Close in tight as fast as possible, and kill quickly.
And Elend attacked. The koloss swung as well. Elend could see the attack, but couldn’t do anything about it. He could only throw himself forward, knife raised, teeth clenched.
He rammed his knife into the koloss’s eye, barely managing to get inside the creature’s reach. Even so, the hilt of the sword hit him in the stomach.
Both dropped.
Elend groaned quietly, slowly becoming aware of the hard, ash-packed earth and weeds eaten down to their roots. A fallen twig was scratching his cheek. Odd that he would notice that, considering the pain in his chest. He stumbled to his feet. The koloss he’d attacked did not rise. Its companions stood, looking unconcerned, though their eyes were focused on him. They seemed to want something.
“He ate my horse,” Elend said, saying the first thing that came to his clouded mind.
The group of koloss nodded. Elend stumbled forward, wiping the ash from his cheek with a dazed hand as he knelt beside the dead creature. He ripped his knife out, then slid it back in his boot. Next he unfastened the pouches; this koloss had two.
Finally, not certain why, he grabbed the creature’s large sword and rested it up on his shoulder. It was so weighty that he could barely carry it, and certainly wouldn’t be able to swing it. How does a creature so small use something like this?
The koloss watched him work without comment; then they led him out of the camp. Once they had retreated, Elend pulled open one of the pouches and looked inside.
He shouldn’t have been surprised by what he found inside. Jastes had decided to control his army the old-fashioned way.
He was paying them.
43
The others call me mad. As I have said, that may be true.
Mist poured into the dark room, collapsing around Vin like a waterfall as she stood in the open balcony doorway. Elend was a motionless lump sleeping in his bed a short distance away.
Apparently, Mistress, OreSeur had explained, he went into the koloss camp alone. You were asleep, and none of us knew what he was doing. I don’t think he managed to persuade the creatures not to attack, but he did come back with some very useful information.
OreSeur sat on his haunches beside her. He had not asked why Vin had come to Elend’s rooms, nor why she stood, quietly watching the former king in the night.
She couldn’t protect him. She tried so hard, but the impossibility of keeping even one person safe suddenly seemed so real—so tangible—to her that she felt sick.
Elend had been right to go out. He was his own man, competent, kingly. What he had done would only put him in more danger, however. Fear had been a companion of hers for such a long time that she had grown accustomed to it, and it rarely caused a physical reaction in her. Yet, watching him sleep quietly, she found her hands traitorously unsteady.
I saved him from the assassins. I protected him. I’m a powerful Allomancer. Why, then, do I feel so helpless?
So alone.
She walked forward, bare feet silent as she stepped up to Elend’s bed. He did not wake. She stood for a long moment, just looking at him peaceful in his slumber.
OreSeur growled quietly.
Vin spun. A figure stood on the balcony, straight-backed and black, a near silhouette even to her tin-enhanced eyes. Mist fell before him, pooling on the floor, spreading out like an ethereal moss.
“Zane,” she whispered.
“He is not safe, Vin,” he said, stepping slowly into the room, pushing a wave of mist before him.
She looked back at Elend. “He never will be.”
“I came to tell you that there is a traitor in your midst.”
Vin looked up. “Who?” she asked.
“The man, Demoux,” Zane said. “He contacted my father a short time before the assassination attempt, offering to open the gates and give up the city.”
Vin frowned. That makes no sense.
Zane stepped forward. “Cett’s work, Vin. He is a snake, even among high lords. I don’t know how he bribed away one of your own men, but I do know that Demoux tried to provoke my father to attack the city during the voting.”
Vin paused. If Straff had attacked at that moment, it would have reinforced the impression that he had sent the assassins in the first place.
“Elend and Penrod were supposed to die,” Zane said. “With the Assembly in chaos, Cett could have taken charge. He could have led his forces—along with your own—against Straff’s attacking army. He would have become the savior who protected Luthadel against the tyranny of an invader….”
