Cett scratched at his beard for a moment, then nodded. “You make a good point, Penrod. Maybe the first good one I’ve ever heard out of you.”
“But we can’t continue trying to assume that we know what we are to do,” Janarle said. “We need direction. Surviving the next ten years, I suspect, is going to depend heavily on my not ending up dead on the end of that Mistborn girl’s knife.”
“Indeed,” Penrod said, nodding curtly. “Master Terrisman. When can we expect the empress to take command again?”
Once again, all three pairs of eyes turned to Sazed.
I don’t really care, Sazed thought, then immediately felt guilty. Vin was his friend. He did care. Even if it was hard to care about anything for him. He looked down in shame. “Lady Vin is suffering greatly from the effects of an extended pewter drag,” he said. “She pushed herself very hard this last year, and then ended it by running all the way back to Luthadel. She is in great need of rest. I think we should let her be for a time longer.”
The others nodded, and returned to their discussion. Sazed’s mind, however, turned to Vin. He’d understated her malady, and he was beginning to worry. A pewter drag drained the body, and he suspected that she’d been forcing herself to stay awake with the metal for months now.
When a Keeper stored up wakefulness, he slept as if in a coma for a time. He could only hope that the effects of such a terrible pewter drag were the same, for Vin hadn’t awoken a single time since her return a week before. Perhaps she’d awake soon, like a Keeper who came out of sleep.
Perhaps it would last longer. Her koloss army waited outside the city, controlled—apparently—even though she was unconscious. But for how long? Pewter dragging could kill, if the person had pushed themselves too hard.
What would happen to the city if she never woke up?
Ash was falling. A lot of ashfalls lately, Elend thought as he and Spook emerged from the trees and looked out over the Luthadel plain.
“See,” Spook said quietly, pointing. “The city gates are broken.”
Elend frowned. “But the koloss are camped outside the city.” Indeed, Straff’s army camp was also still there, right where it had been.
“Work crews,” Spook said, shading his face against the sunlight to protect his overly sensitive Allomancer’s eyes. “Looks like they’re burying corpses outside the city.”
Elend’s frown deepened. Vin. What happened to her? Is she all right?
He and Spook had cut across country, taking a cue from the Terrismen, to make certain that they didn’t get discovered by patrols from the city. Indeed, this day they’d broken their pattern, traveling a little bit during the day so that they could arrive at Luthadel just before nightfall. The mists would soon be coming, and Elend was fatigued—both from rising early and from walking so long.
More than that, he was tired of not knowing what had happened to Luthadel. “Can you see whose flag is set over the gates?” he asked.
Spook paused, apparently flaring his metals. “Yours,” he finally said, surprised.
Elend smiled. Well, either they managed to save the city somehow, or this is a very elaborate trap to capture me. “Come on,” he said, pointing to a line of refugees who were being allowed back into the city—likely those who had fled before, returning for food now that the danger was past. “We’ll mix with those and make our way in.”
Sazed sighed quietly, shutting the door to his room. The kings were finished with the day’s arguments. Actually, they were starting to get along quite well, considering the fact that they’d all tried to conquer each other just a few weeks before.
Sazed knew he could take no credit for their newfound amiability, however. He had other preoccupations.
I’ve seen many die, in my days, he thought, walking into the room. Kelsier. Jadendwyl. Crenda. People I respected. I never wondered what had happened to their spirits.
He set his candle on the table, the fragile light illuminating a few scattered pages, a pile of strange metal nails taken from koloss bodies, and one manuscript. Sazed sat down at the table, fingers brushing the pages, remembering the days spent with Tindwyl, studying.
Maybe this is why Vin put me in charge, he thought. She knew I’d need something to take my mind off Tindwyl.
And yet, he was finding more and more that he didn’t want to take his mind off her. Which was more potent? The pain of memory, or the pain of forgetting? He was a Keeper—it was his life’s work to remember. Forgetting, even in the name of personal peace, was not something that appealed to him.
He flipped through the manuscript, smiling fondly in the dark chamber. He’d sent a cleaned-up, rewritten version with Vin and Elend to the north. This, however, was the original. The frantically—almost desperately—scribbled manuscript made by two frightened scholars.
As he fingered the pages, the flickering candlelight revealed Tindwyl’s firm, yet beautiful, script. It mixed easily with paragraphs written in Sazed’s own, more reserved hand. At times, a page would alternate between their different hands a dozen different times.
He didn’t realize that he was crying until he blinked, sending loose a tear, which hit the page. He looked down, stunned as the bit of water caused a swirl in the ink.
“What now, Tindwyl?” he whispered. “Why did we do this? You never believed in the Hero of Ages, and I never believed in anything, it appears. What was the point of all this?”
He reached up and dabbed the tear with his sleeve, preserving the page as best he could. Despite his tiredness, he began to read, selecting a random paragraph. He read to remember. To think of days when he hadn’t worried about why they were studying. He had simply been content to do what he enjoyed best, with the person he had come to love most.
We gathered everything we could find on the Hero of Ages and the Deepness, he thought, reading. But so much of it seems contradictory.
He flipped through to a particular section, one that Tindwyl had insisted that they include. It contained the several most blatant self-contradictions, as declared by Tindwyl. He read them over, giving them fair consideration for the first time. This was Tindwyl the scholar—a cautious skeptic. He fingered through the passages, reading her script.
The Hero of Ages will be tall of stature, one read. A man who cannot be ignored by others.
The power must not be taken, read another. Of this, we are certain. It must be held, but not used. It must be released. Tindwyl had found that condition foolish, since other sections talked about the Hero using the power to defeat the Deepness.
All men are selfish, read another. The Hero is a man who can see the needs of all beyond his own desires. “If all men are selfish,” Tindwyl had asked, “then how can the Hero be selfless, as is said in other passages? And, indeed, how can a humble man be expected to conquer the world?”
Sazed shook his head, smiling. At times, her objections had been very well conceived—but at other times, she had just been struggling to offer another opinion, no matter how much of a stretch it required. He ran his fingers across the page again, but paused on the first paragraph.
Tall of stature, it said. That wouldn’t refer to Vin. It hadn’t come from the rubbing, but another book. Tindwyl had included it because the rubbing, the more trustworthy source, said he’d be short. Sazed flipped through the book to the complete transcription of Kwaan’s iron-plate testimony, searching for the passage.