“Don’t worry about the Lord Ruler,” Kelsier said. “The Eleventh Metal will take care of him.”
Vin frowned. Outside, the sun was setting in a fiery blaze of frustration. The mists would come soon, and supposedly Marsh would arrive a short time later.
The Eleventh Metal, she thought, remembering the skepticism with which the other crewmembers regarded it. “Is it real?” Vin asked.
“The Eleventh Metal? Of course it is—I showed it to you, remember?”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “Are the legends real? Are you lying?”
Kelsier turned toward her, frowning slightly. Then he smirked. “You’re a very blunt girl, Vin.”
“I know.”
Kelsier’s smile deepened. “The answer is no. I’m not lying. The legends are real, though it took some time for me to find them.”
“And that bit of metal you showed us really is the Eleventh Metal?”
“I think so,” Kelsier said.
“But you don’t know how to use it.”
Kelsier paused, then shook his head. “No. I don’t.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
Kelsier shrugged, turning to look out the window. “Even if I don’t discover the secret in time, I doubt the Lord Ruler will be as big a problem as you think. He’s a powerful Allomancer, but he doesn’t know everything—if he did, we’d be dead right now. He’s not omnipotent, either—if he were, he wouldn’t have needed to execute all of those skaa to try and frighten the city into submission.
“I don’t know what he is—but I think he’s more like a man than he is a god. The words in that logbook . . . they’re the words of a regular person. His real power comes from his armies and his wealth. If we remove them, he won’t be able to do anything to stop his empire from collapsing.”
Vin frowned. “He might not be a god, but . . . he’s something, Kelsier. Something different. Today, when he was in the square, I could feel his touch on my emotions even when I was burning copper.”
“That’s not possible, Vin,” Kelsier said with a shake of his head. “If it were, Inquisitors would be able to sense Allomancy even when there was a Smoker nearby. If that were the case, don’t you think they’d hunt down all of the skaa Mistings and kill them?”
Vin shrugged.
“You know the Lord Ruler is strong,” Kelsier said, “and you feel like you should still be able to sense him. So you do.”
Maybe he’s right, she thought, picking off another bit of the windowsill. He’s been an Allomancer for far longer than I have, after all.
But . . . I felt something, didn’t I? And the Inquisitor that nearly killed me—somehow, he found me in the darkness and rain. He must have sensed something.
She let the matter drop, however. “The Eleventh Metal. Couldn’t we just try it and see what it does?”
“It’s not that simple,” Kelsier said. “You remember how I told you never to burn a metal that wasn’t one of the ten?”
Vin nodded.
“Burning another metal can be deadly,” Kelsier said. “Even getting the wrong mixture in an alloy metal can make you sick. If I’m wrong about the Eleventh Metal . . .”
“It will kill you,” Vin said quietly.
Kelsier nodded.
So, you’re not quite as certain as you pretend, she decided. Otherwise, you’d have tried it by now.
“That’s what you want to find in the logbook,” Vin said. “A clue about how to use the Eleventh Metal.”
Kelsier nodded. “I’m afraid we weren’t very lucky in that respect. So far, the logbook hasn’t even mentioned Allomancy.”
“Though it does talk about Feruchemy,” Vin said.
Kelsier eyed her as he stood by his window, one shoulder leaning against the wall. “So Sazed told you about that?”
Vin glanced down. “I . . . kind of forced him to.”
Kelsier chuckled. “I wonder what I’ve unleashed upon the world by teaching you Allomancy. Of course, my trainer said the same thing about me.”
“He was right to worry.”
“Of course he was.”
Vin smiled. Outside, the sunlight was nearly gone, and diaphanous patches of mist were beginning to form in the air. They hung like ghosts, slowly growing larger, extending their influence as night approached.
“Sazed didn’t have time to tell me much about Feruchemy,” Vin said carefully. “What kind of things can it do?” She waited in trepidation, assuming that Kelsier would see through her lie.
“Feruchemy is completely internal,” Kelsier said in an offhand voice. “It can provide some of the same things we get from pewter and tin—strength, endurance, eyesight—but each attribute has to be stored separately. It can enhance a lot of other things too—things that Allomancy can’t do. Memory, physical speed, clarity of thought . . . even some strange things, like physical weight or physical age, can be altered by Feruchemy.”
“So, it’s more powerful than Allomancy?” Vin said.
Kelsier shrugged. “Feruchemy doesn’t have any external powers—it can’t Push and Pull emotions, nor can it Steelpush or Ironpull. And, the biggest limitation to Feruchemy is that you have to store up all of its abilities by drawing them from your own body.
“Want to be twice as strong for a time? Well, you have to spend several hours being weak to store up the strength. If you want to store up the ability to heal quickly, you have to spend a great deal of time feeling sick. In Allomancy, the metals themselves are our fuel—we can generally keep going as long as we have enough metal to burn. In Feruchemy, the metals are just storage devices—your own body is the real fuel.”
“So, you just steal someone else’s storage metals, right?” Vin said.
Kelsier shook his head. “Doesn’t work—Feruchemists can only access metal stores they themselves created.”
“Oh.”
Kelsier nodded. “So, no. I wouldn’t say that Feruchemy is more powerful than Allomancy. They both have advantages and limitations. For instance, an Allomancer can only flare a metal so high, and so his maximum strength is bounded. Feruchemists don’t have that kind of limitation; if a Feruchemist had enough strength stored up to be twice as strong as normal for an hour, he could choose instead to be three times as strong for a shorter period of time—or even four, five, or six times as strong for even shorter periods.”
Vin frowned. “That sounds like a pretty big advantage.”
“True,” Kelsier said, reaching inside of his cloak and pulling out a vial containing several beads of atium. “But we have this. It doesn’t matter if a Feruchemist is as strong as five men or as strong as fifty men—if I know what he’s going to do next, I’ll beat him.”
Vin nodded.
“Here,” Kelsier said, unstoppering the vial and pulling out one of the beads. He took out another vial, this one filled with the normal alcohol solution, and dropped the bead in it. “Take one of these. You might need it.”
“Tonight?” Vin asked, accepting the vial.
Kelsier nodded.