She smiled as she twisted in the air. Zane—hovering in the air above the wall’s top—nodded appreciatively as she passed. She noticed that he’d grabbed a few of her discarded coins.
Time for a little attack myself, Vin thought.
She slammed a Push against the coins in Zane’s hand, and they shot her upward. However, Zane was still Pushing against the coin on the wall top below, and so he didn’t fall. Instead he hung in the air between the two forces—his own Push forcing him upward, Vin’s Push forcing him downward.
Vin heard him grunt in exertion, and she Pushed harder. She was so focused, however, that she barely saw him open his other hand and Push a coin up toward her. She reached out to Push against it, but fortunately his aim was off, and the coin missed her by a few inches.
Or perhaps it didn’t. Immediately, the coin zipped back downward and hit her in the back. Zane Pulled on it forcefully, and the bit of metal dug into Vin’s skin. She gasped, flaring pewter to keep the coin from cutting through her.
Zane didn’t relent. Vin gritted her teeth, but he weighed much more than she did. She inched down toward him in the night, her Push straining to keep the two of them apart, the coin digging painfully into her back.
Never get into a raw Pushing match, Vin, Kelsier had warned her. You don’t weigh enough—you’ll lose every time.
She stopped Pushing on the coin in Zane’s hand. Immediately, she fell, Pulled by the coin on her back. She Pushed on it slightly, giving herself a little leverage, then threw her final coin to the side. It hit at the last moment, and Vin’s Push scooted her out from between Zane and his coin.
Zane’s coin snapped him in the chest, and he grunted: he had obviously been trying to get Vin to collide with him again. Vin smiled, then Pulled against the coin in Zane’s hand.
Give him what he wants, I guess.
He turned just in time to see her slam feet-first into him. Vin spun, feeling him crumple beneath her. She exulted in the victory, spinning in the air above the wall walk. Then she noticed something: several faint lines of blue disappearing into the distance. Zane had pushed all of their coins away.
Desperately, Vin grabbed one of the coins and Pulled it back. Too late, however. She searched frantically for a closer source of metal, but all was stone or wood. Disoriented, she hit the stone wall walk, tumbling amid her mistcloak until she came to a halt beside the wall’s stone railing.
She shook her head and flared tin, clearing her vision with a flash of pain and other senses. Surely Zane hadn’t fared better. He must have fallen as—
Zane hung a few feet away. He’d found a coin—Vin couldn’t fathom how—and was Pushing against it below him. However, he didn’t shoot away. He hovered above the wall top, just a few feet in the air, still in a half tumble from Vin’s kick.
As Vin watched, Zane rotated slowly in the air, hand outstretched beneath him, twisting like a skilled acrobat on a pole. There was a look of intense concentration on his face, and his muscles—all of them, arms, face, chest—were taut. He turned in the air until he was facing her.
Vin watched with awe. It was possible to Push just slightly against a coin, regulating the amount of force with which one was thrown backward. It was incredibly difficult, however—so difficult that even Kelsier had struggled with it. Most of the time, Mistborn simply used short bursts. When Vin fell, for instance, she slowed herself by throwing a coin and Pushing against it briefly—but powerfully—to counteract her momentum.
She’d never seen an Allomancer with as much control as Zane. His ability to push slightly against that coin would be of little use in a fight; it obviously took too much concentration. Yet, there was a grace to it, a beauty to his movements that implied something Vin herself had felt.
Allomancy wasn’t just about fighting and killing. It was about skill and grace. It was something beautiful.
Zane rotated until he was upright, standing in a gentleman’s posture. Then he dropped to the wall walk, his feet slapping quietly against the stones. He regarded Vin—who still lay on the stones—with a look that lacked contempt.
“You are very skilled,” he said. “And quite powerful.”
He was tall, impressive. Like … Kelsier. “Why did you come to the palace today?” she asked, climbing to her feet.
“To see how they treated you. Tell me, Vin. What is it about Mistborn that makes us—despite our powers—so willing to act as slaves to others?”
“Slaves?” Vin said. “I’m no slave.”
Zane shook his head. “They use you, Vin.”
“Sometimes it’s good to be useful.”
“Those words are spoken of insecurity.”
Vin paused; then she eyed him. “Where did you get that coin, at the end? There were none nearby.”
Zane smiled, then opened his mouth and pulled out a coin. He dropped it to the stones with a pling. Vin opened her eyes wide. Metal inside a person’s body can’t be affected by another Allomancer. … That’s such an easy trick! Why didn’t I think of it?
Why didn’t Kelsier think of it?
Zane shook his head. “We don’t belong with them, Vin. We don’t belong in their world. We belong here, in the mists.”
“I belong with those who love me,” Vin said.
“Love you?” Zane asked quietly. “Tell me. Do they understand you, Vin? Can they understand you? And, can a man love something he doesn’t understand?”
He watched her for a moment. When she didn’t respond, he nodded to her slightly, then Pushed against the coin he had dropped moments before, throwing himself back into the mists.
Vin let him go. His words held more weight than he probably understood. We don’t belong in their world. … He couldn’t know that she’d been pondering her place, wondering whether she was noblewoman, assassin, or something else.
Zane’s words, then, meant something important. He felt himself to be an outsider. A little like herself. It was a weakness in him, certainly. Perhaps she could turn him against Straff—his willingness to spar with her, his willingness to reveal himself, hinted at that much.
She breathed in deeply of the cool, mist air, her heart still beating quickly from the exchange. She felt tired, yet alive, from fighting someone who might actually be better than she was. Standing in the mists atop the wall of an abandoned keep, she decided something.
She had to keep sparring with Zane.
If only the Deepness hadn’t come when it did, providing a threat that drove men to desperation both in action and belief.
18
“KILL HIM,” GOD WHISPERED.
Zane hung quietly in the mists, looking through Elend Venture’s open balcony doors. The mists swirled around him, obscuring him from the king’s view.
“You should kill him,” God said again.
In a way, Zane hated Elend, though he had never met the man before today. Elend was everything that Zane should have been. Favored. Privileged. Pampered. He was Zane’s enemy, a block in the road to domination, the thing that was keeping Straff—and therefore Zane—from ruling the Central Dominance.
But he was also Zane’s brother.
Zane let himself drop through the mists, falling silently to the ground outside Keep Venture. He Pulled his anchors up into his hand—three small bars he had been pushing on to hold himself in place. Vin would be returning soon, and he didn’t want to be near the keep when she did. She had a strange ability to know where he was; her senses were far more keen than any Allomancer he had ever known or fought. Of course, she had been trained by the Survivor himself.