Clubs shrugged. “He left something on my doorstep this morning.”
“A gift?”
Clubs snorted. “It was a woodcarving from a master carpenter up in Yelva City. The note said, ‘I just wanted to show you what real carpenters are up to, old man.’”
Elend chuckled, but trailed off as Clubs eyed him with a discomforting stare. “Whelp was never this insolent before,” Clubs muttered. “I swear, you lot have corrupted the lad.”
Clubs almost seemed to be smiling. Or, was he serious? Elend couldn’t ever decide if the man was as crusty as he seemed, or if Elend was the butt of some elaborate joke.
“How is the army doing?” Elend finally asked.
“Terribly,” Clubs said. “You want an army? Give me more than one year to train it. Right now, I’d barely trust those boys against a mob of old women with sticks.”
Great, Elend thought.
“Can’t do much right now, though,” Clubs grumbled. “Straff is digging in some cursory fortifications, but mostly he’s just resting his men. The attack will come by the end of the week.”
In the courtyard, Vin and Ham continued to fight. It was slow, for the moment, Ham taking time to pause and explain principles or stances. Elend and Clubs watched for a short time as the sparring gradually became more intense, the rounds taking longer, the two participants beginning to sweat as their feet kicked up puffs of ash in the packed, sooty earth.
Vin gave Ham a good contest despite the ridiculous differences in strength, reach, and training, and Elend found himself smiling slightly despite himself. She was something special—Elend had realized that when he’d first seen her in the Venture ballroom, nearly two years before. He was only now coming to realize how much of an understatement “special” was.
A coin snapped against the wooden railing. “My money’s on Vin, too.”
Elend turned with surprise. The man who had spoken was a soldier who had been standing with the others watching behind. Elend frowned. “Who—”
Then, Elend cut himself off. The beard was wrong, the posture too straight, but the man standing behind him was familiar. “Spook?” Elend asked incredulously.
The teenage boy smiled behind an apparently fake beard. “Wasing the where of calling out.”
Elend’s head immediately began to hurt. “Lord Ruler, don’t tell me you’ve gone back to the dialect?”
“Oh, just for the occasional nostalgic quip,” Spook said with a laugh. His words bore traces of his Easterner accent; during the first few months Elend had known the boy, Spook had been utterly unintelligible. Fortunately, the boy had grown out of using his street cant, just as he’d managed to grow out of most of his clothing. Well over six feet tall, the sixteen-year-old young man hardly resembled the gangly boy Elend had met a year before.
Spook leaned against the railing beside Elend, adopting a teenage boy’s lounging posture and completely destroying his image as a soldier—which, indeed, he wasn’t.
“Why the costume, Spook?” Elend asked with a frown.
Spook shrugged. “I’m no Mistborn. We more mundane spies have to find ways to get information without flying up to windows and listening outside.”
“How long you been standing there?” Clubs asked, glaring at his nephew.
“Since before you got here, Uncle Grumbles,” Spook said. “And, in answer to your question, I got back a couple days ago. Before Dockson, actually. I just thought I’d take a bit of a break before I went back to duty.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Spook,” Elend said, “but we’re at war. There isn’t a lot of time to take breaks.”
Spook shrugged. “I just didn’t want you to send me away again. If there’s going to be war here, I want to be around. You know, for the excitement.”
Clubs snorted. “And where did you get that uniform?”
“Uh … Well …” Spook glanced to the side, displaying just a hint of the uncertain boy Elend had known.
Clubs grumbled something about insolent boys, but Elend just laughed and clapped Spook on the shoulder. The boy looked up, smiling; though he’d been easy to ignore at first, he was proving as valuable as any of the other members of Vin’s former crew. As a Tineye—a Misting who could burn tin to enhance his senses—Spook could listen to conversations from far away, not to mention notice distant details.
“Anyway, welcome back,” Elend said. “What’s the word from the west?”
Spook shook his head. “I hate to sound too much like Uncle Crusty over there, but the news isn’t good. You know those rumors about the Lord Ruler’s atium being in Luthadel? Well, they’re back. Stronger this time.”
“I thought we were past that!” Elend said. Breeze and his team had spent the better part of six months spreading rumors and manipulating the warlords into believing that the atium must have been hidden in another city, since Elend hadn’t found it in Luthadel.
“Guess not,” Spook said. “And … I think someone’s spreading these rumors intentionally. I’ve been on the street long enough to sense a planted story, and this rumor smells wrong. Someone really wants the warlords to focus on you.”
Great, Elend thought. “You don’t know where Breeze is, do you?”
Spook shrugged, but he no longer seemed to be paying attention to Elend. He was watching the sparring. Elend glanced back toward Vin and Ham.
As Clubs had predicted, the two had fallen into a more serious contest. There was no more instruction; there were no more quick, repetitive exchanges. They sparred in earnest, fighting in a swirling melee of staffs and dust. Ash flew around them, blown up by the wind of their attacks, and even more soldiers paused in the surrounding hallways to watch.
Elend leaned forward. There was something intense about a duel between two Allomancers. Vin tried an attack. Ham, however, swung simultaneously, his staff blurringly quick. Somehow, Vin got her own weapon up in time, but the power of Ham’s blow threw her back in a tumble. She hit the ground on one shoulder. She gave barely a grunt of pain, however, and somehow got a hand beneath her, throwing herself up to land on her feet. She skidded for a moment, retaining her balance, holding her staff up.
Pewter, Elend thought. It made even a clumsy man dexterous. And, for a person normally graceful like Vin …
Vin’s eyes narrowed, her innate stubbornness showing in the set of her jaw, the displeasure in her face. She didn’t like being beaten—even when her opponent was obviously stronger than she was.
Elend stood up straight, intending to suggest an end to the sparring. At that moment, Vin dashed forward.
Ham brought his staff up expectantly, swinging as Vin came within reach. She ducked to the side, passing within inches of the attack, then brought her weapon around and slammed it into the back of Ham’s staff, throwing him off balance. Then she ducked in for the attack.
Ham, however, recovered quickly. He let the force of Vin’s blow spin him around, and he used the momentum to bring his staff around in a powerful blow aimed directly at Vin’s chest.
Elend cried out.
Vin jumped.
She didn’t have metal to Push against, but that didn’t seem to matter. She sprang a good seven feet in the air, easily cresting Ham’s staff. She flipped as the swing passed beneath her, her fingers brushing the air just above the weapon, her own staff spinning in a one-handed grip.