“Believe as you wish,” Yomen said. “But know this, woman: I do not lie. I’ve never needed lies, and I find that is particularly true now, when the entire world is in chaos. People need truth from those they follow.”
Vin frowned.
“Regardless, it is time,” Yomen said.
“Time?” Vin asked.
Yomen nodded. “Yes. I apologize for leaving you for so long in your cell. I have been … distracted.”
Elend, Vin thought. What has he been doing? I feel so blind!
She glanced at Ruin, who stood on the other side of the bench, shaking his head as if he understood far more than he was telling her. She turned back to Yomen. “I still don’t understand,” she said. “Time for what?”
Yomen met her eyes. “Time for me to make a decision about your execution, Lady Venture.”
Oh, she thought. Right. Between her dealings with Ruin and her plans to escape, she’d nearly forgotten Yomen’s declaration that he intended to let her “defend” herself before he executed her.
Ruin walked across the room, circling Yomen in a leisurely stroll. The obligator king stood, still meeting Vin’s eyes. If he could see Ruin, he didn’t show it. Instead, he waved to a guard, who opened a side door, leading in several obligators in gray robes. They seated themselves on a bench across the room from Vin.
“Tell me, Lady Venture,” Yomen said, turning back to her, “why did you come to Fadrex City?”
Vin cocked her head. “I thought this wasn’t to be a trial. You said that you didn’t need that sort of thing.”
“I would think,” Yomen replied, “that you would be pleased with any delay in the process.”
A delay meant more time to think—more time to possibly escape. “Why did we come?” Vin asked. “We knew you had one of the Lord Ruler’s supply caches beneath your city.”
Yomen raised an eyebrow. “How did you know about it?”
“We found another one,” Vin said. “It had directions to Fadrex.”
Yomen nodded to himself. She could tell that he believed her, but there was something … else. He seemed to be making connections that she didn’t understand, and probably didn’t have the information to understand. “And the danger my kingdom posed to yours?” Yomen asked. “That didn’t have anything at all to do with your invasion of my lands?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Vin said. “Cett had been pushing Elend to move into this dominance for some time.”
The obligators conferred quietly at this comment, though Yomen stood aloof, arms folded as he regarded her. Vin found the experience unnerving. It had been years—from her days in Camon’s crew—since she had felt so much in another’s power. Even when she’d faced the Lord Ruler, she’d felt differently. Yomen seemed to see her as a tool.
But a tool to do what? And, how could she manipulate his needs so that he kept her alive long enough for her to escape?
Make yourself indispensable, Reen had always taught. Then a crewleader can’t get rid of you without losing power himself. Even now, the voice of her brother still seemed to whisper the words in her mind. Were they memories, interpretations of his wisdom, or effects of Ruin’s influence? Regardless, it seemed like good advice at the moment.
“So, you came with the express purpose of invasion?” Yomen asked.
“Elend intended to try diplomacy first,” Vin said carefully. “However, we both knew that it’s a bit hard to play the diplomat when you camp an army outside of someone’s city.”
“You admit to being conquerors, then,” Yomen said. “You are more honest than your husband.”
“Elend is more sincere than either of us, Yomen,” Vin snapped. “Just because he interprets things differently from you or me does not mean he’s being dishonest when he expresses his view.”
Yomen raised an eyebrow, perhaps at the quickness of her response. “A valid point.”
Vin sat back on the bench, wrapping her cut hands with a bit of clean cloth from her shirt. Yomen stood beside the windows of the large, stark room. It felt very odd to be speaking to him. On one hand, she and he seemed very different. He was a bureaucrat obligator whose lack of muscle or warrior’s grace proved that he’d spent his life concerned with forms and records. She was a child of the streets and an adult practiced in war and assassination.
Yet, his mannerisms, his way of speaking, seemed to resemble her own. Is this what I might have been more like, she wondered, had I not been born a skaa? A blunt bureaucrat rather than a terse warrior?
As Yomen contemplated her, Ruin walked in a slow circle around the obligator king. “This one is a disappointment,” Ruin said quietly.
Vin glanced at Ruin just briefly. He shook his head. “Such destruction this one could have caused, had he struck out, rather than staying huddled in his little city, praying to his dead god. Men would have followed him. I could never get through to him on the long term, unfortunately. Not every ploy can be successful, particularly when the will of fools like him must be accounted for.”
“So,” Yomen said, drawing her attention back to him, “you came to take my city because you heard of my stockpile, and because you feared a return of the Lord Ruler’s power.”
“I didn’t say that,” Vin said, frowning.
“You said that you feared me.”
“As a foreign power,” Vin said, “with a proven ability to undermine a government and take it over.”
“I didn’t take over,” Yomen said. “I returned this city, and the dominance, to its rightful rule. But that is beside the point. I want you to tell me of this religion your people preach.”
“The Church of the Survivor?”
“Yes,” Yomen said. “You are one of its heads, correct?”
“No,” Vin said. “They revere me. But I’ve never felt that I properly fit as part of the religion. Mostly, it’s focused around Kelsier.”
“The Survivor of Hathsin,” Yomen said. “He died. How is it that people worship him?”
Vin shrugged. “It used to be common to worship gods that one couldn’t see.”
“Perhaps,” Yomen said. “I have … read of such things, though I find them difficult to understand. Faith in an unseen god—what sense does that make? Why reject the god that they lived with for so long—the one that they could see, and feel—in favor of one that died? One that the Lord Ruler himself struck down?”
“You do it,” Vin said. “You’re still worshipping the Lord Ruler.”
“He’s not gone,” Yomen said.
Vin paused.
“No,” Yomen said, apparently noting her confusion. “I haven’t seen or heard of him since his disappearance. However, neither do I put any credence in reports of his death.”
“He was rather dead,” Vin said. “Trust me.”
“I don’t trust you, I’m afraid,” Yomen said. “Tell me of that evening. Tell me precisely what happened.”
So Vin did. She told him of her imprisonment, and of her escape with Sazed. She told him of her decision to fight the Lord Ruler, and of her reliance on the Eleventh Metal. She left out her strange ability to draw upon the power of the mists, but she explained pretty much everything else—including Sazed’s theory that the Lord Ruler had been immortal through the clever manipulation of his Feruchemy and Allomancy in combination.