“Why didn’t you run?” OreSeur asked. “You didn’t have a Contract bonding you to him.”
“I … don’t know,” Vin said. “People are strange, OreSeur, and loyalty is so often twisted. I stayed with Camon because he was familiar, and I feared leaving more than I did staying. That crew was all I had. My brother was gone, and I was terrified of being alone. It seems kind of strange now, thinking back.”
“Sometimes a bad situation is still better than the alternative. You did what you needed to do to survive.”
“Perhaps,” Vin said. “But there’s a better way, OreSeur. I didn’t know it until Kelsier found me, but life doesn’t have to be like that. You don’t have to spend your years mistrusting, staying in the shadows and keeping yourself apart.”
“Perhaps if you are human. I am kandra.”
“You can still trust,” Vin said. “You don’t have to hate your masters.”
“I don’t hate them all, Mistress.”
“But you don’t trust them.”
“It is nothing personal, Mistress.”
“Yes it is,” Vin said. “You don’t trust us because you’re afraid we’ll hurt you. I understand that—I spent months with Kelsier wondering when I was going to get hurt again.”
She paused. “But OreSeur, nobody betrayed us. Kelsier was right. It seems incredible to me even now, but the men in this crew—Ham, Dockson, Breeze—they’re good people. And, even if one of them were to betray me, I’d still rather have trusted them. I can sleep at night, OreSeur. I can feel peace, I can laugh. Life is different. Better.”
“You are human,” OreSeur said stubbornly. “You can have friends because they don’t worry that you’ll eat them, or some other foolishness.”
“I don’t think that about you.”
“Don’t you? Mistress, you just admitted that you resent me because I ate Kelsier. Beyond that, you hate the fact that I followed my Contract. You, at least, have been honest.
“Human beings find us disturbing. They hate that we eat their kind, even though we only take bodies that are already dead. Your people find it unsettling that we can take their forms. Don’t tell me that you haven’t heard the legends of my people. Mistwraiths, they call us—creatures that steal the shapes of men who go into the mists. You think a monster like that, a legend used to frighten children, will ever find acceptance in your society?”
Vin frowned.
“This is the reason for the Contract, Mistress,” OreSeur said, his muffled voice harsh as he spoke through dog’s lips. “You wonder why we don’t just run away from you? Meld into your society, and become unseen? We tried that. Long ago, when the Final Empire was new. Your people found us, and they started to destroy us. They used Mistborn to hunt us down, for there were many more Allomancers in those days. Your people hated us because they feared we would replace them. We were almost completely destroyed—and then we came up with the Contract.”
“But, what difference does that make?” Vin asked. “You’re still doing the same things, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but now we do them at your command,” OreSeur said. “Men like power, and they love controlling something powerful. Our people offered to serve, and we devised a binding contract—one that every kandra vowed to uphold. We will not kill men. We will take bones only when we are commanded. We will serve our masters with absolute obedience. We began to do these things, and men stopped killing us. They still hated and feared us—but they also knew they could command us.
“We became your tools. As long as we remain subservient, Mistress, we survive. And that is why I obey. To break the Contract would be to betray my people. We cannot fight you, not while you have Mistborn, and so we must serve you.”
Mistborn. Why are Mistborn so important? He implied that they could find kandra. …
She kept this tidbit to herself; she sensed that if she pointed it out, he’d close up again. So, instead, she sat up and met his eyes in the darkness. “If you wish, I will free you from your Contract.”
“And what would that change?” OreSeur asked. “I’d just get another Contract. By our laws I must wait another decade before I have time for freedom—and then only two years, during which time I won’t be able to leave the kandra Homeland. To do otherwise would risk exposure.”
“Then, at least accept my apology,” she asked. “I was foolish to resent you for following your Contract.”
OreSeur paused. “That still doesn’t fix things, Mistress. I still have to wear this cursed dog’s body—I have no personality or bones to imitate!”
“I’d think that you would appreciate the opportunity simply to be yourself.”
“I feel naked,” OreSeur said. He sat quietly for a moment; then he bowed his head. “But … I have to admit that there are advantages to these bones. I didn’t realize how unobtrusive they would make me.”
Vin nodded. “There were times in my life when I would have given anything to be able to take the form of a dog and just live my life being ignored.”
“But not anymore?”
Vin shook her head. “No. Not most of the time, anyway. I used to think that everyone was like you say—hateful, hurtful. But there are good people in the world, OreSeur. I wish I could prove that to you.”
“You speak of this king of yours,” OreSeur said, glancing toward the keep.
“Yes,” Vin said. “And others.”
“You?”
Vin shook her head. “No, not me. I’m not a good person or a bad person. I’m just here to kill things.”
OreSeur watched her for a moment, then settled back down. “Regardless,” he said, “you are not my worst master. That is, perhaps, a compliment among our people.”
Vin smiled, but her own words left her a bit haunted. Just here to kill things. …
She glanced toward the light of the armies outside the city. A part—the part that had been trained by Reen, the part that still occasionally used his voice in the back of her mind—whispered that there was another way to fight these armies. Rather than rely on politics and parlays, the crew could use Vin. Send her on a quiet visit into the night that left the kings and generals of the armies dead.
But, she knew that Elend wouldn’t approve of something like that. He’d argue against using fear to motivate, even on one’s enemies. He’d point out that if she killed Straff or Cett, they’d just be replaced by other men, men even more hostile toward the city.
Even so, it seemed like such a brutal, logical answer. A piece of Vin itched to do it, if only to be doing something other than waiting and talking. She was not a person meant to be besieged.
No, she thought. That’s not my way. I don’t have to be like Kelsier was. Hard. Unyielding. I can be something better. Something that trusts in Elend’s way.
She shoved aside that part of her that wanted to just go assassinate both Straff and Cett, then turned her attention to other things. She focused on her bronze, watching for signs of Allomancy. Though she liked to jump around and “patrol” the area, the truth was that she was just as effective staying in one place. Assassins would be likely to scout the front gates, for that was where patrols began and the largest concentration of soldiers waited.