“Let’s be on with it then,” Kelsier said.
Gemmel glared at him. The old lunatic didn’t like it when Kelsier tried to take control. But … well, that was what Kelsier did. Somebody had to.
Keep Shezler was constructed in the unusual architectural style typical of any area of the Western Dominance far from Luthadel. Instead of blocks and peaks, it had an almost organic feel, with four tapering towers up front. He thought that buildings out here must be constructed of stone frames with a kind of hardened mud outside, sculpted and shaped to make all those curves and knobs. The keep, like the rest of the buildings, looked unfinished to Kelsier. “Where?” Kelsier said.
“Up,” Gemmel said. “Then down.” He jumped from the wall and threw a coin for himself. He Pushed against it, and his weight drove it downward. When it hit the ground, Gemmel launched higher toward the building.
Kelsier leaped and Pushed against his own coin. The two of them bounded across the space between the sculpted wall and the lit keep. Powerful limelights burned behind stained-glass windows; here in the Western Dominance, those windows were often odd shapes, and no two were alike. Had these people no understanding of proper aesthetics?
Closer to the building, Kelsier began to Pull instead of Push—he switched from burning steel to burning iron, then yanked on a blue line leading to a steel window frame. That meant he was Pulled upward, as if he were on a tether. It was tricky; the ground still tugged him downward, and he also still had momentum forward, so when he Pulled he had to be careful not to slam himself into things.
With Pulling, he gained more height. He needed it, as Keep Shezler was tall, as tall as any keep in Luthadel. The two Allomancers bounded up the front facade, grabbing or leaping from the knobs and bits of stonework. Kelsier landed on an outcropping, waved his arms for a moment, then snatched hold of a statue that had been placed there for no reason he could discern. It was covered in bits of glaze of different colors.
Gemmel flew past on the right; the other Mistborn moved with a deft grace. He threw a coin to the side, where it hit an outcropping. Then, by pushing on it, Gemmel nudged himself in just the right direction. He spun, mistcloak streaking the mists, then Pulled himself to a different stained-glass window. He hit and hung there like an insect, fingers grabbing bits of metal and stone.
Powerful limelight shone out through the window, which shattered the light into colors, spraying them across Gemmel as if he too were covered in bits of glaze. He looked up, a smile on his lips. In that light, with the mistcloak hanging beneath him, the mists dancing around him, Gemmel suddenly seemed more regal to Kelsier. Distant from the ragged madman. Something far more grand.
Gemmel leaped out into the mists, then Pulled himself upward. Kelsier watched him go, surprised to find himself envious. I will learn, he told himself. I’ll be that good.
From the start, he’d been drawn to zinc and brass, Allomancy that let him play with people’s emotions. It had seemed most similar to what he’d done unaided in the past. But he was a new man, reborn in those dreadful pits. Whatever he had been, it wasn’t enough. He needed to become something more.
Kelsier threw himself upward, Pulling his way to the roof of the building. Gemmel kept going up past the roof, flying toward the tips of the four spires that adorned the front of the building. Kelsier dropped his entire bag of coins—the more metal you Pushed off, the faster and higher you could go—and flared his steel. He Pushed with everything he had, sending himself upward like an arrow.
Mists streamed around him. The colorful lights of the stained-glass windows withdrew below. A spire dwindled on either side of him, growing more and more narrow. He shoved off the tin cladding on one of them to nudge himself to the right.
With a final Push of strength he crested the very tip of the spire, which had a knob on top the size of man’s head. Kelsier landed on it, flaring his pewter, which improved his physical abilities. That didn’t just make him stronger; it made him more dexterous as well. Capable of standing on one foot atop a globe a handspan wide hundreds of feet off the ground. Having performed the maneuver, he stopped and stared at his foot.
“You’re growing more confident,” Gemmel said. The other man had stopped just shy of the tip of the spire, clinging to it below Kelsier. “That’s good.”
