Mind muddled by terror, she reflexively reached out and Pulled against the ingot, trying to yank herself toward it. And, of course, it obediently shot up toward her.
I’m dead.
Then her body lurched, pulled upward by the belt. Her descent slowed until she was drifting quietly through the air. Kelsier appeared in the mists, standing on the ground beneath her; he was—of course—smiling.
He let her drop the last few feet, catching her, then setting her upright on the soft earth. She stood quivering for a moment, breathing in terse, anxious breaths.
“Well, that was fun,” Kelsier said lightly.
Vin didn’t respond.
Kelsier sat down on a nearby rock, obviously giving her time to gather her wits. Eventually, she burned pewter, using the sensation of solidness it provided to steady her nerves.
“You did well,” Kelsier said.
“I nearly died.”
“Everybody does, their first time,” Kelsier said. “Ironpulling and Steelpushing are dangerous skills. You can impale yourself with a bit of metal that you Pull into your own body, you can jump and leave your anchor too far behind, or you can make a dozen other mistakes.
“My experience—limited though it is—has been that it’s better to get into those extreme circumstances early, when someone can watch over you. Anyway, I assume you can understand why it’s important for an Allomancer to carry as little metal on their body as possible.”
Vin nodded, then paused, reaching up to her ear. “My earring,” she said. “I’ll have to stop wearing it.”
“Does it have a clip on the back?” Kelsier asked.
Vin shook her head. “It’s just a small stud, and the pin on the back bends down.”
“Then you’ll be all right,” Kelsier said. “Metal in your body—even if only a bit of it is in your body—can’t be Pushed or Pulled. Otherwise another Allomancer could rip the metals out of your stomach while you were burning them.”
Good to know, Vin thought.
“It’s also why those Inquisitors can walk around so confidently with a pair of steel spikes sticking out of their heads. The metal pierces their bodies, so it can’t be affected by another Allomancer. Keep the earring—it’s small, so you won’t be able to do much with it, but you could use it as a weapon in an emergency.”
“All right.”
“Now, you ready to go?”
She looked up at the wall, preparing to jump again, then nodded.
“We’re not going back up,” Kelsier said. “Come on.”
Vin frowned as Kelsier began to walk out into the mists. So, does he have a destination after all—or has he just decided to wander some more? Oddly, his affable nonchalance made him very difficult to read.
Vin hurried to keep up, not wanting to be left alone in the mists. The landscape around Luthadel was barren save for scrub and weeds. Prickles and dried leaves—both dusted with ash from an earlier ashfall—rubbed against her legs as they walked. The underbrush crunched as they walked, quiet and a bit sodden with mist dew.
Occasionally, they passed heaps of ash that had been carted out of the city. Most of the time, however, ash was thrown into the River Channerel, which passed through the city. Water broke it down eventually—or, at least, that was what Vin assumed. Otherwise the entire continent would have been buried long ago.
Vin stayed close to Kelsier as they walked. Though she had traveled outside cities before, she had always moved as part of a group of boatmen—the skaa workers who ran narrowboats and barges up and down the many canal routes in the Final Empire. It had been hard work—most noblemen used skaa instead of horses to pull the boats along the towpath—but there had been a certain freedom to knowing that she was traveling at all, for most skaa, even skaa thieves, never left their plantation or town.
The constant movement from city to city had been Reen’s choice; he had been obsessive about never getting locked down. He usually got them places on canal boats run by underground crews, never staying in one place for more than a year. He had kept moving, always going. As if running from something.
They continued to walk. At night, even the barren hills and scrub-covered plains took on a forbidding air. Vin didn’t speak, though she tried to make as little noise as possible. She had heard tales of what went abroad in the land at night, and the cover of the mists—even pierced by tin as it now was—made her feel as if she were being watched.
The sensation grew more unnerving as they traveled. Soon, she began to hear noises in the darkness. They were muffled and faint—crackles of weeds, shuffles in the echoing mist.
You’re just being paranoid! she told herself as she jumped at some half-imagined sound. Eventually, however, she could stand it no more.
“Kelsier!” she said with an urgent whisper—one that sounded betrayingly loud to her enhanced ears. “I think there’s something out there.”
“Hum?” Kelsier asked. He looked lost in his thoughts.
“I think something is following us!”
“Oh,” Kelsier said. “Yes, you’re right. It’s a mistwraith.”
Vin stopped dead in her tracks. Kelsier, however, kept going.
“Kelsier!” she said, causing him to pause. “You mean they’re real?”
“Of course they are,” Kelsier said. “Where do you think all the stories came from?”
Vin stood in dumbfounded shock.
“You want to go look at it?” Kelsier asked.
“Look at the mistwraith?” Vin asked. “Are you—” She stopped.
Kelsier chuckled, strolling back to her. “Mistwraiths might be a bit disturbing to look at, but they’re relatively harmless. They’re scavengers, mostly. Come on.”
He began to retrace their footsteps, waving her to follow. Reluctant—but morbidly curious—Vin followed. Kelsier walked at a brisk pace, leading her to the top of a relatively scrub-free hill. He crouched down, motioning for Vin to do likewise.
“Their hearing isn’t very good,” he said as she knelt in the rough, ashen dirt beside him. “But their sense of smell—or, rather, taste—is quite acute. It’s probably following our trail, hoping that we’ll discard something edible.”
Vin squinted in the darkness. “I can’t see it,” she said, searching the mists for a shadowed figure.
“There,” Kelsier said, pointing toward a squat hill.
Vin frowned, imagining a creature crouching atop the hill, watching her as she looked for it.
Then the hill moved.
Vin jumped slightly. The dark mound—perhaps ten feet tall and twice as long—lurched forward in a strange, shuffling gait, and Vin leaned forward, trying to get a better look.
“Flare your tin,” Kelsier suggested.
Vin nodded, calling upon a burst of extra Allomantic power. Everything immediately became lighter, the mists becoming even less of an obstruction.
What she saw caused her to shiver—fascinated, revolted, and more than a little disturbed. The creature had smoky, translucent skin, and Vin could see its bones. It had dozens upon dozens of limbs, and each one looked as if it had come from a different animal. There were human hands, bovine hooves, canine haunches, and others she couldn’t identify.