I don’t even know if this was the spirit tonight, Vin told herself. Yet, the one tailing her had vanished so abruptly. . . .
Confused, and chilled, she Pushed herself out of the city and quickly made her way back to Elend’s camp.
One final aspect of the Lord Ruler’s cultural manipulation is quite interesting: that of technology.
I have already mentioned that Rashek chose to use Khlenni architecture, which allowed him to construct large structures and gave him the civil engineering necessary to build a city as large as Luthadel. In other areas, however, he suppressed technological advancements. Gunpowder, for instance, was so frowned upon by Rashek that knowledge of its use disappeared almost as quickly as knowledge of the Terris religion.
Apparently, Rashek found it alarming that armed with gunpowder weapons, even the most common of men could be nearly as effective as archers with years of training. And so, he favored archers. The more training-dependent military technology was, the less likely it was that the peasant population would be able to rise up and resist him. Indeed, skaa revolts always failed in part for this very reason.
28
“ARE YOU SURE IT WAS THE MIST SPIRIT?” Elend asked, frowning, a half-finished letter—scribed into a steel foil sheet—sitting on his desk before him. He’d decided to sleep in his cabin aboard the narrowboat, rather than in a tent. Not only was it more comfortable, he felt more secure with walls around him, as opposed to canvas.
Vin sighed, sitting down on their bed, pulling her legs up and setting her chin on her knees. “I don’t know. I kind of got spooked, so I fled.”
“Good thing,” Elend said, shivering as he remembered what the mist spirit had done to him.
“Sazed was convinced that the mist spirit wasn’t evil,” Vin said.
“So was I,” Elend said. “If you’ll remember, I’m the one who walked right up to it, telling you that I felt it was friendly. That was right about the time it stabbed me.”
Vin shook her head. “It was trying to keep me from releasing Ruin. It thought that if you were dying, I would take the power for myself and heal you, rather than giving it up.”
“You don’t know its intentions for certain, Vin. You could be connecting coincidences in your mind.”
“Perhaps. However, it led Sazed to discover that Ruin was altering text.”
That much, at least, was true—if, indeed, Sazed’s account of the matter could be trusted. The Terrisman had been a little bit . . . inconsistent since Tindwyl had died. No, Elend told himself, feeling an instant stab of guilt. No, Sazed is trustworthy. He might be struggling with his faith, but he is still twice as reliable as the rest of us.
“Oh, Elend,” Vin said softly. “There’s so much we don’t know. Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don’t know how to read. The mist spirit is related to all this, but I can’t even begin to fathom how.”
“It’s probably on our side,” Elend said, though it was hard not to keep flashing back to memories of how it had felt to be stabbed, to feel his life fading away. To die, knowing what it would do to Vin.
He forced himself back to the conversation at hand. “You think the mist spirit tried to keep you from releasing Ruin, and Sazed says it gave him important information. That makes it the enemy of our enemy.”
“For the moment,” Vin said. “But, the mist spirit is much weaker than Ruin. I’ve felt them both. Ruin was . . . vast. Powerful. It can hear whatever we say—can see all places at once. The mist spirit is far fainter. More like a memory than a real force or power.”
“Do you still think it hates you?”
Vin shrugged. “I haven’t seen it in over a year. Yet, I’m pretty sure that it isn’t the sort of thing that changes, and I always felt hatred and animosity from it.” She paused, frowning. “That was the beginning. That night when I first saw the mist spirit was when I began to sense that the mists were no longer my home.”
“Are you sure the spirit isn’t what kills people and makes them sick?”
Vin nodded. “Yes, I’m sure.” She was adamant about this, though Elend felt she was a bit quick to judge. Something ghost-like, moving about in the mists? It seemed like just the kind of thing that would be related to people dying suddenly in those same mists.
Of course, the people who died in the mists didn’t die of stabbings, but of a shaking disease. Elend sighed, rubbing his eyes. His unfinished letter to Lord Yomen sat on his desk—he’d have to get back to it in the morning.
“Elend,” Vin said. “Tonight, I told someone that I’d stop the ash from falling and turn the sun yellow.”
Elend raised an eyebrow. “That informant you spoke of?”
Vin nodded. The two sat in silence.
“I never expected you to admit something like that,” he finally said.
“I’m the Hero of Ages, aren’t I? Even Sazed said so, before he started to go strange. It’s my destiny.”
“The same ‘destiny’ that said you would take up the power of the Well of Ascension, then release it for the greater good of mankind?”
Vin nodded.
“Vin,” Elend said with a smile, “I really don’t think ‘destiny’ is the sort of thing we need to worry about right now. I mean, we have proof that the prophecies were twisted by Ruin in order to trick people into freeing him.”
“Someone has to worry about the ash,” Vin said.
There wasn’t much he could say to that. The logical side of him wanted to argue, claiming that they should focus on the things they could do—making a stable government, uncovering the secrets left by the Lord Ruler, securing the supplies in the caches. Yet, the constant ashfall seemed to be growing even denser. If that continued, it wouldn’t be long before the sky was nothing more than a solid black storm of ash.
