Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [427]
“I see,” Tindwyl said. “Then, you haven’t missed this at all?” She nodded toward the shop’s inner room.
Vin paused. The room burst with colors and fabric, lace and velvet, bodices and skirts. Everything was powdered with a light perfume. Standing before the dressing dummies in their brilliant hues, Vin was—for just a moment—again taken back to the balls. Back to when she was Valette. Back to when she had an excuse to be Valette.
“They say you enjoyed noble society,” Tindwyl said lightly, walking forward. Allrianne was already standing near the front of the room, running her fingers across a bolt of fabric, talking to the dressmaker in a firm voice.
“Who told you that?” Vin asked.
Tindwyl turned back. “Why, your friends, dear. It’s quite curious—they say you stopped wearing dresses a few months after the Collapse. They all wonder why. They say you seemed to like dressing like a woman, but I guess they were wrong.”
“No,” Vin said quietly. “They were right.”
Tindwyl raised an eyebrow, pausing beside a dressmaker’s dummy in a bright green dress, edged with lace, the bottom flaring wide with several underskirts.
Vin approached, looking up at the gorgeous costume. “I was beginning to like dressing like this. That was the problem.”
“I don’t see a problem in that, dear.”
Vin turned away from the gown. “This isn’t me. It never was—it was just an act. When wearing a dress like that, it’s too easy to forget who you really are.”
“And these dresses can’t be part of who you really are?”
Vin shook her head. “Dresses and gowns are part of who she is.” She nodded toward Allrianne. “I need to be something else. Something harder.” I shouldn’t have come here.
Tindwyl laid a hand on Vin’s shoulder. “Why haven’t you married him, child?”
Vin looked up sharply. “What kind of question is that?”
“An honest one,” Tindwyl said. She seemed far less harsh than she had been the other times Vin had met her. Of course, during those times, she had mostly been addressing Elend.
“That topic is not your concern,” Vin said.
“The king has asked me to help him improve his image,” Tindwyl said. “And I have taken it upon myself to do more than that—I want to make a real king of him, if I can. There is some great potential in him, I think. However, he’s not going to be able to realize it until he’s more sure about certain things in his life. You in particular.”
“I…” Vin closed her eyes, remembering his marriage proposal. That night, on the balcony, ash lightly falling in the night. She remembered her terror. She’d known, of course, where the relationship was going. Why had she been so frightened?
That was the day she’d stopped wearing dresses.
“He shouldn’t have asked me,” Vin said quietly, opening her eyes. “He can’t marry me.”
“He loves you, child,” Tindwyl said. “In a way, that is unfortunate—this would all be much easier if he could feel otherwise. However, as things stand…”
Vin shook her head. “I’m wrong for him.”
“Ah,” Tindwyl said. “I see.”
“He needs something else,” Vin said. “Something better. A woman who can be a queen, not just a bodyguard. Someone…” Vin’s stomach twisted. “Someone more like her.”
Tindwyl glanced toward Allrianne, who laughed at a comment made by the elderly dressmaker as he took her measurements.
“You are the one he fell in love with, child,” Tindwyl said.
“When I was pretending to be like her.”
Tindwyl smiled. “Somehow, I doubt that you could be like Allrianne, no matter how hard you practiced.”
“Perhaps,” Vin said. “Either way, it was my courtly performance that he loved. He didn’t know what I really was.”
“And has he abandoned you now that he does know of it?”
“Well, no. But—”
“All people are more complex than they first appear,” Tindwyl said. “Allrianne, for instance, is eager and young—perhaps a bit too outspoken. But she knows more of the court than many would expect, and she seems to know how to recognize what is good in a person. That is a talent many lack.
“Your king is a humble scholar and thinker, but he has the will