Vin stood quietly. Just because Zane said it didn’t mean it was true. Yet, her investigations whispered that Demoux was the traitor.
She’d recognized the assassin at the assembly, and he had been from Cett’s retinue, so she knew that Zane was telling the truth about at least one thing. Plus, Cett had precedent for sending Allomancer assassins: he had sent the ones months ago, when Vin had used the last of her atium. Zane had saved her life during that fight.
She clenched her fists, frustration biting at her chest. If he’s right, then Demoux is dead, and an enemy kandra has been in the palace, spending his days just steps away from Elend. Even if Zane lies, we still have a tyrant inside the city, another without. A force of koloss salivating over the people. And Elend doesn’t need me.
Because there’s nothing I can do.
“I see your frustration,” Zane whispered, stepping up beside Elend’s bed, looking down at his sleeping brother. “You keep listening to him. You want to protect him, but he won’t let you.” Zane looked up, meeting her eyes. She saw an implication in them.
There was something she could do—the thing a part of her had wanted to do from the beginning. The thing she’d been trained to do.
“Cett almost killed the man you love,” Zane said. “Your Elend does as he wishes. Well, let us do as you wish.” He looked into her eyes. “We have been someone else’s knives for too long. Let’s show Cett why he should fear us.”
Her fury, her frustration at the siege, yearned to do as Zane suggested. Yet, she wavered, her thoughts in chaos. She had killed—killed well—just a short time before, and it had terrified her. Yet…Elend could take risks—insane risks, traveling into an army of koloss on his own. It almost felt like a betrayal. She had worked so hard to protect him, straining herself, exposing herself. Then, just a few days later, he wandered alone into a camp full of monsters.
She gritted her teeth. Part of her whispered that if Elend wouldn’t be reasonable and stay out of danger, she’d just have to go and make sure the threats against him were removed.
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
Zane nodded. “Realize this,” he said. “We can’t just assassinate him. Another warlord will take his place, and take his armies. We have to attack hard. We have to hit that army so soundly that whoever takes over for Cett is so frightened that he withdraws.”
Vin paused, looking away from him, nails biting into her own palms.
“Tell me,” he said, stepping closer to her. “What would your Kelsier tell you to do?”
The answer was simple. Kelsier would never have gotten into this situation. He had been a hard man, a man with little tolerance for any who threatened those he loved. Cett and Straff wouldn’t have lasted a single night at Luthadel without feeling Kelsier’s knife.
There was a part of her that had always been awed by his powerful, utilitarian brutality.
There are two ways to stay safe, Reen’s voice whispered to her. Either be so quiet and harmless that people ignore you, or be so dangerous that they’re terrified of you.
She met Zane’s eyes and nodded. He smiled, then moved over and jumped out the window.
“OreSeur,” she whispered once he was gone. “My atium.”
The dog paused, then padded up to her, his shoulder splitting. “Mistress…” he said slowly. “Do not do this.”
She glanced at Elend. She couldn’t protect him from everythin
g. But she could do something.
She took the atium from OreSeur. Her hands no longer shook. She felt cold.
“Cett has threatened all that I love,” she whispered. “He will soon know that there is something in this world more deadly than his assassins. Something more powerful than his army. Something more terrifying than the Lord Ruler himself.
“And I am coming for him.”
Mist duty, they called it.
Every soldier had to take his turn, standing in the dark with a sputtering torch. Someone had to watch. Had to stare into those shifting, deceitful mists and wonder if anything was out there. Watching.
Wellen knew there was.
He knew it, but he never spoke. Soldiers laughed at such superstitions. They had to go out in the mists. They were used to it. They knew better than to fear it.
Supposedly.
“Hey,” Jarloux said, stepping up to the edge of the wall. “Wells, do you see something out there?”
Of course he didn’t. They stood with several dozen others on the perimeter of Keep Hasting, watching from the outer keep wall—a low fortification, perhaps fifteen feet tall, that surrounded the grounds. Their job was to look for anything suspicious in the mists.
