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Breeze turned to look out the window. “You were always the best of us, Sazed,” he said quietly. “Because you believed in something.”
Hope, Elend thought forcefully. She needs that from me; she’s always needed that from me.
It wasn’t worth fighting, because nothing meant anything.
Somehow, among the fall of kings and collapse of worlds, she had grown into a woman.
“I don’t have much time for stories,” Vin said. “Seems that fewer and fewer people do, these days.”
“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.”
“I’m a storyteller,” Slowswift corrected. “And not every story is meant for every set of ears. Why should I talk to those who would attack my city and overthrow my liege?”
“We could pay you well.” “I sell information, child. Not my soul.”
He looked across the cabin at her, sitting on the bed, expression distant as she thought about things that shouldn’t have to be her burden. Even after leaping about all night, even after their days spent traveling, even with her face dirtied by ash, she was beautiful.
“Think as you wish, Lady Patresen. But there is one thing you must understand. You are not my adversary. I don’t have time for people like you. You’re a petty woman in an insignificant city, part of a doomed culture of nobility. I’m not talking to you because I want to be part of your schemes; you can’t even understand how unimportant they are to me.
He ground his teeth, walking, hoping that the motion would help him work out the knots within himself.
“There is a saying in the Steel Ministry,” Yomen eventually said. “‘Sit down to dine with evil, and you will consume it with your meal.’”
Hell, boy, every leader has weaknesses—the ones who win are the ones who learn how to smother those weaknesses, not give them fuel!”
However, he realized that this siege could tip the balance between who he was and who he feared he would become.
Inside—not buried all that deeply—she’d known something very important. Reen had loved her.
“You are my enemy. You seek to end the things I love.” And is an ending always bad? it asked. Must not all things, even worlds, someday end?
War has changed him some, but on the inside he’s still a dreamer caught in a world with too much violence.
“Power can be a terrible thing, Spook,” she said quietly. “I’m … not pleased with what it’s done to my brother. Don’t wish so hard for it.”
As it was, the corpse was left alone to be buried in ash. The world was dying. Its gods had to die with it.
“Vin, Vin. Why can’t you see? This isn’t about good or evil. Morality doesn’t enter into it. Good men will kill as quickly for what they want as evil men—only the things they want are different.”
How did men believe in something that preached love on one hand, yet taught destruction of unbelievers on the other? How did one rationalize belief with the lack of proof? How could they honestly expect him to have faith in something that taught of miracles and wonders in the far past, but carefully gave excuses for why such things didn’t occur in the present day?
Belief isn’t simply a thing for fair times and bright days, I think. What is belief—what is faith—if you don’t continue in it after failure?
Better to trust and be betrayed, Kelsier seemed to whisper. It had been one of the Survivor’s mottos. Better to love and be hurt.
And in truth, he’d rather be in the city—almost certainly doomed—than be out there besieging it, and winning. For he knew that the winning side wasn’t always the right one.
“It sounds to me, young one,” Haddek said, “that you’re searching for something that cannot be found.” “The truth?” Sazed said. “No,” Haddek replied. “A religion that requires no faith of its believers.”
“Try? You realize the forces I can bring to bear against you, child? You realize the power I have, the destruction I represent? I am mountains that crush. I am waves that crash. I am storms that shatter. I am the end.”
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.
All societies have people who break the rules, child, Sazed thought. Particularly when power is concerned.
