OreSeur nodded. Vin turned, leaning against the desk, watching him and thinking of what he’d said earlier. Expression of hope. …
“The kandra have a religion, don’t they?” Vin guessed.
OreSeur turned sharply. That was enough of a confirmation.
“Do the Keepers know of it?” Vin asked.
OreSeur stood on his hind legs, paws against the windowsill. “I should not have spoken.”
“You needn’t be afraid,” Vin said. “I won’t give away your secret. But, I don’t see why it has to be secret anymore.”
“It is a kandra thing, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “It wouldn’t be of any interest to anyone else.”
“Of course it would,” Vin said. “Don’t you see, OreSeur? The Keepers believe that the last independent religion was destroyed by the Lord Ruler centuries ago. If the kandra managed to keep one, that suggests that the Lord Ruler’s theological control of the Final Empire wasn’t absolute. That has to mean something.”
OreSeur paused, cocking his head, as if he hadn’t considered such things.
His theological control wasn’t absolute? Vin thought, a bit surprised at the words. Lord Ruler—I’m starting to sound like Sazed and Elend. I’ve been studying too much lately.
“Regardless, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “I’d rather you didn’t mention this to your Keeper friends. They would probably begin asking discomforting questions.”
“They’re like that,” Vin said with a nod. “What is it your people have prophecies about, anyway?”
“I don’t think you want to know, Mistress.”
Vin smiled. “They talk about overthrowing us, don’t they?”
OreSeur sat down, and she could almost see a flush on his canine face. “My … people have dealt with the Contract for a great long time, Mistress. I know it is difficult for you to understand why we would live under this burden, but we find it necessary. Yet, we do dream of a day when it may not be.”
“When all the humans are subject to you?” Vin asked.
OreSeur looked away. “When they’re all dead, actually.”
“Wow.”
“The prophecies are not literal, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “They’re metaphors—expressions of hope. Or, at least, that is how I have always seen them. Perhaps your Terris prophecies are the same? Expressions of a belief that if the people were in danger, their gods would send a Hero to protect them? In this case, the vagueness would be intentional—and rational. The prophecies were never meant to mean someone specific, but more to speak of a general feeling. A general hope.”
If the prophecies weren’t specific, why could only she sense the drumming beats?
Stop it, she told herself. You’re jumping to conclusions. “All the humans dead,” she said. “How do we die off? The kandra kill us?”
“Of course not,” OreSeur said. “We honor our Contract, even in religion. The stories say that you’ll kill yourselves off. You’re of Ruin, after all, while the kandra are of Preservation. You’re … actually supposed to destroy the world, I believe. Using the koloss as your pawns.”
“You actually sound sorry for them,” Vin noted with amusement.
“The kandra actually tend to think well of the koloss, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “There is a bond between us; we both understand what it is to be slaves, we both are outsiders to the culture of the Final Empire, we both—”
He paused.
“What?” Vin asked.
“Might I speak no further?” OreSeur asked. “I have said too much already. You put me off balance, Mistress.”
Vin shrugged. “We all need secrets.” She glanced toward the door. “Though there’s one I still need to figure out.”
OreSeur hopped down from his chair, joining her as she strode out the door.
There was still a spy somewhere in the palace. She’d been forced to ignore that fact for far too long.
Elend looked deeply into the well. The dark pit—wide-mouthed to accommodate the comings and goings of numerous skaa—seemed a large mouth opening up, stone lips spread and preparing to swallow him down. Elend glanced to the side, where Ham stood speaking with a group of healers.
“We first noticed when so many people came to us complaining of diarrhea and abdominal pains,” the healer said. “The symptoms were unusually strong, my lord. We’ve … already lost several to the malady.”
Ham glanced at Elend, frowning.
“Everyone who grew sick lived in this area,” the healer continued. “And drew their water from this well or another in the next square.”
“Have you brought this to the attention of Lord Penrod and the Assembly?” Elend asked.
“Um, no, my lord. We figured that you …”
I’m not king anymore, Elend thought. However, he couldn’t say the words. Not to this man, looking for help.
“I’ll take care of it,” Elend said, sighing. “You may return to your patients.”
“They are filling our clinic, my lord,” he said.
“Then appropriate one of the empty noble mansions,” Elend said. “There are plenty of those. Ham, send him with some of my guard to help move the sick and prepare the building.”
Ham nodded, waving over a soldier, telling him to gather twenty on-duty men from the palace to meet with the healer. The healer smiled, looking relieved, and bowed to Elend as he left.
Ham walked up, joining Elend beside the well. “Coincidence?”
“Hardly,” Elend said, gripping the edge if the well with frustrated fingers. “The question is, which one poisoned it?”
“Cett just came into the city,” Ham said, rubbing his chin. “Would have been easy to send out some soldiers to covertly drop in the poison.”
“Seems more like something my father would do,” Elend said. “Something to increase our tension, to get back at us for playing him for a fool in his camp. Plus, he’s got that Mistborn who could have easily placed the poison.”
Of course, Cett had had this same thing happen to him—Breeze poisoning his water supply back before he reached the city. Elend ground his teeth. There was really no way to know which one was behind the attack.
Either way, the poisoned wells meant trouble. There were others in the city, of course, but they were just as vulnerable. The people might have to start relying on the river for their water, and it was far less healthy, its waters muddy and polluted by waste from both the army camps and the city itself.
“Set guards around these wells,” Elend said, waving a hand. “Board them up, post warnings, and then tell the healers to watch with particular care for other outbreaks.”
We just keep getting wound tighter and tighter, he thought as Ham nodded. At this rate, we’ll snap long before winter ends.
After a detour for a late dinner—where some talk about servants getting sick left her concerned—Vin went in and checked on Elend, who had just returned from walking the city with Ham. After that, Vin and OreSeur continued their original quest: that of finding Dockson.
They located him in the palace library. The room had once been Straff’s personal study; Elend seemed to find the room’s new purpose amusing for some reason.