“I know,” Elend said again, bidding the two farewell.
Ham waved to Spook, and the two of them left, off to check with Breeze and Clubs.
They all act so glum, Elend thought, leaving his rooms to find something to eat. It’s like they think we’re doomed because of one setback. But, Cett’s withdrawal is a good thing. One of our enemies is leaving—and there are still two armies out there. Jastes won’t attack if doing so exposes him to Straff, and Straff himself is too scared of Vin to do anything. In fact, her attack on Cett will only make my father more frightened. Maybe that’s why she did it.
“Your Majesty?” a voice whispered.
Elend spun, searching the hallway.
“Your Majesty,” said a short figure in the shadows. OreSeur. “I think I’ve found her.”
Elend didn’t bring anyone with him save for a few guards. He didn’t want to explain to Ham and the others how he’d gotten his information; Vin still insisted on keeping OreSeur secret.
Ham’s right about one thing, Elend thought as his carriage pulled to a stop. She is hiding things. She does it all the time.
But that didn’t stop him from trusting her. He nodded to OreSeur, and they left the carriage. Elend waved his guards back as he approached a dilapidated building. It had probably once been a poor merchant’s shop—a place run by extremely low nobility, selling meager necessities to skaa workers in exchange for food tokens, which could in turn be exchanged for money from the Lord Ruler.
The building was in a sector that Elend’s fuel-collection crews hadn’t reached yet. It was obvious, however, that it hadn’t seen a lot of use lately. It had been ransacked long ago, and the ash coating the floor was a good four inches deep. A small trail of footprints led toward a back stairwell.
“What is this place?” Elend asked with a frown.
OreSeur shrugged a pair of dog’s shoulders.
“Then how did you know she was here?”
“I followed her last night, Your Majesty,” OreSeur said. “I saw the general direction she went. After that, it was simply a process of careful searching.”
Elend frowned. “That still must have taken some pretty mean tracking abilities, kandra.”
“These bones have unusually keen senses.”
Elend nodded. The stairwell led up into a long hallway with several rooms at the ends. Elend began to walk down the hallway, then paused. To one side, a panel on the wall had been slid back, revealing a small cubby. He could hear movement within.
“Vin?” he asked, poking his head into the cubby.
There was a small room hidden behind the wall, and Vin sat on the far side. The room—more of a nook—was only a few feet across, and even Vin wouldn’t have been able to stand up in it. She didn’t respond to him. She simply sat, leaning against the far wall, head turned away from him.
Elend crawled inside the small chamber, getting ash on his knees. It was barely large enough for him to enter without bumping into her. “Vin? Are you all right?”
She sat, twisting something between her fingers. And she was looking at the wall—looking through a narrow hole. Elend could see sunlight shining through.
It’s a peephole, he realized. To watch the street below. This isn’t a shop—it’s a thieving hideout. Or, it was.
“I used to think Camon was a terrible man,” Vin said quietly.
Elend paused, on hands and knees. Finally, he settled back into a cramped seated position. At least Vin didn’t look hurt. “Camon?” he asked. “Your old crewleader, before Kelsier?”
Vin nodded. She turned away from the slit, sitting with her arms around her knees. “He beat people, he killed those who disagreed with him. Even among street thugs, he was brutal.”
Elend frowned.
“But,” Vin said quietly, “I doubt he killed as many people during his entire life as I killed last night.”
Elend closed his eyes. Then he opened them and shuffled a little closer, laying a hand on Vin’s shoulder. “Those were enemy soldiers, Vin.”
“I was like a child in a room full of bugs,” Vin whispered. He could finally see what was in her fingers. It was her earring, the simple bronze stud that she always wore. She looked down at it, twisting it between her fingers.
“Did I ever tell you how I got this?” she asked. He shook his head. “My mother gave it to me,” she said. “I don’t remember it happening—Reen told me about it. My mother…she heard voices sometimes. She killed my baby sister, slaughtered her. And that same day she gave me this, one of her own earrings. As if…as if choosing me over my sister. A punishment for one, a twisted present for another.”
