Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)

If I could find just a bit of metal . . .

She began to search. Instinctively, she tried to burn iron, expecting the blue lines to appear—but, of course, she had no iron to burn. She shook her head at the foolish move, but it was simply a sign of how much she’d come to rely on her Allomancy. She felt . . . blinded. She couldn’t burn tin to listen for voices. She couldn’t burn pewter to strengthen her against the pain of her hurting arm and head. She couldn’t burn bronze to search for nearby Allomancers.

Nothing. She had nothing.

You functioned without Allomancy before, she told herself sternly. You can do it now.

Even so, she searched the bare floor of her cell, hoping for the chance existence of a discarded pin or nail. She found nothing, so she turned her attention to the bars. However, she couldn’t think of a way to get off even a flake of the iron.

So much metal here, she thought with frustration. And I can’t use any of it!

She sat back on the ground, huddling up against the stone wall, shivering quietly in her damp clothing. It was still dark outside; the room’s window casually allowed in a few trails of mist. What had happened with the rebellion? What about her friends? She thought that the mists outside looked a bit brighter than usual. Torchlight in the night? Without tin, her senses were too weak to tell.

What was I thinking? she thought with despair. Did I presume to succeed where Kelsier had failed? He knew that the Eleventh Metal was useless.

It had done something, true—but it certainly hadn’t killed the Lord Ruler. She sat, thinking, trying to figure out what had happened. There had been an odd familiarity about the things the Eleventh Metal had shown her. Not because of the way the visions had appeared, but because of the way Vin had felt when burning the metal.

Gold. The moment when I burned the Eleventh Metal felt like that time when Kelsier had me burn gold.

Could it be that the Eleventh Metal wasn’t really “eleventh” at all? Gold and atium had always seemed oddly paired to Vin. All of the other metals came in pairs that were similar—a base metal, then its alloy, each doing opposite things. Iron Pulled, steel Pushed. Zinc Pulled, brass Pushed. It made sense. All except for atium and gold.

What if the Eleventh Metal was really an alloy of atium or of gold? It would mean . . . that gold and atium aren’t paired. They do two different things. Similar, but different. They’re like . . .

Like the other metals, which were grouped into larger bases of four. There were the physical metals: iron, steel, tin, and pewter. The mental metals: bronze, copper, zinc, and brass. And . . . there were the time-affecting metals: gold and its alloy, and atium and its alloy.

That means there’s another metal. One that hasn’t been discovered—probably because atium and gold are too valuable to forge into different alloys.

But, what good was the knowledge? Her “Eleventh Metal” was probably just a paired opposite of gold—the metal Kelsier had told her was the most useless of them all. Gold had shown Vin herself—or, at least, a different version of her that had felt real enough to touch. But, it had simply been a vision of what she could have become, had the past been different.

The Eleventh Metal had done something similar: Instead of showing Vin’s own past, it had shown her similar images from other people. And that told her . . . nothing. What difference did it make what the Lord Ruler could have been? It was the current man, the tyrant that ruled the Final Empire, that she had to defeat.

A figure appeared in the doorway—an Inquisitor dressed in a black robe, the hood up. His face was shadowed, but his spike-heads jutted from the front of the cowl.

“It is time,” he said. Another Inquisitor waited in the doorway as the first creature pulled out a set of keys and moved to open Vin’s door.

Vin tensed. The door clicked, and she sprang to her feet, scrambling forward.

Have I always been this slow without pewter? she thought with horror. The Inquisitor snatched her arm as she passed, his motions unconcerned, almost casual—and she could see why. His hands moved supernaturally quickly, making her seem even more sluggish by comparison.

The Inquisitor pulled her up, twisting her and easily holding her. He smiled with an evil grin, his face pocked with scars. Scars that looked like . . .

Arrowhead wounds, she thought with shock. But . . . healed already? How can it be?

She struggled, but her weak, pewterless body was no match for the Inquisitor’s strength. The creature carried her toward the doorway, and the second Inquisitor stepped back, regarding her with spikes that peeked out from beneath its cowl. Though the Inquisitor who carried her was smiling, this second one had a flat line of a mouth.

Vin spat at the second Inquisitor as she passed, her spittle smacking it right on one of its spike-heads. Her captor carried her out of the chamber and through a narrow hallway. She cried out for help, knowing that her screams—in the middle of Kredik Shaw itself—would be useless. At least she succeeded in annoying the Inquisitor, for he twisted her arm.

“Quiet,” he said as she grunted in pain.

Vin fell silent, instead focusing on their location. They were probably in one of the lower sections of the palace; the hallways were too long to be in a tower or spire. The decorations were lavish, but the rooms looked . . . unused. The carpets were pristine, the furniture unmarked by scuff or scratch. She had the feeling that the murals were rarely seen, even by those who often passed through the chambers.

Eventually, the Inquisitors entered a stairwell and began to climb. One of the spires, she thought.

With each climbing step, Vin could feel the Lord Ruler getting closer. His mere presence dampened her emotions, stealing her willpower, making her numb to everything but lonely depression. She sagged in the Inquisitor’s grip, no longer struggling. It took all of her energy to simply resist the Lord Ruler’s pressure on her soul.

After a short time in the tunnel-like stairwell, the Inquisitors carried her out into a large, circular room. And, despite the power of the Lord Ruler’s Soothing, despite her visits to noble keeps, Vin took just a brief moment to stare at her surroundings. They were majestic like none she’d ever seen.

The room was shaped like a massive, stocky cylinder. The wall—there was only one, running in a wide circle—was made entirely of glass. Lit by fires from behind, the room glowed with spectral light. The glass was colored, though it didn’t depict any specific scene. Instead, it seemed crafted from a single sheet, the colors blown and melded together in long, thin trails. Like . . .

Like mist, she thought with wonder. Colorful streams of mist, running in a circle around the entire room.

The Lord Ruler sat in an elevated throne in the very center of the room. He wasn’t the old Lord Ruler—this was the younger version, the handsome man who had killed Kelsier.

Some kind of impostor? No, I can feel him—just as I could feel the one before. They’re the same man. Can he change how he looks, then? Appearing young when he wishes to put forth a pretty face?

A small group of gray-robed, eye-tattooed obligators stood conversing on the far side of the room. Seven Inquisitors stood waiting, like a row of shadows with iron eyes. That made nine of them in all, counting the two that had escorted Vin. Her scar-faced captor delivered her to one of the others, who held her with a similarly inescapable grip.

“Let us be on with this,” said the Lord Ruler.

A regular obligator stepped forward, bowing. With a chill, she realized that she recognized him.

Lord Prelan Tevidian, she thought, eyeing the thin balding man. My . . . father.

“My lord,” Tevidian said, “forgive me, but I do not understand. We have already discussed this matter!”