“Suspicious.” That was the word they used. It was all suspicious. It was mist. That shifting darkness, that void made of chaos and hatred. Wellen had never trusted it. They were out there. He knew.
Something moved in the darkness. Wellen stepped back, staring into the void, his heart beginning to flutter, hands beginning to sweat as he raised his spear.
“Yeah,” Jarloux said, squinting. “I swear, I see…”
It came, as Wellen had always known it would. Like a thousand gnats on a hot day, like a hail of arrows shot by an entire army. Coins sprayed across the battlements. A wall of shimmering death, hundreds of trails zipping through the mists. Metal rang against stone, and men cried out in pain.
Wellen stepped back, raising his spear, as Jarloux yelled the alarm. Jarloux died halfway through the call, a coin snapping through his mouth, throwing out a chip of tooth as it proceeded out the back of his head. Jarloux collapsed, and Wellen stumbled away from the corpse, knowing that it was too late to run.
The coins stopped. Silence in the air. Men lay dying or groaning at his feet.
Then they came. Two dark shadows of death in the night. Ravens in the mist. They flew over Wellen with a rustle of black cloth.
And they left him behind, alone amid the corpses of what had once been a squad of forty men.
Vin landed in a crouch, bare feet on the cool stone cobbles of the Hasting courtyard. Zane landed upright, standing—as always—with his towering air of self-confidence.
Pewter blazed within her, giving her muscles the taut energy of a thousand excited moments. She easily ignored the pain of her wounded side. Her sole bead of atium rested in her stomach, but she didn’t use it. Not yet. Not unless she was right, and Cett proved to be Mistborn.
“We’ll go from the bottom up,” Zane said.
Vin nodded. The central tower of Keep Hasting was many stories high, and they couldn’t know which one Cett was on. If they started low, he wouldn’t be able to escape.
Besides. Going up would be more difficult. The energy in Vin’s limbs cried for release. She’d waited, remained coiled, for far too long. She was tired of weakness, tired of being restrained. She had spent months as a knife, held immobile at someone’s throat.
It was time to cut.
The two dashed forward. Torches began to light around them as Cett’s men—those who camped in the courtyard—awakened to the alarm. Tents unfurled and collapsed, men yelling in surprise, looking for the army that assailed them. They could only wish that they were so lucky.
Vin jumped straight up into the air, and Zane spun, throwing a bag of coins around him. Hundreds of bits of copper sparkled in the air beneath her—a peasant’s fortune. Vin landed with a rustle, and they both Pushed, their power throwing the coins outward. The torch-sparkled missiles ripped through the camp, dropping surprised, drowsy men.
Vin and Zane continued toward the central tower. A squad of soldiers had formed up at the tower’s front. They still seemed disoriented, confused, and sleepy, but they were armed. Armed with metal armor and steel weapons—a choice that, had they actually been facing an enemy army, would have been wise.
Zane and Vin slid into the midst of the soldiers. Zane tossed a single coin into the air between them. Vin reached out and Pushed against it, feeling Zane’s weight as he also Pushed against it.
Braced against each other, they both Pushed in opposite directions, throwing their weight against the breastplates of the soldiers to either side. With flared pewter—holding each other steady—their Pushes scattered the soldiers as if they had been slapped by enormous hands. Spears and swords twisted in the night, clattering to the cobbles. Breastplates towed bodies away.
Vin extinguished her steel as she felt Zane’s weight come off the coin. The sparkling bit of metal bounced to the ground between them, and Zane turned, throwing up his hand toward the single soldier who remained standing directly between Zane and the keep doors.
A squad of soldiers raced up behind Zane, but they suddenly halted as he Pushed against them—then sent the transfer of weight directly into the lone soldier. The unfortunate man crashed backward into the keep doors.
Bones crunched. The doors flung open as the soldier burst into the room beyond. Zane ducked through the open doorway, and Vin moved smoothly behind him, her bare feet leaving rough cobbles and falling on smooth marble instead.
