Page 152 of The Well of Ascension

“Well, do you still think the same way?”

Dockson paused thoughtfully, fingers slowly tapping on the desktop. Vin waited, trying not to show her tension. The conversation in question had been between the two of them, and during it, Dockson had first spoken to her of how much he’d hated the nobility.

“I suppose I don’t,” Dockson said. “Not anymore. Kell always said that you gave the nobility too much credit, Vin. But you started to change even him there at the end. No, I don’t think that noble society needs to be completely destroyed. They aren’t all monsters as once presumed.”

Vin relaxed. He not only knew the conversation, he knew the details of the tangents they’d discussed. She had been the only one there with him. That had to mean that he wasn’t the kandra, right?

“This is about Elend, isn’t it?” Dockson asked.

Vin shrugged. “I suppose.”

“I know that you wish he and I could get along better, Vin. But, all things considered, I think we’re doing pretty well. He is a decent man; I can acknowledge that. He has some faults as a leader: he lacks boldness, lacks presence.”

Not like Kelsier.

“But,” Dockson continued, “I don’t want to see him lose his throne. He has treated the skaa fairly, for a nobleman.”

“He’s a good person, Dox,” Vin said quietly.

Dockson looked away. “I know that. But…well, every time I talk to him, I see Kelsier standing over his shoulder, shaking his head at me. Do you know how long Kell and I dreamed of toppling the Lord Ruler? The other crewmembers, they thought Kelsier’s plan was a newfound passion—something that came to him in the Pits. But it was older than that, Vin. Far older.

“We always hated the nobility, Kell and I. When we were youths, planning our first jobs, we wanted to be rich—but we also wanted to hurt them. Hurt them for taking from us things they had no right to. My love…Kelsier’s mother…. Every coin we stole, every nobleman we left dead in an alleyway—this was our way of waging war. Our way of punishing them.”

Vin sat quietly. It was these kinds of stories, these memories of a haunted past, that had always made her just a little uncomfortable with Kelsier—and with the person he had been training her to become. It was this sentiment that gave her pause, even when her instincts whispered that she should go and exact retribution on Straff and Cett with knives in the night.

Dockson held some of that same hardness. Kell and Dox weren’t evil men, but there was an edge of vengefulness to them. Oppression had changed them in ways that no amount of peace, reformation, or recompense could redeem.

Dockson shook his head. “And we put one of them on the throne. I can’t help but think that Kell would be angry with me for letting Elend rule, no matter how good a man he is.”

“Kelsier changed at the end,” Vin said quietly. “You said it yourself, Dox. Did you know that he saved Elend’s life?”

Dockson turned, frowning. “When?”

“On that last day,” Vin said. “During the fight with the Inquisitor. Kell protected Elend, who came looking for me.”

“Must have thought he was one of the prisoners.”

Vin shook her head. “He knew who Elend was, and knew that I loved him. In the end, Kelsier was willing to admit that a good man was worth protecting, no matter who his parents were.”

“I find that hard to accept, Vin.”

“Why?”

Dockson met her eyes. “Because if I accept that Elend bears no guilt for what his people did to mine, then I must admit to being a monster for the things that I did to them.”

Vin shivered. In those eyes, she saw the truth behind Dockson’s transformation. She saw the death of his laughter. She saw the guilt. The murders.

This man is no impostor.

“I can find little joy in this government, Vin,” Dockson said quietly. “Because I know what we did to create it. The thing is, I’d do it all again. I tell myself it’s because I believe in skaa freedom. I still lie awake at nights, however, quietly satisfied for what we’ve done to our former rulers. Their society undermined, their god dead. Now they know.”

Vin nodded. Dockson looked down, as if ashamed, an emotion she’d rarely seen in him. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Dockson sat quietly as she withdrew, his pen and ledger forgotten on the desktop.

“It’s not him,” Vin said, walking down an empty palace hallway, trying to shake the haunting sound of Dockson’s voice from her mind.

“You are certain, Mistress?” OreSeur asked.

Vin nodded. “He knew about a private conversation that Dockson and I had before the Collapse.”

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