Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn #1)(32)

Vin watched them go, Clubs limping out the door, the boy pulling it closed behind them. Then she glanced at Kelsier. “You knew he’d come back.”

He shrugged, standing and stretching. “I hoped. People are attracted to vision. The job I’m proposing…well, it just isn’t the sort of thing you walk away from—at least, not if you’re a bored old man who’s generally annoyed at life. Now, Vin, I assume that your crew owns this entire building?”

Vin nodded. “The shop upstairs is a front.”

“Good,” Kelsier said, checking his pocket watch, then handing it to Dockson. “Tell your friends that they can have their lair back—the mists are probably already coming out.”

“And us?” Dockson asked.

Kelsier smiled. “We’re going to the roof. Like I told you, I have to fetch some atium.”

By day, Luthadel was a blackened city, scorched by soot and red sunlight. It was hard, distinct, and oppressive.

At night, however, the mists came to blur and obscure. High noble keeps became ghostly, looming silhouettes. Streets seemed to grow more narrow in the fog, every thoroughfare becoming a lonely, dangerous alleyway. Even noblemen and thieves were apprehensive about going out at night—it took a strong heart to brave the foreboding, misty silence. The dark city at night was a place for the desperate and the foolhardy; it was a land of swirling mystery and strange creatures.

Strange creatures like me, Kelsier thought. He stood upon the ledge that ran around the lip of the ?at-roofed lair. Shadowed buildings loomed in the night around him, and the mists made everything seem to shift and move in the darkness. Weak lights peeked from the occasional window, but the tiny beads of illumination were huddled, frightened things.

A cool breeze slipped across the rooftop, shifting the haze, brushing against Kelsier’s mist-wetted cheek like an exhaled breath. In days past—back before everything had gone wrong—he had always sought out a rooftop on the evening before a job, wishing to overlook the city. He didn’t realize he was observing his old custom this night until he glanced to the side, expecting Mare to be there next to him, as she always had been.

Instead, he found only the empty air. Lonely. Silent. The mists had replaced her. Poorly.

He sighed and turned. Vin and Dockson stood behind him on the rooftop. Both looked apprehensive to be out in the mists, but they dealt with their fear. One did not get far in the underworld without learning to stomach the mists.

Kelsier had learned to do far more than “stomach” them. He had gone among them so often during the last few years that he was beginning to feel more comfortable at night, within the mists’ obscuring embrace, than he did at day.

“Kell,” Dockson said, “do you have to stand on the ledge like that? Our plans may be a bit crazy, but I’d rather not have them end with you splattered across the cobblestones down there.”

Kelsier smiled. He still doesn’t think of me as a Mistborn, he thought. It will take some getting used to for all of them.

Years before, he had become the most infamous crewleader in Luthadel, and he had done it without even being an Allomancer. Mare had been a Tineye, but he and Dockson…they had just been regular men. One a half-breed with no powers, the other a runaway plantation skaa. Together, they had brought Great Houses to their knees, stealing brashly from the most powerful men in the Final Empire.

Now Kelsier was more, so much more. Once he had dreamed of Allomancy, wishing for a power like Mare’s. She had been dead before he’d Snapped, coming to his powers. She would never see what he would do with them.

Before, the high nobility had feared him. It had taken a trap set by the Lord Ruler himself to capture Kelsier. Now. . the Final Empire itself would shake before he was ?nished with it.

He scanned the city once more, breathing in the mists, then hopped down off the ledge and strolled over to join Dockson and Vin. They carried no lights; ambient starlight diffused by the mists was enough to see by in most cases.

Kelsier took off his jacket and vest, handing them to Dockson, then he untucked his shirt, letting the long garment hang loose. The fabric was dark enough that it wouldn’t give him away in the night.

“All right,” Kelsier said. “Who should I try?”

Dockson frowned. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

Kelsier smiled.

Dockson sighed. “Houses Urbain and Teniert have been hit recently, though not for their atium.”

“Which house is the strongest right now?” Kelsier asked, squatting down and undoing the ties on his pack, which rested by Dockson’s feet. “Who would no one consider hitting?”

Dockson paused. “Venture,” he ?nally said. “They’ve been on top for the last few years. They keep a standing force of several hundred men, and the local house nobility includes a good two dozen Mistings.”

Kelsier nodded. “Well, that’s where I’ll go, then. They’re certain to have some atium.” He pulled open the pack, then whipped out a dark gray cloak. Large and enveloping, the cloak wasn’t constructed from a single piece of cloth—rather, it was made up of hundreds of long, ribbonlike strips. They were sewn together at the shoulders and across the chest, but mostly they hung separate from one another, like overlapping streamers.

Kelsier threw on the garment, its strips of cloth twisting and curling, almost like the mists themselves.