Chapter Text
There was light.
Vin drifted through this strange place, strange but calming, freedom from danger, freedom from fear. Just like the Mists, like she’d always wanted the Mists to be.
Elend was there. All had floated away, but Elend was there, just close enough to be a comforting presence. She felt him at peace. She felt at peace. The Power was gone, lifted from her shoulders, a burden eased. Sazed had it now, wise, kindly Sazed, if anyone could be trusted to hold the Power, it was him.
Kelsier had been there too, and she hadn’t needed to wonder why. It was done. She had done what had been asked of her, what she’d asked of herself. She could rest.
She saw the light and drifted towards gentle oblivion.
Drifted…
And she breathed.
It was an awful breath of air to reintroduce one to the concept. She coughed at the dust and grime, and struck her head painfully on something hard when she tried to sit up. She tried to burn pewter to numb the pain and found none. It was pitch black. She lay supine in a tight space, with a plane of cold stone close above her. She searched about her person and found her coin pouch, her knives - clean - and a single vial. She burned steel; she was out, so she burned iron, and a web of blue lines appeared, connecting her chest to nearby sources of metal. One of them ran to the vial.
She clutched the knives and the metals to her chest and took a moment to slow her breathing. She still wore her mistcloak, though her earring was missing. The blue lines pointed in all directions; Metal, nearby, outside the confines of this box. That suggested the box was in a room, with open space above. She groped at the roof of the box and found the edge. The corner was square. She felt the lower corner, by her hip. Rounded. Perhaps the ceiling was a lid, a separate piece of stone from the walls?
Forcing herself to move slowly, she pried the cork of the vial and swallowed the metals inside. She burned pewter, and the throbbing subsided in her forehead. She placed both hands flat on the lid, testing how its weight felt under her newfound strength. It budged only slightly. She hesitated; she had duralumin, which could enhance the effects of pewter, but would burn it all up in the process. If the lid was secured in some way she hadn’t anticipated, she might expend all her pewter without making a way out.
Vin breathed, slowly, in light of the dust, but deeply, and she burned steel, pewter, tin. She gave the lid another experimental push, looking for any sources of metal that moved in response, and trying to feel the way its weight moved. Steelsight revealed small pieces of metal above her that were moved, but none along the edge of the box, and she felt nothing to suggest any kind of latch or fixture on the lid.
She closed her eyes. Then she burned pewter and duralumin and rose from the grave.
The lid crashed to the ground and Vin sprung into a low crouch, knives ready. She was in a stone room, walls inlaid with tiles, lit only by two lanterns flanking the only door, beyond which Mist crept along the stone floor. She crouched in a shallow trough atop an unadorned stone block. Another lid lay next to the trough, with thin lines of metal along its face. She dashed into the corner beside the door, hiding from the view of anyone outside, and burned tin. She heard short, fearful breaths, somewhere past the door and to the right. The air was clean here, tainted only by the scent from the lanterns.
She turned and looked at the stone block. The near edge bore a metal plaque.
Vin Venture, the Ascendant Warrior Elend Venture, the Last Emperor
Now, They Rest.
Vin looked at the other side of the block, with the undisturbed lid. She thought of that place she’d been, the strange place with its calming light. It felt like another lifetime.
Elend had been there. Elend had made it where they were going, and she had not. She felt this, somehow, and she did not know why.
She moved to the side of the tomb and Pushed on the lid with steel and duralumin. She cried out as the force pushed her against the wall, with no pewter to brace herself the lid crashed to the ground, and she climbed back atop the tomb, and she flung herself back into the corner. She pressed her knuckles into her eyes, face writhing and tears leaking through her fingers. She shook, and for a time that’s all there was.
A door opened somewhere and hastily footsteps sounded, moving away from her. She had to leave this place. She pushed herself to her feet, sliding up the wall. Her ribs cried in protest. She held out a hand and Pulled a vial of metals to her from among the dust and bone and white clothing. Elend’s final gift.
