“Your Majesty …” Noorden said slowly. “Do you think, maybe, that we should just let Cett take the throne? I mean, how bad could he be?”
Elend stopped. One of the reasons he employed the former obligator was because of Noorden’s different viewpoint. He wasn’t a skaa, nor was he a high nobleman. He wasn’t a thief. He was just a scholarly little man who had joined the Ministry because it had offered an option other than becoming a merchant.
To him, the Lord Ruler’s death had been a catastrophe that had destroyed his entire way of life. He wasn’t a bad man, but he had no real understanding of the plight of the skaa.
“What do you think of the laws I’ve made, Noorden?” Elend asked.
“They’re brilliant, Your Majesty,” Noorden said. “Keen representations of the ideals spoken of by old philosophers, along with a strong element of modern realism.”
“Will Cett respect these laws?” Elend asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t ever really met the man.”
“What do your instincts tell you?”
Noorden hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “He isn’t the type of man who rules by law. He just does what he wants.”
“He would bring only chaos,” Elend said. “Look at the information we have from his homeland and the places he’s conquered. They are in turmoil. He’s left a patchwork of half alliances and promises—threats of invasion acting as the thread that—barely—holds it all together. Giving him rule of Luthadel would just set us up for another collapse.”
Noorden scratched his cheek, then nodded thoughtfully and turned back to his reading.
I can convince him, Elend thought. If only I could do the same for the Assemblymen.
But Noorden was a scholar; he thought the way Elend did. Logical facts were enough for him, and a promise of stability was more powerful than one of wealth. The Assembly was a different beast entirely. The noblemen wanted a return to what they’d known before; the merchants saw an opportunity to grab the titles they’d always envied; and the skaa were simply worried about a brutal slaughter.
And yet, even those were generalizations. Lord Penrod saw himself as the city’s patriarch—the ranking nobleman, the one who needed to bring a measure of conservative temperance to their problems. Kinaler, one of the steelworkers, was worried that the Central Dominance needed a kinship with the kingdoms around it, and saw an alliance with Cett as the best way to protect Luthadel in the long run.
Each of the twenty-three Assemblymen had their own thoughts, goals, and problems. That was what Elend had intended; ideas proliferated in such an environment. He just hadn’t expected so many of their ideas to contradict his own.
“You were right, Ham,” Elend said, turning.
Ham looked up, raising an eyebrow.
“At the beginning of this all, you and the others wanted to make an alliance with one of the armies—give them the city in exchange for keeping it safe from the other armies.”
“I remember,” Ham said.
“Well, that’s what the people want,” Elend said. “With or without my consent, it appears they’re going to give the city to Cett. We should have just gone with your plan.”
“Your Majesty?” Sazed asked quietly.
“Yes?”
“My apologies, but it is not your duty to do what the people want.”
Elend blinked. “You sound like Tindwyl.”
“I have known few people as wise as she, Your Majesty,” Sazed said, glancing at her.
“Well, I disagree with both of you,” Elend said. “A ruler should only lead by the consent of the people he rules.”
“I do not disagree with that, Your Majesty,” Sazed said. “Or, at least, I do believe in the theory of it. Regardless, I still do not believe that your duty is to do as the people wish. Your duty is to lead as best you can, following the dictates of your conscience. You must be true, Your Majesty, to the man you wish to become. If that man is not whom the people wish to have lead them, then they will choose someone else.”
Elend paused. Well, of course. If I shouldn’t be an exception to my own laws, I shouldn’t be an exception to my own ethics, either. Sazed’s words were really just a rephrasing of things Tindwyl had said about trusting oneself, but Sazed’s explanation seemed a better one. A more honest one.
“Trying to guess what people wish of you will only lead to chaos, I think,” Sazed said. “You cannot please them all, Elend Venture.”
The study’s small ventilation window bumped open, and Vin squeezed through, pulling in a puff of mist behind her. She closed the window, then surveyed the room.
“More?” she asked incredulously. “You found more books?”
“Of course,” Elend said.
“How many of those things have people written?” she asked with exasperation.
Elend opened his mouth, then paused as he saw the twinkle in her eye. Finally, he just sighed. “You’re hopeless,” he said, turning back to his letters.
He heard rustling from behind, and a moment later Vin landed on one of his stacks of books, somehow managing to balance atop it. Her mistcloak tassels hung down around her, smudging the ink on his letter.
Elend sighed.
“Oops,” Vin said, pulling back the mistcloak. “Sorry.”
“Is it really necessary to leap around like that all the time, Vin?” Elend asked.
Vin jumped down. “Sorry,” she repeated, biting her lip. “Sazed says it’s because Mistborn like to be up high, so we can see everything that’s going on.”
Elend nodded, continuing the letter. He preferred them to be in his own hand, but he’d need to have a scribe rewrite this one. He shook his head. So much to do. …
Vin watched Elend scribble. Sazed sat reading, as did one of Elend’s scribes—the obligator. She eyed the man, and he shrank down a little in his seat. He knew that she’d never trusted him. Priests shouldn’t be cheerful.
She was excited to tell Elend what she’d discovered about Demoux, but she hesitated. There were too many people around, and she didn’t really have any evidence—just her instincts. So, she held herself back, looking over the stacks of books.
There was a dull quiet in the room. Tindwyl sat with her eyes slightly glazed; she was probably studying some ancient biography in her mind. Even Ham was reading, though he flipped from book to book, hopping topics. Vin felt as if she should be studying something, too. She thought of the notes she’d been making about the Deepness and the Hero of Ages, but couldn’t bring herself to get them out.
She couldn’t tell him about Demoux, yet, but there was something else she’d discovered.
“Elend,” she said quietly. “I have something to tell you.”
“Humm?”
“I heard the servants talking when OreSeur and I got dinner earlier,” Vin said. “Some people they know have been sick lately—a lot of them. I think that someone might be fiddling with our supplies.”
“Yes,” Elend said, still writing. “I know. Several wells in the city have been poisoned.”
“They have?”
He nodded. “Didn’t I tell you when you checked on me earlier? That’s where Ham and I were.”