Vin shook her head. “My entire life has been death, Elend. Death of my sister, the death of Reen. Crewmembers dead around me, Kelsier falling to the Lord Ruler, then my own spear in the Lord Ruler’s chest. I try to protect, and tell myself that I’m escaping it all. And then…I do something like I did last night.”
Not certain what else to do, Elend pulled her close. She was stiff, however. “You had a good reason for what you did,” he said.
“No I didn’t,” Vin said. “I just wanted to hurt them. I wanted to scare them and make them leave you alone. It sounds childish, but that’s how I felt.”
“It’s not childish, Vin,” Elend said. “It was good strategy. You gave our enemies a show of force. You frightened away one of our major opponents, and now my father will be even more afraid to attack. You’ve bought us more time!”
“Bought it with the lives of hundreds of men.”
“Enemy soldiers who marched into our city,” Elend said. “Men who were protecting a tyrant who oppresses his people.”
“That’s the same rationale Kelsier used,” Vin said quietly, “when he killed noblemen and their guards. He said they were upholding the Final Empire, so they deserved to die. He frightened me.”
Elend didn’t know what to say to that.
“It was like he thought himself a god,” Vin whispered. “Taking life, giving life, where he saw fit. I don’t want to be like him, Elend. But, everything seems to be pushing me in that direction.”
“I…” You’re not like him, he wanted to say. It was true, but the words wouldn’t come out. They rang hollow to him.
Instead, he pulled Vin close, her shoulder up against his chest, head beneath his chin. “I wish I knew the right things to say, Vin,” he whispered. “Seeing you like this makes every protective instinct inside of me twist. I want to make it better—I want to fix everything—but I don’t know how. Tell me what to do. Just tell me how I can help!”
She resisted his embrace a little at first, but then sighed quietly and slid her arms around him, holding him tightly. “You can’t help with this,” she said softly. “I have to do it alone. There are…decisions I have to make.”
He nodded. “You’ll make the right ones, Vin.”
“You don’t even know what I’m deciding.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I know I can’t help—I couldn’t even hold on to my own throne. You’re ten times as capable as I am.”
She squeezed his arm. “Don’t say things like that.
Please?”
He frowned at the tension in her voice, then nodded. “All right. But, either way, I trust you, Vin. Make your decisions—I’ll support you.”
She nodded, relaxing a bit beneath his arms. “I think…” she said. “I think I have to leave Luthadel.”
“Leave? And go where?”
“North,” she said. “To Terris.”
Elend sat back, resting against the wooden wall. Leave? he thought with a twisting feeling. Is this what I’ve earned by being so distracted lately?
Have I lost her?
And yet, he’d just told her that he’d support her decisions. “If you feel you have to go, Vin,” he found himself saying, “then you should do so.”
“If I were to leave, would you go with me?”
“Now?”
Vin nodded, head rubbing his chest.
“But the city rejected you.”
“I know,” he said, sighing. “But…I can’t leave them, Vin. They rejected me, but I won’t abandon them.”
Vin nodded again, and something told him this was the answer she had expected.
Elend smiled. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”
“Hopeless,” she said softly, sighing as she finally pulled away from him. She seemed so tired. Outside the room, Elend could hear footsteps. OreSeur appeared a moment later, poking his head into the hidden chamber.
“Your guards are growing restless, Your Majesty,” he said to Elend. “They will soon come looking for you.”
Elend nodded, shuffling over to the exit. Once in the hallway, he offered a hand to help Vin out. She took the hand, crawling out, then stood and dusted off her clothing—her typical shirt and trousers.
Will she ever go back to dresses now? he wondered.
“Elend,” she said, fishing in a pocket. “Here, you can spend this, if you want.”
She opened up her hand, dropping a bead into his hand.
“Atium?” he asked incredulously. “Where did you get it?”