Then she sprinted out the door, through a wide foyer and up a set of stairs. Out into the Mists and a new world.
She slid to her knees in the grass. Which was green, and free of ash. Through the Mists, the lights of a city lurked, only the lights seemed… wrong somehow. She burned tin, to see through the Mist, ignoring the heightened pain from her ribs. She knelt on a gentle hill, covered in the green grass and crisscrossed with pathways. The city began perhaps a half-mile away, and its buildings were odd, lacking the sloped, shingled roofs of Luthadel. In the distance two monstrously tall buildings rose above the Mists. Large metal covered blocks dotted the perimeter of the buildings, a few of them in motion, with more of those strange, unwavering lights guiding their way.
She felt the grass between her fingers. It was wet with dew, and a single blade came away when she pulled on it. Green plants. Kelsier had been right. There were even flowers, like that drawing he’d always kept from Mare. The stories he’d recounted said flowers had come in all different types, but these all looked exactly like the drawing.
Her ribs ached. Pushing like that when she’d been out of pewter had been foolish, but she’d just… needed to know. She drank the metals from the second vial, but didn’t burn pewter yet. It would give her the strength to continue in spite of her injury, but she just… couldn’t yet. It felt wrong to ignore this pain.
Hesitantly, she turned and looked over her shoulder at the structure she’d emerged from. It was a low building that sat at the crest of the hill, and above it rose two massive statues. It was them, she realized. Elend in the white uniform that had become his signature, and Vin herself, in as good a representation of a mistcloak as you could expect from stone. She rested her gaze on the statue of Elend, with its strong and regal expression. He’d worked hard to learn that expression.
She wanted to remember that face, not the one of bone she’d seen in the tomb. And she clung to that presence she’d felt in that strange, comforting place. He’d been at peace. She looked back down at the grass.
They had done it. They’d stopped Ruin, and the world had survived. Healed, even. Perhaps thrived. Elend Venture was a hero, and he’d earned his rest.
So why was she still here?
She rose to her feet and began slowly burning pewter and copper. The ache in her ribs subsided a bit and a familiar warmth filled her. She followed a steelsight line to a bench with metal fixtures, and Pushed herself into the sky. The city was filled with metal.
She needed to think, and the Mists had always been her friend.
Marasi felt blasphemous.
She stood in the Originators' Tomb, in what had, until last night, been the final resting place of the Ascendant Warrior and the Last Emperor. The stone lids of both coffins had been shoved aside, and Vin’s body was gone. Elend’s remained, now covered by a white sheet out of respect for the dead. It felt almost a futile gesture, given the insult that had been done here.
Marasi checked her disgust. It took an uncommon type of callousness to loot the graves of two people who had saved the world. Even in the riots a few years ago, no one had dared, though the constabulatory had sent guards then, just in case. But, anger wouldn’t help her in examining a crime scene.
They’d already checked the rest of the mausoleum, part crypt and part museum, and found nothing disturbed. That was odd. The place was full of relics from the World of Ash and works of art and writing, including nothing less than the Words of Founding, the original copies. Everything was locked up, of course, but evidently the thieves had been able to move the heavy stone slabs that had covered the tombs, so none of the locks should have been beyond their ability to break. And they’d clearly had no qualms about leaving behind traces of their presence, or making noise; the poor caretaker had reported the crime after hearing the sounds of stone crashing from her small apartment, tucked in a back corner of the mausoleum. Wayne was there now, speaking to her. That was always a gamble, but Wayne had talked Marasi into letting him try and calm her down.
An empty vial and a wax-covered cork lay in the trough of Vin’s coffin. The lids lay in the gaps between the tomb and the wall, and there was a large web of cracks and dislodged tiles in the wall mural on Elend’s side, suggesting the lid was thrown off with some force. There was no such destruction on Vin’s side; only a single crack in the mural, at about torso height. Marasi left the chamber, not wanting to disturb the Emperor anymore than he had been. The strangest thing about this whole scene was that the robbers had opened both tombs, but left Elend’s remains while taking Vin’s. The only thing missing from his tomb was a vial of metals, like the one left discarded in Vin’s coffin. The caretaker’s office had contained detailed descriptions of the crypt and the manner of the burial, as ordered by the Lord Mistborn himself, and those had said they’d been buried with their weapons, including a vial of allomancer’s metals.
