Still, she felt her mind wandering. There were forces moving in the world, and Vin wasn’t certain if she wanted to be part of them.
What is my place? she thought. She never felt that she’d discovered it—not back when she’d been playing as Valette Renoux, and not now, when she acted as the bodyguard to the man she loved. Nothing quite fit.
She closed her eyes, burning tin and bronze, feeling the touch of wind-borne mist on her skin. And, oddly, she felt something else, something very faint. In the distance she could sense Allomantic pulsings. They were so dull she almost missed them.
They were kind of like the pulses given off by the mist spirit. She could hear it, too, much closer. Atop a building out in the city. She was getting used to its presence, not that she had much choice. Still, as long as it only watched. …
It tried to kill one of the Hero’s companions, she thought. It knifed him, somehow. Or so the logbook claimed.
But … what was that pulsing in the far distance? It was soft … yet powerful. Like a faraway drum. She squeezed her eyes shut, focusing.
“Mistress?” OreSeur said, suddenly perking up.
Vin snapped her eyes open. “What?”
“Didn’t you hear that?”
Vin sat up. “Wha—” Then she picked it out. Footsteps outside the wall a short distance away. She leaned closer, noticing a dark figure walking down the street toward the keep. She’d been so focused on her bronze that she’d completely tuned out real sounds.
“Good job,” she said, approaching the edge of the guard station’s roof. Only then did she realize something important. OreSeur had taken the initiative: he’d alerted her of the danger without specifically being ordered to listen.
It was a small thing, but it seemed important.
“What do you think?” she asked quietly, watching the figure approach. He carried no torch, and he seemed very comfortable in the mists.
“Allomancer?” OreSeur asked, crouching beside her.
Vin shook her head. “There’s no Allomantic pulse.”
“So if he is one, he’s Mistborn,” OreSeur said. He still didn’t know she could pierce copperclouds. “He’s too tall to be your friend Zane. Be careful, Mistress.”
Vin nodded, dropped a coin, then threw herself into the mists. Behind her, OreSeur jumped down from the guardhouse, then leapt off the wall and dropped some twenty feet to the ground.
He certainly does like to push the limits of those bones, she thought. Of course, if a fall couldn’t kill him, then she could perhaps understand his courage.
She guided herself by Pulling on the nails in a wooden roof, landing just a short distance from the dark figure. She pulled out her knives and prepared her metals, making certain she had duralumin. Then she moved quietly across the street.
Surprise, she thought. Ham’s suggestion still left her nervous. She couldn’t always depend on surprise. She followed the man, studying him. He was tall—very tall. And in robes. In fact, those robes …
Vin stopped short. “Sazed?” she asked with shock.
The Terrisman turned, face now visible to her tin-enhanced eyes. He smiled. “Ah, Lady Vin,” he said with his familiar, wise voice. “I was beginning to wonder how long it would take you to find me. You are—”
He was cut off as Vin grabbed him in an excited embrace. “I didn’t think you were going to come back so soon!”
“I was not planning to return, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “But events are such that I could not avoid this place, I think. Come, we must speak with His Majesty. I have news of a rather disconcerting nature.”
Vin let go, looking up at his kindly face, noting the tiredness in his eyes. Exhaustion. His robes were dirty and smelled of ash and sweat. Sazed was usually very meticulous, even when he traveled. “What is it?” she asked.
“Problems, Lady Vin,” he said quietly. “Problems and troubles.”
The Terris rejected him, but he came to lead them.
23
“KING LEKAL CLAIMED THAT HE had twenty thousand of the creatures in his army,” Sazed said quietly.
Twenty thousand! Elend thought in shock. That was easily as dangerous as Straff’s fifty thousand men. Probably more so.
The table fell silent, and Elend glanced at the others. They sat in the palace kitchen, where a couple of cooks hurriedly prepared a late-night dinner for Sazed. The white room had an alcove at the side with a modest table for servant meals. Not surprisingly, Elend had never dined in the room, but Sazed had insisted that they not wake the servants it would require to prepare the main dining hall, though he apparently hadn’t eaten all day.
So, they sat on the low wooden benches, waiting while the cooks worked—far enough away that they couldn’t hear the hushed conversation in the alcove. Vin sat beside Elend, arm around his waist, her wolfhound kandra on the floor beside her. Breeze sat on the other side of him, looking disheveled; he’d been rather annoyed when they’d woken him. Ham had already been up, as had Elend himself. Another proposal had needed work—a letter he would send to the Assembly explaining that he was meeting with Straff informally, rather than in official parlay.
Dockson pulled over a stool, choosing a place away from Elend, as usual. Clubs sat slumped on his side of the bench, though Elend couldn’t tell if the posture was from weariness or from general Clubs grumpiness. That left only Spook, who sat on one of the serving tables a distance away, legs swinging over the side as he occasionally pilfered a tidbit of food from the annoyed cooks. He was, Elend noticed with amusement, flirting quite unsuccessfully with a drowsy kitchen girl.
And then there was Sazed. The Terrisman sat directly across from Elend with the calm sense of collectedness that only Sazed could manage. His robes were dusty, and he looked odd without his earrings—removed to not tempt thieves, Elend would guess—but his face and hands were clean. Even dirtied from travel, Sazed still gave off a sense of tidiness.
“I do apologize, Your Majesty,” Sazed said. “But I do not think that Lord Lekal is trustworthy. I realize that you were friends with him before the Collapse, but his current state seems somewhat … unstable.”
Elend nodded. “How is he controlling them, you think?”
Sazed shook his head. “I cannot guess, Your Majesty.”
Ham shook his head. “I have men in the guard who came up from the South after the Collapse. They were soldiers, serving in a garrison near a koloss camp. The Lord Ruler hadn’t been dead a day before the creatures went crazy. They attacked everything in the area—villages, garrisons, cities.”
“The same happened in the Northwest,” Breeze said. “Lord Cett’s lands were being flooded with refugees running from rogue koloss. Cett tried to recruit the koloss garrison near his own lands, and they followed him for a time. But then, something set them off, and they just attacked his army. He had to slaughter the whole lot—and lost nearly two thousand soldiers killing a small garrison of five hundred koloss.”
The group grew quiet again, the clacking and talking of the cooking staff sounding a short distance away. Five hundred koloss killed two thousand men, Elend thought. And the Jastes force contains twenty thousand of the beasts. Lord Ruler …