“Ham,” Elend said quietly, “you know I’m right. We can’t keep doing this. The further we penetrate into the Western Dominance, the more daylight we’ll lose to the mists.”
Ham shook his head. “You’d really stand by and watch your own soldiers die, El?”
Elend’s face grew hard, and he met Vin’s eyes as she joined them. “We can’t afford to wait out the mists every morning.”
“Even if it saves lives?” Ham asked.
“Slowing down costs lives,” Elend said. “Each hour we spend out here brings the mists closer to the Central Dominance. We’re planning to be at siege for some time, Ham—and that means we need to get to Fadrex as soon as possible.”
Ham glanced at Vin, looking for support. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Ham. Elend is right. We can’t have our entire army dependent upon the whims of the mists. We’d be exposed—if someone attacked us in the morning, our men would either have to respond and get struck down by the mists, or hide in their tents and wait.”
Ham frowned, then excused himself, tromping through the fallen ash to help a group of soldiers pack away their tents. Vin stepped up beside Elend, watching the large soldier go.
“Kelsier was wrong about him,” she finally said.
“Who?” Elend asked. “Ham?”
Vin nodded. “At the end—after Kelsier died—we found a last note from him. He said that he’d chosen the members of the crew to be leaders in his new government. Breeze to be an ambassador, Dockson to be a bureaucrat, and Ham to be a general. The other two fit their roles perfectly, but Ham …”
“He gets too involved,” Elend said. “He has to know each man he commands personally or it makes him uncomfortable. And, when he knows them all that well, he grows attached.”
Vin nodded quietly, watching Ham begin to laugh and work with the soldiers.
“Listen to us,” Elend said, “callously talking about the lives of those who follow us. Perhaps it would be better to grow attached, like Ham. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so quick to order people to their deaths.”
Vin glanced at Elend, concerned at the bitterness in his voice. He smiled, trying to cover it up, then glanced away. “You need to do something with that koloss of yours. He’s been poking around the camp, scaring the men.”
Vin frowned. As soon as she thought of the creature, she became aware of where it was—near the edge of the camp. It was always under her command, but she could only take direct, full control of it when she concentrated. Otherwise, it would follow her general orders—staying in the area, not killing anything.
“I should go make sure the barges are ready to move,” Elend said. He glanced at her, and when she didn’t indicate that she’d go with him, he gave her a quick kiss, then departed.
Vin moved through the camp again. Most of the tents were down and stowed, and the soldiers were making quick work of their food. She passed out of the perimeter, and found Human sitting quietly, ash drifting slightly against his legs. He watched the camp with red eyes, his face broken by the ripped skin which hung from his right eye down to the corner of his mouth.
“Human,” she said, folding her arms.
He looked over at her, then stood, ash falling from his eleven-foot, overly muscled blue figure. Even with the number of creatures she’d killed, even knowing she controlled this one completely, Vin had a moment of reflexive fear as she stood before the massive beast with its tightly stretched skin and bleeding rips.
“Why did you come to camp?” she said, shaking off her panic.
“I am human,” he said with his slow, deliberate tone.
“You’re koloss,” she said. “You know that.”
“I should have a house,” Human said. “Like those.”
“Those are tents, not houses,” Vin said. “You can’t come to camp like this. You have to stay with the other koloss.”
Human turned, glancing toward the south, where the koloss army waited, separate from the humans. They remained under Elend’s control, twenty thousand in number, now that they’d picked up the ten thousand that had been waiting with the main bulk of the army. It made more sense to leave them under Elend’s control, since—in terms of raw power—he was a much stronger Allomancer than Vin.
Human looked back at Vin. “Why?”
“Why do you have to stay with the others?” Vin asked. “Because you make the people in the camp uncomfortable.”
“Then they should attack me,” Human said.
“That’s why you’re not a human,” Vin said. “We don’t attack people just because they make us uncomfortable.”
“No,” Human said. “You make us kill them instead.”
Vin paused, cocking her head. Human, however, just looked away, staring at the human camp again. His beady red eyes made his face hard to read, but Vin almost sensed a … longing in his expression.
“You’re one of us,” Human said.
Vin looked up. “Me?”
“You’re like us,” he said. “Not like them.”
“Why do you say that?” Vin asked.
Human looked down at her. “Mist,” he said.
Vin felt a momentary chill, though she had no real idea why. “What do you mean?”
Human didn’t respond.
“Human,” she said, trying another tactic. “What do you think of the mists?”
“They come at night.”
Vin nodded. “Yes, but what do you think of them. Your people. Do they fear the mists? Does it ever kill them?”
“Swords kill,” Human said. “Rain doesn’t kill. Ash doesn’t kill. Mist doesn’t kill.”
Fairly good logic, Vin thought. A year ago, I would have agreed with it. She was about to give up on the line of reasoning, but Human continued.
“I hate it,” he said.
Vin paused.
“I hate it because it hates me,” Human said. He looked at her. “You feel it.”
“Yes,” Vin said, surprising herself. “I do.”
Human regarded her, a line of blood trailing out of the ripped skin near his eye, running stark down his blue skin, mixing with flakes of ash. Finally, he nodded, as if giving approval to her honest reply.
Vin shivered. The mist isn’t alive, she thought. It can’t hate me. I’m imagining things.
But … once, years ago, she had drawn upon the mists. When fighting the Lord Ruler, she had somehow gained a power over them. It had been as if she’d used the mist itself to fuel her Allomancy instead of metals. It was only with that power that she’d been able to defeat the Lord Ruler.
That had been a long time ago, and she’d never been able to replicate the event. She’d tried time and again over the years, and after so many failures, she was beginning to think that she must have been mistaken. Certainly, in more recent times, the mists had been unfriendly. She tried to keep telling herself that there was nothing supernatural about it, but she knew that wasn’t true. What of the mist spirit, the thing that had tried to kill Elend—and then had saved him by showing her how to make him into an Allomancer? It was real, of that she was certain, even if she hadn’t seen it in over a year.