So apparently the thieves had drunk one vial and taken the others. Marasi took a small cloth bag from her purse, and gingerly collected the vial from Vin’s coffin. She grimaced it was evidence, but this felt… unconscionably disrespectful. The woman who’d killed Ruin had lain here. It felt wrong to even touch the stone.
She scurried from the chamber out into the foyer. Chip stood by a mural of Lord Hammond, watching her with a disquieted expression. “Hell of a way to refill on metals,” he grumbled. “Bastards.”
“Hmm?” This was Wayne, rounding the corner from the curator’s apartment, hat in hand.
Marasi spoke before Chip could respond. “Did you learn anything from her?”
“Her name’s Anla. She has two granddaughters, Willow and Myla, older of ‘em just started kindergarten. I told her to give her my sympathies.”
She went to protest that wasn’t what she meant, but found herself giving a slight smile first. “Is she okay?”
“Scared her so much she thought Ruin himself had come again, but not hurt.” He nodded towards the doorway to the tomb. “Not too happy ‘bout that. Find anything?”
“They took the metals from Elend’s body.”
“Think they had allomancers, then?”
Marasi pursed her lips. “Chip, there’s metals inlaid on the lids. You think a coinshot could have Pushed them off?”
Chip scratched at his chin. “They’re probably heavier than a man, so you’d need something behind you to push off of.” His eyes scanned the walls on either side of the doorway. He was a coinshot himself, and would be looking for sources of metal. “Don’t see much that way, at least nothing too heavy. We’d have seen things thrown about that were used as anchors. You’d nearly crush yourself too.” He shook his head. “No. If we’re right that the lid was thrown and cracked the mural, that’s harder than any coinshot could have Pushed.”
“Wax once pushed an entire house down in the Roughs,” said Wayne, “Small house, granted, and not too thick in the walls, but I was in it at the time and thought it was right cozy.”
That would have involved Waxillium filling his metalmind to increase his weight, she expected. Still, it made her wonder if he could have managed something like this. Right now he and Steris were vacationing in the north of the Basin. “It could have been a thug, maybe. Or… do you suppose someone else with the same powers as Waxillium?”
Wayne scrunched up his eyebrows. “Never met another crasher. And I know the names of all hundred types of Twinborn.”
“...there are two hundred fifty six.”
“Nah,” Wayne shook his head. “Sixteen and sixteen? Couldn’t be that many.”
Marasi let that lie. She’d only met three twinborn herself, and Waxillium had apparently been told, by an unidentified woman at a party in New Seran, that he was only the third crasher - steel allomancer and iron feruchemist - ever born.
The group grew silent. There was a somberness to this place, even as a crime scene. They exchanged wordless looks, and moved to leave.
It was a clear day outside, and a half dozen other constables were spread about the surrounding areas, deterring curious passersby. Wayne donned his hat again.
“Did the caretaker say anything else about the break-in?” Marasi asked.
“Woke up to the sound of stone crashing, she says. Ran when she heard the second. Didn’t see anyone on her way out.”
“Did she look in the burial chamber?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Shame, that’s where I’d have gone. Lyin’ down amid a bunch of bodies is a great way to hide. Mm, and she said she thought something came running out of the place after her.”
That was news. “One of the thieves?”
Wayne shook his head. “Couldn’t say. And, well, I think the poor woman was just scared.”
Marasi folded her arms. Around them, the Field of Rebirth was alive with pedestrians out for walks, many of them drawn to the mausoleum by all the activity. She and Wayne slipped past the border being maintained by the constables, and she thought as they walked.
