The Mistborn Trilogy (53 page)

Then, he paused. He shook his head, as if walking up. Vin frowned. Something felt different. Tentatively, she extinguished her copper, and realized that she could no longer feel the Lord Ruler’s Soothing. The feeling of awful depression—of soullessness and emptiness—had strangely disappeared. Spook looked up, and the rest of the crewmembers stood just a little straighter.

Vin glanced around. The skaa below looked unchanged. Yet, her friends—

Her eyes found Kelsier. The crewleader stood straight-backed, staring resolutely at the approaching carriage, a look of concentration on his face.

He’s Rioting our emotions,
Vin realized.
He’s counteracting the Lord Ruler’s power.
It was obviously a struggle for Kelsier to protect even their small group.

Breeze is right
, Vin thought.
How can we fight something like this? The Lord Ruler is Soothing a hundred thousand people at once!

But, Kelsier fought on. Just in case, Vin turned on her copper. Then she burned zinc and reached out to help Kelsier, Rioting the emotions of those around her. It felt like she was Pulling against some massive, immobile wall. Yet, it must have helped, for Kelsier relaxed slightly, shooting her a grateful look.

“Look,” Dockson said, probably unaware of the unseen battle that occurred around him. “The prisoner carts.” He pointed toward a set of ten large, barlined carts traveling down the corridor behind the Lord Ruler.

“Do you recognize anyone in them?” Ham said, leaning forward.

“I’m not of the seeing,” Spook said, looking uncomfortable. “Uncle, you really the burn, right?”

“Yes, my copper is on,” Clubs said testily. “You’re safe. We’re far enough away from the Lord Ruler that it wouldn’t matter anyway—that plaza is enormous.”

Spook nodded, then obviously began burning tin. A moment later, he shook his head. “Notting of the recognizing anyone.”

“You weren’t there for a lot of the recruiting, though, Spook,” Ham said, squinting.

“True,” Spook replied. Though his accent remained, he was obviously making an effort to speak normally.

Kelsier stepped up to the ledge, holding a hand up to shade his eyes. “I can see the prisoners. No, I don’t recognize any of the faces. They aren’t captive soldiers.”

“Who, then?” Ham asked.

“Mostly women and children, it appears,” Kelsier said.

“The families of the soldiers?” Ham asked, horrified.

Kelsier shook his head. “I doubt it. They wouldn’t have taken the time to identify dead skaa.”

Ham frowned, looking confused.

“Random people, Hammond,” Breeze said with a quiet sigh. “Examples—casual executions made in order to punish the skaa for harboring rebels.”

“No, not even that,” Kelsier said. “I doubt the Lord Ruler even knows, or cares, that most of those men were recruited from Luthadel. He probably just assumes that it was another countryside rebellion. This…this is just a way of reminding everyone who is in control.”

The Lord Ruler’s carriage rolled up a platform onto the central patio. The ominous vehicle pulled to a stop in the exact center of the square, but the Lord Ruler himself remained inside.

The prisoner carts pulled to a stop, and a group of obligators and soldiers began to unload them. Black ash continued to fall as the first group of prisoners—most struggling only weakly—were dragged up onto the raised central platform. An Inquisitor directed the work, gesturing for prisoners to be gathered beside each of the platform’s four bowl-like fountains.

Four prisoners were forced to their knees—one beside each running fountain—and four Inquisitors raised obsidian axes. Four axes fell, and four heads were sheared free. The bodies, still held by soldiers, were allowed to spurt their last lifeblood into the fountain basins.

The fountains began to glisten red as they sprayed into the air. The soldiers tossed the bodies aside, then brought four more people forward.

Spook looked away sickly. “Why…why doesn’t Kelsier do something? To saving them, I mean?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Vin said. “There are
eight
Inquisitors down there—not to mention the Lord Ruler himself. Kelsier would be an idiot to try something.”

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he considered it,
she thought, remembering when Kelsier had been ready to rush down and take on an entire army by himself. She glanced to the side. Kelsier looked like he was forcibly holding himself back—white-knuckled hands gripping the chimney beside him—to keep himself from rushing down to stop the executions.

Spook stumbled over to another part of the rooftop where he could retch without spilling bile onto the people below. Ham groaned slightly, and even Clubs looked saddened. Dockson watched solemnly, as if witnessing the deaths were some sort of vigil. Breeze just shook his head.

Kelsier, however…Kelsier was angry. His face red, his muscles tense, his eyes ablaze.

Four more deaths, one of them a child.

“This,” Kelsier said, angrily waving his hand toward the central square. “
This
is our enemy. There is no quarter here, no walking away. This is no simple job, to be thrown aside when we encounter a few unexpected twists.”

Four more deaths.

“Look at them!” Kelsier demanded, pointing at the bleachers full of nobility. Most of them appeared bored—and a few even seemed to be enjoying themselves, turning and joking with one another as the beheadings continued.

“I know you question me,” Kelsier said, turning to the crew. “You think that I’ve been too hard on the nobility, think that I relish killing them too much. But, can you honestly see those men laughing and tell me that they don’t
deserve
to die by my blade? I only bring them justice.”

Four more deaths.

Vin searched the bleachers with urgent, tin-enhanced eyes. She found Elend sitting amid a group of younger men. None of them were laughing, and they weren’t the only ones. True, many of the nobility made light of the experience, but there were some small minority who looked horrified.

Kelsier continued. “Breeze, you asked about the atium. I’ll be honest. It was never my main goal—I gathered this crew because I wanted to change things. We’ll grab the atium—we’ll need it to support a new government—but this job isn’t about making me, or any of you, wealthy.

