Page 50 of The Well of Ascension

“Then I command you to speak of it.”

“Then I must refuse to answer,” OreSeur said.

“Refuse to answer?” Vin asked. “You can do that?”

OreSeur nodded. “We are not required to reveal secrets about kandra nature, Mistress. It is—”

“In the Contract,” Vin finished, frowning.I really need to read that thing again.

“Yes, Mistress. I have, perhaps, said too much already.”

Vin turned away from OreSeur, looking out over the city. The mists continued to spin. Vin closed her eyes, questing out with bronze, trying to feel the telltale pulse of an Allomancer burning metals nearby.

OreSeur rose and padded over beside her, then settled down on his haunches again, sitting on the inclined roof. “Shouldn’t you be at the meeting the king is having, Mistress?”

“Perhaps later,” Vin said, opening her eyes. Out beyond the city, watchfires from the armies lit the horizon. Keep Venture blazed in the night to her right, and inside of it, Elend was holding council with the others. Many of the most important men in the government, sitting together in one room. Elend would call her paranoid for insisting that she be the one who watched for spies and assassins. That was fine; he could call her whatever he wanted, as long as he stayed alive.

She settled back down. She was glad Elend had decided to pick Keep Venture as his palace, rather than moving into Kredik Shaw, the Lord Ruler’s home. Not only was Kredik Shaw too big to be properly defended, but it also reminded her of him. The Lord Ruler.

She thought of the Lord Ruler often, lately—or, rather, she thought of Rashek, the man who had become the Lord Ruler. A Terrisman by birth, Rashek had killed the man who should have taken the power at the Well of Ascension and…

And done what? They still didn’t know. The Hero had been on a quest to protect the people from a danger simply known as the Deepness. So much had been lost; so much had been intentionally destroyed. Their best source of information about those days came in the form of an aged journal, written by the Hero of Ages during the days before Rashek had killed him. However, it gave precious few clues about his quest.

Why do I even worry about these things?Vin thought.The Deepness is a thing a thousand years forgotten. Elend and the others are right to be concerned about more pressing events.

And still, Vin found herself strangely detached from them. Perhaps that was why she found herself scouting outside. It wasn’t that she didn’t worry about the armies. She just felt…removed from the problem. Even now, as she considered the threat to Luthadel, her mind was drawn back to the Lord Ruler.

You don’t know what I do for mankind,he had said.I was your god, even if you couldn’t see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves.Those were the Lord Ruler’s last words, spoken as he lay dying on the floor of his own throne room. They worried her. Chilled her, even still.

She needed to distract herself. “What kinds of things do you like, kandra?” she asked, turning to the creature, who still sat on the rooftop beside her. “What are your loves, your hatreds?”

“I do not want to answer that.”

Vin frowned. “Do not want to, or do nothaveto?”

OreSeur paused. “Do not want to, Mistress.” The implication was obvious.You’re going to have to command me.

She almost did. However, something gave her pause, something in those eyes—inhuman though they were. Something familiar.

She’d known resentment like that. She’d felt it often during her youth, when she’d served crewleaders who had lorded over their followers. In the crews, one did what one was commanded—especially if one was a small waif of a girl, without rank or means of intimidation.

“If you don’t wish to speak of it,” Vin said, turning away from the kandra, “then I won’t force you.”

OreSeur was silent.

Vin breathed in the mist, its cool wetness tickling her throat and lungs. “Do you know whatIlove, kandra?”

“No, Mistress.”

“The mists,” she said, holding out her arms. “The power, the freedom.”

OreSeur nodded slowly. Nearby, Vin felt a faint pulsing with her bronze. Quiet, strange, unnerving. It was the same odd pulsing that she had felt atop Keep Venture a few nights before. She had never been brave enough to investigate it again.

It’s time to do something about that,she decided. “Do you know what I hate, kandra?” she whispered, falling to a crouch, checking her knives and metals.

“No, Mistress.”

She turned, meeting OreSeur’s eyes. “I hate being afraid.”

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