The Hero of Ages (Mistborn 3)

Spook smiled. "You like the dresses?"

She looked down, flushing slightly. "I . . . haven't worn anything like this in years."

"Nobody in this city has," Spook said, setting down the charcoal and wiping his fingers on a rag. "But, then, that makes it pretty easy to get them, if you know which buildings to loot. It looks like I matched your size pretty well, eh?"

"Yes," she said quietly, drifting forward. The gown really did look good on her, and Spook found it a little difficult to focus as she drew closer. She eyed his charcoal board, then frowned. "Is . . . that supposed to make any sense?"

Spook shook himself free of his trance. The charcoal board was a mess of scratches and notations. That, in itself, would have made it difficult enough to read. There was, however, something else that made it even more incomprehensible.

"It's mostly written in Eastern street slang," Spook said.

"The language you grew up speaking?" she said, fingering the board's edge, careful not to touch the writing itself, lest she smudge it.

Spook nodded.

"Even the words are different," she said. "Wasing?"

"It kind of means 'was doing,' " Spook explained. "You start sentences with it. 'Wasing the run of there' would mean 'I was running to that place.' "

"Wasing the where of how of the finds," Beldre said, smiling slightly to herself as she read from the board. "It sounds like gibberish!"

"Wasing the how of wanting the doing," Spook said, smiling, falling into a full accent. Then he flushed, turning away.

"What?" she asked.

Why do I always act so foolish around her? he thought. The others always made fun of my slang—even Kelsier thought it was silly. Now I start speaking it before her?

He'd been feeling confident and1 sure as he studied his plans before she arrived. Why was it that the girl could always make him fall out of his leadership role and go back to being the old Spook? The Spook who had never been important.

"You shouldn't be ashamed of the accent," Beldre said. "I think it's kind of charming."

"You just said it was gibberish," Spook said, turning back to her.

"But that's the best part!" Beldre said. "It's gibberish on purpose, right?"

Spook remembered with fondness how his parents had responded to his adoption of the slang. It had been a kind of power, being able to say things that only his friends could understand. Of course, he'd started speaking in it so much that it had been hard to switch back.

"So," Beldre said, eyeing the board. "What does it say?"

Spook hesitated. "Just random thoughts," he said. She was his enemy—he had to remember that.

"Oh," she said. Something unreadable crossed her face, then she turned away from the board.

Her brother always banished her from his conferences, Spook thought. Never told her anything important. Left her feeling like she was useless. . . .

"I need to get your brother to use his Allomancy in front of the people," Spook found himself saying. "To let them see that he's a hypocrite."

Beldre looked back.

"The board is filled with my ideas," Spook said. "Most of them aren't very good. I'm kind of leaning toward just attacking him, making him defend himself."

"That won't work," Beldre said.

"Why not?"

"He won't use Allomancy against you. He wouldn't expose himself like that."

"If I threaten him strongly enough he will."

Beldre shook her head. "You promised not to hurt him. Remember?"

"No," Spook said, raising a finger. "I promised to try to find another way. And, I don't intend to kill him. I just need to make him think that I'd kill him."

Beldre fell silent again. His heart lurched.

"I won't do it, Beldre," Spook said. "I won't kill him."

"You promise that?"

Spook nodded.

She looked up at him, then smiled. "I want to write him a letter. Perhaps I can talk him into listening to you; we could avoid the need for this in the first place."

"All right . . ." Spook said. "But, you realize I'll have to read the letter to make certain you're not revealing anything that could hurt my position."

Beldre nodded.

Of course, he'd do more than read it. He'd rewrite it on another sheet of paper, changing the line order, and then add a few unimportant words. He'd worked on too many thieving crews to be unaware of ciphers. But, assuming that Beldre was being honest with him, a letter from her to Quellion was a good idea. It couldn't help but strengthen Spook's position.

He opened his mouth to ask whether or not her sleeping accommodations were acceptable, but cut himself off as he heard someone approaching. Harder footsteps this time. Captain Goradel, he guessed.

Sure enough, the soldier appeared around the corner to Spook's "room" a short time later.

"My lord," the soldier said. "You should see this."

The soldiers were gone.

Sazed looked through the window with the others, inspecting the empty plot of ground where Quellion's troops had been camped for the last few weeks, watching the Ministry building.

"When did they leave?" Breeze asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"Just now," Goradel explained.

The move felt ominous to Sazed for some reason. He stood beside Spook, Breeze, and Goradel—though the others seemed to take the soldiers' retreat as a good sign.

"Well, it will make sneaking out easier," Goradel noted.

"More than that," Spook said. "It means I can incorporate our own soldiers in the plan against Quellion. We'd never have gotten them out of the building secretly with half an army on our doorstep, but now . . ."

