Marsh sighed and stood. He had been awake only a few hours, but he already seemed tired. His head hung slightly, as if the weight of the spikes were pulling it down.
“Does that … hurt, Marsh?” she asked. “The spikes, I mean?”
He paused. “Yes. All eleven of them … throb. The pain reacts to my emotions somehow.”
“Eleven?” Vin asked with shock.
Marsh nodded. “Two in the head, eight in the chest, one in the back to seal them together. That’s the only way to kill an Inquisitor—you have to separate the top spikes from the bottom ones. Kell did it through a beheading, but it’s easier to just pull out the middle spike.”
“We thought you were dead,” Vin said. “When we found the body and the blood at the Soothing station …”
Marsh nodded. “I was going to send word of my survival, but they watched me fairly closely that first day. I didn’t expect Kell to make his move so quickly.”
“None of us did, Master Marsh,” Sazed said. “None of us expected it at all.”
“He actually did it, didn’t he?” Marsh said, shaking his head in wonder. “That bastard. There are two things I’ll never forgive him for. The first is for stealing my dream of overthrowing the Final Empire, then actually succeeding at it.”
Vin paused. “And the second?”
Marsh turned spike-heads toward her. “Getting himself killed to do it.”
“If I may ask, Master Marsh,” Sazed said. “Who was that corpse that Mistress Vin and Master Kelsier discovered at the Soothing station?”
Marsh looked back over the city. “There were several corpses, actually. The process to create a new Inquisitor is … messy. I’d rather not speak about it.”
“Of course,” Sazed said, bowing his head.
“You, however,” Marsh said, “could tell me about this creature that Kelsier used to imitate Lord Renoux.”
“The kandra?” Sazed said. “I fear even the Keepers know little of them. They are related to mistwraiths—perhaps even the same creatures, just older. Because of their reputation, they generally prefer to remain unseen—though some of the noble houses hire them on occasion.”
Vin frowned. “So … why didn’t Kell just have this kandra impersonate him and die in his stead?”
“Ah,” Sazed said. “You see, Mistress, for a kandra to impersonate someone, they first must devour that person’s flesh and absorb their bones. Kandra are like mistwraiths—they have no skeletons of their own.”
Vin shivered. “Oh.”
“He is back, you know,” Marsh said. “The creature is no longer using my brother’s body—he has another one—but he came looking for you, Vin.”
“Me?” Vin asked.
Marsh nodded. “He said something about Kelsier transferring his contract to you before he died. I believe the beast sees you as its master, now.”
Vin shivered. That … thing ate Kelsier’s body. “I don’t want it around,” she said. “I’ll send it away.”
“Do not be quite so hasty, Mistress,” Sazed said. “Kandra are expensive servants—you must pay them in atium. If Kelsier bought an extended contract for one, it would be foolish to waste its services. A kandra might prove a very useful ally in the months to come.”
Vin shook her head. “I don’t care. I don’t want that thing around. Not after what it did.”
The trio fell silent. Finally, Marsh stood, sighing. “Anyway, if you will excuse me, I should go make an appearance at the keep—the new king wants me to represent the Ministry in his negotiations.”
Vin frowned. “I don’t see why the Ministry deserves any say in things.”
“The obligators are still quite powerful, Mistress,” Sazed said. “And, they are the most efficient and well-trained bureaucratic force in the Final Empire. His majesty would be wise to try and bring them to his side, and recognizing Master Marsh may help achieve this.”
Marsh shrugged. “Of course, assuming I can establish control over the Canton of Orthodoxy, the Ministry should … change during the next few years. I’ll move slowly and carefully, but by the time I’m done, the obligators won’t even realize what they’ve lost. Those other Inquisitors could present a problem, though.”
Vin nodded. “How many are there outside of Luthadel?”
“I don’t know,” Marsh said. “I wasn’t a member of the order for very long before I destroyed it. However, the Final Empire was a big place. Many speak of there being around twenty Inquisitors in the empire, but I never was able to pin anyone down on a hard number.”
Vin nodded as Marsh left. However, the Inquisitors—while dangerous—worried her far less now that she knew their secret. She was more concerned about something else.
You don’t know what I do for mankind. I was your god, even if you couldn’t see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves….
The Lord Ruler’s final words. At the time, she thought he’d been referring to the Final Empire as the thing he did “for mankind.” However, she wasn’t so certain anymore. There had been … fear in his eyes when he’d spoken those words, not pride.
“Saze?” she said. “What was the Deepness? The thing that the Hero from the logbook was supposed to defeat?”
“I wish that we knew, Mistress,” Sazed said.
“But, it didn’t come, right?”
“Apparently not,” Sazed said. “The legends agree that had the Deepness not been stopped, the very world would have been destroyed. Of course, perhaps these stories have been exaggerated. Maybe the danger of the ‘Deepness’ was really just the Lord Ruler himself—perhaps the Hero’s fight was simply one of conscience. He had to choose to dominate the world or to let it be free.”
That didn’t sound right to Vin. There was more. She remembered that fear in the Lord Ruler’s eyes. Terror.
He said “do,” not “did.” “What I do for mankind.” That implies that he was still doing it, whatever it was.
You have doomed yourselves….
She shivered in the evening air. The sun was setting, making it even easier to see the illuminated Keep Venture—Elend’s choice of headquarters for the moment, though he might still move to Kredik Shaw. He hadn’t decided yet.
“You should go to him, Mistress,” Sazed said. “He needs to see that you are well.”
Vin didn’t reply immediately. She stared out over the city, watching the bright keep in the darkening sky. “Were you there, Sazed?” she asked. “Did you hear his speech?”
“Yes, Mistress,” he said. “Once we discovered that there was no atium in that treasury, Lord Venture insisted that we go seek help for you. I was inclined to agree with him—neither of us were warriors, and I was still without my Feruchemical storages.”
No atium, Vin thought. After all of this, we haven’t found a speck of it. What did the Lord Ruler do with it all? Or … did someone else get to it first?
“When Master Elend and I found the army,” Sazed continued, “its rebels were slaughtering the palace soldiers. Some of them tried to surrender, but our soldiers weren’t letting them. It was a … disturbing scene, Mistress. Your Elend … he didn’t like what he saw. When he stood up there before the skaa, I thought that they would simply kill him too.”