Mistborn Trilogy

by Sanderson, Brandon

  And yet, a part of Sazed resisted. That made him feel deeply guilty; the villagers needed his teachings, and he wished dearly to help them. However…he felt that he was missing something. The Lord Ruler was dead, but the story did not seem finished. Was there something he had overlooked?

  Something larger, even, than the Lord Ruler? Something so large, so big, that it was effectively invisible?

  Or, do I just want there to be something else? he wondered. I’ve spent most of my adult life resisting and fighting, taking risks that the other Keepers called mad. I wasn’t content with feigned subservience—I had to get involved in the rebellion.

  Despite that rebellion’s success, Sazed’s brethren still hadn’t forgiven him for his involvement. He knew that Vin and the others saw him as docile, but compared with other Keepers he was a wild man. A reckless, untrustworthy fool who threatened the entire order with his impatience. They had believed their duty was to wait, watching for the day when the Lord Ruler was gone. Feruchemists were too rare to risk in open rebellion.

  Sazed had disobeyed. Now he was having trouble living the peaceful life of a teacher. Was that because some subconscious part of him knew that the people were still in danger, or was it because he simply couldn’t accept being marginalized?

  “Master Terrisman!”

  Sazed spun. The voice was terrified. Another death in the mists? he thought immediately.

  It was eerie how the other skaa remained inside their hovels despite the horrified voice. A few doors creaked, but nobody rushed out in alarm—or even curiosity—as the screamer dashed up to Sazed. She was one of the fieldworkers, a stout, middle-aged woman. Sazed checked his reserves as she approached; he had on his pewtermind for strength, of course, and a very small steel ring for speed. Suddenly, he wished he’d chosen to wear just a few more bracelets this day.

  “Master Terrisman!” the woman said, out of breath. “Oh, he’s come back! He’s come for us!”

  “Who?” Sazed asked. “The man who died in the mists?”

  “No, Master Terrisman. The Lord Ruler.”

  Sazed found him standing just outside the village. It was already growing dark, and the woman who’d fetched Sazed had returned to her hovel in fear. Sazed could only imagine how the poor people felt—trapped by the onset of the night and its mist, yet huddled and worried at the danger that lurked outside.

  And an ominous danger it was. The stranger waited quietly on the worn road, wearing a black robe, standing almost as tall as Sazed himself. The man was bald, and he wore no jewelry—unless, of course, you counted the massive iron spikes that had been driven point-first through his eyes.

  Not the Lord Ruler. A Steel Inquisitor.

  Sazed still didn’t understand how the creatures continued to live. The spikes were wide enough to fill the Inquisitor’s entire eye sockets; the nails had destroyed the eyes, and pointed tips jutted out the back of the skull. No blood dripped from the wounds—for some reason, that made them seem more strange.

  Fortunately, Sazed knew this particular Inquisitor. “Marsh,” Sazed said quietly as the mists began to form.

  “You are a very difficult person to track, Terrisman,” Marsh said—and the sound of his voice shocked Sazed. It had changed, somehow, becoming more grating, more gristly. It now had a grinding quality, like that of a man with a cough. Just like the other Inquisitors Sazed had heard.

  “Track?” Sazed asked. “I wasn’t planning on others needing to find me.”

  “Regardless,” Marsh said, turning south. “I did. You need to come with me.”

  Sazed frowned. “What? Marsh, I have a work to do here.”

  “Unimportant,” Marsh said, turning back, focusing his eyeless gaze on Sazed.

  Is it me, or has he become stranger since we last met? Sazed shivered. “What is this about, Marsh?”

  “The Conventical of Seran is empty.”

  Sazed paused. The Conventical was a Ministry stronghold to the south—a place where the Inquisitors and high obligators of the Lord Ruler’s religion had retreated after the Collapse.

  “Empty?” Sazed asked. “That isn’t likely, I think.”

  “True nonetheless,” Marsh said. He didn’t use body language as he spoke—no gesturing, no movements of the face.

  “I…” Sazed trailed off. What kinds of information, wonders, secrets, the Conventical’s libraries must hold.

