“Different?” Elend asked, doing up the buttons on his jacket sleeves. “What is different about Tindwyl’s death? She fell during the assault on Luthadel. So did Clubs and Dockson. You killed my own father in that battle, and I beheaded my best friend shortly before it. We’ve all lost people.”
“He said something like that himself,” Vin said. “But, it’s more than just one death to him. I think he sees a kind of betrayal in Tindwyl’s death—he always was the only one of us who had faith. He lost that when she died, somehow.”
“The only one of us who had faith?” Elend asked, plucking a wooden, silver-painted pin off his desk and affixing it to his jacket. “What about this?”
“You belong to the Church of the Survivor, Elend,” Vin said. “But you don’t have faith. Not like Sazed did. It was like … he knew everything would turn out all right. He trusted that something was watching over the world.”
“He’ll deal with it.”
“It’s not just him, Elend,” Vin said. “Breeze tries too hard.”
“What does that mean?” Elend asked with amusement.
“He Pushes on everyone’s emotions,” Vin said. “He Pushes too hard, trying to make others happy, and he laughs too hard. He’s afraid, worried. He shows it by overcompensating.”
Elend smiled. “You’re getting as bad as he is, reading everybody’s emotions and telling them how they’re feeling.”
“They’re my friends, Elend,” Vin said. “I know them. And, I’m telling you—they’re giving up. One by one, they’re beginning to think we can’t win this one.”
Elend fastened the final button, then looked at himself in the mirror. Sometimes, he still wondered if he fit the ornate suit, with its crisp whiteness and implied regality. He looked into his own eyes, looking past the short beard, warrior’s body, and scarred skin. He looked into those eyes, searching for the king behind them. As always, he wasn’t completely impressed with what he saw.
He carried on anyway, for he was the best they had. Tindwyl had taught him that. “Very well,” he said. “I trust that you’re right about the others—I’ll do something to fix it.”
That, after all, was his job. The title of emperor carried with it only a single duty.
To make everything better.
“All right,” Elend said, pointing to a map of the empire hanging on the wall of the conference tent. “We timed the arrival and disappearance of the mists each day, then Noorden and his scribes analyzed them. They’ve given us these perimeters as a guide.”
The group leaned in, studying the map. Vin sat at the back of the tent, as was still her preference. Closer to the shadows. Closer to the exit. She’d grown more confident, true—but that didn’t make her careless. She liked to be able to keep an eye on everyone in the room, even if she did trust them.
And she did. Except maybe Cett. The obstinate man sat at the front of the group, his quiet teenage son at his side, as always. Cett—or, King Cett, one of the monarchs who had sworn allegiance to Elend—had an unfashionable beard, an even more unfashionable mouth, and two legs that didn’t work. That hadn’t kept him from nearly conquering Luthadel over a year before.
“Hell,” Cett said. “You expect us to be able to read that thing?”
Elend tapped the map with his finger. It was a rough sketch of the empire, similar to the one they’d found in the cavern, only more up to date. It had several large concentric circles inscribed on it.
“The outermost circle is the place where the mists have completely taken the land, and no longer leave at all during the daylight.” Elend moved his finger inward to another circle. “This circle passes through the village we just visited, where we found the cache. This marks four hours of daylight. Everything inside the circle gets more than four hours. Everything outside of it gets less.”
“And the final circle?” Breeze asked. He sat with Allrianne as far away from Cett as the tent would allow. Cett still had a habit of throwing things at Breeze: insults, for the most part, and occasionally knives.
Elend eyed the map. “Assuming the mists keep creeping toward Luthadel at the same rate, that circle represents the area that the scribes feel will get enough sunlight this summer to support crops.”
The room fell silent.
Hope is for the foolish, Reen’s voice seemed to whisper in the back of Vin’s mind. She shook her head. Her brother, Reen, had trained her in the ways of the street and the underground, teaching her to be mistrustful and paranoid. In doing so, he’d also taught her to survive. It had taken Kelsier to show her that it was possible to both trust and survive—and it had been a hard lesson. Even so, she still often heard Reen’s phantom voice in the back of her mind—more a memory than anything else—whispering her insecurities, bringing back the brutal things he had taught her.
“That’s a fairly small circle, El,” Ham said, still studying the map. The large-muscled man sat with General Demoux between Cett and Breeze. Sazed sat quietly to the side. Vin glanced at him, trying to judge if their previous conversation had lifted his depression any, but she couldn’t tell.
They were a small group: only nine, if one counted Cett’s son, Gneorndin. But, it included pretty much all that was left of Kelsier’s crew. Only Spook, doing reconnaissance in the North, was missing. Everyone was focused on the map. The final circle was, indeed, very small—not even as big as the Central Dominance, which held the imperial capital of Luthadel. What the map said, and Elend implied, was that over ninety percent of the empire wouldn’t be able to support crops this summer.
“Even this small bubble will be gone by next winter,” Elend said.
Vin watched the others contemplate, and realize—if they hadn’t already—the horror of what was upon them. It’s like Alendi’s logbook said, she thought. They couldn’t fight the Deepness with armies. It destroyed cities, bringing a slow, terrible death. They were helpless.
The Deepness. That was what they’d called the mists—or, at least, that was what the surviving records called them. Perhaps the thing they fought, the primal force Vin had released, was behind the obfuscation. There was really no way of knowing for sure what had once been, for the entity had the power to change records.
“All right, people,” Elend said, folding his arms. “We need options. Kelsier recruited you because you could do the impossible. Well, our predicament is pretty impossible.”
“He didn’t recruit me,” Cett pointed out. “I got pulled by my balls into this little fiasco.”
“I wish I cared enough to apologize,” Elend said, staring at them. “Come on. I know you have thoughts.”
“Well, my dear man,” Breeze said, “the most obvious option appears to be the Well of Ascension. It seems the power there was built to fight the mists.”
“Or to free the thing hiding in them,” Cett said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Vin said, causing heads to turn. “There’s no power at the Well. It’s gone. Used up. If it ever returns, it will be in another thousand years, I suspect.”
“That’s a little bit long to stretch the supplies in those storage caches,” Elend said.