Soldiers waited inside. These didn’t wear armor, and they carried large wooden shields to block coins. They were armed with staves or obsidian swords. Hazekillers—men trained specifically to fight Allomancers. There were, perhaps, fifty of them.
Now it begins in earnest, Vin thought, leaping into the air and Pushing off the door’s hinges.
Zane led by Pushing on the same man he’d used to break open the doors, throwing the corpse toward a group of hazekillers. As the soldier crashed into them, Vin landed amid a second group. She spun on the floor, whipping out her legs and flaring pewter, tripping a good four men. As the others tried to strike, she Pushed downward against a coin in her pouch, ripping it free and throwing herself upward. She spun in the air, catching a falling staff discarded by a tripped soldier.
Obsidian cracked against the white marble where she had been. Vin came down with her own weapon and struck, attacking faster than anyone should be able to, hitting ears, chins, and throats. Skulls cracked. Bones broke. She was barely breathing hard when she found all ten of her opponents down.
Ten men…didn’t Kelsier once tell me he had trouble with half a dozen hazekillers?
No time to think. A large group of soldiers charged her. She yelled and jumped toward them, throwing her staff into the face of the first man she met. The others raised their shields, surprised, but Vin whipped out a pair of obsidian daggers as she landed. She rammed them into the thighs of two men before her, then spun past them, attacking flesh where she saw it.
An attack flickered from the corner of her eye, and she snapped up an arm, blocking the wooden staff as it came for her head. The wood cracked, and she took the man down with a wide sweep of the dagger, nearly beheading him. She jumped backward as the others moved in, braced herself, then yanked on the armored corpse Zane had used before, Pulling it toward her.
Shields did little good against a missile so large. Vin smashed the corpse into her opponents, sweeping them before her. To the side, she could see the remnants of the hazekillers who had attacked Zane. Zane stood among them, a black pillar before the fallen, arms outstretched. He met her eyes, then nodded toward the rear of the chamber.
Vin ignored the few remaining hazekillers. She Pushed against the corpse and sent herself sliding across the floor. Zane jumped up, Pushing back, shattering his way through a window and into the mists. Vin quickly did a check of the back rooms: no Cett. She turned a
nd took down a straggling hazekiller as she ducked into the lift shaft.
She needed no elevator. She shot straight up on a Pushed coin, bursting out onto the third floor. Zane would take the second.
Vin landed quietly on the marble floor, hearing footsteps come down a stairwell beside her. She recognized this large, open room: it was the chamber where she and Elend had met Cett for dinner. It was now empty, even the table removed, but she recognized the circular perimeter of stained-glass windows.
Hazekillers burst from the kitchen room. Dozens. There must be another stairwell back there, Vin thought as she darted toward the stairwell beside her. Dozens more were coming out there, however, and the two groups moved to surround her.
Fifty-to-one must have seemed like good odds for the men, and they charged confidently. She glanced at the open kitchen doors, and saw no Cett beyond. This floor was clear.
Cett certainly brought a lot of hazekillers, she thought, backing quietly to the center of the room. Save for the stairwell, kitchens, and pillars, the room was mostly surrounded in arched stained-glass windows.
He planned for my attack. Or, he tried to.
Vin ducked down as the waves of men surrounded her. She turned her head up, eyes closed, and burned duralumin.
Then she Pulled.
Stained-glass windows—set in metal frames inside their arches—exploded around the room. She felt the metal frames burst inward, twisting on themselves before her awesome power. She imagined twinkling slivers of multi-colored glass in the air. She heard men scream as glass and metal hit them, embedding in their flesh.
Only the outer layer of men would die from the blast. Vin opened her eyes and jumped as a dozen dueling canes fell around her. She passed through a hail of attacks. Some hit. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t feel pain at the moment.
She Pushed against a broken metal frame, throwing herself over the heads of soldiers, landing outside the large circle of attackers. The outer line of men was down, impaled by glass shards and twisted metal frames. Vin raised a hand and bowed her head.
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