  “You must come with me,” Marsh said. “I may need help, should my brethren discover us.”

  My brethren. Since when are the Inquisitors Marsh’s “brethren”? Marsh had infiltrated their numbers as part of Kelsier’s plan to overthrow the Final Empire. He was a traitor to their numbers, not their brother.

  Sazed hesitated. Marsh’s profile looked…unnatural, even unnerving, in the dim light. Dangerous.

  Don’t be foolish, Sazed chastised himself. Marsh was Kelsier’s brother—the Survivor’s only living relative. As an Inquisitor, Marsh had authority over the Steel Ministry, and many of the obligators had listened to him despite his involvement with the rebellion. He had been an invaluable resource for Elend Venture’s fledgling government.

  “Go get your things,” Marsh said.

  My place is here, Sazed thought. Teaching the people, not gallivanting across the countryside, chasing my own ego.

  And yet…

  “The mists are coming during the day,” Marsh said quietly.

  Sazed looked up. Marsh was staring at him, the heads of his spikes shining like round disks in the last slivers of sunlight. Superstitious skaa thought that Inquisitors could read minds, though Sazed knew that was foolish. Inquisitors had the powers of Mistborn, and could therefore influence other people’s emotions—but they could not read minds.

  “Why did you say that?” Sazed asked.

  “Because it is true,” Marsh said. “This is not over, Sazed. It has not yet begun. The Lord Ruler…he was just a delay. A cog. Now that he is gone, we have little time remaining. Come with me to the Conventical—we must search it while we have the opportunity.”

  Sazed paused, then nodded. “Let me go explain to the villagers. We can leave tonight, I think.”

  Marsh nodded, but he didn’t move as Sazed retreated to the village. He just remained, standing in the darkness, letting the mist gather around him.

  8

  It all comes back to poor Alendi. I feel bad for him, and for all the things he has been forced to endure. For what he has been forced to become.

  Vin threw herself into the mists. She soared in the night air, passing over darkened homes and streets. An occasional, furtive bob of light glowed in the mists—a guard patrol, or perhaps an unfortunate late-night traveler.

  Vin began to descend, and she immediately flipped a coin out before herself. She Pushed against it, her weight plunging it down into the quiet depths. As soon as it hit the street below, her Push forced her upward, and she sprang back into the air. Soft Pushes were very difficult—so each coin she Pushed against, each jump she made, threw her into the air at a terrible speed. The jumping of a Mistborn wasn’t like a bird’s flight. It was more like the path of a ricocheting arrow.

  And yet, there was a grace to it. Vin breathed deeply as she arced above the city, tasting the cool, humid air. Luthadel by day smelled of burning forges, sun-heated refuse, and fallen ash. At night, however, the mists gave the air a beautiful chill crispness—almost a cleanliness.

  Vin crested her jump, and she hung for just a brief moment as her momentum changed. Then she began to plummet back toward the city. Her mistcloak tassels fluttered around her, mingling with her hair. She fell with her eyes closed, remembering her first few weeks in the mist, training beneath Kelsier’s relaxed—yet watchful—tutelage. He had given her this. Freedom. Despite two years as a Mistborn, she had never lost the sense of intoxicating wonder she felt when soaring through the mists.

  She burned steel with her eyes closed; the lines appeared anyway, visible as a spray of threadlike blue lines set against the blackness of h
er eyelids. She picked two, pointing downward behind her, and Pushed, throwing herself into another arc.

  What did I ever do without this? Vin thought, opening her eyes, whipping her mistcloak behind her with a throw of the arm.

  Eventually, she began to fall again, and this time she didn’t toss a coin. She burned pewter to strengthen her limbs, and landed with a thump on the wall surrounding Keep Venture’s grounds. Her bronze showed no signs of Allomantic activity nearby, and her steel revealed no unusual patterns of metal moving toward the keep.

  Vin crouched on the dark wall for a few moments, right at the edge, toes curling over the lip of the stone. The rock was cool beneath her feet, and her tin made her skin far more sensitive than normal. She could tell that the wall needed to be cleaned; lichens were beginning to grow along its side, encouraged by the night’s humidity, protected from the day’s sun by a nearby tower.