Then with a quick motion, Gemmel leaped up and swept Kelsier’s leg from underneath him. Kelsier cried out, losing control and falling into the mists. Gemmel Pushed against the vials full of metal flakes that Kelsier—like most Allomancers—carried on his belt. That Push shoved Kelsier away from the building and out into the mists.
He plummeted, and lost rational thought for a moment. There was a primal terror to falling. Gemmel had spoken about controlling that, about learning not to fear heights or get disoriented while dropping.
Those lessons fled Kelsier’s mind. But he was falling. Fast. Through churning mists, disoriented. It would take only seconds to hit the ground.
Desperate, he Pushed on those vials of metal, hoping he was pointed in the right direction. They ripped from his belt and smashed downward into something. The ground.
There wasn’t much metal in them. Barely enough to slow Kelsier. He hit the ground a fraction of a second after Pushing, and the blow knocked the wind from him. His vision flashed.
He lay in a daze as something thumped to the ground beside him. Gemmel. The other man snorted in derision. “Fool.”
Kelsier groaned and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He was alive. And remarkably, nothing seemed broken—though his side and thigh smarted something wicked. He’d have awful bruises. Pewter had kept him alive. The fall, even with the Push at the end, would have broken another man’s bones.
Kelsier stumbled to his feet and glared at Gemmel, but made no complaint. This probably was the best way to learn. At least it would be the fastest. Rationally, Kelsier would have chosen this—being thrown in, forced to learn as he went. That didn’t stop him from hating Gemmel.
“I thought we were going up,” Kelsier said.
“Then down.”
“Then up again, I assume?” Kelsier asked with a sigh.
“No. Down some more.” Gemmel strode across the grounds of the keep, passing ornamental shrubbery that had become dark, mist-shrouded silhouettes in the night. Kelsier hastened up beside Gemmel, wary of another attack.
“It’s in the basement,” Gemmel muttered. “Basement, of all things. Why a basement?”
“What’s in the basement?” Kelsier asked.
“Our goal,” Gemmel said. “We had to go up high, so I could look for an entrance. I think there’s one out here in the gardens.”
“Wait, that actually sounds reasonable,” Kelsier said. “You must have hit your head on something.”
Gemmel glared at him, then shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. Kelsier readied his metals, prepared to fight back. But Gemmel turned his hand to the side and sprayed them across a pair of guards who were jogging up the path to see who was walking through the grounds at night.
The men fell, one of them yelling. Gemmel didn’t seem to care that it might reveal the two of them. He stalked on ahead.
Kelsier hesitated for a moment, glancing at the dying men. Employed by the enemy. He tried to feel something for them, but he couldn’t. That part of him had been ripped out by the Pits of Hathsin, though a different part was disturbed at how little he felt.
He hurried on after Gemmel, who had found what appeared to be a groundskeeping shed. When he pulled open the door, however, there were no tools, just a dark set of steps leading downward.
“Steel burning?” Gemmel asked. Kelsier nodded.
“Watch for movement,” Gemmel said, grabbing a handful of coins from his pouch. Kelsier raised a hand toward the fallen guards and Pulled on the coins Gemmel had used against them, flipping them up toward him. He’d seen Gemmel Pull on things lightly, so that they didn’t streak toward him at full strength. Kelsier hadn’t mastered that trick yet,
and he had to crouch down and let the coins spray over his head into the wall of the shed. He gathered them up, then started down after an impatient Gemmel, who was watching him with displeasure.
“I was unarmed,” Kelsier explained. “Left my pouch on top of the building.”
“Mistakes like that will end with you dead.”
Kelsier didn’t reply. It had been a mistake. Of course, he’d planned to fetch the coin pouch—and would have, if Gemmel hadn’t knocked him off the spire.
The light grew dim, then neared blackness as they continued down the steps. Gemmel didn’t produce a torch or lantern, but instead waved at Kelsier to go first. Another test of some sort?
Steel burning within Kelsier let him identify sources of metal by their blue lines. He paused, then dropped the handful of coins to the ground, letting them bounce down the steps. In falling, they let him see where the stairs were, and when they came to a rest that gave him an even better picture.
