Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)

She was in two places at once. She could see herself, and she could see herself.

One of her was a strange woman, changed and transformed from the girl she had always been. That girl had been careful and cautious—a girl who would never burn an unfamiliar metal based solely on the word of one man. This woman was foolish; she had forgotten many of the things that had let her survive so long. She drank from cups prepared by others. She fraternized with strangers. She didn’t keep track of the people around her. She was still far more careful than most people, but she had lost so much.

The other her was something she had always secretly loathed. A child, really. Thin to the point of scrawniness, she was lonely, hateful, and untrusting. She loved no one, and no one loved her. She always told herself, quietly, that she didn’t care. Was there something worth living for? There had to be. Life couldn’t be as pathetic as it seemed. Yet, it had to be. There wasn’t anything else.

Vin was both. She stood in two places, moving both bodies, being both girl and woman. She reached out with hesitant, uncertain hands—one each—and touched herself on the faces, one each.

Vin gasped, and it was gone. She felt a sudden rush of emotions, a sense of worthlessness and confusion. There were no chairs in the room, so she simply squatted to the ground, sitting with her back to the wall, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them.

Kelsier walked over, squatting down to lay a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Gold and atium are complements, like the other metal pairs,” Kelsier said. “Atium lets you see, marginally, into the future. Gold works in a similar way, but it lets you see into the past. Or, at least, it gives you a glimpse of another version of yourself, had things been different in the past.”

Vin shivered. The experience of being both people at once, of seeing herself twice over, had been disturbingly eerie. Her body still shook, and her mind didn’t feel . . . right anymore.

Fortunately, the sensation seemed to be fading. “Remind me to listen to you in the future,” she said. “Or, at least, when you talk about Allomancy.”

Kelsier chuckled. “I tried to put it out of your mind for as long as possible. But, you had to try it sometime. You’ll get over it.”

Vin nodded. “It’s . . . almost gone already. But, it wasn’t just a vision, Kelsier. It was real. I could touch her, the other me.”

“It may feel that way,” Kelsier said. “But she wasn’t here—I couldn’t see her, at least. It’s an hallucination.”

“Atium visions aren’t just hallucinations,” Vin said. “The shadows really do show what people will do.”

“True,” Kelsier said. “I don’t know. Gold is strange, Vin. I don’t think anybody understands it. My trainer, Gemmel, said that a gold shadow was a person who didn’t exist—but could have. A person you might have become, had you not made certain choices. Of course, Gemmel was a bit screwy, so I’m not sure how much I’d believe of what he said.”

Vin nodded. However, it was unlikely that she’d find out more about gold anytime soon. She didn’t intend to ever burn it again, if she could help it. She continued to sit, letting her emotions recover for a while, and Kelsier moved back over by the window. Eventually, he perked up.

“He’s here?” Vin asked, crawling to her feet.

Kelsier nodded. “You want to stay here and rest some more?”

Vin shook her head.

“All right, then,” he said, placing his pocket watch, file, and other metals on the windowsill. “Let’s go.”

They didn’t go out the window—Kelsier wanted to maintain a low profile, though this section of the Twists was so deserted that Vin wasn’t sure why he bothered. They left the building via a set of untrustworthy stairs, then crossed the street in silence.

The building Marsh had chosen was even more run-down than the one Vin and Kelsier had been sitting in. The front door was gone, though Vin could see remnants of it in the splintered refuse on the floor. The room inside smelled of dust and soot, and she had to stifle a sneeze.

A figure standing on the far side of the room spun at the sound. “Kell?”

“It’s me,” Kelsier said. “And Vin.”

As Vin drew closer, she could see Marsh squinting in the darkness. It was odd to watch him, feeling like she was in plain sight, yet knowing that to him she and Kelsier were nothing more than shadows. The far wall of the building had collapsed, and mist floated freely in the room, nearly as dense as it was outside.

“You have Ministry tattoos!” Vin said, staring at Marsh.

“Of course,” Marsh said, his voice as stern as ever. “I had them put on before I met up with the caravan. I had to have them to play the part of an acolyte.”

They weren’t extensive—he was playing a low-ranked obligator—but the pattern was unmistakable. Dark lines, rimming the eyes, running outward like crawling cracks of lightning. There was one, single line—much thicker, and in bright red, running down the side of his face. Vin recognized the pattern: These were the lines of an obligator who belonged to the Canton of Inquisition. Marsh hadn’t just infiltrated the Ministry, he’d chosen the most dangerous section of it to infiltrate.

“But, you’ll always have them,” Vin said. “They’re so distinctive—everywhere you go, you’ll be known as either an obligator or a fraud.”

“That was part of the price he paid to infiltrate the Ministry, Vin,” Kelsier said quietly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Marsh said. “I didn’t have much of a life before this anyway. Look, can we hurry? I’m expected to be somewhere soon. Obligators lead busy lives, and I only have a few minutes’ leeway.”

“All right,” Kelsier said. “I assume your infiltration went well, then?”

“It went fine,” Marsh said tersely. “Too well, actually—I think I might have distinguished myself from the group. I assumed that I would be at a disadvantage, since I didn’t have the same five years of training that the other acolytes did. I made certain to answer questions as thoroughly as possible, and to perform my duties with precision. However, I apparently know more about the Ministry than even some of its members do. I’m certainly more competent than this batch of newcomers, and the prelans have noticed that.”

Kelsier chuckled. “You always were an overachiever.”

Marsh snorted quietly. “Anyway, my knowledge—not to mention my skill as a Seeker—has already earned me an outstanding reputation. I’m not sure how closely I want the prelans paying attention to me; that background we devised begins to sound a bit flimsy when an Inquisitor is grilling you.”

Vin frowned. “You told them that you’re a Misting?”

“Of course I did,” Marsh said. “The Ministry—particularly the Canton of Inquisition—recruits noblemen Seekers diligently. The fact that I’m one is enough to keep them from asking too many questions about my background. They’re happy enough to have me, despite the fact that I’m a fair bit older than most acolytes.”

“Besides,” Kelsier said, “he needed to tell them he was a Misting so that he could get into the more secretive Ministry sects. Most of the higher-ranking obligators are Mistings of one sort or another. They tend to favor their own kind.”

“With good reason,” Marsh said, speaking quickly. “Kell, the Ministry is far more competent than we assumed.”

“What do you mean?”

“They make use of their Mistings,” Marsh said. “Good use of them. They have bases throughout the city—Soothing stations, as they call them. Each one contains a couple of Ministry Soothers whose only duty is to extend a dampening influence around them, calming and depressing the emotions of everyone in the area.”

Kelsier hissed quietly. “How many?”