What was it? A twelfth metal? Perhaps Allomancy wasn’t as limited as Kelsier and the others had always assured her.
She took a few deep breaths, climbing to her knees, calming herself. There was something . . . Pushing against her. The Lord Ruler’s presence. She could feel it, though it wasn’t as powerful as it had been earlier, when he had killed Kelsier. Still, she didn’t have copper to burn—she had no way to hide from the Lord Ruler’s powerful, almost omnipotent, hand. She felt depression twisting her, telling her to just lie down, to give up. . . .
No! she thought. I have to get out. I have to stay strong!
She forced herself to stand and inspect her surroundings. Her prison was more like a cage than a cell. It had bars running along three of the four sides, and it contained no furniture—not even a sleeping mat. There were two other cell-cages in the room, one to either side of her.
She had been stripped, they had only left her with her undergarments. The move was probably to make certain that she didn’t have any hidden metals. She glanced around the room. It was long and thin, and had stark stone walls. A stool sat in one corner, but the room was otherwise empty.
If I could find just a bit of metal . . .
She began to search. Instinctively, she tried to burn iron, expecting the blue lines to appear—but, of course, she had no iron to burn. She shook her head at the foolish move, but it was simply a sign of how much she’d come to rely on her Allomancy. She felt . . . blinded. She couldn’t burn tin to listen for voices. She couldn’t burn pewter to strengthen her against the pain of her hurting arm and head. She couldn’t burn bronze to search for nearby Allomancers.
Nothing. She had nothing.
You functioned without Allomancy before, she told herself sternly. You can do it now.
Even so, she searched the bare floor of her cell, hoping for the chance existence of a discarded pin or nail. She found nothing, so she turned her attention to the bars. However, she couldn’t think of a way to get off even a flake of the iron.
So much metal here, she thought with frustration. And I can’t use any of it!
She sat back on the ground, huddling up against the stone wall, shivering quietly in her damp clothing. It was still dark outside; the room’s window casually allowed in a few trails of mist. What had happened with the rebellion? What about her friends? She thought that the mists outside looked a bit brighter than usual. Torchlight in the night? Without tin, her senses were too weak to tell.
What was I thinking? she thought with despair. Did I presume to succeed where Kelsier had failed? He knew that the Eleventh Metal was useless.
It had done something, true—but it certainly hadn’t killed the Lord Ruler. She sat, thinking, trying to figure out what had happened. There had been an odd familiarity about the things the Eleventh Metal had shown her. Not because of the way the visions had appeared, but because of the way Vin had felt when burning the metal.
Gold. The moment when I burned the Eleventh Metal felt like that time when Kelsier had me burn gold.
Could it be that the Eleventh Metal wasn’t really “eleventh” at all? Gold and atium had always seemed oddly paired to Vin. All of the other metals came in pairs that were similar—a base metal, then its alloy, each doing opposite things. Iron Pulled, steel Pushed. Zinc Pulled, brass Pushed. It made sense. All except for atium and gold.
What if the Eleventh Metal was really an alloy of atium or of gold? It would mean . . . that gold and atium aren’t paired. They do two different things. Similar, but different. They’re like . . .
Like the other metals, which were grouped into larger bases of four. There were the physical metals: iron, steel, tin, and pewter. The mental metals: bronze, copper, zinc, and brass. And . . . there were the time-affecting metals: gold and its alloy, and atium and its alloy.
That means there’s another metal. One that hasn’t been discovered—probably because atium and gold are too valuable to forge into different alloys.
But, what good was the knowledge? Her “Eleventh Metal” was probably just a paired opposite of gold—the metal Kelsier had told her was the most useless of them all. Gold had shown Vin herself—or, at least, a different version of her that had felt real enough to touch. But, it had simply been a vision of what she could have become, had the past been different.
The Eleventh Metal had done something similar: Instead of showing Vin’s own past, it had shown her similar images from other people. And that told her . . . nothing. What difference did it make what the Lord Ruler could have been? It was the current man, the tyrant that ruled the Final Empire, that she had to defeat.
A figure appeared in the doorway—an Inquisitor dressed in a black robe, the hood up. His face was shadowed, but his spike-heads jutted from the front of the cowl.
“It is time,” he said. Another Inquisitor waited in the doorway as the first creature pulled out a set of keys and moved to open Vin’s door.
Vin tensed. The door clicked, and she sprang to her feet, scrambling forward.
Have I always been this slow without pewter? she thought with horror. The Inquisitor snatched her arm as she passed, his motions unconcerned, almost casual—and she could see why. His hands moved supernaturally quickly, making her seem even more sluggish by comparison.
The Inquisitor pulled her up, twisting her and easily holding her. He smiled with an evil grin, his face pocked with scars. Scars that looked like . . .
Arrowhead wounds, she thought with shock. But . . . healed already? How can it be?
She struggled, but her weak, pewterless body was no match for the Inquisitor’s strength. The creature carried her toward the doorway, and the second Inquisitor stepped back, regarding her with spikes that peeked out from beneath its cowl. Though the Inquisitor who carried her was smiling, this second one had a flat line of a mouth.
Vin spat at the second Inquisitor as she passed, her spittle smacking it right on one of its spike-heads. Her captor carried her out of the chamber and through a narrow hallway. She cried out for help, knowing that her screams—in the middle of Kredik Shaw itself—would be useless. At least she succeeded in annoying the Inquisitor, for he twisted her arm.
“Quiet,” he said as she grunted in pain.
Vin fell silent, instead focusing on their location. They were probably in one of the lower sections of the palace; the hallways were too long to be in a tower or spire. The decorations were lavish, but the rooms looked . . . unused. The carpets were pristine, the furniture unmarked by scuff or scratch. She had the feeling that the murals were rarely seen, even by those who often passed through the chambers.
Eventually, the Inquisitors entered a stairwell and began to climb. One of the spires, she thought.
With each climbing step, Vin could feel the Lord Ruler getting closer. His mere presence dampened her emotions, stealing her willpower, making her numb to everything but lonely depression. She sagged in the Inquisitor’s grip, no longer struggling. It took all of her energy to simply resist the Lord Ruler’s pressure on her soul.
After a short time in the tunnel-like stairwell, the Inquisitors carried her out into a large, circular room. And, despite the power of the Lord Ruler’s Soothing, despite her visits to noble keeps, Vin took just a brief moment to stare at her surroundings. They were majestic like none she’d ever seen.