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When they see me, do they see a liar?
Men like you preach change, but I wonder. Is this a battle we can really fight?” “You’re fighting it already, Goodman Mennis. You’re just losing horribly.”
And now, the Final Empire itself would shake before he was finished with it.
His anger was quiet, not as fierce as it had been the night he’d killed Lord Tresting. But he felt it still, felt it in the itching of his scars and in the remembered screams of the woman he loved.
If they want to stand against me like noblemen, then they can die like noblemen.”
Even if he were here, he’d be off on his own. You won’t— A muted thump sounded as someone dropped a stack of books onto her table. Vin jumped in startlement, turning as Elend Venture pulled over a chair, then sat down with a relaxed posture.
This is the Final Empire, Vin, she told herself as the carriage rolled away. Don’t forget the ash because you see a little silk.
One geode; that bought one more week of life. Life beneath the taskmasters’ lashes. Life beneath the rule of a sadistic god. Life beneath the sun gone red.
I’m a bodyguard, not a general.” I know how you feel, my friend, Kelsier thought. I’m a thief, not a prophet. Sometimes we have to be what the job requires.
“Oh? Has my lady suddenly become an optimist?” “Has my Terrisman suddenly become a smart-mouth?” Vin retorted. “He always has been, I think,” Sazed said with a slight smile.
You’re no skaa—you’re just noblemen without titles.”
Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.
Farewell. I’ll tell Mare about you. She always wanted a daughter.
I know what you’re thinking. This is the Mistborn who killed the Lord Ruler? This scrawny thing? Can it be possible? I wonder the same thing myself.
Elend watched her with fondness.
Despite her oddities—or more likely because of them—he loved this thin woman with the determined eyes and blunt temperament.
The merchant lounged by it, a scruffy man who had hair on only half of his head—the right half. Vin stood there for a moment, trying to decide if the odd hairstyle was due to disease, injury, or preference.
relatable
Kelsier. Even now, that was still her immediate reaction.
“Good men don’t need to become legends.” She opened her eyes, looking up at him. “They simply do what’s right anyway.”
Perhaps in the end he would realize that there was no ghostly threat facing the world—that he had simply returned because of his own selfish desire to be with his friends.
Ham’s innocent gesture made her want to squirm. It seemed to her that people shouldn’t be so casual with the way that they touched others.
my girl :)
“Do you know what I hate, kandra?” she whispered,
“No, mistress.”
“I hate being afraid.”
“My experience has been that the man is usually made by the situation.
“Papers can be moved, I believe. If they prove too heavy, you could always burn pewter to give yourself more strength.”
“I’m certain she’s a capable bodyguard, but as a lady, she—” “Stop,” Elend snapped. “Vin is fine as she is.”
“Good men can make terrible kings,” Tindwyl noted. “But bad men cannot make good kings,” Sazed said. “It is better to start with a good man and work on the rest, I think.”
Idly, she wondered what kind of person she might have become if she’d gained full access to her powers without simultaneously learning of friendship and trust from Kelsier’s crew.
She had a great many skills, but few of them were “beautiful hallway” types of skills. They were more … “ash-stained alleyway” types.
Elend apparently wanted to remind everyone who his friends were. Powerful men. Frightening men. Men who killed gods.
“Oh, child. When will you stop worrying and simply let yourself be loved?”
“I think I would feel more comfortable in this city,” she said, “if I didn’t know that our Mistborn had the volatile emotions of a teenage girl.” “Lady Vin is more stable than you think,” Sazed said. “Sazed, I’ve raised some fifteen daughters,” Tindwyl said, entering the room. “No teenage girl is stable. Some are merely better at hiding it than others.”
Someone stole away my friend the scholar, Sazed thought, and left a king in his place.
BREEZE COULD SMELL INTRIGUE FROM two streets away.
She ran as she had done only once before, and pushed herself even harder than she had on that day. Then, she had been running simply to keep up with Kelsier. Now she ran for those she loved.
“I thought I knew you,” she snapped. “I thought you were a good man, deep down.” Cett shook his head. “The good men are all dead, Allrianne. They died inside that city.”
Half of the time he thought he had no business leading men at all. The other half of the time, he figured that he thought too much.
You gave me that, Sazed. You taught me to love him enough to let him die.”
“He was a man,” Vin said quietly. “Only a man. Yet you always knew he’d succeed. He made you be what he wanted you to be.”
Most of the crew had trouble worshipping Kelsier as the other skaa did, for they knew of his faults and his quirks. They knew him as a man first, as a god second. Perhaps the religions were the same to Sazed. He knew them so well that he could see their flaws too easily.
“There has to be a balance, Vin,” he said. “Somehow we’ll find it. The balance between who we wish to be and who we need to be.” He sighed. “But for now,” he said, looking to the canal, “we have to be satisfied with who we are.”
Vin didn’t need another person worshipping her. She didn’t need another faithful believer like Demoux, especially not in Elend. He didn’t need to be a good member of the Church of the Survivor. He needed to be a good husband.
Vin smiled, and suddenly Elend felt as if the world had been put back together a tiny amount.
You have to admit that you’re unusual, Vin. You’re some strange mixture of a noblewoman, a street urchin, and a cat.
Is it such a shameful thing, he thought, to be the man who likes to provide information for others, rather than the one who has to use that information?
Vin was a person of instinct, while Elend was one of logic and thought. Sometimes it seemed she could do the impossible simply because she didn’t stop to think about how impossible it really was. If Elend came to a cliff, he paused, gauging the distance to the other side. Vin went ahead and jumped.
The world was dying. Its gods had to die with it.
“For some time now, I have been searching through the religions of humankind, trying to ascertain which of their teachings were true. I had begun to despair that I would ever find a religion that offered the answers I sought. Then I learned that my own religion still existed, protected by the kandra. I came here hoping to find the truth.” “This is the truth,” one of the kandra said. “That’s what every religion teaches,” Sazed said, frustration mounting. “Yet in each of them I find inconsistencies, logical leaps, and demands of faith I find impossible to accept.” “It sounds to me, young one,”
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I can’t decide if you’re a fool, Vin thought toward it, or if you simply exist in a way that makes you incapable of considering some things.
