he know? Vin wondered with alarm. Would one kandra be able to recognize another in a dog’s body? No, that couldn’t be. Otherwise OreSeur could find the impostor for her. So, she simply smiled again, patting OreSeur’s head. “There is a trainer in the market. He teaches wolfhounds to be protective—to stay with young children and keep them out of danger.”
Dockson nodded. “So, any purpose to this visit?”
Vin shrugged. “We never chat anymore, Dox.”
Dockson sat back in his chair. “This might not be the best time for chatting. I have to prepare the royal finances to be taken over by someone else, should the vote go against Elend.”
Would a kandra be able to do the ledgers? Vin wondered. Yes. They’d have known—they’d have been prepared.
“I’m sorry,” Vin said. “I don’t mean to bother you, but Elend has been so busy lately, and Sazed has his project….”
“It’s all right,” Dockson said. “I can spare a few minutes. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, do you remember that conversation we had, back before the Collapse?”
Dockson frowned. “Which one?”
“You know…. The one about your childhood.”
“Oh,” Dockson said, nodding. “Yes, what about it?”
“Well, do you still think the same way?”
Dockson paused thoughtfully, fingers slowly tapping on the desktop. Vin waited, trying not to show her tension. The conversation in question had been between the two of them, and during it, Dockson had first spoken to her of how much he’d hated the nobility.
“I suppose I don’t,” Dockson said. “Not anymore. Kell always said that you gave the nobility too much credit, Vin. But you started to change even him there at the end. No, I don’t think that noble society needs to be completely destroyed. They aren’t all monsters as once presumed.”
Vin relaxed. He not only knew the conversation, he knew the details of the tangents they’d discussed. She had been the only one there with him. That had to mean that he wasn’t the kandra, right?
“This is about Elend, isn’t it?” Dockson asked.
Vin shrugged. “I suppose.”
“I know that you wish he and I could get along better, Vin. But, all things considered, I think we’re doing pretty well. He is a decent man; I can acknowledge that. He has some faults as a leader: he lacks boldness, lacks presence.”
Not like Kelsier.
“But,” Dockson continued, “I don’t want to see him lose his throne. He has treated the skaa fairly, for a nobleman.”
“He’s a good person, Dox,” Vin said quietly.
Dockson looked away. “I know that. But…well, every time I talk to him, I see Kelsier standing over his shoulder, shaking his head at me. Do you know how long Kell and I dreamed of toppling the Lord Ruler? The other crewmembers, they thought Kelsier’s plan was a newfound passion—something that came to him in the Pits. But it was older than that, Vin. Far older.
“We always hated the nobility, Kell and I. When we were youths, planning our first jobs, we wanted to be rich—but we also wanted to hurt them. Hurt them for taking from us things they had no right to. My love…Kelsier’s mother…. Every coin we stole, every nobleman we left dead in an alleyway—this was our way of waging war. Our way of punishing them.”
Vin sat quietly. It was these kinds of stories, these memories of a haunted past, that had always made her just a little uncomfortable with Kelsier—and with the person he had been training her to become. It was this sentiment that gave her pause, even when her instincts whispered that she should go and exact retribution on Straff and Cett with knives in the night.
Dockson held some of that same hardness. Kell and Dox weren’t evil men, but there was an edge of vengefulness to them. Oppression had changed them in ways that no amount of peace, reformation, or recompense could redeem.
Dockson shook his head. “And we put one of them on the throne. I can’t help but think that Kell would be angry with me for letting Elend rule, no matter how good a man he is.”
“Kelsier changed at the end,” Vin said quietly. “You said it yourself, Dox. Did you know that he saved Elend’s life?”
Dockson turned, frowning. “When?”
“On that last day,” Vin said. “During the fight with the Inquisitor. Kell protected Elend, who came looking for me.”
“Must have thought he was one of the prisoners.”
Vin shook her head. “He knew who Elend was, and knew that I loved him. In the end, Kelsier was willing to admit that a good man was worth protecting, no matter who his parents were.”
“I find that hard to accept, Vin.”
“Why?”
Dockson met her eyes. “Because if I accept that Elend bears no guilt for what his people did to mine, then I must admit to being a monster for the things that I did to them.”
Vin shivered. In those eyes, she saw the truth behind Dockson’s transformation. She saw the death of his laughter. She saw the guilt. The murders.
This man is no impostor.
“I can find little joy in this government, Vin,” Dockson said quietly. “Because I know what we did to create it. The thing is, I’d do it all again. I tell myself it’s because I believe in skaa freedom. I still lie awake at nights, however, quietly satisfied for what we’ve done to our former rulers. Their society undermined, their god dead. Now they know.”
Vin nodded. Dockson looked down, as if ashamed, an emotion she’d rarely seen in him. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Dockson sat quietly as she withdrew, his pen and ledger forgotten on the desktop.
