“But,” Spook said, looking up, “though I doubt myself, I still think we’ll be all right.”
Sazed was surprised at the hope he saw in the boy’s eyes. That’s what I’ve lost.
“How can you say that?” Sazed asked.
“I don’t know, really,” Spook said. “I just . . . Well, do you remember that question you asked me when you first got here? We were standing by the lake, just over there. You asked me about faith. You asked what good it was, if it just led people to hurt each other, like Quellion’s faith in the Survivor has done.”
Sazed looked out over the lake. “Yes,” he said softly. “I remember.”
“I’ve been thinking about that ever since,” Spook said. “And . . . I think I might have an answer.”
“Please.”
“Faith,” Spook said, “means that it doesn’t matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.”
Sazed frowned.
“It means that there will always be a way,” Spook whispered, staring forward, eyes glazed, as if seeing things that Sazed could not.
Yes, Sazed thought. That is what I have lost. And it’s what I need to get back.
I have come to see that each power has three aspects: a physical one, which can be seen in the creations made by Ruin and Preservation; a spiritual one in the unseen energy that permeates all of the world; and a cognitive one in the minds which controlled that energy.
There is more to this. Much more that even I do not yet comprehend.
57
YOU SHOULD KILL THEM.
Vin looked up as she heard a pair of guards pass the door to her cell. There was one good thing about Ruin’s voice—it tended to warn her when people were nearby, even if it did always tell her to kill them.
A part of her did wonder if, in fact, she was mad. After all, she saw and heard things that nobody else could. However, if she were mad, there would really be no way for her to realize it. So, she simply decided to accept what she heard, and move on.
In truth, she was glad for Ruin’s voice on occasion. Other than Ruin, she was alone in the cell. All was still. Even the soldiers did not speak—likely at Yomen’s orders. Plus, each time Ruin spoke, she felt as if she learned something. For instance, she had learned that Ruin could either manifest in person or affect her from a distance. When its actual presence was not with her in the cell, Ruin’s words were far more simple and vague.
Take, for instance, Ruin’s order that she kill the guards. She couldn’t follow that suggestion, not from within the cell. It wasn’t so much a specific order as it was an attempt to change her inclinations. Again, that reminded her of Allomancy, which could exert a general influence over a person’s emotions.
General influence . . .
Something suddenly occurred to her. She quested out, and—sure enough—she could still feel the thousand koloss that Elend had given her. They were under her control still, distant, obeying the general orders she’d given them before.
Could she use them somehow? Deliver a message to Elend, perhaps? Get them to attack the city and free her? As she considered them, both plans seemed flawed. Sending them to Fadrex would just get them killed, as well as risk upsetting whatever plans Elend had for a potential attack. She could send them to find Elend, but that would probably just get them killed by the camp guards, who would be afraid they were bloodlusting. Plus, what would she have them do if they did get to him? She could order them to take actions, like attack or pick someone up, but she’d never tried something as delicate as ordering one to speak certain words.
She tried forming those words in her head and getting them to the koloss, but all she sensed back was confusion. She’d have to work on that some more. And, as she considered, she wondered if getting a message to Elend would really be the best way to use them. It would let Ruin know about a potential tool she had that, maybe, he hadn’t noticed.
“I see that he finally found a cell for you,” a voice said.
Vin looked up, and there he was. Still wearing Reen’s form, Ruin stood in the small cell with her. He maintained a straight-backed posture, standing almost benevolently over her. Vin sat up on her cot. She’d never thought that of all her metals, she would miss bronze so much. When Ruin returned to visit in “person,” burning bronze had let her feel him via bronzepulses and gave her warning that he had arrived, even if he didn’t appear to her.
“I’ll admit that I’m disappointed in you, Vin,” Ruin said. He used Reen’s voice, but he imbued it with a sense of . . . age. Of quiet wisdom. The fatherly nature of that voice, mixed with Reen’s face and her own knowledge of the thing’s desire to destroy, was disturbing.
“The last time you were captured and locked away without metals,” Ruin continued, “not a night passed before you’d killed the Lord Ruler and overthrown the empire. Now you’ve been soundly imprisoned for what . . . a week now?”
Vin didn’t respond. Why come taunt me? Does it expect to learn something?
Ruin shook its head. “I would have thought at the very least that you’d have killed Yomen.”
“Why are you so concerned with his death?” Vin asked. “It seems to me that he’s on your side.”
Ruin shook its head, standing with hands clasped behind its back. “You still don’t understand, I see. You’re all on my side, Vin. I created you. You’re my tools—each and every one of you. Zane, Yomen, you, your dear Emperor Venture . . .”
“No. Zane was yours, and Yomen is obviously misguided. But Elend . . . he’ll fight against you.”
“But he can’t,” Ruin said. “That’s what you refuse to understand, child. You cannot fight me, for by the mere act of fighting you advance my goals.”
“Evil men, perhaps, help you,” Vin said. “But not Elend. He’s a good person, and not even you can deny that.”
“Vin, Vin. Why can’t you see? This isn’t about good or evil. Morality doesn’t even enter into it. Good men will kill as quickly for what they want as evil men—only the things they want are different.”