“From a friend,” she said.
“And you didn’t burn it last night?” Elend asked. “When you were fighting all those soldiers?”
“No,” Vin said. “I swallowed it, but I didn’t end up needing it, so I forced it back up.”
Lord Ruler! Elend thought. I didn’t even consider that she didn’t have atium. What could she have done if she’d burned that bit? He looked up at her. “Some reports say that there’s another Mistborn in the city.”
“There is. Zane.”
Elend dropped the bead back into her hand. “Then keep this. You might need it to fight him.”
“I doubt that,” Vin said quietly.
“Keep it anyway,” Elend said. “This is worth a small fortune—but we’d need a very large fortune to make any difference now. Besides, who would buy it? If I used it to bribe Straff or Cett, they’d only become more certain I’m holding atium against them.”
Vin nodded, then glanced at OreSeur. “Keep this,” she said, handing the bead toward him. “It’s big enough that another Allomancer could pull it off me if he wanted.”
“I will guard it with my life, Mistress,” OreSeur said, his shoulder splitting open to make room for the bit of metal.
Vin turned to join Elend as they walked down the steps, moving to meet with the guards below.
45
I know what I have memorized. I know what is now repeated by the other Worldbringers.
“The hero of ages won’t be Terris,” Tindwyl said, scribbling a note at the bottom of their list.
“We knew that already,” Sazed said. “From the logbook.”
“Yes,” Tindwyl said, “but Alendi’s account was only a reference—a thirdhand mention of the effects of a prophecy. I found someone quoting the prophecy itself.”
“Truly?” Sazed asked, excited. “Where?”
“The biography of Helenntion,” Tindwyl said. “One of the last survivors of the Council of Khlennium.”
“Write it for me,” Sazed said, scooting his chair a bit closer to hers. He had to blink a few times as she wrote, his head clouding for a moment from fatigue.
Stay alert! he told himself. There isn’t much time left. Not much at all….
Tindwyl was doing a little better than he, but her wakefulness was obviously beginning to run out, for she was starting to droop. He’d taken a quick nap during the night, rolled up on her floor, but she had carried on. As far as he could tell, she’d been awake for over a week straight.
There was much talk of the Rabzeen, during those days, Tindwyl wrote. Some said he would come to fight the Conqueror. Others said he was the Conqueror. Helenntion didn’t make his thoughts on the matter known to me. The Rabzeen is said to be “He who is not of his people, yet fulfills all of their wishes.” If this is the case, then perhaps the Conqueror is the one. He is said to have been of Khlennium.
She stopped there. Sazed frowned, reading the words again. Kwaan’s last testimony—the rubbing Sazed had taken at the Conventical of Seran—had proven useful in more than one way. It had provided a key.
It wasn’t until years later that I became convinced that he was the Hero of Ages, Kwaan had written. Hero of Ages: the one called Rabzeen in Khlennium, the Anamnesor….
The rubbing was a means of translation—not between languages, but between synonyms. It made sense that there would be other names for the Hero of Ages; a figure so important, so surrounded by lore, would have many titles. Yet, so much had been lost from those days. The Rabzeen and the Anamnesor were both mythological figures vaguely familiar to Sazed—but they were only two among hosts. Until the discovery of the rubbing, there had been no way to connect their names to the Hero of Ages.
Now Tindwyl and he could search their metalminds with open eyes. Perhaps, in the past, Sazed had read this very passage from Helenntion’s biography; he had at least skimmed many of the older records, searching for religious references. Yet, he would never have been able to realize that the passage was referring to the Hero of Ages, a figure from Terris lore that the Khlenni people had renamed into their own tongue.
“Yes…” he said slowly. “This is good, Tindwyl. Very good.” He reached over, laying his hand on hers.
“Perhaps,” she said, “though it tells us nothing new.”
“Ah, but the wording might be important, I think,” Sazed said. “Religions are often very careful with their writings.”
