Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [909]
He flinched slightly as Vin mentioned that last one.
“The ash is getting worse, isn’t it?” she asked. “Falling more thickly?”
Yomen nodded.
“We were always worried about the mists,” Vin said. “But the ash, it’s going to be what kills us. It will block the sunlight, bury our cities, cover our streets, choke our fields. . . .”
“The Lord Ruler won’t let that happen,” Yomen said.
“And if he really is dead?”
Yomen met her eyes. “Then you have doomed us all.”
Doomed. . . . The Lord Ruler had said something similar right before Vin had killed him. She shivered, waiting in awkward silence, suffering Ruin’s smiling stare until a scribe scuttled into the room, bearing several rolled maps.
Yomen took one of the maps, waving the man away. He spread it out on a table, waving Vin forward. “Show me,” he said, stepping back to keep out of her reach as she approached.
She picked up a piece of charcoal, then began to mark the locations of the storage caverns. Luthadel. Satren. Vetitan. Urteau. All five that she had found—all near the Central Dominance, one in the center, the other four forming a box around it. She put a final “X” beside Fadrex City.
Then, with charcoal gripped in her fingers, she noticed something. Sure are a lot of mines shown on this map around Fadrex, she thought. A lot of metal in the area.
“Step back,” Yomen said.
Vin moved away. He approached, scanning the map. Vin stood in silence, thinking. Elend’s scribes could never find a pattern to the cache locations. Two were in small cities, two in large ones. Some near canals, others not. The scribes claimed that they just didn’t have a large enough set from which to determine patterns.
“This seems completely random,” Yomen said, echoing her own thoughts.
“I didn’t make up those locations, Yomen,” she said, folding her arms. “Your spies can confirm where Elend has taken his armies and sent his emissaries.”
“Not all of us have the resources for extensive spy networks, Empress,” Yomen said flatly, looking back at the map. “There should be some pattern. . . .”
Vetitan, Vin thought. The place where we found the cavern just before this one. It was a mining town as well. And Urteau too.
“Yomen?” she said, looking up. “Does one of those maps list mineral deposits?”
“Of course,” he said distractedly. “We are the Canton of Resource, after all.”
“Get it out.”
Yomen raised an eyebrow, indicating what he thought of her giving him orders. However, he waved for his scribe to do as she had requested. A second map overlaid the first, and Vin walked forward. Yomen immediately shied backward, keeping out of reach.
He has good instincts, for a bureaucrat, she thought, slipping the charcoal out from underneath the map. She quickly made her five marks again. With each one, her hand grew more tense. Each cavern was in a rocky area, near metal mines. Even Luthadel bore rich mineral deposits. Lore said that the Lord Ruler had constructed his capital in that location because of the mineral content in the area, particularly the groundwater. That much the better for Allomancers.
“What are you trying to imply?” Yomen asked. He’d edged close enough to see what she’d marked.
“This is the connection,” Vin said. “He built his storages near sources of metal.”
“Or, it was simple chance.”
“No,” Vin said, looking up, glancing at Ruin. “No, metal equals Allomancy, Yomen. There’s a pattern here.”
Yomen waved her away again, approaching the map. He snorted. “You’ve included marks near each of the most productive mines in the inner empire. You expect me to believe that you’re not just playing me, offering some phantom ‘evidence’ that these really are the locations of the storage caverns?”
Vin ignored him. Metal. The words of Kwaan were written in metal, because he said they were safe. Safe. Safe from being changed, we assumed.
Or, did he mean safe from being read?
The Lord Ruler had drawn his maps on metal plates.
So, what if Ruin couldn’t find the storages on his own because