Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [750]
The Harrows was clogged with a disorderly mash of wood and cloth and bodies. Shacks leaned against shacks, buildings leaned precariously against earth and rock, and the entire mess piled on top of itself, creeping up the canal walls toward the dark sky above. Here and there, people slept under only a dirty sheet stretched between two bits of urban flotsam—their millennium-old fear of the mists giving way before simple necessity.
Spook shuffled down the crowded canal. Some of the piles of half-buildings reached so high and wide that the sky narrowed to a mere crack far above, shining down its midnight light, too dim to be of use to any eyes but Spook’s.
Perhaps the chaos was why the Citizen chose not to visit the Harrows. Or, perhaps he was simply waiting to clean them out until he had a better grip on his kingdom. Either way, his strict society, mixed with the poverty it was creating, made for a curiously open nighttime culture. The Lord Ruler had patrolled the streets. The Citizen, however, preached that the mists were of Kelsier—and so could hardly forbid people to go out in them. Urteau was the first place in Spook’s experience where a person could walk down a street at midnight and find a small tavern open and serving drinks. He moved inside, cloak pulled tight. There was no proper bar, just a group of dirty men sitting around a dug-out firepit in the ground. Others sat on stools or boxes in the corners. Spook found an empty box, and sat down.
Then he closed his eyes and listened, filtering through the conversations. He could hear them all, of course—even with his earplugs in. So much about being a Tineye wasn’t about what you could hear, but what you could ignore.
Footsteps thumped near him, and he opened his eyes. A man wearing trousers sewn with a dozen different buckles and chains stopped in front of Spook, then thumped a bottle on the ground. “Everyone drinks,” the man said. “I have to pay to keep this place warm. Nobody just sits for free.”
“What have you got?” Spook asked.
The bartender kicked the bottle. “House Venture special vintage. Aged fifty years. Used to go for six hundred boxings a bottle.”
Spook smiled, fishing out a pek—a coin minted by the Citizen to be worth a fraction of a copper clip. A combination of economic collapse and the Citizen’s disapproval of luxury meant that a bottle of wine that had once been worth hundreds of boxings was now practically worthless.
“Three for the bottle,” the bartender said, holding out his hand.
Spook brought out two more coins. The bartender left the bottle on the floor, and so Spook picked it up. He had been offered no corkscrew or cup—both likely cost extra, though this vintage of wine did have a cork that stuck up a few inches above the bottle’s lip. Spook eyed it.
I wonder. . . .
He had his pewter on a low burn—not flared like his tin. Just there enough to help with the fatigue and the pain. In fact, it did its job so well that he’d nearly forgotten about his wound during the walk to the bar. He stoked the pewter a bit, and the rest of the wound’s pain vanished. Then, Spook grabbed the cork, pulling it with a quick jerk. It came free of the bottle with barely a hint of resistance.
Spook tossed the cork aside. I think I’m going to like this, he thought with a smile.
He took a drink of the wine straight from the bottle, listening for interesting conversations. He had been sent to Urteau to gather information, and he wouldn’t be much use to Elend or the others if he stayed lying in bed. Dozens of muffled conversations echoed in the room, most of them harsh. This wasn’t the kind of place where one found men loyal to the local government—which was precisely why Spook had found his way to the Harrows in the first place.
“They say he’s going to get rid of coins,” a man whispered at the main firepit. “He’s making plans to gather them all up, keep them in his treasury.”
“That’s foolish,” another voice replied. “He minted his own coins—why take them now?”
“It’s true,” the first voice said. “I seen him speak on it myself. He says that men shouldn