Mistborn: Secret History (Mistborn, #3.5)(25)

Yes, Kelsier thought, stopping on the street. Those towers were distinctive even in the dreamy, misted landscape of this Realm. Longsfollow. How could he have reached this place already? It was well outside the Central Dominance. How long had he been running?

Time had become a strange thing to him since his death. He had no need for food, and didn’t feel tiredness beyond what his mind projected. With Ruin obstructing the sun, and the only light that of the misty ground, it was very difficult to judge the passing of days.

He’d been running . . . for a while. A long while?

He suddenly felt exhausted, his mind numbing, as if suffering the effects of a pewter drag. He groaned and sat down by the side of the canal mound, which was covered in tiny plants. Those plants seemed to grow anywhere water was present in the real world. He’d found them sprouting from misty cups.

Occasionally he’d found other, stranger plants in the landscape between towns—places where the springy ground grew more firm. Places without people: the extended, ashen emptiness between dots of civilization.

He heaved himself to his feet, fighting off the exhaustion. It was all in his head, quite literally. Reluctant to push himself back into a run for the moment, he strolled through Longsfollow. A town had grown up here around the canal stop. Well, a village. Noblemen who ran plantations farther out from the canal would come here to trade and to ship goods in toward Luthadel. It had become a hub of commerce, a bustling civic center.

Kelsier had killed seven men here.

Or had it been eight? He strolled, counting them off. The lord, both of his sons, his wife . . . Yes, seven, counting two guards and that cousin. That was right. He’d spared the cousin’s wife, who had been with child.

He and Mare had been renting a room above the general store, over there, pretending to be merchants from a minor noble house. He walked up the steps outside the building, stopping at the door. He rested his fingers on it and sensed it in the Physical Realm, familiar even after all this time.

We had plans! Mare had said as they furiously packed. How could you do this?

“They murdered a child, Mare,” Kelsier whispered. “Sank her in the canal with stones tied to her feet. Because she spilled their tea. Because she spilled the damn tea.”

Oh, Kell, she’d said. They kill people every day. It’s terrible, but it’s life. Are you going to bring retribution to every nobleman out there?

“Yes,” Kelsier whispered. He made a fist against the door. “I did it. I made the Lord Ruler himself pay, Mare.”

And that boiling mass of writhing serpents in the sky . . . that had been the result. He’d seen the truth, in his moment between time with Preservation. The Lord Ruler would have prevented this doom for another thousand years.

Kill one man. Get vengeance, but cause how many more deaths? He and Mare had fled this village. He’d later learned that Inquisitors had come, torturing many of the people they’d known here, killing not a few in their search for answers.

Kill, and they killed in turn. Get revenge, and their vengeance returned tenfold.

You are mine, Survivor.

He gripped at the door handle, but couldn’t do more than gain an impression of how it looked. He couldn’t move it. Fortunately, he was able to push against the door and force himself through. He stumbled to a stop, and was shocked to see that the room was occupied. A solitary soul—glowing, so it was a person in the real world, not this one—lay on the cot in the corner.

He and Mare had left this place in a hurry, and had been forced to stash some of their possessions in a hole behind a stone in the hearth. Those was gone now; he’d pilfered them after Mare’s death, following his escape from the Pits and his training with the strange old Allomancer named Gemmel.

He avoided the person and walked to the small hearth. When he’d returned for that hidden coin, he’d been on his way to Luthadel, his mind overflowing with grand plans and dangerous ideas. He’d retrieved the coin, but had found more than he intended. The pouch of coin, and beside it a journal of Mare’s.

“If I’d died,” Kelsier said, loudly, “if I’d let myself be pulled into that other place . . . I’d be with Mare now, wouldn’t I?”

No reply.

“Preservation!” Kelsier shouted. “Do you know where she is? Did you see her pass into that darkness you spoke of, in that place where people go after this? I’d be with her, wouldn’t I, if I’d let myself die?”

Again Preservation didn’t reply. His mind certainly wasn’t in all places, even if his essence was. Considering how erratic he’d been lately, his mind might not be completely in even one place. Kelsier sighed, looking around the small room.

Then he stepped back, realizing that the person on the cot had stood up and was looking about.

“What do you want?” Kelsier snapped.

The figure jumped. Had he heard that?

Kelsier walked up to the figure and touched him, gaining a vision of an old beggar, scraggly of beard and wild of eye. The man was muttering to himself, and Kelsier—while touching him—could make some of it out.

“In me head,” the man muttered. “Geddouta me head.”

“You can hear me,” Kelsier said.

The figure jumped again. “Damn whispers,” he said. “Geddouta me head!”

Kelsier lowered his hand. He’d seen this, in the pulses. Sometimes the mad whispered the things they had heard from Ruin. But it seemed they could hear Kelsier as well.