It just seemed so difficult to think that Vin—his wife—could do anything about the color of the sun or the falling ash. Demoux is right, he thought, tapping his fingers across the metallic letter to Lord Yomen. I’m really not a very good member of the Church of the Survivor.
He looked across the cabin at her, sitting on the bed, expression distant as she thought about things that shouldn’t have to be her burden. Even after leaping about all night, even after their days spent traveling, even with her face dirtied by ash, she was beautiful.
At that moment, Elend realized something. Vin didn’t need another person worshipping her. She didn’t need another faithful believer like Demoux, especially not in Elend. He didn’t need to be a good member of the Church of the Survivor. He needed to be a good husband.
“Well, then,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
“What?” Vin asked.
“Save the world,” Elend said. “Stop the ash.”
Vin snorted quietly. “You make it sound like a joke.”
“No, I’m serious,” he said, standing. “If this is what you feel you must do—what you feel that you are—then let’s do it. I’ll help however I can.”
“What about your speech before?” Vin said. “In the last storage cavern—you talked about division of labor. Me working on the mists, you working on uniting the empire.”
“I was wrong.”
Vin smiled, and suddenly Elend felt as if the world had been put back together just a bit.
“So,” Elend said, sitting on the bed beside her. “What have you got? Any thoughts?”
Vin paused. “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t tell you.”
Elend frowned.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Vin said. “It’s Ruin. In the last storage cavern, I found a second inscription on the plate, down near the bottom. It warned me that anything I speak—or that I write—will be known by our enemy. So, if we talk too much, he will know our plans.”
“That makes it a bit difficult to work on the problem together.”
Vin took his hands. “Elend, do you know why I finally agreed to marry you?”
Elend shook his head.
“Because I realized t
hat you trusted me,” Vin said. “Trusted me as nobody ever has before. On that night, when I fought Zane, I decided that I had to give my trust to you. This force that’s destroying the world, we have something that it can never understand. I don’t necessarily need your help; I need your trust. Your hope. It’s something I’ve never had of myself, and I rely on yours.”
Elend nodded slowly. “You have it.”
“Thank you.”
“You know,” Elend added, “during those days when you refused to marry me, I constantly thought about how strange you were.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s romantic.”
Elend smiled. “Oh, come on. You have to admit that you’re unusual, Vin. You’re like some strange mixture of a noblewoman, a street urchin, and a cat. Plus, you’ve managed—in our short three years together—to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiancée. That’s kind of like a homicidal hat trick. It’s a strange foundation for a relationship, wouldn’t you say?”
Vin just rolled her eyes.
“I’m just glad I don’t have any other close relatives,” Elend said. Then, he eyed her. “Except for you, of course.”
“I’m not about to drown myself, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“No,” Elend said. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . well, you know. Anyway, I was explaining something. In the end, I stopped worrying about how strange you seemed. I realized that it didn’t really matter if I understood you, because I trusted you. Does that make sense? Either way, I guess I’m saying that I agree. I don’t really know what you’re doing, and I don’t have any clue how you’re going to achieve it. But, well, I trust that you’ll do it.”
Vin pulled close to him.
“I just wish there were something I could do to help,” Elend said.
“Then take the whole numbers part,” Vin said, frowning distastefully. Though she’d been the one to think something was odd about the percentages of those who fell to the mists, Elend knew that she found numbers troublesome. She didn’t have the training, or the practice, to deal with them.
“You’re sure that’s even related?” Elend asked.
“You were the one who thought that the percentages were so strange.”
“Good point. All right, I’ll work on it.”
“Just don’t tell me what you discover,” Vin said.
“Well, how is that going to help anything?”
“Trust,” Vin said. “You can tell me what to do, just don’t tell me why. Maybe we can stay ahead of this thing.”
Stay ahead of it? Elend thought. It has the power to bury the entire empire in ash, and can apparently hear every single word we say. How do we “stay ahead” of something like that? But, he had just promised to trust Vin, so he did so.
Vin pointed at the table. “Is that your letter to Yomen?”
Elend nodded. “I’m hoping that he’ll talk to me, now that I’m actually here.”
“Slowswift does seem to think that Yomen is a good man. Maybe he’ll listen.”
“Somehow, I doubt it,” Elend said. He sat softly for a moment, then made a fist, gritting his teeth in frustration. “I told the others that I want to try diplomacy, but I know that Yomen is going to reject my message. That’s why I brought my army in the first place—I could have just sent you to sneak in, like you did in Urteau. However, sneaking in didn’t help us much there; we still have to secure the city if we want the supplies.
“We need this city. Even if you hadn’t felt so driven to discover what was in the cache, I would have come here. The threat Yomen poses to our kingdom is too strong, and the possibility that the Lord Ruler left important information in that cache can’t be ignored. Yomen has grain in that storage, but the land here won’t get enough sunlight to grow it. So, he’ll probably feed it to the people—a waste, when we don’t have enough to plant and fill the Central Dominance. We have to take this city, or at least make an ally out of it.
“But, what do I do if Yomen won’t talk? Send armies to attack nearby villages? Poison the city’s supplies? If you’re right, then he’s found the cache, which means he’ll have more food than we hoped. Unless we destroy that, he might outlast our siege. But, if I do destroy it, his people will starve . . .” Elend shook his head. “Do you remember when I executed Jastes?”
