Eyes turned on Vin. She looked down at the pouch in her hand, and pulled it open. A smaller sack, obviously filled with atium beads, fell into her hand. It was followed by a small bar of metal wrapped in a sheet of paper. The Eleventh Metal.
Vin unwrapped the paper.
Vin, it read. Your original duty tonight was going to be to assassinate the high noblemen remaining in the city. But, well, you convinced me that maybe they should live.
I could never figure out how this blasted metal was supposed to work. It’s safe to burn—it won’t kill you—but it doesn’t appear to do anything useful. If you’re reading this, then I failed to figure out how to use it when I faced the Lord Ruler. I don’t think it matters. The people needed something to believe in, and this was the only way to give it to them.
Please don’t be angry at me for abandoning you. I was given an extension on life. I should have died in Mare’s place years ago. I was ready for this.
The others will need you. You’re their Mistborn now—you’ll have to protect them in the months to come. The nobility will send assassins against our fledgling kingdom’s rulers.
Farewell. I’ll tell Mare about you. She always wanted a daughter.
“What does it say, Vin?” Ham asked.
“It . . . says that he doesn’t know how the Eleventh Metal works. He’s sorry—he wasn’t certain how to defeat the Lord Ruler.”
“We’ve got an entire city full of people to fight him,” Dox said. “I seriously doubt he can kill us all—if we can’t destroy him, we’ll just tie him up and toss him in a dungeon.”
The others nodded.
“All right!” Dockson said. “Breeze and Ham, you need to get to those other warehouses and begin giving out weapons. Spook, go fetch the apprentices—we’ll need them to run messages. Let’s go!”
Everyone scattered. Soon, the skaa they had seen earlier burst into the warehouse, holding their torches high, looking in awe at the wealth of weaponry. Dockson worked efficiently, ordering some of the newcomers to be distributors, sending others to go gather their friends and family. Men began to gear up, gathering weapons. Everyone was busy except for Vin.
She looked up at Sazed, who smiled at her. “Sometimes we just have to wait long enough, Mistress,” he said. “Then we find out why exactly it was that we kept believing. There is a saying that Master Kelsier was fond of.”
“There’s always another secret,” Vin whispered. “But Saze, everyone has something to do except me. I was originally supposed to go assassinate noblemen, but Kell doesn’t want me to do that anymore.”
“They have to be neutralized,” Sazed said, “but not necessarily murdered. Perhaps your place was simply to show Kelsier that fact?”
Vin shook her head. “No. I have to do more, Saze.” She gripped the empty pouch, frustrated. Something crinkled inside of it.
She looked down, opening the pouch and noticing a piece of paper that she hadn’t seen before. She pulled it out and unfolded it delicately. It was the drawing that Kelsier had shown her—the picture of a flower. Mare had always kept it with her, dreaming of a future where the sun wasn’t red, where plants were green. . . .
Vin looked up.
Bureaucrat, politician, soldier . . . there’s something else that every kingdom needs.
A good assassin.
She turned, pulling out a vial of metal and drinking its contents, using the liquid to wash down a couple beads of atium. She walked over to the pile of weapons, picking up a small bundle of arrows. They had stone heads. She began breaking the heads off, leaving about a half inch of wood attached to them, discarding the fletched shafts.
“Mistress?” Sazed asked with concern.
Vin walked past him, searching through the armaments. She found what she wanted in a shirtlike piece of armor, constructed from large rings of interlocking metal. She pried a handful of these free with a dagger and pewter-enhanced fingers.
“Mistress, what are you doing?”
Vin walked over to a trunk beside the table, within which she had seen a large collection of powdered metals. She filled her pouch with several handfuls of pewter dust.
“I’m worried about the Lord Ruler,” she said, taking a file from the box and scraping off a few flakes of the Eleventh Metal. She paused—eyeing the unfamiliar, silvery metal—then swallowed the flakes with a gulp from her flask. She put a couple more flakes in one of her backup metal vials.
“Surely the rebellion can deal with him,” Sazed said. “He is not so strong without all of his servants, I think.”
“You’re wrong,” Vin said, rising and walking toward the door. “He’s strong, Saze. Kelsier couldn’t feel him, not like I can. He didn’t know.”
“Where are you going?” Sazed asked behind her.
Vin paused in the doorway, turning, mist curling around her. “Inside the palace complex, there is a chamber protected by soldiers and Inquisitors. Kelsier tried to get into it twice.” She turned back toward the dark mists. “Tonight, I’m going to find out what’s inside of it.”
* * *
I have decided that I am thankful for Rashek’s hatred. It does me well to remember that there are those who abhor me. My place is not to seek popularity or love; my place is to ensure mankind’s survival.
36
Vin walked quietly Toward Kredik Shaw. The sky behind her burned, the mists reflecting and diffusing the light of a thousand torches. It was like a radiant dome over the city.
The light was yellow, the color Kelsier had always said the sun should be.
Four nervous guards waited at the same palace doorway that she and Kelsier had attacked before. They watched her approach. Vin stepped slowly, quietly, on the mist-wetted stones, her mistcloak rustling solemnly.
One of the guards lowered a spear at her, and Vin stopped right in front of him.
“I know you,” she said quietly. “You endured the mills, the mines, and the forges. You knew that someday they would kill you, and leave your families to starve. So, you went to the Lord Ruler—guilty but determined—and joined his guards.”
The four men glanced at each other, confused.
“The light behind me comes from a massive skaa rebellion,” she said. “The entire city is rising up against the Lord Ruler. I don’t blame you men for your choices, but a time of change is coming. Those rebels could use your training and your knowledge. Go to them—they gather in the Square of the Survivor.”
“The . . . Square of the Survivor?” a soldier asked.
“The place where the Survivor of Hathsin was killed earlier today.”
The four men exchanged looks, uncertain.
Vin Rioted their emotions slightly. “You don’t have to live with the guilt anymore.”
Finally, one of the men stepped forward and ripped the symbol off his uniform, then strode determinedly into the night. The other three paused, then followed—leaving Vin with an open entrance to the palace.
Vin walked down the corridor, eventually passing the same guard chamber as before. She strode inside—stepping past a group of chatting guards without hurting any of them—and entered the hallway beyond. Behind her, the guards shook off their surprise and called out in alarm. They burst into the corridor, but Vin jumped and Pushed against the lantern brackets, hurling herself down the hallway.