The differences in the treatment of the two graves stuck out, but the larger question was why would anyone steal Vin’s remains? She’d have been bones by now - Elend had been - and according to the orders for the burial, she’d have her mistcloak and obsidian knives. She could imagine relics like that being sold on the black market, but again, so many artifacts were left undisturbed.
“Wayne? Do you remember that journal I got from Ironeyes?”
“Think he did this?” Wayne had produced a flask somehow. “S’pose he is Death. Guess he’s allowed.”
That hadn’t been what she’d meant, but it gave her a bit of pause. “It talked about hemalurgy. How you could steal powers from an allomancer.”
“Thought they had to be alive for it. That steelrunner Bleeder killed was alive when she gave her the spike. Could tell from the blood. Nearly got in all the booze she had lyin’ around.”
That was true. Still, they knew the Set had learned some of the secrets of Hemalurgy. It didn’t seem out of the question that the body of a Mistborn could be of use. Though Elend had been a Mistborn as well. She ground her teeth. Nothing about this lined up.
“We should check stations nearby for strange reports, possibly involving allomancers. It's a big open park, someone must have seen something.”
“Reckon we can stop by a, what’s it called. Dress shop on the way? For MeLaan.”
“We probably shouldn’t go shopping on police time.” This meant yes. She and Wayne had a rapport. “Is she into dresses again?”
“I, uh, hope so.”
“Wayne.”
“Wasn’t anything I did! Least not that I know. But she’d been distant. She said she didn’t want to build up expectations for me. Something like that.” He bristled. “Can’t tell if it’s because she’s a woman or a Kandra sometimes.”
Marasi rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Wayne had a talent for getting to know how people thought, but Melaan consistently found ways to confound him. She was… singular, to be sure. Marasi had been slow to warm to her, and still felt a certain kind of strangeness around Melann. She felt a bit guilty for that.
The Field of Rebirth sat at the very center of Eledel, and thus didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of any one octant, which meant driving a short ways into each octant in search of the nearest constable station. None knew anything about the robbery of the mausoleum that Marasi and Wayne hadn’t seen for themselves. In the 1st, 3rd and 7th octave there’d been brawls the previous night involving allomancers, but nothing that hadn’t been resolved. The report that stuck out the most was from the 5th octant, where a metallurgist’s shop had been robbed. When they visited, the elderly owner said that amounts of every metal he had in stock had been taken, the mental and physical metals in greater quantities. He also showed them the window the thief had entered from. To avoid intrusion by use of allomancy, the glass was extra thick and the wood of the frame had been held in place with screws from the inside, of a thread that was too heavy for a coinshot or lurcher to dislodge.
They hadn’t been dislodged. Each screw had been turned and loosened until the window could move, as if some one had been opening it from the inside, though the metallurgist scoffed at the notion.
It was odd that the thieves had left any metal at all. The workshop still contained hundreds of not thousands of boxings worth of metals. In fact they'd taken less of the more expensive metals like bendalloy than of more common ones like steel and tin.
Another break-in concerning allomancy and suggesting motivations beyond simple burglary. And with troublingly few leads to follow. The window opened into a narrow alleyway, but a half hour of interviewing the owners and staff of surrounding shops for anything they might have seen last night returned nothing. The metallurgist employed a security guard, but she watched the storefront, and protested she had heard nothing. Marasi sensed a measure of frustration from the owner towards the guard, and did her best to diffuse it; there hadn’t been any reason to think the window could be opened, so it wasn’t the guard’s fault.
“I think it’s a reasonable leap to think this is related to the crypt,” Marasi said to Wayne in a Fifth Octant Boutique. Wayne had given a clerk MeLaan’s measurements, then confirmed to her that yes, those were actually correct, and the clerk was currently in the back of the shop seeing what was in stock.
Wayne rocked on his heels and examined a shelf of women’s hats. “Suppose I’m an allomancer.”
“You are.”
“Hey, look at us, making progress. And I’m in need of metals. I rob a metal shop, but they don’t have what I need.” He frowned. “I have to imagine I’d try something before knocking over the Ascendant Warrior’s grave. I’d at least try and find a bolt to eat.”
