“No I didn’t,” Vin said. “I just wanted to hurt them. I wanted to scare them and make them leave you alone. It sounds childish, but that’s how I felt.”
“It’s not childish, Vin,” Elend said. “It was good strategy. You gave our enemies a show of force. You frightened away one of our major opponents, and now my father will be even more afraid to attack. You’ve bought us more time!”
“Bought it with the lives of hundreds of men.”
“Enemy soldiers who marched into our city,” Elend said. “Men who were protecting a tyrant who oppresses his people.”
“That’s the same rationale Kelsier used,” Vin said quietly, “when he killed noblemen and their guards. He said they were upholding the Final Empire, so they deserved to die. He frightened me.”
Elend didn’t know what to say to that.
“It was like he thought himself a god,” Vin whispered. “Taking life, giving life, where he saw fit. I don’t want to be like him, Elend. But, everything seems to be pushing me in that direction.”
“I …” You’re not like him, he wanted to say. It was true, but the words wouldn’t come out. They rang hollow to him.
Instead, he pulled Vin close, her shoulder up against his chest, head beneath his chin. “I wish I knew the right things to say, Vin,” he whispered. “Seeing you like this makes every protective instinct inside of me twist. I want to make it better—I want to fix everything—but I don’t know how. Tell me what to do. Just tell me how I can help!”
She resisted his embrace a little at first, but then sighed quietly and slid her arms around him, holding him tightly. “You can’t help with this,” she said softly. “I have to do it alone. There are … decisions I have to make.”
He nodded. “You’ll make the right ones, Vin.”
“You don’t even know what I’m deciding.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I know I can’t help—I couldn’t even hold on to my own throne. You’re ten times as capable as I am.”
She squeezed his arm. “Don’t say things like that. Please?”
He frowned at the tension in her voice, then nodded. “All right. But, either way, I trust you, Vin. Make your decisions—I’ll support you.”
She nodded, relaxing a bit beneath his arms. “I think …” she said. “I think I have to leave Luthadel.”
“Leave? And go where?”
“North,” she said. “To Terris.”
Elend sat back, resting against the wooden wall. Leave? he thought with a twisting feeling. Is this what I’ve earned by being so distracted lately?
Have I lost her?
And yet, he’d just told her that he’d support her decisions. “If you feel you have to go, Vin,” he found himself saying, “then you should do so.”
“If I were to leave, would you go with me?”
“Now?”
Vin nodded, head rubbing his chest.
“No,” he finally said. “I couldn’t leave Luthadel, not with those armies still out there.”
“But the city rejected you.”
“I know,” he said, sighing. “But … I can’t leave them, Vin. They rejected me, but I won’t abandon them.”
Vin nodded again, and something told him this was the answer she had expected.
Elend smiled. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”
“Hopeless,” she said softly, sighing as she finally pulled away from him. She seemed so tired. Outside the room, Elend could hear footsteps. OreSeur appeared a moment later, poking his head into the hidden chamber.
“Your guards are growing restless, Your Majesty,” he said to Elend. “They will soon come looking for you.”
Elend nodded, shuffling over to the exit. Once in the hallway, he offered a hand to help Vin out. She took the hand, crawling out, then stood and dusted off her clothing—her typical shirt and trousers.
Will she ever go back to dresses now? he wondered.
“Elend,” she said, fishing in a pocket. “Here, you can spend this, if you want.”
She opened up her hand, dropping a bead into his hand.
“Atium?” he asked incredulously. “Where did you get it?”
“From a friend,” she said.
“And you didn’t burn it last night?” Elend asked. “When you were fighting all those soldiers?”
“No,” Vin said. “I swallowed it, but I didn’t end up needing it, so I forced it back up.”
Lord Ruler! Elend thought. I didn’t even consider that she didn’t have atium. What could she have done if she’d burned that bit? He looked up at her. “Some reports say that there’s another Mistborn in the city.”
“There is. Zane.”
Elend dropped the bead back into her hand. “Then keep this. You might need it to fight him.”
“I doubt that,” Vin said quietly.
“Keep it anyway,” Elend said. “This is worth a small fortune—but we’d need a very large fortune to make any difference now. Besides, who would buy it? If I used it to bribe Straff or Cett, they’d only become more certain I’m holding atium against them.”
Vin nodded, then glanced at OreSeur. “Keep this,” she said, handing the bead toward him. “It’s big enough that another Allomancer could pull it off me if he wanted.”
“I will guard it with my life, Mistress,” OreSeur said, his shoulder splitting open to make room for the bit of metal.
Vin turned to join Elend as they walked down the steps, moving to meet with the guards below.
I know what I have memorized. I know what is now repeated by the other Worldbringers.
45
“THE HERO OF AGES WON’T be Terris,” Tindwyl said, scribbling a note at the bottom of their list.
“We knew that already,” Sazed said. “From the logbook.”
“Yes,” Tindwyl said, “but Alendi’s account was only a reference—a thirdhand mention of the effects of a prophecy. I found someone quoting the prophecy itself.”
“Truly?” Sazed asked, excited. “Where?”
“The biography of Helenntion,” Tindwyl said. “One of the last survivors of the Council of Khlennium.”
“Write it for me,” Sazed said, scooting his chair a bit closer to hers. He had to blink a few times as she wrote, his head clouding for a moment from fatigue.
Stay alert! he told himself. There isn’t much time left. Not much at all. …
Tindwyl was doing a little better than he, but her wakefulness was obviously beginning to run out, for she was starting to droop. He’d taken a quick nap during the night, rolled up on her floor, but she had carried on. As far as he could tell, she’d been awake for over a week straight.
There was much talk of the Rabzeen, during those days, Tindwyl wrote. Some said he would come to fight the Conqueror. Others said he was the Conqueror. Helenntion didn’t make his thoughts on the matter known to me. The Rabzeen is said to be “He who is not of his people, yet fulfills all of their wishes.” If this is the case, then perhaps the Conqueror is the one. He is said to have been of Khlennium.