“It’s not him,” Vin said, walking down an empty palace hallway, trying to shake the haunting sound of Dockson’s voice from her mind.
“You are certain, Mistress?” OreSeur asked.
Vin nodded. “He knew about a private conversation that Dockson and I had before the Collapse.”
OreSeur was silent for a moment. “Mistress,” he finally said, “my brethren can be very thorough.”
“Yes, but how could he have known about such an event?”
“We often interview people before we take their bones, Mistress,” OreSeur explained. “We’ll meet them several times, in different settings, and find ways to talk about their lives. We’ll also talk to their friends and acquaintances. Did you ever tell anyone about this conversation you had with Dockson?”
Vin stopped to lean against the side of the stone hallway. “Maybe Elend,” she admitted. “I think I mentioned it to Sazed too, just after it happened. That was almost two years ago.”
“That could have been enough, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “We cannot learn everything about a person, but we try our best to discover items like this—private conversations, secrets, confidential information—so that we can mention them at appropriate times and reinforce our illusion.”
Vin frowned.
“There are…other things as well, Mistress,” OreSeur said.
“I hesitate because I do not wish you to imagine your friends in pain. However, it is common for our master—the one who actually does the killing—to torture their victim for information.”
Vin closed her eyes. Dockson felt so real…his guilt, his reactions…that couldn’t be faked, could it?
“Damn,” she whispered quietly, opening her eyes. She turned, sighing as she pushed open the shutters of a hallway window. It was dark out, and the mists curled before her as she leaned against the stone windowsill and looked out at the courtyard two stories below.
“Dox isn’t an Allomancer,” she said. “How can I find out for certain if he’s the impostor or not?”
“I do not know, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “This is never an easy task.”
Vin stood quietly. Absently, she pulled out her bronze earring—her mother’s earring—and worked it between her fingers, watching it reflect light. It had once been gilded with silver, but that had worn off in most places.
“I hate this,” she finally whispered.
“What, Mistress?”
“This…distrust,” she said. “I hate being suspicious of my friends. I thought I was through mistrusting those around me. I feel like a knife is twisting inside of me, and it cuts deeper every time I confront one of the crew.”
OreSeur sat on his haunches beside her, and he cocked his head. “But, Mistress. You’ve managed to eliminate several of them as impostors.”
“Yes,” Vin said. “But that only narrows the field—brings me one step closer to knowing which one of them is dead.”
“And that knowledge isn’t a good thing?”
Vin shook her head. “I don’t want it to be any of them, OreSeur. I don’t want to distrust them, don’t want to find out that we’re right….”
OreSeur didn’t respond at first, leaving her to stare out the window, mists slowly streaming to the floor around her.
“You are sincere,” OreSeur finally said.
She turned. “Of course I am.”
“I’m sorry, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “I did not wish to be insulting. I just…Well, I have been kandra to many masters. So many of them are suspicious and hateful of everyone around them, I had begun to think that your kind lacked the capacity for trust.”
“That’s silly,” Vin said, turning back to the window.
“I know it is,” OreSeur said. “But people often believe silly things, if given enough proof. Either way, I apologize. I do not know which of your friends is dead, but I am sorry that one of my kind brought you this pain.”
“Whoever he is, he’s just following his Contract.”
“Yes, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “The Contract.”
Vin frowned. “Is there a way that you could find out which kandra has a Contract in Luthadel?”
“I’m sorry, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “That is not possible.”
“I figured as much,” she said. “Are you likely to know him, whoever he is?”
“The kandra are a close-knit group, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “And our numbers are small. There is a good chance that I know him quite well.”
Vin tapped her finger against the windowsill, frowning as she tried to decide if the information was useful.
“I still don’t think it’s Dockson,” she finally said, replacing the earring. “We’ll ignore him for now. If I can’t get any other leads, we’ll come back…” She trailed off as something caught her attention. A figure walking in the courtyard, bearing no light.
Ham, she thought. But the walk wasn’t right.
She Pushed on the shield of the lamp hanging on the wall a short distance away. It snapped closed, the lamp shaking as the hallway fell into darkness.
“Mistress?” OreSeur asked as Vin climbed up into the window, flaring her tin as she squinted into the night.
Definitely not Ham, she thought.
Her first thought was of Elend—a sudden terror that assassins had come while she was talking to Dockson. But, it was early in the night, and Elend would still be speaking with his counselors. It was an unlikely time for an assassination.
And only one man? Not Zane, not judging from the height.
Probably just a guard, Vin thought. Why do I have to be so paranoid all the time?
And yet…she watched the figure walking into the courtyard, and her instincts kicked in. He seemed to be moving suspiciously, as if he were uncomfortable—as if he didn’t want to be seen.
“In my arms,” she said to OreSeur, tossing a padded coin out the window.