Marasi sat on a bench, positioned for use by shoppers, and drummed her finger on her knee. “There are some metals that weren’t known when that crypt was built. Bendalloy, cadmium, chromium and nicrosil. They wouldn’t have been buried with those. But, those were the metals the thieves took less of from the shop.”
The clerk returned, carrying an evening gown of slick green silk. Long in the skirt and cut for an hourglass figure. Recently, MeLaan had started to dress more androgynous much of the time, but when she wore gowns, this one was certainly the type. Wayne said he’d take it.
“You think there’s any the kids would have been buried with that the fellow down the street wouldn’t have had?”
Vin had been younger than Marasi when she died, but it still seemed strange to hear her and Elend called the kids. “They weren’t buried with Atium, it was all gone even then. I suppose they’d have had duralumin. Which the shop didn’t have, come to think of it.” Duralumin enhanced the effect of other metals an allomancer was burning, but no one had been born with the ability to burn multiple metals since the Lord Mistborn. There were still mistings who could burn duralumin and nothing else, making it a useless power. Duralumin gnats, they were called. Marasi had thought her cadmium allomancy useless, and felt self-concious about it, but it had saved them on more than one occasion.
“How hard’s it to get duralumin?” Wayne asked from the checkout counter.
“Not too hard. It’s an alloy of aluminum, so it’s expensive, but it gets made.” Wayne paid and they walked out into the street, Marasi checking to make sure he still had the same hat and hadn’t “traded” for one in the shop. It was the same one he’d walked in with, though not the same one he’d had at the tomb. Good enough.
“I don’t know, Wayne. I suppose it’s worth watching out for any more allomancy-related reports. Maybe crimes involving Duralumin. I just wish we had more to go on.”
“Truth is, sometimes the fellow gets away.” He fidgeted with the box with the dress inside. “You think she’ll like this? The neckline isn’t too low? Or too high?”
“She’ll like it.”
“You don’t think I’ll look like one of those overstuffed bigwigs who buy their wife a dress because they don’t like how she’s dressing?” He opened the lid. “I could use one of these, so don’t be sayin’ yes just to make me feel better about the purchase. Don’t quite have the bust, but you never know when you’re gonna need good silk.”
“Wayne.” She looked at him. “She’s going to say thank you. Then she's not going to wear it and you’ll worry she doesn't like it, and then when it's been just long enough, she’ll wear it to dinner with you or something.”
Wayne blinked. “How did you do that?”
Marasi grinned. “Perhaps I’m a kandra.”
“Might be.” He replaced the lid. “Well, they say it’s the thought that counts. Helps, I say, means folks don’t have to do it themselves.”
“You’ll tell her I said hello?”
“Will do, will do. Ahem. Well, if, we’re done interrogating my love lif-”
“Absolutely not.” It had been three months since she and Allik had ended things. Wayne had been sympathetic when, in spite of her better judgment, she talked about it with him, but she had very little interest in letting him pass back into the phase where he could poke fun at her over things like that. “We should also be on the lookout for black market activities, if they wanted to sell Vin’s body and knives as relics.”
“They’ll be subtle about it, I wager. The broadsheets will love this.”
“That’s true. We should release a statement, asking people to report strange incidents of allomancy. Turn the public outcry into something productive.”
They reached the car and Marasi got in on the driver’s side. “It just seems so wrong. Vin and Elend are heroes.”
“My Ma told me a story about a hero once,” Wayne’s voice was distant for a moment.
Marasi considered a moment. “Maybe you can tell it to me sometime.”
“Reckon I can. Reckon I can.”
Marasi drove them over the canal back to the forth octant. “Oh. and you never said, what kind of twinborn are you? The name, I mean.”
“Hmm? Oh that’s easy. I bet you could guess.”
They were silent for a block or two. “Bloodsmear?”
“Marasi, there’s hope for you yet.”