“And what would that be?” Breeze asked curiously.
“A message from Marsh,” Kelsier said, opening the letter and scanning its contents. “He’s in the city, and he has news.”
“What news?” Ham asked.
“He doesn’t say,” Kelsier said, grabbing a baywrap. “But he gave instructions on where to meet him tonight.” He walked over, picking up a regular skaa cloak. “I’m going to go scout the location before it gets dark. Coming, Vin?”
She nodded, standing.
“The rest of you keep working on the plan,” Kelsier said. “In two months’ time, I want this city to be so tense that when it finally breaks, even the Lord Ruler won’t be able to hold it together.”
“There’s something you’re not telling us, isn’t there?” Vin said, looking away from the window, turning toward Kelsier. “A part of the plan.”
Kelsier glanced over at her in the darkness. Marsh’s chosen meeting place was an abandoned building within the Twists, one of the most impoverished skaa slums. Kelsier had located a second abandoned building across from the one they would meet in, and he and Vin waited on the top floor, watching the street for signs of Marsh.
“Why do you ask me that?” Kelsier finally said.
“Because of the Lord Ruler,” Vin said, picking at the rotting wood of her windowsill. “I felt his power today. I don’t think the others could sense it, not like a Mistborn can. But I know you must have.” She looked up again, meeting Kelsier’s eyes. “You’re still planning to get him out of the city before we try to take the palace, right?”
“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.”