“Yeden is dead. He was our excuse—a way that we could do something good while still pretending to just be thieves. Now that he’s gone, you can give up, if you want. Quit. But, that won’t change anything. The struggle will go on. Men will still die. You’ll just be ignoring it.”

Four more deaths.

“It’s time to stop the charade,” Kelsier said, staring at them each in turn. “If we’re going to do this now, we have to be up-front and honest with ourselves. We have to admit that it isn’t about money. It’s about stopping
that
.” He pointed at the courtyard with its red fountains—a visible sign of death for the thousands of skaa too far away to even tell what was happening.

“I intend to continue my fight,” Kelsier said quietly. “I realize that some of you question my leadership. You think I’ve been building myself up too much with the skaa. You whisper that I’m making myself into another Lord Ruler—you think that my ego is more important to me than overthrowing the empire.”

He paused, and Vin saw guilt in the eyes of Dockson and the others. Spook rejoined the group, still looking a bit sick.

Four more deaths.

“You’re wrong,” Kelsier said quietly. “You have to trust me. You gave me your confidence when we began this plan, despite how dangerous things seemed. I still need that confidence! No matter how things appear, no matter how terrible the odds, we have to keep fighting!”

Four more deaths.

The crew slowly turned toward Kelsier. Resisting the Lord Ruler’s Pushing on their emotions didn’t seem like half as much a struggle for Kelsier anymore, though Vin had let her zinc lapse.

Maybe…maybe he
can
do it,
Vin thought, despite herself. If there was ever a man who could defeat the Lord Ruler, it would be Kelsier.

“I didn’t choose you men because of your competence,” Kelsier said, “though you are certainly skilled. I chose each of you specifically because I knew you to be men of conscience. Ham, Breeze, Dox, Clubs…you are men with reputations for honesty, even charity. I knew that if I were going to succeed at this plan, I would need men who actually
cared
.

“No, Breeze, this isn’t about boxings or about glory. This is about war—a war we have been fighting for a thousand years, a war I intend to end. You may go, if you wish. You know I’ll let any of you out—no questions asked, no repercussions exacted—if you wish to go.

“However,” he said, eyes growing hard, “if you stay, you have to promise to stop questioning my authority. You can voice concerns about the job itself, but there will be no more whispered conferences about my leadership. If you stay, you follow me. Understood?”

One by one, he locked eyes with the crewmembers. Each one gave him a nod.

“I don’t think we ever really questioned you, Kell,” Dockson said. “We just…we’re worried, and I think rightly so. The army was a big part of our plans.”

Kelsier nodded to the north, toward the main city gates. “What do you see up in the distance, Dox?”

“The city gates?”

“And what is different about them recently?”

Dockson shrugged. “Nothing unusual. They’re a bit understaffed, but—”

“Why?” Kelsier interjected. “Why are they understaffed?”

Dockson paused. “Because the Garrison is gone?”

“Exactly,” Kelsier said. “Ham says that the Garrison could be out chasing remnants of our army for months, and only about ten percent of its men stayed behind. That makes sense—stopping rebels is the sort of thing the Garrison was created to do. Luthadel might be exposed, but no one ever attacks Luthadel. No one ever has.”

A quiet understanding passed between the members of the crew.

“Part one of our plan to take the city has been accomplished,” Kelsier said. “We got the Garrison out of Luthadel. It cost us far more than we expected—far more than it should have. I wish to the Forgotten Gods that those boys hadn’t died. Unfortunately, we can’t change that now—we can only use the opening they gave us.

“The plan is still in motion—the main peacekeeping force in the city is gone. If a house war starts in earnest, the Lord Ruler will have a difficult time stopping it. Assuming he wants to. For some reason, he tends to step back and let the nobility fight each other every hundred years or so. Perhaps he finds that letting them at each other’s throats keeps them away from his own.”

“But, what if the Garrison comes back?” Ham asked.

“If I’m right,” Kelsier said, “the Lord Ruler will let them chase stragglers from our army for several months, giving the nobility a chance to blow off a little steam. Except, he’s going to get a lot more than he expected. When that house war starts, we’re going to use the chaos to seize the palace.”

“With what army, my dear man?” Breeze said.

“We still have some troops left,” Kelsier said. “Plus, we have time to recruit more. We’ll have to be careful—we can’t use the caves, so we’ll have to hide our troops in the city. That will probably mean smaller numbers. However, that won’t be an issue—you see, that garrison is going to return eventually.”

The members of the group shared a look as the executions proceeded below. Vin sat quietly, trying to decide what Kelsier meant by that statement.

“Exactly, Kell,” Ham said slowly. “The Garrison will return, and we won’t have a big enough army to fight them.”

“But we
will
have the Lord Ruler’s treasury,” Kelsier said, smiling. “What is it you always say about those Garrisoners, Ham?”

The Thug paused, then smiled too. “That they’re mercenaries.”

“We seize the Lord Ruler’s money,” Kelsier said, “and it means we get his army too. This can still work, gentlemen. We can
make
it work.”

The crew seemed to grow more confident. Vin, however, turned her eyes back toward the square. The fountains ran so red that they seemed completely filled with blood. Over it all, the Lord Ruler watched from within his jet-black carriage. The windows were open, and—with tin—Vin could just barely see a silhouetted figure sitting within.

That’s our real foe
, she thought.
Not the missing garrison, not the Inquisitors with their axes. That man. The one from the logbook.

We’ll have to find a way to defeat him, otherwise everything else we do will be pointless.