  Vin remained quiet, watching a slight breeze push and churn the mists. She heard the movement on the street below before she saw it. She tensed, checking her reserves, before she was able to discern a wolfhound’s shape in the shadows.

  She dropped a coin over the side of the wall, then leapt off. OreSeur waited as she landed quietly before him, using a quick Push on the coin to slow her descent.

  “You move quickly,” Vin noted appreciatively.

  “All I had to do was round the palace grounds, Mistress.”

  “Still, you stuck closer to me this time than you ever did before. That wolfhound’s body is faster than a human one.”

  OreSeur paused. “I suppose,” he admitted.

  “Think you can follow me through the city?”

  “Probably,” OreSeur said. “If you lose me, I will return to this point so you can retrieve me.”

  Vin turned and dashed down a side street. OreSeur then took off quietly behind her, following.

  Let’s see how well he does in a more demanding chase, she thought, burning pewter and increasing her speed. She sprinted along the cool cobbles, barefoot as always. A normal man could never have maintained such a speed. Even a trained runner couldn’t have kept pace with her, for he would have quickly tired.

  With pewter, however, Vin could run for hours at breakneck speeds. It gave her strength, lent her an unreal sense of balance, as she shot down the dark, mist-ruled street, a flurry of cloak tassels and bare feet.

  OreSeur kept pace. He loped beside her in the night, breathing heavily, focused on his running.

  Impressive, Vin thought, then turned down an alleyway. She easily jumped the six-foot-tall fence at the back, passing into the garden of some lesser nobleman’s mansion. She spun, skidding on the wet grass, and watched.

  OreSeur crested the top of the wooden fence, his dark, canine form dropping through the mists to land in the loam before Vin. He came to a stop, resting on his haunches, waiting quietly, panting. There was a look of defiance in his eyes.

  All right, Vin thought, pulling out a handful of coins. Follow this.

  She dropped a coin and threw herself backward up into the air. She spun in the mists, twisting, then Pushed herself sideways off a well spigot. She landed on a rooftop and jumped off, using another coin to Push herself over the street below.

  She kept going, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, using coins when necessary. She occasionally shot a glance behind, and saw a dark form struggling to keep up. He’d rarely followed her as a human; usually, she had checked in with him at specific points. Moving out in the night, jumping through the mists…this was the true domain of the Mistborn. Did Elend understand what he asked when he told her to bring OreSeur with her? If she stayed down on the streets, she’d expose herself.

  She landed on a rooftop, jarring to a sudden halt as she grabbed hold of the building’s stone lip, leaning out over a street three stories below. She maintained her balance, mist swirling below her. All was silent.

  Well, that didn’t take long, she thought. I’ll just have to explain to Elend that—

  OreSeur’s canine form thumped to the rooftop a short distance away. He padded over to her, then sat down on his haunches, waiting expectantly.

  Vin frowned. She’d traveled for a good ten minutes, running over rooftops with the speed of a Mistborn. “How…how did you get up here?” she demanded.

  “I jumped atop a shorter building, then used it to reach these tenements, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “Then I followed you along the rooftops. They are placed so closely together that it was not difficult to jump from one to another.”

  Vin’s confusion must have shown, for OreSeur continued. “I may have been…hasty in my judgment of these bones, Mistress. They certainly do have an impressive sense of smell—in fact, all of their senses are quite keen. It was surprisingly easy to track you, even in the darkness.”

  “I…see,” Vin said. “Well, that’s good.”

  “Might I ask, Mistress, the purpose of that chase?”

  Vin shrugged. “I do this sort of thing every night.”

  “It seemed like you were particularly intent on losing me. It will be very difficult to protect you if you don’t let me stay near you.”

  “Protect me?” Vin asked. “You can’t even fight.”

  “The Contract forbids me from killing a human,” OreSeur said. “I could, however, go for help should you need it.”

  Or throw me a bit of atium in a moment of danger, Vin admitted. He’s right—he could be useful. Why am I so determined to leave him behind?