"Yes," Goradel said. "But where did they go? Do you think Quellion is suspicious of us?"

Breeze snorted. "That, my dear man, sounds like a question for your scouts. Why not have them search out where that army went?"

Goradel nodded. But then, to Sazed's slight surprise, the soldier looked toward Spook for a confirmation. Spook nodded, and the captain moved off to give the orders.

He looks to the boy over Breeze and I, Sazed thought. He shouldn't have been surprised. Sazed himself had agreed to let Spook take the lead, and to Goradel, all three of them—Sazed, Breeze, Spook—were probably equal. All were in Elend's inner circle, and of the three, Spook was the best warrior. It made sense for Goradel to look to him as a source of authority.

It just felt strange to see Spook giving orders to the soldiers. Spook had always been so quiet during the days of the original crew. And yet, Sazed was beginning to respect the boy too. Spook knew how to give orders in a way that Sazed could not, and he had shown remarkable foresight in his preparations in Urteau, as well as his plans to overthrow Quellion. He had a flair for the dramatic that Breeze kept saying was remarkable.

And yet, there was that bandage on the boy's eyes, and the other things he hadn't explained. Sazed knew that he should have pushed harder for answers, but the truth was that he trusted Spook. Sazed had known Spook from the lad's young teenage years, when he'd barely been capable of communicating with others.

As Goradel moved off, Spook looked to Sazed and Breeze. "Well?"

"Quellion is planning something," Breeze said. "Seems too early to jump to conclusions, though."

"I agree," Spook said. "For now, we go forward with the plan."

With that, they split up. Sazed turned, making his way back down and over to the far side of the cavern—to where a large group of soldiers worked in an area well lit with lanterns. On his arms, he wore the familiar weight of his copperminds—two on his forearms, two on his upper arms. In them sat the knowledge of engineering he needed to complete the task Spook had assigned him.

Lately, Sazed didn't know what to think. Each time he climbed the ladder and looked out over the city, he saw worse signs. The ashfalls were heavier. The earthquakes were gr1owing more and more frequent, and more and more violent. The mists were lingering later and later in the day. The sky grew dark, the red sun more like a vast bleeding scar than a source of light and life. The ashmounts made the horizon red even during the night.

It seemed to him that the end of the world should be a time when men found faith, not a time when they lost it. Yet, the little time that he'd devoted to studying the religions in his portfolio had not been encouraging. Twenty more religions eliminated, leaving just thirty potential candidates.

He shook his head to himself, moving among the toiling soldiers. Several groups worked on wooden contraptions filled with rocks—weight systems that would fall to block off the water running into the cavern. Others worked on the system of pulleys that would lower the mechanism. After about a half hour or so, Sazed determined that they were all doing their tasks well, and returned to his calculations. However, as he walked to his table, he saw Spook approaching him.

"Riots," Spook said, falling into step beside Sazed.

"Excuse me, Lord Spook?"

"That's where the soldiers went. Some people started a fire, and the soldiers guarding us were needed to put it out before the whole city went up. There's a lot more wood here than there is in Central Dominance cities."

Sazed frowned. "Our actions here are becoming dangerous, I fear."

Spook shrugged. "Seems like a good thing to me. This city is on the edge of snapping, Saze. Just like Luthadel was when we took control."

"Only the presence of Elend Venture kept that city from destroying itself," Sazed said quietly. "Kelsier's revolution could easily have turned into a disaster."

"It will be all right," Spook said.

Sazed eyed the young man as the two of them walked through the cavern. Spook seemed to be trying very hard to project an air of confidence. Perhaps Sazed was just growing cynical, but he found it difficult to be as optimistic as Spook.

"You don't believe me," Spook said.

"I'm sorry, Lord Spook," Sazed said. "It's not that . . . it's just that I seem to have trouble having faith in anything lately."

"Oh."

They walked silently for a while, eventually finding themselves at the edge of the glassy underground lake. Sazed paused beside the waters, his worries chewing at his insides. He stood for a long moment, feeling frustrated, but not really having an outlet.

"Don't you even worry, Spook?" Sazed finally asked. "Worry that we'll fail?"

"I don't know," Spook said, shuffling.

"And, it's so much more than this," Sazed said, waving back at the work crews. "The very sky seems to be our enemy. The land is dying. Don't you wonder what good any of this is? Why we even struggle? We're all doomed anyway!"

Spook flushed. Then, finally, he looked down. "I don't know," he repeated. "I . . . I understand what you're doing, Sazed. You're trying to find out if I doubt myself. I guess you can see through me."

Sazed frowned, but Spook wasn't looking.

"You're right," the young man said then, wiping his brow, "I do wonder if I'll fail. I guess Tindwyl would be annoyed at me, wouldn't she? She didn't think t1hat leaders should doubt themselves."