She’d recognized the assassin at the assembly, and he had been from Cett’s retinue, so she knew that Zane was telling the truth about at least one thing. Plus, Cett had precedent for sending Allomancer assassins: he had sent the ones months ago, when Vin had used the last of her atium. Zane had saved her life during that fight.
She clenched her fists, frustration biting at her chest. If he’s right, then Demoux is dead, and an enemy kandra has been in the palace, spending his days just steps away from Elend. Even if Zane lies, we still have a tyrant inside the city, another without. A force of koloss salivating over the people. And Elend doesn’t need me.
Because there’s nothing I can do.
“I see your frustration,” Zane whispered, stepping up beside Elend’s bed, looking down at his sleeping brother. “You keep listening to him. You want to protect him, but he won’t let you.” Zane looked up, meeting her eyes. She saw an implication in them.
There was something she could do—the thing a part of her had wanted to do from the beginning. The thing she’d been trained to do.
“Cett almost killed the man you love,” Zane said. “Your Elend does as he wishes. Well, let us do as you wish.” He looked into her eyes. “We have been someone else’s knives for too long. Let’s show Cett why he should fear us.”
Her fury, her frustration at the siege, yearned to do as Zane suggested. Yet, she wavered, her thoughts in chaos. She had killed—killed well—just a short time before, and it had terrified her. Yet … Elend could take risks—insane risks, traveling into an army of koloss on his own. It almost felt like a betrayal. She had worked so hard to protect him, straining herself, exposing herself. Then, just a few days later, he wandered alone into a camp full of monsters.
She gritted her teeth. Part of her whispered that if Elend wouldn’t be reasonable and stay out of danger, she’d just have to go and make sure the threats against him were removed.
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
Zane nodded. “Realize this,” he said. “We can’t just assassinate him. Another warlord will take his place, and take his armies. We have to attack hard. We have to hit that army so soundly that whoever takes over for Cett is so frightened that he withdraws.”
Vin paused, looking away from him, nails biting into her own palms.
“Tell me,” he said, stepping closer to her. “What would your Kelsier tell you to do?”
The answer was simple. Kelsier would never have gotten into this situation. He had been a hard man, a man with little tolerance for any who threatened those he loved. Cett and Straff wouldn’t have lasted a single night at Luthadel without feeling Kelsier’s knife.
There was a part of her that had always been awed by his powerful, utilitarian brutality.
There are two ways to stay safe, Reen’s voice whispered to her. Either be so quiet and harmless that people ignore you, or be so dangerous that they’re terrified of you.
She met Zane’s eyes and nodded. He smiled, then moved over and jumped out the window.
“OreSeur,” she whispered once he was gone. “My atium.”
The dog paused, then padded up to her, his shoulder splitting. “Mistress …” he said slowly. “Do not do this.”
She glanced at Elend. She couldn’t protect him from everything. But she could do something.
She took the atium from OreSeur. Her hands no longer shook. She felt cold.
“Cett has threatened all that I love,” she whispered. “He will soon know that there is something in this world more deadly than his assassins. Something more powerful than his army. Something more terrifying than the Lord Ruler himself.
“And I am coming for him.”
Mist duty, they called it.
Every soldier had to take his turn, standing in the dark with a sputtering torch. Someone had to watch. Had to stare into those shifting, deceitful mists and wonder if anything was out there. Watching.
Wellen knew there was.
He knew it, but he never spoke. Soldiers laughed at such superstitions. They had to go out in the mists. They were used to it. They knew better than to fear it.
Supposedly.
“Hey,” Jarloux said, stepping up to the edge of the wall. “Wells, do you see something out there?”
Of course he didn’t. They stood with several dozen others on the perimeter of Keep Hasting, watching from the outer keep wall—a low fortification, perhaps fifteen feet tall, that surrounded the grounds. Their job was to look for anything suspicious in the mists.
“Suspicious.” That was the word they used. It was all suspicious. It was mist. That shifting darkness, that void made of chaos and hatred. Wellen had never trusted it. They were out there. He knew.
Something moved in the darkness. Wellen stepped back, staring into the void, his heart beginning to flutter, hands beginning to sweat as he raised his spear.
“Yeah,” Jarloux said, squinting. “I swear, I see …”
It came, as Wellen had always known it would. Like a thousand gnats on a hot day, like a hail of arrows shot by an entire army. Coins sprayed across the battlements. A wall of shimmering death, hundreds of trails zipping through the mists. Metal rang against stone, and men cried out in pain.
Wellen stepped back, raising his spear, as Jarloux yelled the alarm. Jarloux died halfway through the call, a coin snapping through his mouth, throwing out a chip of tooth as it proceeded out the back of his head. Jarloux collapsed, and Wellen stumbled away from the corpse, knowing that it was too late to run.
The coins stopped. Silence in the air. Men lay dying or groaning at his feet.
Then they came. Two dark shadows of death in the night. Ravens in the mist. They flew over Wellen with a rustle of black cloth.
And they left him behind, alone amid the corpses of what had once been a squad of forty men.
Vin landed in a crouch, bare feet on the cool stone cobbles of the Hasting courtyard. Zane landed upright, standing—as always—with his towering air of self-confidence.
Pewter blazed within her, giving her muscles the taut energy of a thousand excited moments. She easily ignored the pain of her wounded side. Her sole bead of atium rested in her stomach, but she didn’t use it. Not yet. Not unless she was right, and Cett proved to be Mistborn.
“We’ll go from the bottom up,” Zane said.
Vin nodded. The central tower of Keep Hasting was many stories high, and they couldn’t know which one Cett was on. If they started low, he wouldn’t be able to escape.
Besides. Going up would be more difficult. The energy in Vin’s limbs cried for release. She’d waited, remained coiled, for far too long. She was tired of weakness, tired of being restrained. She had spent months as a knife, held immobile at someone’s throat.
It was time to cut.
The two dashed forward. Torches began to light around them as Cett’s men—those who camped in the courtyard—awakened to the alarm. Tents unfurled and collapsed, men yelling in surprise, looking for the army that assailed them. They could only wish that they were so lucky.
Vin jumped straight up into the air, and Zane spun, throwing a bag of coins around him. Hundreds of bits of copper sparkled in the air beneath her—a peasant’s fortune. Vin landed with a rustle, and they both Pushed, their power throwing the coins outward. The torch-sparkled missiles ripped through the camp, dropping surprised, drowsy men.