Vin fell silent.
Ruin shook its head. “I keep trying to explain. This process we are engaged in, the end of all things—it’s not a fight, but a simple culmination of inevitability. Can any man make a pocket watch that won’t eventually wind down? Can you imagine a lantern that won’t eventually burn out? All things end. Think of me as a caretaker—the one who watches the shop and makes certain that the lights are turned out, that everything is cleaned up, once closing time arrives.”
For a moment, he made her question. There was some truth in his words, and seeing the changes in the land these last few years—changes that started before Ruin was even released—did make her wonder.
Yet, something about the conversation bothered her. If what Ruin said was completely true, then why did he care about her? Why return and speak to her?
“I guess that you’ve won, then,” she said quietly.
“Won?” Ruin asked. “Don’t you understand? There was nothing for me to win, child. Things happen as they must.”
“I see,” Vin said.
“Yes, perhaps you do,” Ruin said. “I think that you just might be able to.” It turned and began to walk quietly from one side of the cell toward the other. “You are a piece of me, you know. Beautiful destroyer. Blunt and effective. Of all those I’ve claimed over this brief thousand years, you are the only one I think just might be able to understand me.”
Why, Vin thought, it’s gloating! That’s why Ruin is here—because it wants to make certain that someone understands what it has accomplished! There was a feeling of pride and victory in Ruin’s eyes. They were human emotions, emotions that Vin could understand.
At that moment, Ruin stopped being an it in her mind, and instead became a he.
Vin began to think—for the first time—that she could find a way to beat Ruin. He was powerful, perhaps even incomprehensible. But she had seen humanity in him, and that humanity could
be deceived, manipulated, and broken. Perhaps it was this same conclusion that Kelsier had drawn, after looking into the Lord Ruler’s eyes that fateful night when he had been captured. She finally felt as if she understood him, and what it must have felt like to undertake something so bold as the defeat of the Lord Ruler.
But Kelsier had years to plan, Vin thought. I . . . I don’t even know how long I have. Not long, I would guess. Even as she thought, another earthquake began. The walls trembled, and Vin heard guards cursing in the hallway as something fell and broke. And Ruin . . . he seemed to be in a state of bliss, his eyes closed, mouth open slightly and looking pleasured as the building and city rumbled.
Eventually, all fell still. Ruin opened his eyes, staring her down. “This work I do, it’s about passion, Vin. It’s about dynamic events; it’s about change! That is why you and your Elend are so important to me. People with passion are people who will destroy—for a man’s passion is not true until he proves how much he’s willing to sacrifice for it. Will he kill? Will he go to war? Will he break and discard that which he has, all in the name of what he needs?”
It’s not just that Ruin feels that he’s accomplished something, Vin thought, he feels that he’s overcome. Despite what he claims, he feels that he’s won—that he’s defeated something . . . but who or what? Us? We would be no adversary for a force like Ruin.
A voice from the past seemed to whisper to her from long ago. What’s the first rule of Allomancy, Vin?
Consequence. Action and reaction. If Ruin had power to destroy, then there was something that opposed him. It had to be. Ruin had an opposite, an opponent. Or, he once had.
“What did you do to him?” Vin asked.
Ruin hesitated, frowning as he turned toward her.
“Your opposite,” Vin said. “The one who once stopped you from destroying the world.”
Ruin was silent for a long moment. Then he smiled, and Vin saw something chilling in that smile. A knowledge that he was right. Vin was part of him. She understood him.
“Preservation is dead,” Ruin said.
“You killed him?”
Ruin shrugged. “Yes, but no. He gave of himself to craft a cage. Though his throes of agony have lasted several thousand years, now, finally, he is gone. And the bargain has come to its fruition.”
Preservation, Vin thought, a piece of a gigantic whole clicking into place. The opposite of Ruin. A force like that couldn’t have destroyed his enemy, because he would represent the opposite of destruction. But imprisonment, that would be within his powers.
Imprisonment that ended when I gave up the power at the Well.
“And so you see the inevitability,” Ruin said softly.
“You couldn’t create it yourself, could you?” Vin asked. “The world, life. You can’t create, you can only destroy.”
“He couldn’t create either,” Ruin said. “He could only preserve. Preservation is not creation.”
“And so you worked together,” Vin said.
“Both with a promise,” Ruin said. “My promise was to work with him to create you—life that thinks, life that loves.”
“And his promise?” Vin asked, fearing that she knew the answer.
“That I could destroy you eventually,” Ruin said softly. “And I have come to claim what was promised me. The only point in creating something is to watch it die. Like a story that must come to a climax, what I have done will not be fulfilled until the end has arrived.”
It can’t be true, Vin thought. Preservation. If he really represents a power in the universe, then he couldn’t really have been destroyed, could he?
“I know what you are thinking,” Ruin said. “You cannot enlist Preservation’s power. He is dead. He couldn’t kill me, you see. He could only imprison me.”
Yes. I figured that last part out already. You really can’t read my mind, can you?