  She glanced over at OreSeur, who sat patiently, his chest puffing from exertion. She hadn’t realized that kandra even needed to breathe.

  He ate Kelsier.

  “Come on,” Vin said. She jumped from the building, Pushing herself off a coin. She didn’t pause to see if OreSeur followed.

  As she fell, she reached for another coin, but decided not to use it. She Pushed against a passing window bracket instead. Like most Mistborn, she often used clips—the smallest denomination of coin—to jump. It was very convenient that the economy supplied a prepackaged bit of metal of an ideal size and weight for jumping and shooting. To most Mistborn, the cost of a thrown clip—or even a bag of them—was negligible.

  But Vin was not most Mistborn. In her younger years, a handful of clips would have seemed an amazing treasure. That much money could have meant food for weeks, if she scrimped. It also could have meant pain—even death—if the other thieves had discovered that she’d obtained such a fortune.

  It had been a long time since she’d gone hungry. Though she still kept a pack of dried foods in her quarters, she did so more out of habit than anxiety. She honestly wasn’t sure what she thought of the changes within her. It was nice not to have to worry about basic necessities—and yet, those worries had been replaced by ones far more daunting. Worries involving the future of an entire nation.

  The future of…a people. She landed on the city wall—a structure much higher, and much better fortified, than the small wall around Keep Venture. She hopped up on the battlements, fingers seeking a hold on one of the merlons as she leaned over the edge of the wall, looking out over the army’s fires.

  She had never met Straff Venture, but she had heard enough from Elend to be worried.

  She sighed, pushing back off the battlement and hopping onto the wall walk. Then she leaned back against one of the merlons. To the side, OreSeur trotted up the wall steps and approached. Once again, he went down onto his haunches, watching patiently.

  For better or for worse, Vin’s simple life of starvation and beatings was gone. Elend’s fledgling kingdom was in serious danger, and she’d burned away the last of his atium trying to keep herself alive. She’d left him exposed—not just to armies, but to any Mistborn assassin who tried to kill him.

  An assassin like the Watcher, perhaps? The mysterious figure who had interfered in her fight against Cett’s Mistborn. What did he want? Why did he watch her, rather than Elend?

  Vin sighed, reaching into her coin pouch and pulling out her bar of duralumin. She
still had the reserve of it within her, the bit she’d swallowed earlier.

  For centuries, it had been assumed that there were only ten Allomantic metals: the four base metals and their alloys, plus atium and gold. Yet, Allomantic metals always came in pairs—a base metal and an alloy. It had always bothered Vin that atium and gold were considered a pair, when neither was an alloy of the other. In the end, it had turned out that they weren’t actually paired; they each had an alloy. One of these—malatium, the so-called Eleventh Metal—had eventually given Vin the clue she’d needed to defeat the Lord Ruler.

  Somehow Kelsier had found out about malatium. Sazed still hadn’t been able to trace the “legends” that Kelsier had supposedly uncovered teaching of the Eleventh Metal and its power to defeat the Lord Ruler.

  Vin rubbed her finger on the slick surface of the duralumin bar. When Vin had last seen Sazed, he’d seemed frustrated—or, at least, as frustrated as Sazed ever grew—that he couldn’t find even hints regarding Kelsier’s supposed legends. Though Sazed claimed he’d left Luthadel to teach the people of the Final Empire—as was his duty as a Keeper—Vin hadn’t missed the fact that Sazed had gone south. The direction in which Kelsier claimed to have discovered the Eleventh Metal.

  Are there rumors about this metal, too? Vin wondered, rubbing the duralumin. Ones that might tell me what it does?

  Each of the other metals produced an immediate, visible effect; only copper, with its ability to create a cloud that masked an Allomancer’s powers from others, didn’t have an obvious sensory clue to its purpose. Perhaps duralumin was similar. Could its effect be noticed only by another Allomancer, one trying to use his or her powers on Vin? It was the opposite of aluminum, which made metals disappear. Did that mean duralumin would make other metals last longer?

  Movement.

  Vin just barely caught the hint of shadowed motion. At first, a primal bit of terror rose in her: Was it the misty form, the ghost in the darkness she had seen the night before?