Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [930]
Still, it came back to his continuing frustration at his inability to protect his people. And, despite Yomen’s rule of Fadrex, Elend considered its people to be his people. He’d taken the Lord Ruler’s throne, named himself emperor. The entirety of the Final Empire was his to care for. What good was a ruler who couldn’t even protect one city, let alone an empire full of them?
A disturbance at the front of the infirmary room caught his attention. He cast aside his dark thoughts, then bid farewell to the soldier. He rushed to the front of the hospital, where Yomen had already appeared to see what the ruckus was about. A woman stood holding a young boy, who was shaking uncontrollably with the fits.
One of the physicians rushed forward, taking the boy. “Mistsickness?” he asked.
The woman, weeping, nodded. “I kept him inside until today. I knew! I knew that it wanted him! Oh, please . . .”
Yomen shook his head as the physician took the boy to a bed. “You should have listened to me, woman,” he said firmly. “Everyone in the city was to have been exposed to the mists. Now your son will take a bed that we may need for wounded soldiers.”
The woman slumped down, still crying. Yomen sighed, though Elend could see the concern in the man’s eyes. Yomen was not a heartless man, just a pragmatic one. In addition, his words made sense. It was no use hiding someone inside all of their lives, just because of the possibility that they might fall to the mists.
Fall to the mists . . . Elend thought idly, glancing at the boy in bed. He had stopped convulsing, though his face was twisted in an expression of pain. It looked like he hurt so much. Elend had only hurt that much once in his life.
We never did figure out what this mistsickness was all about, he thought. The mist spirit had never returned to him. But, perhaps Yomen knew something.
“Yomen,” he said, walking up to the man, distracting him from his discussion with the surgeons. “Did any of your people ever figure out the reason for the mistsickness?”
“Reason?” Yomen asked. “Does there need to be a reason for a sickness?”
“There does for one this strange,” Elend said. “Did you realize that it strikes down exactly sixteen percent of the population? Sixteen percent—to the man.”
Instead of being surprised, Yomen just shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Sense?” Elend asked.
“Sixteen is a powerful number, Venture,” Yomen said, looking over some reports. “It was the number of days it took the Lord Ruler to reach the Well of Ascension, for instance. It figures prominently in Church doctrine.”
Of course, Elend thought. Yomen wouldn’t be surprised to find order in nature—he believes in a god who ordered that nature.
“Sixteen . . .” Elend said, glancing at the sick boy.
“The number of original Inquisitors,” Yomen said. “The number of Precepts in each Canton charter. The number of Allomantic metals. The—”
“Wait,” Elend said, looking up. “What?”
“Allomantic metals,” Yomen said.
“There are only fourteen of those.”
Yomen shook his head. “Fourteen we know of, assuming your lady was right about the metal paired to aluminum. However, fourteen is not a number of power. Allomantic metals come in sets of two, with groupings of four. It seems likely that there are two more we haven’t discovered, bringing the number to sixteen. Two by two by two by two. Four physical metals, four mental metals, four enhancement metals, and four temporal metals.”
Sixteen metals . . .
Elend glanced at the boy again. Pain. Elend had known such pain once—the day his father had ordered him beaten. Beaten to give him such pain that he thought he might die. Beaten to bring his body to a point near death, so that he would Snap.
Beaten to discover if he was an Allomancer.
Lord Ruler! Elend thought with shock. He dashed away from Yomen, pushing back into the soldiers’ section of the infirmary.
“Who here was taken by the mists?” Elend demanded.
The wounded regarded him with quizzical looks.
“Did any of you get sick?” Elend asked. “When I made