She felt herself begin to slip into unconsciousness.
But people were screaming. She could hear them—had heard them before. Elend’s city … Elend’s people … dying. Her friends were out there somewhere. Friends that Kelsier had trusted her to protect.
She gritted her teeth, shoving aside the exhaustion for a moment longer, struggling up to her feet. She looked through the mists, toward the phantom sounds of terrified people. She began to dash toward them.
She couldn’t jump; she was out of steel. She couldn’t even run very fast, but as she forced her body to move, it responded better and better, fighting off the dull numbness that she’d earned from relying on pewter so long.
She burst out of an alleyway, skidding in the snow, and found a small group of people running before a koloss raiding party. There were six of the beasts, small ones, but still dangerous. Even as Vin watched, one of the creatures cut down an elderly man, slicing him nearly in two. Another picked up a small girl, slamming her against the side of a building.
Vin dashed forward, past the fleeing skaa, whipping out her daggers. She still felt exhausted, but adrenaline helped her somewhat. She had to keep moving. Keep going. To stop was to die.
Several of the beasts turned toward her, eager to fight. One swung for her, and Vin let herself slide in the slush—slipping closer to him—before cutting the back of his leg. He howled in pain as her knife got caught in his baggy skin. She managed to yank it free as a second creature swung.
I feel so slow! she thought with frustration, barely sliding to her feet before backing away from the creature’s reach. His sword sprayed chill water across her, and she jumped forward, planting a dagger in the creature’s eye.
Suddenly thankful for the times Ham had made her practice without Allomancy, she caught the side of a building to steady herself in the slush. Then she threw herself forward, shouldering the koloss with the wounded eye—he was clawing at the dagger and yelling—into his companions. The koloss with the young girl turned, shocked, as Vin rammed her other dagger into his back. He didn’t drop, but he did let go of the child.
Lord Ruler, these things are tough! she thought, cloak whipping as she grabbed the child and dashed away. Especially when you’re not tough yourself. I need some more metals.
The girl in Vin’s arms cringed as a koloss howl sounded, and Vin spun, flaring her tin to keep herself from falling unconscious from her fatigue. The creatures weren’t following, however—they were arguing over a bit of clothing the dead man had been wearing. The howl sounded again, and this time, Vin realized, it had come from another direction.
People began to scream again. Vin looked up, only to find those she’d just rescued facing down an even larger group of koloss.
“No!” Vin said, raising a hand. But, they’d run far while she’d been fighting. She wouldn’t even have been able to see them, save for her tin. As it was, she was able to see painfully well as the creatures began to lay into the small group with their thick-bladed swords.
“No!” Vin screamed again, the deaths startling her, shocking her, standing as a reminder of all the deaths she’d been unable to prevent.
“No. No! No!”
Pewter, gone. Steel, gone. Iron, gone. She had nothing.
Or … she had one thing. Not even pausing to think on what prompted her to use it, she threw a duralumin-enhanced Soothing at the beasts.
It was as if her mind slammed into Something. And then, that Something shattered. Vin skidded to a halt, shocked, child still in her arms as the koloss stopped, frozen in their horrific act of slaughter.
What did I just do? she thought, tracing through her muddled mind, trying to connect why she had reacted as she had. Was it because she had been frustrated?
No. She knew that the Lord Ruler had built the Inquisitors with a weakness: Remove a particular spike from their back, and they’d die. He had also built the kandra with a weakness. The koloss had to have a weakness, too.
TenSoon called the koloss … his cousins, she thought.
She stood upright, the dark street suddenly quiet save for the whimpering skaa. The koloss waited, and she could feel herself in their minds. As if they were an extension of her own body, the same thing she had felt when she’d taken control of TenSoon’s body.
Cousins indeed. The Lord Ruler had built the koloss with a weakness—the same weakness as the kandra. He had given himself a way to keep them in check.
And suddenly she understood how he’d controlled them all those long years.
Sazed stood at the head of his large band of refugees, snow and ash—the two now indistinguishable in the misty darkness—falling around him. Ham sat to one side, looking drowsy. He’d lost too much blood; a man without pewter would have died by now. Someone had given Sazed a cloak, but he had used it to wrap the comatose Breeze. Even though be barely tapped his brassmind for warmth, Sazed himself wasn’t cold.
Maybe he was just getting too numb to care.
He held two hands up before him, forming fists, ten rings sparkling against the light of the group’s single lantern. Koloss approached from the dark alleyways, their forms huddled shadows in the night.
Sazed’s soldiers backed away. There was little hope left in them. Sazed alone stood in the quiet snow, a spindly, bald scholar, nearly naked. He, the one who preached the religions of the fallen. He, who had given up hope at the end. He, who should have had the most faith of all.
Ten rings. A few minutes of power. A few minutes of life.
He waited as the koloss gathered. The beasts grew strangely silent in the night. They stopped approaching. They stood still, a line of dark, moundlike silhouettes in the night.
Why don’t they attack! Sazed thought, frustrated.
A child whimpered. Then, the koloss began to move again. Sazed tensed, but the creatures didn’t walk forward. They split, and a quiet figure walked through the center of them.
“Lady Vin?” Sazed asked. He still hadn’t had a chance to speak with her since she’d saved him at the gate. She looked exhausted.
“Sazed,” she said tiredly. “You lied to me about the Well of Ascension.”
“Yes, Lady Vin,” he said.
“That isn’t important now,” she said. “Why are you standing naked outside of the keep’s walls?”
“I …” He looked up at the koloss. “Lady Vin, I—”
“Penrod!” Vin shouted suddenly. “Is that you up there?”
The king appeared. He looked as confused as Sazed felt.
“Open your gates!” Vin yelled.
“Are you mad?” Penrod yelled back.
“I’m not sure,” Vin said. She turned, and a group of koloss moved forward, walking quietly as if commanded. The largest one picked Vin up, holding her up high, until she was nearly level with the top of the keep’s low wall. Several guards atop the wall shied away from her.
“I’m tired, Penrod,” Vin said. Sazed had to tap his hearing tinmind to listen in on her words.
“We’re all tired, child,” Penrod said.
“I’m particularly tired,” Vin said. “I’m tired of the games. I’m tired of people dying because of arguments between their leaders. I’m tired of good men being taken advantage of.”
Penrod nodded quietly.