The blue lines weren’t really “seeing,” and he still had to walk carefully. However, the coins helped a great deal, and he did see a door latch as it drew near. Behind, he heard Gemmel grunt, and for once it seemed appreciative. “Nice trick with the coins,” the man murmured.
Kelsier smiled, approaching the door at the bottom. He felt out for it, grabbing the metal latch. He carefully eased it open.
There was light on the other side. Kelsier crouched—despite what Gemmel might think, he’d done his share of infiltrating and quiet nighttime thefts. He wasn’t some new sprout. He had simply learned that survival for a half-breed like him meant either learning to talk or learning to sneak; fighting head-on in most situations would have been foolish.
Of course, not one of the three—fighting, talking, or sneaking—had worked that night. The night he’d been taken, a night when nobody could have betrayed him but her. But why had they taken her too? She couldn’t have—
Stop, he told himself, padding into the room in a crouch. It was full of long tables crowded with various kinds of smelting apparatus. Not the bulky smithing kind, but the small burners and delicate instruments of a master metallurgist. Lamps burned on the walls, and a large red forge glowed in the corner. Kelsier felt fresh air blow through from somewhere; the other side of the room ended in several corridors.
The room appeared empty. Gemmel entered, and Kelsier reached back to Pull the coins to him again. Some were stained with the blood of the fallen guards. Still in his crouch, he passed a desk full of writing implements and small, cloth-bound books. He glanced at Gemmel, who strode through the room without any attempt at stealth. Gemmel put his hands on his hips, looking around. “So where is he?”
“Who?” Kelsier said.
Gemmel started muttering under his breath, moving through the room, sweeping some of the implements off the tables and sending them crashing to the floor. Kelsier slipped around the perimeter, intent on peeking into the side corridors to see if anyone was coming. He checked the first one, and found that it opened into a long, narrow room. It was occupied.
Kelsier froze, then slowly stood up. There were half a dozen people in the room, both men and women, bound by their arms to the walls. There were no cells, but the poor souls looked as if they’d been beaten within an inch of their lives. They wore only rags, and those were bloodied.
Kelsier shook himself out of his daze, then padded to the first woman in the line. He pulled off her gag. The floor was damp; probably someone had been here recently to toss buckets of water on the prisoners to keep the laboratory from stinking. A gust of wind from the distant end of the hallway that the room eventually opened into brought a breath of fresh air.
The woman grew stiff as soon as he touched her, eyes snapping open and growing wide with terror. “Please, please no…” she whispered.
“I won’t hurt you,” Kelsier said. That numbness inside of him seemed to be … changing. “Please. Who are you? What is going on here?”
The woman just stared at him. She winced when Kelsier reached up to untie her bonds, and he hesitated.
He heard a muffled sound. Glancing to the side, he saw a second woman, older and matronly. Her skin had been all but flayed from beatings. Her eyes, however, were not nearly as frantic as those of the younger woman. Kelsier moved over and removed her gag.
“Please,” the woman said. “Free us. Or kill us.”
“What is this place?” Kelsier hissed, working on her arm bonds.
“He’s searching for half-breeds,” she said. “To test his new metals on.”
“New metals?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said, tears on her cheeks. “I’m just skaa, we all are. I don’t know why he picks us. He talks about things. Metals, unknown metals. I don’t think he’s completely sane. The things he does … he says they are to bring out our Allomantic side … but my lord, I’ve no noble blood. I can’t…”
“Hush,” Kelsier said, freeing her. Something was burning through that deep knot of numbness inside of him. Something that was like the anger he felt, but somehow different. It was more. It made him want to weep, yet it was warm.
Freed, the woman stared at her hands, wrists scraped raw from the bindings. Kelsier turned to the other poor captives. Most were awake now. There wasn’t hope in their eyes. They just stared ahead, dull.
Yes, he could feel it.
How can we stand a world like this? Kelsier thought, moving to help another captive. Where things like this happen? The most appalling tragedy was that he knew this sort of horror was common. Skaa were disposable. There was nobody to protect them. Nobody cared.
