Vin turned to see Elend lounging in an alcove to her left. She smiled, glancing down at the clock, noticing that it was indeed a few minutes past the time when she had promised to meet him. “I must be picking up bad habits from some friends of mine,” she said, stepping into the alcove.
“Now, see, I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Elend said, smiling. “Why, I’d say that it is a lady’s courtly duty to be a bit dilatory. It does gentlemen good to be forced to wait upon a woman’s whims—or, so my mother was always fond of telling me.”
“It sounds like she was a wise woman,” Vin said. The alcove was just large enough for two people standing sideways. She stood across from him, the balcony overhang a short distance to her left, a marvelous lavender window to her right, their feet nearly touching.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Elend said. “She married my father, after all.”
“Thereby joining the most powerful house in the Final Empire. You can’t do much better than that—though, I suppose she could have tried to marry the Lord Ruler. Last I knew, though, he wasn’t in the market for a wife.”
“Pity,” Elend said. “Maybe he’d look a little less depressed if there were a woman in his life.”
“I guess that would depend on the woman.” Vin glanced to the side as a small group of courtgoers strolled past. “You know, this isn’t exactly the most private location. People are giving us odd looks.”
“You’re the one who stepped in here with me,” Elend pointed out.
“Yes, well, I wasn’t thinking about the gossip we might start.”
“Let it start,” Elend said standing up straight.
“Because it will make your father angry?”
Elend shook his head. “I don’t care about that anymore, Valette.” Elend took a step forward, bringing them even closer together. Vin could feel his breath. He stood there for a moment before speaking. “I think I’m going to kiss you.”
Vin shivered slightly. “I don’t think you want to do that, Elend.”
“Why?”
“How much do you really know about me?”
“Not as much as I’d like to,” he said.
“Not as much as you need to, either,” Vin said, looking up into his eyes.
“So tell me,” he said.
“I can’t. Not right now.”
Elend stood for a moment, then nodded slightly and pulled away. He walked out onto the balcony walkway. “So, shall we go for a stroll, then?”
“Yes,” Vin said, relieved—yet just a bit disappointed as well.
“It’s for the best,” Elend said. “That alcove has absolutely terrible reading light.”
“Don’t you dare,” Vin said, eyeing the book in his pocket as she joined him on the walkway. “Read when you’re with someone else, not me.”
“But that’s how our relationship began!”
“And that’s how it could end too,” Vin said, taking his arm.
Elend smiled. They weren’t the only couple walking the balcony, and down below, other pairs spun slowly to the faint music.
It seems so peaceful. Yet, just a few days ago, many of these people stood and watched idly as women and children were beheaded.
She felt Elend’s arm, his warmth beside her. Kelsier said that he smiled so much because he felt he needed to take what joy he could in the world—to relish the moments of happiness that seemed so infrequent in the Final Empire. Strolling for a time beside Elend, Vin thought she was beginning to understand how Kelsier felt.
“Valette …” Elend said slowly.
“What?”
“I want you to leave Luthadel,” he said.
“What?”
He paused, turning to look at her. “I’ve thought about this a lot. You may not realize it, but the city is becoming dangerous. Very dangerous.”
“I know.”
“Then you know that a small house without allies has no place in the Central Dominance right now,” Elend said. “Your uncle was brave to come here and try to establish himself, but he chose the wrong time. I … I think things are going to get out of hand here very soon. When that happens, I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“My uncle knows what he’s doing, Elend.”
“This is different, Valette,” Elend said. “Entire houses are falling. The Tekiel family wasn’t slaughtered by bandits—that was the work of House Hasting. Those won’t be the last deaths we see before this is through.”
Vin paused, thinking of Shan again. “But … you’re safe, right? House Venture—it’s not like the others. It’s stable.”
Elend shook his head. “We’re even more vulnerable than the rest, Valette.”
“But, your fortune is large,” Vin said. “You don’t depend on contracts.”
“They may not be visible,” Elend said quietly, “but they’re there, Valette. We put on a good show, and the others assume that we have more than we do. However, with the Lord Ruler’s house taxings … well, the only way we maintain so much power in this city is through income. Secret income.”
Vin frowned, and Elend leaned closer, speaking almost in a whisper. “My family mines the Lord Ruler’s atium, Valette,” he said. “That’s where our wealth comes from. In a way, our stability depends almost completely on the Lord Ruler’s whims. He doesn’t like to bother collecting the atium himself, but he gets very perturbed if the delivery schedule is disrupted.”
Find out more! instinct told her. This is the secret; this is what Kelsier needs. “Oh, Elend,” Vin whispered. “You shouldn’t be telling me this.”
“Why not?” he said. “I trust you. Look, you need to understand how dangerous things are. The atium supply has been having some troubles lately. Ever since…. well, something happened a few years ago. Ever since then, things have been different. My father can’t meet the Lord Ruler’s quotas, and last time that happened …”
“What?”
“Well,” Elend said, looking troubled. “Let’s just say that things could soon grow very bad for the Ventures. The Lord Ruler depends on that atium, Valette—it’s one of the prime ways he controls the nobility. A house without atium is a house that can’t defend itself from Mistborn. By keeping a large reserve, the Lord Ruler controls the market, making himself extremely wealthy. He funds his armies by making atium scarce, then selling extra bits for lavish amounts. If you knew more about the economics of Allomancy, this would probably make a lot more sense to you.”
Oh, trust me. I understand more than you think. And now I know far more than I should.
Elend paused, smiling pleasantly as an obligator strolled along the balcony walkway beside them. The obligator looked them over as he passed, eyes thoughtful within their web of tattoos.
Elend turned back to her as soon as the obligator had passed. “I want you to leave,” he repeated. “People know that I’ve paid attention to you. Hopefully, they’ll assume it was just to spite my father, but they could still try to use you. The Great Houses wouldn’t have any qualms about crushing your entire family just to get at me and my father. You have to go.”