“That was well within your right,” Vin said quickly.
“I believe it was,” Elend said. “But I killed him because he led a group of koloss to my city, then let them ravage my people. I’ve nearly done the same thing here. There are twenty thousand of the beasts outside.”
“You can control them.”
“Jastes thought he could control them too,” Elend said. “I don’t want to turn those creatures loose, Vin. But what if the siege fails, and I have to try and break Yomen’s fortifications? I won’t be able to do that without the koloss.” He shook his head. “If only I could talk to Yomen. Perhaps I could make him see reason, or at least convince myself that he needs to fall.”
Vin paused. “There . . . might be a way.”
Elend glanced over, catching her eyes.
“They’re still staging balls inside the city,” Vin said. “And King Yomen attends every one.”
Elend blinked. At first, he assumed that he must have misunderstood her. However, the look in her eyes—that wild determination—persuaded him otherwise. Sometimes, he saw a touch of the Survivor in her; or, at least, of the man the stories claimed Kelsier had been. Bold to the point of recklessness. Brave and brash. He’d rubbed off on Vin more than she liked to admit.
“Vin,” he said flatly, “did you just suggest that we attend a ball being held in the middle of a city we’re besieging?”
Vin shrugged. “Sure. Why not? We’re both Mistborn—we can get into that city without much trouble at all.”
“Yes, but . . .” He trailed off.
I’d have a room filled with the very nobility I’m hoping to intimidate—not to mention have access to the man who refuses to meet with me, in a situation where he’d have trouble running away without looking like a coward.
“You think it’s a good idea,” Vin said, smiling impishly.
“It’s a crazy idea,” Elend said. “I’m emperor—I shouldn’t be sneaking into the enemy city so I can go to a party.”
Vin narrowed her eyes, staring at him.
“I will admit, however,” Elend said, “that the concept does have considerable charm.”
“Yomen won’t come meet us,” Vin said, “so we go in and crash his party.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been to a ball,” Elend said speculatively. “I’ll have to dig up some good reading material for old time’s sake.”
Suddenly, Vin grew pale. Elend paused, glancing at her, sensing that something was wrong. Not with what he’d said, something else. What is it? Assassins? Mist spirits? Koloss?
“I just realized something,” Vin said, looking at him with those intense eyes of hers. “I can’t go to a ball—I didn’t bring a gown!”
The Lord Ruler didn’t just forbid certain technologies, he suppressed technological advancement completely. It seems odd now that during the entirety of his thousand-year reign, very little progress was made. Farming techniques, architectural methods—even fashion remained remarkably stable during the Lord Ruler’s reign.
He constructed his perfect empire, then tried to make it stay that way. For the most part, he was successful. Pocket watches—another Khlenni appropriation—that were made in the tenth century of the empire were nearly identical to those made during the first. Everything stayed the same.
Until it all collapsed, of course.
29
LIKE MOST CITIES IN THE FINAL EMPIRE, Urteau had been forbidden a city wall. In the early days of Sazed’s life, before he’d rebelled, the fact that cities couldn’t build fortifications had always seemed a subtle indication to him of the Lord Ruler’s vulnerability. After all, if the Lord Ruler was worried about rebellions and citi
es that could stand against him, then perhaps he knew something that nobody else did: that he could be defeated.
Thoughts like those had led Sazed to Mare, and finally to Kelsier. And now, they led him to the city of Urteau—a city that finally had rebelled against noble leadership. Unfortunately, it lumped Elend Venture in with all the other nobles.
“I don’t like this, Master Keeper,” Captain Goradel said, walking beside Sazed, who—for the sake of his image—now rode in the carriage with Breeze and Allrianne. After leaving the Terris people behind, Sazed had hurriedly caught up with Breeze and the others, and they were finally entering the city that was their destination.
“Things are supposed to be kind of brutal in there,” Goradel continued. “I don’t think you’ll be safe.”
“I doubt it’s as bad as you think,” Sazed said.
“What if they take you captive?” Goradel asked.
“My dear man,” Breeze said, leaning forward to look out at Goradel. “That’s why kings send ambassadors. This way, if someone gets captured, the king is still safe. We, my friend, are something Elend can never be: expendable.”
Goradel frowned at that. “I don’t feel very expendable.”
Sazed peered out of the carriage, looking at the city through the falling ash. It was large, and was one of the oldest cities in the empire. He noted with interest that as they approached, the road sloped downward, entering an empty canal trough.
“What’s this?” Allrianne asked, sticking her blond head out of the other side of the carriage. “Why’d they build their roads in ditches?”
“Canals, my dear,” Breeze said. “The city used to be filled with them. Now they’re empty—an earthquake or something diverted a river.”
“It’s creepy,” she said, bringing her head back in. “It makes the buildings look twice as tall.”
As they entered the city proper—their two hundred soldiers marching around them in formation—they were met by a delegation of Urteau soldiers in brown uniforms. Sazed had sent word ahead of their coming, of course, and the king—the Citizen, they called him—had given Sazed leave to bring his small contingent of troops into the city.
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