Unless one were Mistborn, of course. Unfortunately, Spook couldn’t hop from building to building on lines of Allomantic power. He was stuck in the slots. He made the best of it.
He picked a ladder and swung onto it, climbing up. Though he wore leather gloves, he could feel the grain of the wood. Up top, there was a small sidewalk running along the streetslot. An alleyway extended ahead of him, leading into a cluster of houses. A building at the end of the small street was his goal, but he did not move toward it. Instead, he waited quietly, searching for the signs he knew were there. Sure enough, he caught a rustling motion in a window a few buildings down. His ears caught the sound of footsteps in another building. The street ahead of him was being watched.
Spook turned aside. While the sentries were very careful to watch the alleyway, they unintentionally left another avenue open: their own buildings. Spook crept to the right, moving on feet that could feel each pebble beneath them, listening with ears that could hear a man’s increased breathing as he spotted something unusual. He rounded the outside of a building, turning away from the watchful eyes, and entering a dead-end alleyway on the other side. There, he lay a hand against the wall of the building.
There were vibrations inside the room; it was occupied, so he moved on. The next room alerted him immediately, as he heard whispered voices inside. The third room, however, gave him nothing. No vibrations of motion. No whispers. Not even the muted thudding of a heartbeat—something he could sometimes hear, if the air were still enough. Taking a deep breath, Spook quietly worked open the window lock and slipped inside.
It was a sleeping chamber, empty as he’d anticipated. He’d never come through this particular room before. His heart thumped as he closed the shutters, then slipped across the floor. Despite the near-total darkness, he had no trouble seeing in the room. It barely seemed dim to him.
Outside the room, he found a more familiar hallway. He easily snuck past two guard rooms, where men watched the street outside. There was a thrill in doing these infiltrations. Spook was in one of the Citizen’s own guardhouses, steps away from large numbers of armed soldiers. They should have taken care to guard their own building better.
He crept up the stairs, making his way to a small, rarely used room on the third floor. He checked for vibrations, then slipped inside. The austere chamber was piled with a mound of extra bedrolls and a dusty stack of uniforms. Spook smiled as he moved across the floor, stepping carefully and quietly, his highly sensitive toes able to feel loose, squeaky, or warped boards. He sat down on the windowsill itself, confident that nobody outside would be able to see well enough to spot him.
The Citizen’s house lay a few yards away. Quellion decried ostentation, and had chosen for his headquarters a structure of modest size. It had probably once been a minor nobleman’s home, and had only a small yard, which Spook could easily see into from his vantage. The building itself glowed, light streaking from every crack and window. It was as if the building were filled with some awesome power, and on the verge of bursting.
But, then, that was just the way that Spook’s overflared tin made him see any building that had lights on inside.
Spook leaned back, legs up on the windowsill, back against the frame. The window contained neither glass nor shutters, though there were nail holes on the side of the wood, indicating that there had once been something there. The reason the shutters had been removed didn’t matter to Spook—the lack of them meant that this room was unlikely to be entered at night. Mists had already claimed the room, though they were so faint to Spook’s eyes that he had had trouble seeing them.
For a while, nothing happened. The building and grounds below remained silent and still in the night air. Eventually, however, she appeared.
Spook perked up, watching the young woman leave the house and enter the garden. She had on a light brown skaa’s dress—a garment she somehow wore with striking elegance. Her hair was darker than the dress, but not by much. Spook had seen very few people with her shade of deep auburn hair—at least, few people who had been able to keep it clean of ash and soot.
Everyone in the city knew of Beldre, the Citizen’s sister, though few had ever seen her. She was said to be beautiful—and in this case, the rumors were true. However, nobody had ever mentioned her sadness. With his tin flared so high, Spook felt like he was standing next to her. He could see her deep, sorrowful eyes, reflecting light from the shining building behind her.
There was a bench in the yard. It sat before a small shrub. It was the only plant left in the garden; the rest had been torn up and plowed under, leaving behind blackish brown earth. From what Spook had heard, the Citizen had declared that ornamental gardens were of the nobility. He claimed that such places had only been possible through the sweat of skaa slaves—just another way the nobility had achieved high levels of luxury by creating equally high levels of work for their servants.
When the people of Urteau had whitewashed the city’s murals and shattered its stained-glass windows, they had also torn up all the ornamental gardens.
Beldre sat down on her bench, hands held motionless in her lap, looking down at the sad shrub. Spook tried to convince himself that she wasn’t the reason why he made certain to always sneak in and listen to the Citizen’s evening conferences, and he was mostly successful. These were some of the best spying opportunities Spook got. Being able to see Beldre was simply a bonus. Not that he cared that much, of course. He didn’t even know her.
He thought that even as he sat there, staring down at her, wishing he had some way to talk to her.
But, this wasn’t the time for that. Beldre’s exile to the garden meant that her brother’s meeting was about to start. He always kept her near, but apparently didn’t want her hearing state secrets. Unfortunately for him, his window opened toward Spook’s vantage point. No normal man—not even an ordinary Tineye or Mistborn—could have heard what was being said inside. But Spook wasn’t, by any stretched definition of the word, normal.
I won’t be useless anymore, he thought with determination as he listened for words spoken in confidence. They passed through the walls, across the short space, and arrived at his ears.
“All right, Olid,” said a voice. “What news?” The voice was, by now, familiar to Spook. Quellion, the Citizen of Urteau.
“Elend Venture has conquered another city,” said a second voice—Olid, the foreign minister.
“Where?” Quellion demanded. “What city?”
“An unimportant one,” Olid said. “To the south. Barely five thousand people.”
“It makes no sense,” said a third voice. “He immediately abandoned the city, taking its populace with him.”
“But he got another koloss army, somehow,” Olid added.
Good, Spook thought. The fourth storage cavern was theirs. Luthadel wouldn’t starve for a while yet. That only left two to secure—the one here in Urteau, and the last one, wherever that turned out to be.
“A tyrant needs no real reason for what he does,” Quellion said. He was a young man, but not foolish. At times, he sounded like other men Spook had known. Wise men. The difference, then, was one of extremity.
Or, perhaps, timing?
“A tyrant simply conquers for the thrill of control,” Quellion continued. “Venture isn’t satisfied with the lands he’s taken—he never will be. He’ll just keep on conquering. Until he comes for us.”