Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [713]
I won’t be useless anymore, he thought with determination as he listened for words spoken in confidence. They passed through the walls, across the short space, and arrived at his ears.
“All right, Olid,” said a voice. “What news?” The voice was, by now, familiar to Spook. Quellion, the Citizen of Urteau.
“Elend Venture has conquered another city,” said a second voice—Olid, the foreign minister.
“Where?” Quellion demanded. “What city?”
“An unimportant one,” Olid said. “To the south. Barely five thousand people.”
“It makes no sense,” said a third voice. “He immediately abandoned the city, taking its populace with him.”
“But he got another koloss army, somehow,” Olid added.
Good, Spook thought. The fourth storage cavern was theirs. Luthadel wouldn’t starve for a while yet. That only left two to secure—the one here in Urteau, and the last one, wherever that turned out to be.
“A tyrant needs no real reason for what he does,” Quellion said. He was a young man, but not foolish. At times, he sounded like other men Spook had known. Wise men. The difference, then, was one of extremity.
Or, perhaps, timing?
“A tyrant simply conquers for the thrill of control,” Quellion continued. “Venture isn’t satisfied with the lands he’s taken—he never will be. He’ll just keep on conquering. Until he comes for us.”
The room fell silent.
“He’s reportedly sending an ambassador to Urteau,” the third voice said. “A member of the Survivor’s own crew.”
Spook perked up.
Quellion snorted. “One of the liars? Coming here?”
“To offer us a treaty, the rumors say,” Olid said.
“So?” Quellion asked. “Why do you mention this, Olid? Do you think we should make a pact with the tyrant?”
“We can’t fight him, Quellion,” Olid said.
“The Survivor couldn’t fight the Lord Ruler,” Quellion said. “But he did anyway. He died, but still won, giving the skaa courage to rebel and overthrow the nobility.”
“Until that bastard Venture took control,” the third voice said.
The room fell silent again.
“We can’t give in to Venture,” Quellion finally said. “I will not hand this city to a nobleman, not after what the Survivor did for us. Of all the Final Empire, only Urteau achieved Kelsier’s goal of a skaa-ruled nation. Only we burned the homes of the nobility. Only we cleansed our town of them and their society. Only we obeyed. The Survivor will watch over us.”
Spook shivered quietly. It felt very strange to be hearing men he didn’t know speak of Kelsier in such tones. Spook had walked with Kelsier, learned from Kelsier. What right did these men have to speak as if they had known the man who had become their Survivor?
The conversation turned to matters more mundane. They discussed new laws that would forbid certain kinds of clothing once favored by the nobility, and then made a decision to give more funding to the genealogical survey committee. They needed to root out any in the city who were hiding noble parentage. Spook took notes so he could pass them on to the others. However, he had trouble keeping his eyes from trailing back down to the young woman in the garden.
What brings her such sorrow? he wondered. A part of him wanted to ask—to be brash, as the Survivor would have been, and hop down to demand of this solemn, solitary girl why she stared at that plant with such melancholy. In fact, he found himself moving to stand before he caught himself.
He might be unique, he might be powerful, but—as he had to remind himself again—he was no Mistborn. His was the way of silence and stealth.
So, he settled back. Content, for the moment, to lean down and watch her, feeling that somehow—despite their distance, despite his ignorance—he understood that feeling in her eyes.
The ash.
I don’t think the people really understood how fortunate they were. During the thousand years before the Collapse, they pushed the ash into rivers, piled it up outside of cities, and generally just let it be. They never understood that without the microbes and plants Rashek had developed to break