What was the connection?
He tried to summon the mental energy to think on the issue, but he felt traitorously apathetic. He just wanted to hide somewhere where nobody would expect anything of him. Where he wouldn’t have to solve the problems of the world, or even deal with his own religious crisis.
He almost did just that. And yet, a little part of him—a spark from before—refused to simply give up. He would at least continue his research, and would do what Elend and Vin asked of him. It wasn’t all he could do, and it wouldn’t satisfy the Terrismen who sat here, looking at him with needful expressions.
But, for the moment, it was all Sazed could offer. To stay at the Pits would be to surrender, he knew. He needed to keep moving, keep working.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the men, setting aside the ledger. “But this is how it must be.”
During the early days of Kelsier’s original plan, I remember how much he confused us all with his mysterious “Eleventh Metal.” He claimed that there were legends of a mystical metal that would let one slay the Lord Ruler—and that Kelsier himself had located that metal through intense research.
Nobody really knew what Kelsier did in the years between his escape from the Pits of Hathsin and his return to Luthadel. When pressed, he simply said that he had been in “the West.” Somehow in his wanderings he discovered stories that no Keeper had ever heard. Most of the crew didn’t know what to make of the legends he spoke of. This might have been the first seed that made even his oldest friends begin to question his leadership.
23
IN THE EASTERN LANDS, NEAR the wastelands of grit and sand, a young boy fell to the ground inside a skaa shack. It was many years before the Collapse, and the Lord Ruler still lived. Not that the boy knew of such things. He was a dirty, ragged thing—like most other skaa children in the Final Empire. Too young to be put to work in the mines, he spent his days ducking away from his mother’s care and running about with the packs of children who foraged in the dry, dusty streets.
Spook hadn’t been that boy for some ten years. In a way, he was aware that he was delusional—that the fever of his wounds was causing him to come in and out of consciousness, dreams of the past filling his mind. He let them run. Staying focused required too much energy.
And so, he remembered what it felt like as he hit the ground. A large man—all men were large compared with Spook—stood over him, skin dirtied with the dust and grime of a miner. The man spat on the dirty floor beside Spook, then turned to the other skaa in the room. There were many. One was crying, the tears leaving lines of cleanliness on her cheeks, washing away the dust.
“All right,” the large man said. “We have him. Now what?”
The people glanced at each other. One quietly closed the shack’s door, shutting out the red sunlight.
“There’s only one thing to be done,” another man said. “We turn him in.”
Spook looked up. He met the eyes of the crying woman. She looked away. “Wasing the where of what?” Spook demanded.
The large man spat again, setting a boot against Spook’s neck, pushing him back down against the rough wood. “You shouldn’t have let him run around with those street gangs, Margel. Damn boy is barely coherent now.”
“What happens if we give him up?” asked one of the other men. “I mean, what if they decide that we’re like him? They could have us executed! I’ve seen it before. You turn someone in, and those … things come searching for everyone that knew him.”
“Problems like his run in the family, they do,” another man said.
The room grew quiet. They all knew about Spook’s family.
“They’ll kill us,” said the frightened man. “You know they will! I’ve seen them, seen them with those spikes in their eyes. Spirits of death, they are.”
“We can’t just let him run about,” another man said. “They’ll discover what he is.”
“There’s only one thing to be done,” the large man said, pressing down on Spook’s neck even harder.
The room’s occupants—the ones Spook could see—nodded solemnly. They couldn’t turn him in. They couldn’t let him go. But, nobody would miss a skaa urchin. No Inquisitor or obligator would ask twice about a dead child found in the streets. Skaa died all the time.
That was the way of the Final Empire.
“Father,” Spook whispered.
The heel came down harder. “You’re not my son! My son went into the mists and never came out. You must be a mistwraith.”
Spook tried to object, but his neck was pressed down too tight. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. The room started to grow black. And yet, his ears—supernaturally sensitive, enhanced by powers he barely understood—heard something.
Coins.
The pressure on his neck grew weaker. He was able to gasp for breath, his vision returning. And there, spilled on the ground before him, was a scattering of beautiful copper coins. Skaa weren’t paid for their work—the miners were given goods instead, barely enough to survive on. Yet, Spook had seen coins occasionally passing between noble hands. He’d once known a boy who had found a coin, lost in the dusty grime of the street.
A larger boy had killed him for it. Then, a nobleman had killed that boy when he’d tried to spend it. It seemed to Spook that no skaa would want coins—they were far too valuable, and far too dangerous. And yet, every eye in the room stared at that spilled bag of wealth.
“The bag in exchange for the boy,” a voice said. Bodies parted to where a man sat at a table at the back of the room. He wasn’t looking at Spook. He just sat, quietly spooning gruel into his mouth. His face was gnarled and twisted, like leather that had been sitting in the sun for far too long. “Well?” the gnarled man said between bites.
“Where did you get money like this?” Spook’s father demanded.
“None of your business.”
“We can’t let the boy go,” one of the skaa said. “He’ll betray us! Once they catch him, he’ll tell them that we knew!”
“They won’t catch him,” the gnarled man said, taking another bite of food. “He’ll be with me, in Luthadel. Besides, if you don’t let him go, I’ll just go ahead and tell the obligators about you all.” He paused, lowering his spoon, glancing at the crowd with a crusty look. “Unless you’re going to kill me too.”
Spook’s father finally took his heel off Spook’s neck as he stepped toward the gnarled stranger. However, Spook’s mother grabbed her husband’s arm. “Don’t, Jedal,” she said softly—but not too softly for Spook’s enhanced ears. “He’ll kill you.”
“He’s a traitor,” Spook’s father spat. “Servant in the Lord Ruler’s army.”
“He brought us coins. Surely taking his money is better than simply killing the boy.”
Spook’s father looked down at the woman. “You did this! You sent for your brother. You knew he’d want to take the boy!”
Spook’s mother turned away.
The gnarled man finally set down his spoon, then stood. People backed away from his chair in apprehension. He walked with a pronounced limp as he crossed the room.