“There has to be a balance, Vin,” he said. “Somehow, we’ll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be.” He sighed. “But for now,” he said, nodding to the side, “we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”
Vin glanced to the side as a small courier skiff from one of the other narrowboats pulled up alongside theirs. A man in simple brown robes stood upon it. He wore large spectacles, as if attempting to obscure the intricate Ministry tattoos around his eyes, and he was smiling happily.
Vin smiled herself. Once, she had thought that a happy obligator was always a bad sign. That was before she’d known Noorden. Even during the days of the Lord Ruler, the contented scholar had probably lived most of his life in his own little world. He provided a strange proof that even in the confines of what had once been—in her opinion—the most evil organization in the empire, one could find good men.
“Your Excellency,” Noorden said, stepping off of the skiff and bowing. A couple of assistant scribes joined him on the deck, lugging books and ledgers.
“Noorden,” Elend said, joining the man on the foredeck. Vin followed. “You have done the counts I asked?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Noorden said as an aide opened up a ledger on a pile of boxes. “I must say, this was a difficult task, what with the army moving about and the like.”
“I’m certain you were thorough as always, Noorden,” Elend said. He glanced at the ledger, which seemed to make sense to him, though all Vin saw was a bunch of random numbers.
“What’s it say?” she asked.
“It lists the number of sick and dead,” Elend said. “Of our thirty-eight thousand, nearly six thousand were taken by the sickness. We lost about five hundred and fifty.”
“Including one of my own scribes,” Noorden said, shaking his head.
Vin frowned. Not at the death, at something else, something itching at her mind …
“Fewer dead than expected,” Elend said, pulling thoughtfully at his beard.
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Noorden said. “I guess these soldier types are more rugged than the average skaa population. The sickness, whatever it is, didn’t strike them as hard.”
“How do you know?” Vin asked, looking up. “How do you know how many should have died?”
“Previous experience, my lady,” Noorden said in his chatty way. “We’ve been tracking these deaths with some interest. Since the disease is new, we’re trying to determine exactly what causes it. Perhaps that will lead us to a way to treat it. I’ve had my scribes reading what we can, trying to find clues of other diseases like this. It seems a little like the shakewelts, though that’s usually brought on by—”
“Noorden,” Vin said, frowning. “You have figures then? Exact numbers?”
“That’s what His Excellency asked for, my lady.”
“How many fell sick to the disease?” Vin asked. “Exactly?”
“Well, let me see …” Noorden said, shooing his scribe away and checking the ledger. “Five thousand two hundred and forty-three.”
“What percentage of the soldiers is that?” Vin asked.
Noorden paused, then waved over a scribe and did some calculations. “About thirteen and a half percent, my lady,” he finally said, adjusting his spectacles.
Vin frowned. “Did you include the men who died in your calculations?”
“Actually, no,” Noorden said.
“And which total did you use?” Vin asked. “The total number of men in the army, or the total number who hadn’t been in the mists before?”
“The first.”
“Do you have a count for the second number?” Vin asked.
“Yes, my lady,” Noorden said. “The emperor wanted an accurate count of which soldiers would be affected.”
“Use that number instead,” Vin said, glancing at Elend. He seemed interested.
“What is this about, Vin?” he asked as Noorden and his men worked.
“I’m … not sure,” Vin said.
“Numbers are important for generalizations,” Elend said. “But I don’t see how …” He trailed off as Noorden looked up from his calculations, then cocked his head, saying something softly to himself.
“What?” Vin asked.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” Noorden said. “I was just a bit surprised. The calculation came out to be exact—precisely sixteen percent of the soldiers fell sick. To the man.”
“A coincidence, Noorden,” Elend said. “It isn’t that remarkable for calculations to come out exact.”
Ash blew across the deck. “No,” Noorden said, “no, you are right, Your Excellency. A simple coincidence.”
“Check your ledgers,” Vin said. “Find percentages based on other groups of people who have caught this disease.”
“Vin,” Elend said, “I’m no statistician, but I have worked with numbers in my research. Sometimes, natural phenomena produce seemingly odd results, but the chaos of statistics actually results in normalization. It might appear strange that our numbers broke down to an exact percentage, but that’s just the way that statistics work.”
“Sixteen,” Noorden said. He looked up. “Another exact percentage.”
Elend frowned, stepping over to the ledger.
“This third one here isn’t exact,” Noorden said, “but that’s only because the base number isn’t a multiple of twenty-five. A fraction of a person can’t really become sick, after all. Yet, the sickness in this population here is within a single person of being exactly sixteen percent.”
Elend knelt down, heedless of the ash that had dusted the deck since it had last been swept. Vin looked over his shoulder, scanning the numbers.
“It doesn’t matter how old the average member of the population is,” Noorden said, scribbling. “Nor does it matter where they live. Each one shows the exact same percentage of people falling sick.”
“How could we have not noticed this before?” Elend asked.
“Well, we did, after a fashion,” Noorden said. “We knew that about four in twenty-five caught the sickness. However, I hadn’t realized how exact the numbers were. This is indeed odd, Your Excellency. I know of no other disease that works this way. Look, here’s an entry where a hundred scouts were sent into the mists, and precisely sixteen of them fell sick!”
Elend looked troubled.
“What?” Vin asked.
“This is wrong, Vin,” Elend said. “Very wrong.”
“It’s like the chaos of normal random statistics has broken down,” Noorden said. “A population should never react this precisely—there should be a curve of probability, with smaller populations reflecting the expected percentages least accurately.”
“At the very least,” Elend said, “the sickness should affect the elderly in different ratios from the healthy.”
“In a way, it does,” Noorden said as one of his assistants handed him a paper with further calculations. “The deaths respond that way, as we would expect. But, the total number who fall sick is always sixteen percent! We’ve been paying so much attention to how many died, we didn’t notice how unnatural the percentages of those stricken were.”