Ruin continued. “It was a villainous act, I must say. Preservation tried to escape our bargain. Would you not call that an evil deed? It is as I said before—good and evil have little to do with ruin or preservation. An evil man will protect that which he desires as surely as a good man.”
But something is keeping Ruin from destroying the world now, she thought. For all his words about stories and endings, he is not a force that would wait for an “appropriate” moment. There is more to this, more that I’m not understanding.
What is holding him back?
“I’ve come to you,” Ruin said, “because I want you, at least, to watch and see. To know. For it has come.”
Vin perked up. “What? The end?”
Ruin nodded.
“How long?” Vin asked.
“Days,” Ruin said. “But not weeks.”
Vin felt a chill, realizing something. He had come to her, finally revealing himself, because she was captured. He thought that there was no further chance for mankind. He assumed that he had won.
Which means that there is a way to beat him, she thought with determination. And it involves me. But I can’t do it here, or he wouldn’t have come to gloat.
And that meant she had to get free. Quickly.
Once you begin to understand these things, you can see how Ruin was trapped even though Preservation’s mind was gone, expended to create the prison. Though Preservation’s consciousness was mostly destroyed, his spirit and body were still in force. And, as an opposite force of Ruin, these could still prevent Ruin from destroying.
Or, at least, keep him from destroying things too quickly. Once his mind was “freed” from its prison the destruction accelerated rapidly.
58
“THROW YOUR WEIGHT HERE,” Sazed said, pointing at a wooden lever. “The counterweights will fall, swinging down all four floodgates and stemming the flow into the cavern. I warn you, however—the explosion of water above will be rather spectacular. We should be able to fill the city’s canals in a matter of hours, and I suspect that a portion of the northern city will be flooded.”
“To dangerous levels?” Spook asked.
“I do not think so,” Sazed said. “The water will burst out through the conduits in the interchange building beside us. I’ve inspected the equipment there, and it appears sound. The water should flow directly into the canals, and from there exit the city. Either way, I would not want to be in those streetslots when this water comes. The current will be quite swift.”
“I’ve taken care of that,” Spook said. “Durn is going to make certain the people know to be clear of the waterways.”
Sazed nodded. Spook couldn’t help but be impressed. The complicated construct of wood, gears, and wire looked like it should have taken months to build, not weeks. Large nets of rocks weighed down the four gates, which hung, ready to block off the river.
“This is amazing, Saze,” Spook said. “With a sign as spectacular as the reappearance of the canal waters, the people will be certain to listen to us instead of the Citizen.” Breeze and Durn’s men had been working hard over the last few weeks, whispering to the people to watch for a miracle from the Survivor of the Flames. Something extraordinary, something to prove—once and for all—who was the rightful master of the city.
“It is the best I could do,” Sazed said with a modest bow of the head. “The seals won’t be perfectly tight, of course. However, that should matter little.”
“Men?” Spook said, turning to four of Goradel’s soldiers. “You understand what you are to do?”
“Yes, sir,” the lead soldier said. “We wait for a messenger, then throw the lever there.”
“If no messenger comes,” Spook said, “throw the switch at nightfall.”
“And,” Sazed said, raising a finger, “don’t forget to twist the sealing mechanism in the other room, plugging the water flow out of this chamber. Otherwise, the lake will eventually empty. Better that we keep this reservoir full, just in case.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier said with a nod.
Spook turned, looking back over the cavern. Soldiers bustled abo
ut, preparing. He was going to need most of them for the night’s activities. They looked eager—they’d spent too long holed up in the cavern and the building above. To the side, Beldre regarded Sazed’s contraption with interest. Spook broke away from the soldiers, approaching her with a quick step.
“You’re really going to do it?” she said. “Return the water to the canals?”
Spook nodded.
“I sometimes imagined what it would be like to have the waters back,” she said. “The city wouldn’t feel as barren—it would become important, like it was during the early days of the Final Empire. All those beautiful waterways. No more ugly gashes in the ground.”
“It will be a wonderful sight,” Spook said, smiling.
Beldre just shook her head. “It . . . amazes me that you can be such different people at the same time. How can the man who would do such a beautiful thing for my city also plan such destruction?”
“Beldre, I’m not planning to destroy your city.”
“Just its government.”
“I do what needs to be done.”
“Men say that so easily,” Beldre said. “Yet, everybody seems to have a different opinion of what ‘needs’ to be done.”
“Your brother had his chance,” Spook said.
Beldre looked down. She still carried with her the letter they’d received earlier in the day—a response from Quellion. Beldre’s plea had been heartfelt, but the Citizen had responded with insults, implying that she had been forced to write the words because she was being held prisoner.
I do not fear a usurper, the letter read. I am protected by the Survivor himself. You will not have this city, tyrant.
Beldre looked up. “Don’t do it,” she whispered. “Give him more time. Please.”
Spook hesitated.
“There is no more time,” Kelsier whispered. “Do what must be done.”
“I’m sorry,” Spook said, turning from her. “Stay with the soldiers—I’m leaving four men to guard you. Not to keep you from fleeing, though they will do that. I want you inside this cavern. I can’t promise that the streets will be safe.”
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