Mistborn.
She shattered the window with a slap. The soldiers that waited beyond jumped backward, spinning. One wore a metal belt buckle. He died first. The other twenty barely knew how to react as the buckle buzzed through their ranks, twisting between Vin’s Pushes and Pulls. They had been trained, instructed, and perhaps even tested against Allomancers.
But they had never fought Vin.
Men screamed and fell, Vin ripping through their ranks with only the buckle as a weapon. Before the force of her pewter, tin, steel, and iron, the possible use of atium seemed an incredible waste. Even without it, she was a terrible weapon—one that, until this moment, even she hadn’t understood.
Mistborn.
The last man fell. Vin stood among them, feeling a numbing sense of satisfaction. She let the belt buckle slip from her fingers. It hit carpet. She stood in a room that wasn’t unadorned as the rest of the building had been; there was furniture here, and there were some minor decorations. Perhaps Elend’s clearing crews hadn’t gotten this far before Cett’s arrival, or perhaps he’d simply brought some of his own comforts.
Behind her was the stairwell. In front of her was a fine wooden wall set with a door—the inner apartments. Vin stepped forward quietly, mistcloak rustling as she Pulled four lamps off the brackets behind her. They whipped forward, and she sidestepped, letting them crash into the wall. Fire blossomed across splattered oil, billowing across the wall, the force of the lamps breaking the door on its hinges. She raised a hand, Pushing it fully open.
Fire dripped around her as she stepped into the room beyond. The richly decorated chamber was quiet, and eerily empty save for two figures. Cett sat in a simple wooden chair, bearded, sloppily dressed, and looking very, very tired. Cett’s young son stepped in between Cett and Vin. The boy held a dueling cane.
So, which one is Mistborn?
The boy swung. Vin caught the weapon, then shoved the boy to the side. He crashed into the wooden wall, then slumped to the ground. Vin eyed him.
“Leave Gneorndin alone, woman,” Cett said. “Do what you came to do.”
Vin turned toward the nobleman. She remembered her frustration, her rage, her cool, icy anger. She stepped forward and grabbed Cett by the front of his suit. “Fight me,” she said, and tossed him backward.
He slammed against the back wall, then slumped to the ground. Vin prepared her atium, but he did not rise. He simply rolled to the side, coughing.
Vin walked over, pulling him up by one arm. He balled a fist, trying to strike her, but he was pathetically weak. She let the blows bounce off her side.
“Fight me,” she commanded, tossing him to the side. He tumbled across the floor—head hitting hard—and came to rest against the burning wall, a trickle of blood running from his brow. He didn’t rise.
Vin gritted her teeth, striding forward.
“Leave him alone!” The boy, Gneorndin, stumbled in front of Cett, raising his dueling cane in a wavering hand.
Vin paused, cocking her head. The boy’s brow was streaked with sweat, and he was unsteady on his feet. She looked into his eyes, and saw absolute terror therein. This boy was no Mistborn. Yet, he held his ground. Pathetically, hopelessly, he stood before the body of the fallen Cett.
“Step aside, son,” Cett said in a tired voice. “There is nothing you can do here.”
The boy started to shake, then began to weep.
Tears, Vin thought, feeling an oddly surreal feeling cloud her mind. She reached up, surprised to find wet streaks on her own cheeks.
“You have no Mistborn,” she whispered.
Cett had struggled to a half-reclining position, and he looked into her eyes.
“No Allomancers faced us this night,” she said. “You used them all on the assassination attempt in the Assembly Hall?”
“The only Allomancers I had, I sent against you months ago,” Cett said with a sigh. “They were all I ever had, my only hope of killing you. Even they weren’t from my family. My whole line has been corrupted by skaa blood—Allrianne is the only Allomancer to be born to us for centuries.”
“You came to Luthadel …”
“Because Straff would have come for me eventually,” Cett said. “My best chance, lass, was to kill you early on. That’s why I sent them all against you. Failing that, I knew I had to try and take this damn city and its atium so I could buy myself some Allomancers. Didn’t work.”
“You could have just offered us an alliance.”
Cett chuckled, pulling himself up to a sitting position. “It doesn’t work that way in real politics. You take, or you get taken. Besides, I’ve always been a gambling man.” He looked up at her, meeting her eyes. “Do what you came to,” he repeated.
Vin shivered. She couldn’t feel her tears. She could barely feel anything.
Why? Why can’t I make sense of anything anymore?
The room began to shake. Vin spun, looking toward the back wall. The wood there quivered and spasmed like a dying animal. Nails began to pop, ripping backward through the paneling; then the entire wall burst away from Vin. Burning boards, splinters, nails, and shingles sprayed in the air, flying around a man in black. Zane stood sideways in the room beyond, death strewn at his feet, hands at his sides.
Red streamed from the tips of his fingers, running in a steady drip. He looked up through the burning remnants of the wall, smiling. Then he stepped toward Cett’s room.
“No!” Vin said, dashing at him.
Zane paused, surprised. He stepped to the side, easily dodging Vin, walking toward Cett and the boy.
“Zane, leave them!” Vin said, turning toward him, Pushing herself in a skid across the room. She reached for his arm. The black fabric glistened wet with blood that was only his own.
Zane dodged. He turned toward her, curious. She reached for him, but he moved out of the way with supernatural ease, outstepping her like a master swordsman facing a young boy.
Atium, Vin thought. He probably burned it this entire time. But, he didn’t need it to fight those men … they didn’t have a chance against us anyway.
“Please,” she asked. “Leave them.”
Zane turned toward Cett, who sat expectant. The boy was at his side, trying to pull his father away.
Zane looked back at her, head cocked.
“Please,” Vin repeated.
Zane frowned. “He still controls you, then,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I thought, maybe, if you could fight and see just how powerful you were, you’d shake yourself free of Elend’s grip. I guess I was wrong.”
Then he turned his back on Cett and walked out through the hole he had made. Vin followed quietly, feet crunching splinters of wood as she slowly withdrew, leaving a broken keep, shattered army, and humiliated lord behind.
But must not even a madman rely on his own mind, his own experience, rather than that of others?
44
IN THE COLD CALM OF morning, Breeze watched a very disheartening sight: Cett’s army withdrawing.
Breeze shivered, breath puffing as he turned toward Clubs. Most people wouldn’t have been able to read beyond the sneer on the squat general’s face. But Breeze saw more: he saw the tension in the taut skin around Clubs’s eyes, he noticed the way that Clubs tapped his finger against the frosty stone wall. Clubs was not a nervous man. The motions meant something.