Page 59 of The Well of Ascension

Vin squeezed his shoulder. “We fought the Lord Ruler.”

“You had Kelsier then.”

“Notthatagain.”

“I’m sorry,” Elend said. “But, really, Vin. Maybe my plan to try and hold on to the government is just arrogance. What was it you told me about your childhood? When you were in the thieving crews, and everyone was bigger, stronger, and meaner than you, what did you do? Did you stand up to the leaders?”

Memories flashed in her mind. Memories of hiding, of keeping her eyes down, of weakness.

“That was then,” she said. “You can’t let others beat on you forever. That’s what Kelsier taught me—that’s why we fought the Lord Ruler. That’s why the skaa rebellion fought the Final Empire all those years, even when there was no chance of winning. Reen taught me that the rebels were fools. But Reen is dead now—and so is the Final Empire. And…”

She leaned down, catching Elend’s eyes. “You can’t give up the city, Elend,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I’d like what that would do to you.”

Elend paused, then smiled slowly. “You can be very wise sometimes, Vin.”

“You think that?”

He nodded.

“Well,” she said, “then obviously you’re as poor a judge of character as I am.”

Elend laughed, putting his arm around her, hugging her against his side. “So, I assume the patrol tonight was uneventful?”

The mist spirit. Her fall. The chill she could still feel—if only faintly remembered—in her forearm. “It was,” she said. The last time she’d told him of the mist spirit, he’d immediately thought she’d been seeing things.

“See,” Elend said, “you should have come to the meeting; I would have liked to have had you here.”

She said nothing.

They sat for a few minutes, looking up at the dark window. There was an odd beauty to it; the colors weren’t visible because of the lack of back light, and she could instead focus on the patterns of glass. Chips, slivers, slices, and plates woven together within a framework of metal.

“Elend?” she finally said. “I’m worried.”

“I’d be concerned if you weren’t,” he said. “Those armies havemeso worried that I can barely think straight.”

“No,” Vin said. “Not about that. I’m worried about other things.”

“Like what?”

“Well…I’ve been thinking about what the Lord Ruler said, right before I killed him. Do you remember?”

Elend nodded. He hadn’t been there, but she’d told him.

“He talked about what he’d done for mankind,” Vin said. “He saved us, the stories say. From the Deepness.”

Elend nodded.

“But,” Vin said, “whatwasthe Deepness? You were a nobleman—religion wasn’t forbidden to you. What did the Ministry teach about the Deepness and the Lord Ruler?”

Elend shrugged. “Not much, really. Religion wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t encouraged either. There was something proprietary about the Ministry, an air that implied they would take care of religious things—that we didn’t need to worry ourselves.”

“But they did teach you about some things, right?”

Elend nodded. “Mostly, they talked about why the nobility were privileged and the skaa cursed. I guess they wanted us to understand how fortunate we were—though honestly, I always found the teachings a little disturbing. See, they claimed that we were noble because our ancestors supported the Lord Ruler before the Ascension. But, that means that we were privileged because of what other people had done. Not really fair, eh?”

Vin shrugged. “Fair as anything else, I guess.”

“But, didn’t you get angry?” Elend said. “Didn’t it frustrate you that the nobility had so much while you had so little?”

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