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Mistborn is my calling card to the world.
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.
Of course, Vin had less time than that to practice before she killed the Lord Ruler. But she was a special case. She used Allomancy as easily as other people breathed; it was less a skill to her than an extension of who she was. Elend might have more raw power—as she always insisted—but she was the true master.
“You did,” she said. “Your parliamentary assembly still rules in Luthadel, and the kingdoms you reign over maintain basic rights and privileges for the skaa.” “Compromises,” Elend said. “They get to do what they want only as long as I don’t disagree with them.” “It’s enough. You have to be realistic, Elend.”
“We’re making progress,” Elend said. “We’ll find a way, Vin. We’ll survive.” “Do you really think we can do it?” Vin asked, turning to look him in the eyes. “Yes,” Elend said. And she believed him. He had hope, and always would. That was a big part of why she loved him so much.
suborning
It is too easy for people to characterize Ruin as simply a force of destruction. Think rather of Ruin as intelligent decay. Not merely chaos, but a force that sought in a rational—and dangerous—way to break everything down to its most basic forms. Ruin could plan and carefully plot, knowing if he built one thing up, he could use it to knock down two others. The nature of the world is such that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.
A year of marriage had taught her, however, that there were some things one simply had to ignore. She could love Elend for his desire to do the right thing, including when she thought he’d done the opposite.
“Why yes,” Breeze said. “While I do happen to like black as a color for suits, I otherwise find it to be a somewhat uninspired hue.” “What else would the ash be?” Breeze shrugged. “Well, Vin says that there’s something behind all this, right? Some evil force of doom or whatever? If I were said force of doom, then I certainly wouldn’t have used my powers to turn the land black. It lacks flair. Red. Now that would be an interesting color. Think of the possibilities—if the ash were red, the rivers would run like blood. Black is so monotonous that you can forget about it, but red—you’d always be
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Unfortunately, much of the time he had trouble summoning the effort even to care about his own pessimistic bent.
I should be able to move on, but I cannot. I am weak of will, I think.” “That just isn’t true, Sazed,” Vin said. “I must disagree.” “Oh?” Vin asked. “And if you really were weak of will, would you be able to disagree with me?” Sazed smiled. “When did you get so good at logic?” “Living with Elend,” Vin said with a sigh. “If you prefer irrational arguments, don’t marry a scholar.”
Clubs and Dockson.
Cett still had a habit of throwing things at Breeze: insults for the most part, and occasionally knives.
“I wish I cared enough to apologize,”
“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.”
portentous
She loved Elend, and was glad life had progressed to the point where she could call him husband, but there had been a delicious innocence about her early days with the crew.
Dances spent with Elend reading at her table, pretending to ignore her. Nights spent learning the secrets of Allomancy. Evenings spent sitting around the table at Clubs’s shop, sharing laughter with the crew. They’d faced the challenge of planning something as large as the fall of an empire, yet felt no burden of leadership or weight of responsibility for the future.
“The kind about monsters and myths. Longtales, some call them—stories told by skaa around the fires, whispering of mistwraiths, shades, spren, and brollins and such.”
“It makes me wonder what is so alluring about the real world that gives them all such a fetish for it. It’s not a very nice place these days.”
Vin smiled, and suddenly Elend felt as if the world had been put back together a tiny amount.
I don’t necessarily need your help; I need your trust. Your hope. It’s something I’ve never had of myself, and I rely on yours.” Elend nodded slowly. “You have it.”
“You know,” Elend added, “during those days when you refused to marry me, I constantly thought about how strange you were.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s romantic.” Elend smiled. “Oh, come on. You have to admit that you’re unusual, Vin. You’re some strange mixture of a noblewoman, a street urchin, and a cat. Plus you’ve managed—in our short three years together—to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiancée. That’s kind of like a homicidal hat trick. It’s a strange foundation for a relationship, wouldn’t you say?” Vin rolled her eyes. “I’m glad I don’t have any other
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In the end, I stopped worrying about how strange you seemed. I realized that it didn’t really matter if I understood you, because I trusted you. Does that make sense?
It seems like only last week you were scrambling about, hiding in corners, wearing the haircut of a boy and the attitude of a mouse.” Vin smiled fondly. “Do you remember when we first met? You thought I was a twixt.”
“Do you know why I detest men such as you, Venture?” Yomen asked. “My insufferable charm and wit? I doubt it’s my good looks—but compared to that of an obligator, I suppose even my face could be enviable.” Yomen’s expression darkened. “How did a man like you ever end up at a table of negotiation?” “I was trained by a surly Mistborn, a sarcastic Terrisman, and a group of disrespectful thieves,” Elend said, sighing. “Plus on top of that, I was a fairly insufferable person to begin with.
“Excuse me, ladies,” a voice said. Vin smiled, turning as the women parted to make way for Elend. Several of the younger ones got dreamy expressions on their faces as they regarded Elend with his warrior’s body, his rugged beard, and his white imperial uniform. Vin suppressed a huff of annoyance. She’d loved him long before he’d become dreamy.
maladroitly
sapient
“This is an example of what we call ostension—a legend being emulated in real life.
To Reen, life had been about survival—the simple, harsh facts of survival. Trust nobody. Make yourself invaluable to your team, but don’t be too threatening. Be ruthless. Stay alive.
“ALL RIGHT,” BREEZE SAID, “SO does somebody want to speculate on how our team’s spy ended up becoming a pseudo-religious vigilante freedom fighter?”
“I do not endeavor to be mysterious, Lord Breeze,” Sazed said, moving on to a small bronze ring.
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?
Delegation, my friend. Without it, we would have to bake our own bread and dig our own latrines!” Then Breeze leaned in. “And trust me. You don’t want to taste anything I’ve had a hand in baking. Ever. Particularly after I’ve cleaned a latrine.”
“A man is what he has passion about,” Breeze said. “I’ve found that if you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you’ll just end up miserable.” “And if what I want isn’t what society needs?” Sazed said. “Sometimes we are required to do what we don’t enjoy. That is a simple fact of life, I think.” Breeze shrugged. “I don’t worry about that. I only do what I’m good at. In my case, that’s making other people do things that I don’t want to. It all fits together in the end.”
disconsolate
Yet this woman continued to trust. It was like finding a beautiful plant growing alone in a field of burnt ash.
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.
“Faith,” Spook said, “means that it doesn’t matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.”
I have come to see that each power has three aspects: a physical one, which can be seen in the creations made by Ruin and Preservation; a spiritual one in the unseen energy that permeates the whole world; and a cognitive one in the minds who controlled that energy. There is more to this. Much more that even I do not yet comprehend.
The sole point in creating something is to watch it die. Like a story that must come to a climax, what I have done will not be fulfilled until the end has arrived.”
Why did they believe? Because they saw miracles. Events one person took as happenstance, a person of faith took as a sign. A loved one recovering from disease, a fortunate business deal, a chance meeting with a long lost friend. It wasn’t the grand doctrines or the sweeping ideals that seemed to make believers out of people. It was the simple magic in the world around them.
Some important decisions were made in public, on a battlefield or in a conference room. But others happened quietly, unseen by others. That didn’t make the decision any less important to Sazed. He would believe. Not because something had been proven to him beyond his ability to deny. But because he chose to.
The life of a person is more than the chaos of its passing. Emotion, Ruin. This is your defeat.
