“By luck,” Vin said, face flushing. “I just tricked her.”
“Allomancy is nothing but tricks, Vin. No, there’s something special about you. I noticed it on that first day, when you shrugged off my attempts to Push and Pull your emotions.”
She flushed. “It can’t be that, Kelsier. Maybe I’ve just practiced with bronze more than you…. I don’t know, I just …”
“Vin,” Kelsier said, “you’re still too self-effacing. You’re good at this—that much is obvious. If that’s why you can see through copperclouds … well, I don’t know. But learn to take a little pride in yourself, kid! If there’s anything I can teach you, it’s how to be self-confident.”
Vin smiled.
“Come on,” he said, standing and holding out a hand to help her up. “Sazed is going to fret all night if you don’t let him finish stitching that cheek wound, and Ham’s dying to hear about your battle. Good job leaving Shan’s body back at Keep Venture, by the way—when House Elariel hears that she was found dead on Venture property …”
Vin allowed him to pull her up, but she glanced toward the trapdoor apprehensively. “I … don’t know if I want to go down yet, Kelsier. How can I face them?”
Kelsier laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. If you didn’t say some stupid things every once in a while, you certainly wouldn’t fit in with this group. Come on.”
Vin hesitated, then let him lead her back down to the warmth of the kitchen.
“Elend, how can you read at times like this?” Jastes asked.
Elend looked up from his book. “It calms me.”
Jastes raised an eyebrow. The young Lekal sat impatiently in the coach, tapping his fingers on the armrest. The window shades were drawn, partially to hide the light of Elend’s reading lantern, partially to keep out the mists. Though Elend would never admit it, the swirling fog made him just a bit nervous. Noblemen weren’t supposed to be afraid of such things, but that didn’t change the fact that the deep, caliginous mist was just plain creepy.
“Your father is going to be livid when you get back,” Jastes noted, still tapping the armrest.
Elend shrugged, though this comment did make him a little bit nervous. Not because of his father, but because of what had happened this night. Some Allomancers had, apparently, been spying on Elend’s meeting with his friends. What information had they gathered? Did they know about the books he’d read?
Fortunately, one of them had tripped, falling through Elend’s skylight. After that, it had been confusion and chaos—soldiers and ballgoers running about in a semi-panic. Elend’s first thought had been for the books—the dangerous ones, the ones that if the obligators found he possessed, could get him into serious trouble.
So, in the confusion, he’d dumped them all in a bag and followed Jastes down to the palace side exit. Grabbing a carriage and sneaking out of the palace grounds had been an extreme move, perhaps, but it had been ridiculously easy. With the number of carriages fleeing the Venture grounds, not a single person had paused to notice that Elend himself was in the carriage with Jastes.
It’s probably all died down by now, Elend told himself. People will realize that House Venture wasn’t trying to attack them, and that there wasn’t really any danger. Just some spies who got careless.
He should have returned by now. However, his convenient absence from the palace gave him a perfect excuse to check on another group of spies. And this time, Elend himself had sent them.
A sudden knock on the door made Jastes jump, and Elend closed his book, then opened the carriage door. Felt, one of the House Venture chief spies, climbed into the carriage, nodding his hawkish, mustached face respectfully to Elend, then Jastes.
“Well?” Jastes asked.
Felt sat down with the keen litheness of his kind. “The building is ostensibly a woodcrafter’s shop, m’lord. One of my men has heard of the place—it’s run by one Master Cladent, a skaa carpenter of no small skill.”
Elend frowned. “Why did Valette’s steward come here?”
“We think that the shop is a front, m’lord,” Felt said. “We’ve been observing it ever since the steward led us here, as you ordered. However, we’ve had to be very careful—there are several watchnests hidden on its roof and top floors.”
Elend frowned. “An odd precaution for a simple craftsman’s shop, I should think.”
Felt nodded. “That’s not the half of it, m’lord. We managed to sneak one of our best men up to the building itself—we don’t think he was spotted—but he had a remarkably difficult time hearing what’s going on inside. The windows are sealed and stuffed to keep in sound.”
Another odd precaution, Elend thought. “What do you think it means?” he asked Felt.
“It’s got to be an underground hideout, m’lord,” Felt said. “And a good one. If we hadn’t been watching carefully, and been certain what to look for, we would never have noticed the signs. My guess is that the men inside—even the Terrisman—are members of a skaa thieving crew. A very well-funded and skilled one.”
“A skaa thieving crew?” Jastes asked. “And Lady Valette too?”
“Likely, m’lord,” Felt said.
Elend paused. “A … skaa thieving crew …” he said, stunned. Why would they send one of their members to balls? To perform a scam of some sort, perhaps?
“M’lord?” Felt asked. “Do you want us to break in? I’ve got enough men to take their entire crew.”
“No,” Elend said. “Call your men back, and tell no one of what you’ve seen this night.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Felt said, climbing out of the coach.
“Lord Ruler!” Jastes said as the carriage door closed. “No wonder she didn’t seem like a regular noblewoman. It wasn’t her rural upbringing—she’s just a thief!”
Elend nodded, thoughtful, not certain what to think.
“You owe me an apology,” Jastes said. “I was right about her, eh?”
“Perhaps,” Elend said. “But … in a way, you were wrong about her too. She wasn’t trying to spy on me—she was just trying to rob me.”
“So?”
“I … need to think about this,” Elend said, reaching out and knocking for the carriage to start moving. He sat back as the coach began to roll back toward Keep Venture.
Valette wasn’t the person that she’d said she was. However, he’d already prepared himself for that news. Not only had Jastes’s words about her made him suspicious, Valette herself hadn’t denied Elend’s accusations earlier in the night. It was obvious; she had been lying to him. Playing a part.
He should have been furious. He realized this, logically, and a piece of him did ache of betrayal. But, oddly, the primary emotion he felt was one of … relief.
“What?” Jastes asked, studying Elend with a frown.
Elend shook his head. “You’ve had me worrying over this for days, Jastes. I felt so sick that I could barely function—all because I thought that Valette was a traitor.”
“But she is. Elend, she’s probably trying to scam you!”