Vin nodded, but Kelsier didn’t turn away from her. “No, really. Tell me what you’re thinking, Vin. You’ve got a much larger enemy threatening you. What do you do?”
“Well,” she said slowly. “You don’t fight him, that’s for certain. Even if you won somehow, you’d be so hurt and broken that you couldn’t fight off anyone else.”
“Makes sense,” Dockson said. “But we might not have a choice. We have to get rid of that army somehow.”
“And if it just left the city?” she asked. “That would work too? If I had to deal with someone big, I’d try and distract him first, get him to leave me alone.”
Ham chuckled. “Good luck getting the Garrison to leave Luthadel. The Lord Ruler sends squads out on patrol sometimes, but the only time I know of the entire Garrison leaving was when that skaa rebellion broke out down in Courteline a half century ago.”
Dockson shook his head. “Vin’s idea is too good to dismiss that easily, I think. Really, we can’t fight the Garrison—at least, not while they’re entrenched. So, we need to get them to leave the city somehow.”
“Yes,” Breeze said, “but it would take a particular crisis to require involving the Garrison. If the problem weren’t threatening enough, the Lord Ruler wouldn’t send the entire Garrison. If it were too dangerous, he’d hunker down and send for his koloss.”
“A rebellion in one of the nearby cities?” Ham suggested.
“That leaves us with the same problem as before,” Kelsier said, shaking his head. “If we can’t get the skaa here to rebel, we’ll never get ones outside the city to do so.”
“What about a feint of some sort, then?” Ham asked. “We’re assuming that we’ll be able to raise a sizable group of soldiers. If they pretend to attack someplace nearby, perhaps the Lord Ruler would send the Garrison out to help.”
“I doubt he’d send them away to protect another city,” Breeze said. “Not if it left him exposed in Luthadel.”
The group fell silent, thinking again. Vin glanced around, then found Kelsier’s eyes on her.
“What?” he asked.
She squirmed a bit, glancing down. “How far away are the Pits of Hathsin?” she finally asked.
The crew paused.
Finally, Breeze laughed. “Oh, now that’s devious. The nobility don’t know that the Pits produce atium, so the Lord Ruler couldn’t make much of a fuss—not without revealing that there’s something very special about those Pits. That means no koloss.”
“They wouldn’t arrive in time anyway,” Ham said. “The Pits are only a couple of days away. If they were threatened, the Lord Ruler would have to respond quickly. The Garrison would be the only force in striking distance.”
Kelsier smiled, eyes alight. “And it wouldn’t take much of an army to threaten the Pits, either. A thousand men could do it. We send them to attack, then when the Garrison leaves, we march our second, larger force in and seize Luthadel itself. By the time the Garrison realized that they’d been duped, they wouldn’t be able to get back in time to stop us from taking the city walls.”
“Could we keep them, though?” Yeden asked apprehensively.
Ham nodded eagerly. “With ten thousand skaa, I could hold this city against the Garrison. The Lord Ruler would have to send for his koloss.”
“By then, we’d have the atium,” Kelsier said. “And the Great Houses won’t be in any position to stop us—they’ll be weakened and frail because of their internal fighting.”
Dockson was scribbling furiously on his pad. “We’ll need to use Yeden’s caves, then. They’re within striking distance of both our targets, and they’re closer to Luthadel than the Pits are. If our army left from there, it could get here before the Garrison could return from the Pits.”
Kelsier nodded.
Dockson continued to scribble. “I’ll have to start stockpiling supplies in those caves, maybe make a trip out to check conditions there.”
“And, how are we going to get the soldiers there?” Yeden asked. “That’s a week outside the city—and skaa aren’t allowed to travel on their own.”
“I’ve already got someone who can help us there,” Kelsier said, writing Attack Pits of Hathsin beneath Luthadel Garrison on his board. “I have a friend that can give us a front to run canal boats to the north.”
“Assuming,” Yeden said, “you can even make good on your first and primary promise. I paid you to gather me an army. Ten thousand men is a great number, but I’ve still to see an adequate explanation of how you’re going to raise them. I’ve already told you the kinds of problems we’ve had trying to recruit in Luthadel.”
“We won’t need the general population to support us,” Kelsier said. “Just a small percentage of them—there are nearly a million workers in and around Luthadel. This should actually be the easiest part of the plan, since we happen to be in the presence of one of the world’s greatest Soothers. Breeze, I’m counting on you and your Allomancers to force us up a nice selection of recruits.”
Breeze sipped his wine. “Kelsier, my good man. I wish you wouldn’t use words like ‘force’ in reference to my talents. I simply encourage people.”
“Well, can you encourage us up an army?” Dockson asked.
“How much time do I have?” Breeze asked.
“A year,” Kelsier said. “We’ll plan this to go off next fall. Assuming the Lord Ruler does gather his forces to attack Yeden once we take the city, we might as well make him do it in the winter.”
“Ten thousand men,” Breeze said with a smile, “gathered from a resistant population in less than a year. It would certainly be a challenge.”
Kelsier chuckled. “From you, that’s as good as a yes. Start in Luthadel, then move to the surrounding cities. We need people who are close enough to gather at the caves.”
Breeze nodded.
“We’ll also need weapons and supplies,” Ham said. “And we’ll need to train the men.”
“I’ve already got a plan to get weapons,” Kelsier said. “Can you find some men to do the training?”
Ham paused thoughtfully. “Probably. I know some skaa soldiers who fought in one of the Lord Ruler’s Suppression Campaigns.”
Yeden paled. “Traitors!”
Ham shrugged. “Most of them aren’t proud of what they did,” he said. “But most of them also like to eat. It’s a hard world, Yeden.”
“My people will never work with such men,” Yeden said.
“They’ll have to,” Kelsier said sternly. “A large number of skaa rebellions fail because their men are poorly trained. We’re going to give you an army of well-equipped, well-fed men—and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you get them slaughtered because they were never taught which end of the sword to hold.”
Kelsier paused, then eyed Ham. “However, I do suggest that you find men who are bitter against the Final Empire for what it forced them to do. I don’t trust men whose loyalty only goes as far as the boxings in their pockets.”