Vin looked away from the servants, but didn’t meet Telden’s eyes, fearing that he’d see confirmation in them. He was wrong about her—she would kill those servants if she thought it would get her out. However, she was uncertain. If Yomen heard screams, he wouldn’t be likely to open the trapdoor, and Vin would have slaughtered innocents for no reason.
“So,” Telden said, finishing off his wine. “We are at a stalemate. We assume that you’re running low on food down here, unless you’ve found a way to open those cans. Even if you have, there’s nothing you can do down here to help up above. My guess is that unless you take the wine, we’ll all end up starving to death in this cavern.”
Vin sat back in her chair. There has to be a way out—a chance to exploit this.
However, it was incredibly unlikely that she’d be able to break through that door above. She could maybe use duralumin and steel to Push her way through. However, her steel and pewter would be gone, and she was out of metal vials.
Telden’s words, unfortunately, held a great deal of truth. Even if Vin could survive in the cavern, she’d be stagnant and useless. The siege would continue up above—she didn’t even know how that was going—and the world would continue to die by Ruin’s machinations.
She needed to get out of the cavern. Even if that meant being put into Yomen’s hands. She eyed the bottle of drugged wine.
Damn, she thought. That obligator is far cleverer than we expected. The wine would certainly have been prepared with enough strength to knock out an Allomancer.
However …
Pewter made the body resistant to all kinds of drugs. If she flared pewter with duralumin after drinking the wine, would it perhaps burn away the poison and leave her awake? She could pretend to be unconscious, then escape above.
It seemed like a stretch. And yet, what was she to do? Her food was almost gone, and her chances for escaping were slim. She didn’t know what Yomen wanted of her—and Telden would be very unlikely to tell her—but he must not want her dead. If that had been the case, he’d simply have left her to starve.
She had a choice. Either wait longer in the cavern, or gamble on a better chance to escape up above. She thought for just a moment, then made up her mind. She reached for the bottle. Even if her trick with pewter didn’t work, she’d rather gamble on getting into a better situation up above.
Telden chuckled. “They did say that you were a decisive one. That’s rather refreshing—I’ve spent far too long with stuffy noblemen who take years to come to any firm decisions.”
Vin ignored him. She easily popped the cork off of the bottle, then raised it and took a swig. The drugs began to take effect almost immediately. She settled back in her chair, letting her eyes droop, trying to give the impression that she was falling asleep. Indeed, it was very difficult to remain awake. Her mind was clouding despite flared pewter.
She slumped, feeling herself drift away. Here goes, she thought, then burned duralumin. Her body flared with hyper-enhanced pewter. Immediately, the feeling of tiredness went away. She almost bolted upright from the sudden burst of energy. Telden was chuckling. “I’ll be,” he said to one of the servants. “She actually went for it.”
“You’d be dead if she hadn’t, my lord,” the servant said. “We’d all be dead.”
And then the duralumin ran out. Her pewter disappeared with a puff, and with it went her immunity to the drug, which hadn’t burned away. It had been a long shot anyway.
She barely heard her weapon click as it slipped from her fingers and hit the floor. Then, she fell unconscious.
Once Ruin was free from his prison, he was able to influence people more strongly—but impaling someone with a Hemalurgic spike was difficult no matter what the circumstances.
To achieve such things, he apparently began with people who already had a tenuous grip on reality. Their insanity made them more open to his touch, and he could use them to spike more stable people. Either way, it’s impressive how many important people Ruin managed to spike. King Penrod, ruling Luthadel at the time, is a very good example of this.
51
ELEND FLEW THROUGH THE MISTS. He’d never quite been able to manage Vin’s horseshoe trick. Somehow, she could keep herself in the air, bounding from Push to Push, then Pulling each horseshoe back up behind her after she used it. To Elend, the process looked like a cyclone of potentially lethal chunks of metal with Vin at the center.
He dropped a coin, then Pushed himself in a powerful leap. He’d given up on the horseshoe method after four or five failed attempts. Vin had seemed puzzled that he couldn’t get it down—she’d apparently figured it out on her own, needing only about a half hour’s practice to perfect it.
But, well, that was Vin.
Elend made do with coins, of which he carried a rather large bag. Copper clips, the smallest of the old imperial coins, worked perfectly for his purposes—particularly since he was apparently much more powerful than other Mistborn. Each of his Pushes carried him farther than they should have, and he really didn’t use that many coins, even when traveling a long distance.
It felt good to be away. He felt free as he plunged down from his leap, dropping through the shifting darkness, then flared pewter and landed with a muffled thump. The ground in this particular valley was relatively free of ash—it had drifted, leaving a small corridor where it only came up to his mid-calf. So, he ran for a few minutes, for the change.
A mistcloak fluttered behind him. He wore dark clothing, rather than one of his white uniforms. It seemed appropriate; besides, he’d never really had a chance to be a true Mistborn. Since discovering his powers, he’d spent his life at war. There wasn’t all that much need for him to go scuttling about in the darkness, particularly not with Vin around to do it better.
I can see why Vin would find this intoxicating, he thought, dropping another coin and bounding between two hilltops. Even with the stress of Vin’s capture and the threat to the empire, there was an exhilarating freedom about cruising through the mists. It almost allowed him to forget about the wars, the destruction, and the responsibility.
Then, he landed, ash coming up to nearly his waist. He stood for a few moments, looking down at the soft black powder. He couldn’t escape it. Vin was in danger, the empire was collapsing, and his people were starving. It was his job to fix these things—that was the burden he’d taken upon himself when he’d become emperor.
He Pushed himself into the air, leaving a trail of ash fluttering in the mists behind him.
I certainly hope Sazed and Breeze are having better luck in Urteau, he thought. He was worried about his chances with Fadrex, and the Central Dominance was going to need the grain in the Urteau cache if they were going to plant enough food for the coming winter.
He couldn’t worry about that now. He simply had to count on his friends to be effective. Elend’s job was to do something to help Vin. He couldn’t just sit and wait in the camp, letting Yomen pull the strings. And yet, he didn’t dare try to assassinate Yomen—not after the man had tricked both of them so cleverly.
And so, Elend ran, heading northeast, toward the last known location of a koloss army. The time for subtlety and diplomacy was over. Elend needed a threat—something he could hold over Yomen’s head and, if necessary, use to batter him. And nothing was better at battering a city than koloss. Perhaps he was a fool for seeking out the brutes on his own. Perhaps it was wrong to give up on diplomacy. Yet, he had made his decision. It seemed he had failed in so many things lately—protecting Vin, keeping Luthadel safe, defending his people—that he simply needed to act.