Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn #1)(55)

Vin turned with concern, noting an approaching bob of lanternlight in the dark mists.

She turned back to Kelsier, but he was gone. She cursed, bending over the side of the wall and looking down into the mists. She could hear the guards behind her, speaking softly to one another as they walked along the wall.

Kelsier was right: She didn’t have many options. Angry, she climbed up onto the battlement. She wasn’t afraid of heights in particular, but who wouldn’t be apprehensive, standing atop the wall, looking down at her doom? Vin’s heart ?uttered, her stomach twisting.

I hope Kelsier’s out of the way, she thought, checking the blue line to make certain she was above the ingot. Then, she stepped off.

She immediately began to plummet toward the ground. She Pushed re?exively with her steel, but her trajectory was off; she had fallen to the side of the ingot, not directly toward it. Consequently, her Push nudged her to the side even farther, and she began to tumble through the air.

Alarmed, she Pushed again—harder this time, ?aring her steel. The sudden effort launched her back upward. She arced sideways through the air, popping up into the air alongside the walltop. The passing guards spun with surprise, but their faces soon became indistinct as Vin fell back down toward the ground.

Mind muddled by terror, she re?exively reached out and Pulled against the ingot, trying to yank herself toward it. And, of course, it obediently shot up toward her.

I’m dead.

Then her body lurched, pulled upward by the belt. Her descent slowed until she was drifting quietly through the air. Kelsier appeared in the mists, standing on the ground beneath her; he was—of course—smiling.

He let her drop the last few feet, catching her, then setting her upright on the soft earth. She stood quivering for a moment, breathing in terse, anxious breaths.

“Well, that was fun,” Kelsier said lightly.

Vin didn’t respond.

Kelsier sat down on a nearby rock, obviously giving her time to gather her wits. Eventually, she burned pewter, using the sensation of solidness it provided to steady her nerves.

“You did well,” Kelsier said.

“I nearly died.”

“Everybody does, their ?rst time,” Kelsier said. “Ironpulling and Steelpushing are dangerous skills. You can impale yourself with a bit of metal that you Pull into your own body, you can jump and leave your anchor too far behind, or you can make a dozen other mistakes.

“My experience—limited though it is—has been that it’s better to get into those extreme circumstances early, when someone can watch over you. Anyway, I assume you can understand why it’s important for an Allomancer to carry as little metal on their body as possible.”

Vin nodded, then paused, reaching up to her ear. “My earring,” she said. “I’ll have to stop wearing it.”

“Does it have a clip on the back?” Kelsier asked.

Vin shook her head. “It’s just a small stud, and the pin on the back bends down.”

“Then you’ll be all right,” Kelsier said. “Metal in your body—even if only a bit of it is in your body—can’t be Pushed or Pulled. Otherwise another Allomancer could rip the metals out of your stomach while you were burning them.”

Good to know, Vin thought.

“It’s also why those Inquisitors can walk around so con?dently with a pair of steel spikes sticking out of their heads. The metal pierces their bodies, so it can’t be affected by another Allomancer. Keep the earring—it’s small, so you won’t be able to do much with it, but you could use it as a weapon in an emergency.”

“All right.”

“Now, you ready to go?”

She looked up at the wall, preparing to jump again, then nodded.

“We’re not going back up,” Kelsier said. “Come on.”

Vin frowned as Kelsier began to walk out into the mists. So, does he have a destination after all—or has he just decided to wander some more? Oddly, his affable nonchalance made him very dif?cult to read.

Vin hurried to keep up, not wanting to be left alone in the mists. The landscape around Luthadel was barren save for scrub and weeds. Prickles and dried leaves—both dusted with ash from an earlier ashfall—rubbed against her legs as they walked. The underbrush crunched as they walked, quiet and a bit sodden with mist dew.

Occasionally, they passed heaps of ash that had been carted out of the city. Most of the time, however, ash was thrown into the River Channerel, which passed through the city. Water broke it down eventually—or, at least, that was what Vin assumed. Otherwise the entire continent would have been buried long ago.

Vin stayed close to Kelsier as they walked. Though she had traveled outside cities before, she had always moved as part of a group of boatmen—the skaa workers who ran narrow-boats and barges up and down the many canal routes in the Final Empire. It had been hard work—most noblemen used skaa instead of horses to pull the boats along the towpath— but there had been a certain freedom to knowing that she was traveling at all, for most skaa, even skaa thieves, never left their plantation or town.

The constant movement from city to city had been Reen’s choice; he had been obsessive about never getting locked down. He usually got them places on canal boats run by underground crews, never staying in one place for more than a year. He had kept moving, always going. As if running from something.