He hopped up obligingly, and she leaped out the window, fell twenty-five feet, and landed with the coin. She released OreSeur and nodded into the mists. He followed closely as she moved into the darkness, stooping and hiding, trying to get a good look at the lone figure. The man walked briskly, moving toward the side of the palace, where the servants’ entrances were. As he passed, she finally saw his face.
Captain Demoux? she thought.
She sat back, crouching with OreSeur beside a small stack of wooden supply boxes. What did she really know of Demoux? He was one of the skaa rebels recruited by Kelsier almost two years before. He’d taken to command, and had been promoted quickly. He was one of the loyal men who had stayed behind when the rest of the army had followed Yeden to their doom.
After the Collapse, he’d stayed in with the crew, eventually becoming Ham’s second. He had received no small amount of training from Ham—which might explain why he’d go out at night without a torch or lantern. But, even so….
If I were going to replace someone on the crew, Vin thought, I wouldn’t pick an Allomancer—that would make the impostor too easy to spot. I’d pick someone ordinary, someone who wouldn’t have to make decisions or attract notice.
Someone close to the crew, but not necessarily on it. Someone who is always near important meetings, but someone that others don’t really know that well….
She felt a small thrill. If the impostor were Demoux, it would mean that one of her good friends hadn’t been killed. And it would mean that the kandra’s master was even smarter than she’d given him credit for being.
He rounded the keep, and she followed quietly. However, whatever he’d been doing this night, it was already completed—for he moved in through one of the entrances on the side of the building, greeting the guards posted there to watch.
Vin sat back in the shadows. He’d spoken to the guards, so he hadn’t snuck out of the palace. And yet…she recognized the stooped posture, the nervous movements. He’d been nervous about something.
That’s him, she thought. The spy.
But now, what should she do about it?
34
There was a place for me, in the lore of the Anticipation—I thought myself the Announcer, the prophet foretold to discover the Hero of Ages. Renouncing Alendi then would have been to renounce my new position, my acceptance, by the others.
And so I did not.
“That won’t work,” Elend said, shaking his head. “We need a unanimous decision—minus the person being ousted, of course—in order to depose a member of the Assembly. We’d never manage to vote out all eight merchants.”
Ham looked a bit deflated. Elend knew that Ham liked to consider himself a philosopher; indeed, Ham had a good mind for abstract thinking. However, he wasn’t a scholar. He liked to think up questions and answers, but he didn’t have experience studying a text in detail, searching out its meaning and implications.
Elend glanced at Sazed, who sat with a book open on the table before him. The Keeper had at least a dozen volumes stacked around him—though, amusingly, his stacks were neatly arranged, spines pointing the same direction, covers flush. Elend’s own stacks were characteristically haphazard, pages of notes sticking out at odd angles.
It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn’t want to move around very much. Ham sat on the floor, a small pile of books beside him, though he spent most of his time voicing one random idea or another. Tindwyl had a chair, and did n
ot study. The Terriswoman found it perfectly acceptable to train Elend as a king; however, she refused to research and give suggestions about keeping his throne. This seemed, in her eyes, to cross some unseen line between being an educator and a political force.
Good thing Sazed isn’t like that, Elend thought. If he were, the Lord Ruler might still be in charge. In fact, Vin and I would probably both be dead—Sazed was the one who actually rescued her when she was imprisoned by the Inquisitors. It wasn’t me.
He didn’t like to think about that event. His bungled attempt at rescuing Vin now seemed a metaphor for all he had done wrong in his life. He’d always been well-intentioned, but he’d rarely been able to deliver. That was going to change.
“What about this, Your Majesty?” The one who spoke was the only other person in the room, a scholar named Noorden. Elend tried to ignore the intricate tattoos around the man’s eyes, indications of Noorden’s former life as an obligator. He wore large spectacles to try to hide the tattoos, but he had once been relatively well placed in the Steel Ministry. He could renounce his beliefs, but the tattoos would always remain.
“What have you found?” Elend asked.
“Some information on Lord Cett, Your Majesty,” Noorden said. “I found it in one of the ledgers you took from the Lord Ruler’s palace. It seems Cett isn’t as indifferent to Luthadel politics as he’d like us to think.” Noorden chuckled to himself at the thought.
Elend had never met a cheerful obligator before. Perhaps that was why Noorden hadn’t left the city like most of his kind; he certainly didn’t seem to fit into their ranks. He was only one of several men that Elend had been able to find to act as scribes and bureaucrats in his new kingdom.
Elend scanned Noorden’s page. Though the page was filled with numbers rather than words, his scholar’s mind easily parsed the information. Cett had done a lot of trading with Luthadel. Most of his work had been done using lesser houses as fronts. That might have fooled noblemen, but not the obligators, who had to be informed of the terms of any deal.
Noorden passed the ledger over to Sazed, who scanned the numbers.
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