Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn #1)(41)

And yet, the group regarded their list of “problems” with determination. There was a grim mirth about them—as if they understood that they had a better chance of making the sun rise at night than they did of overthrowing the Final Empire. Yet, they were still going to try.

“By the Lord Ruler,” Vin whispered. “You’re serious. You really mean to do this.”

“Don’t use his name as an oath, Vin,” Kelsier said. “Even blasphemy honors him—when you curse by that creature’s name, you acknowledge him as your god.”

Vin fell silent, sitting back in her chair, a bit numb.

“Anyway,” Kelsier said, smiling lightly. “Anyone have any ideas on how to overcome these problems? Besides Yeden’s attitude, of course—we all know he’s hopeless.”

The room was quiet and thoughtful.

“Thoughts?” Kelsier asked. “Angles? Impressions?”

Breeze shook his head. “Now that it’s all up there, I can’t help wondering if the child has a point. This is a daunting task.”

“But it can be done,” Kelsier said. “Let’s start by talking about how to break the city. What can we do that would be so threatening that it would throw the nobility into chaos, maybe even get the palace guard out into the city, exposing them to our troops? Something that would distract the Ministry, and the Lord Ruler himself, while we move our troops in to attack?”

“Well, a general revolution among the populace comes to mind,” Ham said.

“Won’t work,” Yeden said ?rmly.

“Why not?” Ham asked. “You know how the people are treated. They live in slums, work in mills and smithies the entire day, and half of them still starve.”

Yeden shook his head. “Don’t you understand? The rebellion has been trying for a thousand years to get the skaa in this city to rise up. It never works. They’re too beaten down— they don’t have the will or the hope to resist. That’s why I had to come to you to get an army.”

The room fell still. Vin, however, slowly nodded her head. She’d seen it—she’d felt it. One didn’t ?ght the Lord Ruler. Even living as a thief, crouching at the edge of society, she knew that. There would be no rebellion.

“He’s right, I’m afraid,” Kelsier said. “The skaa won’t rise up, not in their current state. If we’re going to overthrow this government, we’ll need to do it without the help of the masses. We can probably recruit our soldiers from among them, but we can’t count on the general populace.”

“Could we cause a disaster of some sort?” Ham asked. “A ?re maybe?”

Kelsier shook his head. “It might disrupt trade for a while, but I doubt it would have the effect we want. Besides, the cost in skaa lives would be too high. The slums would burn, not stone nobleman keeps.”

Breeze sighed. “What, then, would you have us do?”

Kelsier smiled, eyes twinkling. “What if we turned the Great Houses against each other?”

Breeze paused. “A house war. .” he said, taking a speculative sip of his wine. “It’s been a while since the city had one of those.”

“Which means that tensions have had plenty of time to brew,” Kelsier said. “The high nobility are growing increasingly powerful—the Lord Ruler barely has control over them anymore, which is why we have a chance of shattering his grip. Luthadel’s Great Houses are the key—they control imperial trade, not to mention enslave the greatest majority of the skaa.”

Kelsier pointed at the board, moving his ?nger between the line that said Chaos and the line that said Great Houses.

“If we can turn the houses inside Luthadel against each other, we can bring down the city. Mistborn will start assassinating house leaders. Fortunes will collapse. It won’t take long before there is open warfare in the streets. Part of our contract with Yeden states that we’ll give him an opening to seize the city for himself. Can you think of a better one than that?”

Breeze nodded with a smile. “It has ?air—and I do like the idea of having the noblemen kill each other.”

“You always like it better when someone else does the work, Breeze,” Ham noted.

“My dear friend,” Breeze replied, “the entire point of life is to ?nd ways to get others to do your work for you. Don’t you know anything about basic economics?”

Ham raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I—”

“It was a rhetorical question, Ham,” Breeze interrupted, rolling his eyes.

“Those are the best kind!” Ham replied.

“Philosophy later, Ham,” Kelsier said. “Stay on task. What do you think of my suggestion?”



“It could work,” Ham said, settling back. “But I can’t see the Lord Ruler letting things go that far.”

“It’s our job to see that he doesn’t have a choice,” Kelsier said. “He’s known to let his nobility squabble, probably to keep them off-balance. We fan those tensions, then we somehow force the Garrison to pull out. When the houses start ?ghting in earnest, the Lord Ruler won’t be able to do anything to stop them—except, perhaps, send his palace guard into the streets, which is exactly what we want him to do.”

“He could also send for a koloss army,” Ham noted.