Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn #1)(210)

Trust me, Vin, he’d said. You trusted me enough to jump off the wall, and I caught you. You’re going to have to trust me this time too.

I’ll catch you.

I’ll catch you….

It was as if she were nowhere. Among, and of, the mist. How she envied it. It didn’t think. Didn’t worry.

Didn’t hurt.

I trusted you, Kelsier, she thought. I actually did—but you let me fall. You promised that your crews had no betrayals. What of this? What of your betrayal?

She hung, her tin extinguished to let her better see the mists. They were slightly wet, cool upon her skin. Like the tears of a dead man.

Why does it matter, anymore? she thought, staring upward. Why does anything matter? What was it you said to me, Kelsier? That I never really understood? That I still needed to learn about friendship? What about you? You didn’t even ?ght him.

He stood there again, in her mind. The Lord Ruler struck him down with a disdainful blow. The Survivor had died like any other man.

Is this why you were so hesitant to promise that you wouldn’t abandon me?

She wished she could just. . go. Float away. Become mist. She’d once wished for freedom—and then had assumed she’d found it. She’d been wrong. This wasn’t freedom, this grief, this hole within her.



It was the same as before, when Reen had abandoned her. What was the difference? At least Reen had been honest. He’d always promised that he would leave. Kelsier had led her along, telling her to trust and to love, but Reen had always been the truthful one.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she whispered to the mists. “Can’t you just take me?”

The mists gave no answer. They continued to spin playfully, uncaring. Always changing—yet somehow, always the same.

“Mistress?” called an uncertain voice from below. “Mistress, is that you up there?”

Vin sighed, burning tin, then extinguishing steel and letting herself drop. Her mistcloak ?uttered as she fell through the mists; she landed quietly on the rooftop above their safe house. Sazed stood a short distance away, beside the steel ladder that the lookouts had been using to get atop the building.

“Yes, Saze?” she asked tiredly, reaching out to Pull up the three coins she’d been using as anchors to stabilize her like the legs of a tripod. One of them was twisted and bent—the same coin she and Kelsier had gotten into a Pushing match over so many months ago.

“I’m sorry, Mistress,” Sazed said. “I simply wondered where you had gone.”

She shrugged.

“It is a strangely quiet night, I think,” Sazed said.

“A mournful night.” Hundreds of skaa had been massacred following Kelsier’s death, and hundreds more had been trampled during the rush to escape.

“I wonder if his death even meant anything,” she said quietly. “We probably saved a lot fewer than were killed.”

“Slain by evil men, Mistress.”

“Ham often asks if there even is such a thing as ‘evil.’ ”

“Master Hammond likes to ask questions,” Sazed said, “but even he doesn’t question the answers. There are evil men…just as there are good men.”

Vin shook her head. “I was wrong about Kelsier. He wasn’t a good man—he was just a liar. He never had a plan for defeating the Lord Ruler.”

“Perhaps,” Sazed said. “Or, perhaps he never had an opportunity to ful?ll that plan. Perhaps we just don’t understand the plan.”

“You sound like you still believe in him.” Vin turned and walked to the edge of the ?at-topped roof, staring out over the quiet, shadowy city.

“I do, Mistress,” Sazed said.

“How? How can you?”

Sazed shook his head, walking over to stand beside her. “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?”

Vin frowned.

“Anyone can believe in someone, or something, that always succeeds, Mistress. But failure… ah, now, that is hard to believe in, certainly and truly. Dif?cult enough to have value, I think.”

Vin shook her head. “Kelsier doesn’t deserve it.”

“You don’t mean that, Mistress,” Sazed said calmly. “You’re angry because of what happened. You hurt.”

“Oh, I mean it,” Vin said, feeling a tear on her cheek. “He doesn’t deserve our belief. He never did.”

“The skaa think differently—their legends about him are growing quickly. I shall have to return here soon and collect them.”

Vin frowned. “You would gather stories about Kelsier?”

“Of course,” Sazed said. “I collect all religions.”

Vin snorted. “This is no religion we’re talking about, Sazed. This is Kelsier.”

“I disagree. He is certainly a religious ?gure to the skaa.”

“But, we knew him,” Vin said. “He was no prophet or god. He was just a man.”

“So many of them are, I think,” Sazed said quietly.

Vin just shook her head. They stood there for a moment, watching the night. “What of the others?” she ?nally asked.

“They are discussing what to do next,” Sazed said. “I believe it has been decided that they will leave Luthadel separately and seek refuge in other towns.”