Not even him. He’d spent most of his life ignoring such acts of brutality. Oh, he’d pretended to fight back. But he’d really just been about enriching himself. All of those plans, all of those heists, all of his grand visions. All about him. Him alone.
He freed another of the captives, a young, dark-haired woman. She looked like Mare. After being freed, she just huddled down on the ground in a ball. Kelsier stood over her, feeling powerless.
Nobody fights, he thought. Nobody thinks they can fight. But they’re wrong. We can fight.… I can fight.
Gemmel strode into the room. He looked over the skaa and barely seemed to notice them. He was still muttering to himself. He had taken just a few steps into the room when a voice yelled from the laboratory.
“What is going on here?”
Kelsier recognized that voice. Oh, he’d never heard it specifically before—but he recognized the arrogance in it, the self-assuredness. The contempt. He found himself rising, brushing past Gemmel, stepping back into the lab.
A man in a fine suit, white shirt buttoned to the neck, stood in the laboratory. His hair was short, after the most current trends, and his suit looked to have been shipped in from Luthadel—it certainly was tailored after the most fashionable styles.
He looked at Kelsier, imperious. And Kelsier found himself smiling. Really smiling, for the first time since the Pits. Since the betrayal.
The nobleman sniffed, then raised a hand and tossed a coin at Kelsier. After a brief moment of surprise, Kelsier Pushed on it right as Lord Shezler did. Both were thrown backward, and Shezler’s eyes widened in shock.
Kelsier slammed back against the wall. Shezler was Mistborn. No matter. A new kind of anger rose within Kelsier even as he grinned. It burned like a metal, that emotion did. An unknown, glorious metal.
He could fight back. He would fight back.
The nobleman yanked on his belt, dropping it—and his metals—from his waist. He whipped a dueling cane from his side and jumped forward, moving too quickly. Kelsier flared his pewter, then his steel, and Pushed on the apparatus on one of the tables, flinging it at Shezler.
The man snarled, raising an arm and Pushing some of it away. Again, the two Pushes—one from Kelsier, one from his foe—struck one another, and they were both slammed backward. Shezler steadied himself against a table, which shook. Glass broke and metal tools clattered to the ground.
??
?Have you any idea what all of that is worth?” Shezler growled, lowering his arm and advancing.
“Your soul, apparently,” Kelsier whispered.
Shezler prowled forward, coming close, then struck with the cane. Kelsier backed away. He felt his pocket jerk, and he Pushed, shoving the coins out of his coat as Shezler Pushed on them. A second later, and they would have cut through Kelsier’s stomach—as it was, they ripped out of his pocket, then shot backward toward the wall of the room.
His coat’s buttons started to shake, though they only had some metal leaf on them. He pulled off the coat, removing the last bit of metal he was carrying. Gemmel should have warned me about that! The leaf had barely registered to his senses, but still he felt a fool. The older man was right; Kelsier wasn’t thinking like an Allomancer. He focused too much on appearance and not enough on what might kill him.
Kelsier continued to back away, watching his opponent, determined not to make another mistake. He’d been in street brawls before, but not many. He’d tried to avoid them—brawling had been an old habit of Dockson’s. For once, he wished he’d been less refined in that particular area.
He edged along one of the tables, waiting for Gemmel to come in from the side. The man didn’t enter. He probably didn’t intend to.
This was all about finding Shezler, Kelsier realized. So that I could fight another Mistborn. There was something important in that.… It suddenly made sense.
Kelsier growled, and was surprised to hear the sound coming from him. That glowing anger inside of him wanted vengeance, but also something more. Something greater. Not just revenge against those who had hurt him, but against the entirety of noble society.
In that moment, Shezler—arrogantly striding forward, more concerned for his equipment than the lives of his skaa—became a focus for it all.
Kelsier attacked.
He didn’t have a weapon. Gemmel had spoken of glass knives, but had never given one to Kelsier. So, he snatched up a shard of broken glass from the floor, heedless of the cuts on his fingers. Pewter let him ignore pain as he jumped toward Shezler, going for his throat.