“Especially prophecies,” Tindwyl said, frowning just a bit. She was not fond of anything that smacked of superstition or soothsaying.
“I would have thought,” Sazed noted, “that you would no longer have this prejudice, considering our current enterprise.”
“I gather information, Sazed,” she said. “Because of what it says of people, and because of what the past can teach us. However, there is a reason I took to studying history as opposed to theology. I don’t approve of perpetuating lies.”
“Is that what you think I do when I teach of religions?” he asked in amusement.
Tindwyl looked toward him. “A bit,” she admitted. “How can you teach the people to look toward the gods of the dead, Sazed? Those religions did their people little good, and their prophecies are now dust.”
“Religions are an expression of hope,” Sazed said. “That hope gives people strength.”
“Then you don’t believe?” Tindwyl asked. “You just give the people something to trust, something to delude themselves?”
“I would not call it so.”
“Then you think the gods you teach of do exist?”
“I…think that they deserved to be remembered.”
“And their prophecies?” Tindwyl said. “I see scholarly value in what we do—the bringing to light of facts from the past could give us information about our current problems. Yet, this soothsaying for the future is, at its core, foolishness.”
“I would not say that,” Sazed said. “Religions are promises—promises that there is something watching over us, guiding us. Prophecies, therefore, are natural extensions of the hopes and desires of the people. Not foolishness at all.”
“So, your interest is purely academic?” Tindwyl said.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Tindwyl studied him, watching his eyes. She frowned slowly. “You believe it, don’t you?” she asked. “You believe that this girl is the Hero of Ages.”
“I have not yet decided,” Sazed said.
“How can you even consider such a thing, Sazed?” Tindwyl asked. “Don’t you see? Hope is a good thing—a wonderful thing—but you must have hope in something appropriate. If you perpetuate the dreams of the past, then you stifle your own dreams of the future.”
“What if the past dreams are worthy of being remembered?”
&n
bsp; Tindwyl shook her head. “Look at the odds, Sazed. What are the chances we would end up where we are, studying this rubbing, in the very same household as the Hero of Ages?”
“Odds are irrelevant when a foretelling is involved.”
Tindwyl closed her eyes. “Sazed…I think religion is a good thing, and belief is a good thing, but it is foolishness to look for guidance in a few vague phrases. Look at what happened last time someone assumed they had found this Hero. The Lord Ruler, the Final Empire, was the result.”
“Still, I will hope. If you did not believe the prophecies, then why work so hard to discover information about the Deepness and the Hero?”
“It’s simple,” Tindwyl said. “We are obviously facing a danger that has come before—a recurring problem, like a plague that plays itself out, only to return again centuries later. The ancient people knew of this danger, and had information about it. That information, naturally, broke down and became legends, prophecies, and even religions. There will be, then, clues to our situation hidden in the past. This is not a matter of soothsaying, but of research.”
Sazed lay his hand on hers. “I think, perhaps, that this is something we cannot agree upon. Come, let us return to our studies. We must use the time we have left.”
“We should be all right,” Tindwyl said, sighing and reaching to tuck a bit of hair back into her bun. “Apparently, your Hero scared off Lord Cett last night. The maid who brought breakfast was speaking of it.”
“I know of the event,” Sazed said.
“Then things are growing better for Luthadel.”
“Yes,” Sazed said. “Perhaps.”
She frowned. “You seem hesitant.”
“I do not know,” he said, glancing down. “I do not feel that Cett’s departure is a good thing, Tindwyl. Something is very wrong. We need to be finished with these studies.”
Tindwyl cocked her head. “How soon?”
“We should try to be done tonight, I think,” Sazed said, glancing toward the pile of unbound sheets they had stacked on the table. That stack contained all the notes, ideas, and connections that they’d made during their furious bout of study. It was a book, of sorts—a guidebook that told of the Hero of Ages and the Deepness. It was a good document—incredible, even, considering the time they’d been given. It was not comprehensive. It was, however, probably the most important thing he’d ever written.
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