Sixteen. Why sixteen percent?
The beads of metal found at the Well—beads that made men into Mistborn—were the reason why Allomancers used to be more powerful. Those first Mistborn were as Elend Venture became—possessing a primal power, which was then passed down through the lines of the nobility, weakening a bit with each generation.
The Lord Ruler was one of these ancient Allomancers, his power pure and unadulterated by time and breeding. That is part of why he was so mighty compared to other Mistborn—though, admittedly, his ability to mix Feruchemy and Allomancy was what produced many of his most spectacular abilities. Still, it is interesting to me that one of his "divine" powers—his essential Allomantic strength—was something every one of the original nine Allomancers possessed.
22
SAZED SAT IN ONE OF THE NICER BUILDINGS at the Pits of Hathsin—a former guardhouse—holding a mug of hot tea. The Terris elders sat in chairs before him, a small stove providing warmth. On the next day, Sazed would have to leave to catch up with Goradel and Breeze, who would be well on their way to Urteau by now.
The sunlight was dimming. The mists had already come, and they hung just outside the glass window. Sazed could just barely make out depressions in the dark ground outside—cracks, in the earth. There were dozens of the cracks; the Terris people had built fences to mark them. Only a few years ago, before Kelsier had destroyed the atium crystals, men had been forced to crawl down into those cracks, seeking small geodes which had beads of atium at their centers.
Each slave who hadn't been able to find at least one geode a week had been executed. There were likely still hundreds, perhaps thousands, of corpses pinned beneath the ground, lost in deep caverns, dead without anyone knowing or caring.
What a terrible place this was, Sazed thought, turning away from the window as a young Terriswoman closed the shutters. Before him on the table were several ledgers which showed the resources, expenditures, and needs of the Terris people.
"I believe I suggested keeping these figures in metal," Sazed said.
"Yes, Master Keeper," said one of the elderly stewards. "We copy the important figures into a sheet of metal each evening, then check them weekly against the ledgers to make certain nothing has changed."
"That is well," Sazed said, picking through one of the ledgers, sitting in his lap. "And sanitation? Have you addressed those issues since my last visit?"
"Yes, Master Keeper," said another man. "We have prepared many more latrines, as you commanded—though we do not need them."
"There may be refugees," Saze1d said. "I wish for you to be able to care for a larger population, should it become necessary. But, please. These are only suggestions, not commands. I claim no authority over you."
The group of stewards shared glances. Sazed had been busy during his time with them, which had kept him from dwelling on his melancholy thoughts. He'd made sure they had enough supplies, that they kept a good communication with Penrod in Luthadel, and that they had a system in place for settling disputes among themselves.
"Master Keeper," one of the elders finally said. "How long will you be staying?"
"I must leave in the morning, I fear," Sazed said. "I came simply to check on your needs. This is a difficult time to live, and you could be easily forgotten by those in Luthadel, I think."
"We are well, Master Keeper," said one of the others. He was the youngest of the elders, and he was only a few years younger than Sazed. Most of the men here were far older—and far wiser—than he. That they should look to him seemed wrong.
"Will you not reconsider your place with us, Master Keeper?" asked another. "We want not for food or for land. Yet, what we do lack is a leader."
"The Terris people were oppressed long enough, I think," Sazed said. "You have no need for another tyrant king."
"Not a tyrant," one said. "One of our own."
"The Lord Ruler was one of our own," Sazed said quietly,
The group of men looked down. That the Lord Ruler had proven to be Terris was a shame to all of their people.
"We need someone to guide us," one of the men said. "Even during the days of the Lord Ruler, he was not our leader. We looked to the Keeper Synod."
The Keeper Synod—the clandestine leaders of Sazed's sect. They had led the Terris people for centuries, secretly working to make certain that Feruchemy continued, despite the Lord Ruler's attempts to breed the power out of the people.
"Master Keeper," said Master Vedlew, senior of the elders.
"Yes, Master Vedlew?"
"You do not wear your copperminds."
Sazed looked down. He hadn't realized it was noticeable that, beneath his robes, he wasn't wearing the metal bracers. "They are in my pack."
"It seems odd, to me," Vedlew said, "that you should work so hard during the Lord Ruler's time, always wearing your metalminds in secret, despite the danger. Yet, now that you are free to do as you wish, you carry them in your pack."
Sazed shook his head. "I cannot be the man you wish me to be. Not right now."
"You are a Keeper."
"I was the lowest of them," Sazed said. "A rebel and a reject. They cast me from their presence. The last time I left Tathingdwen, I did so in disgrace. The common people cursed me in the quiet of their homes."
"Now they bless you, Master Sazed," said one of the men.
"I do not deserve those blessings."
"Deserve them or not, you are all we have left."
"Then we are a sorrier people than we may appear."
The room fell silent.
"There was another reason why1 I came here, Master Vedlew," Sazed said, looking up. "Tell me, have any of your people died recently in . . . odd circumstances?"
"Of what do you speak?" the aged Terrisman asked.
"Mist deaths," Sazed said. "Men who are killed by simply going out into the mists during the day."
"That is a tale of the skaa," one of the other men scoffed. "The mists are not dangerous."
"Indeed," Sazed said carefully. "Do you send your people out to work in them during the daylight hours, when the mists have not yet retreated for the day?"
"Of course we do," said the younger Terrisman. "Why, it would be foolish to let those hours of work pass."
Sazed found it difficult not to let his curiosity work on that fact. Terrismen weren't killed by the daymists.
What was the connection?
He tried to summon the mental energy to think on the issue, but he felt traitorously apathetic. He just wanted to hide somewhere where nobody would expect anything of him. Where he wouldn't have to solve the problems of the world, or even deal with his own religious crisis.
He almost did just that. And yet, a little part of him—a spark from before—refused to simply give up. He would at least continue his research, and would do what Elend and Vin asked of him. It wasn't all he could do, and it wouldn't satisfy the Terrismen who sat here, looking at him with needful expressions.
But, for the moment, it was all Sazed could offer. To stay at the Pits would be to surrender, he knew. He needed to keep moving, keep working.
"I'm sorry," he said to the men, setting aside the ledger. "But this is how it must be."
During the early days of Kelsier's original plan, I remember how much he confused us all with his mysterious "Eleventh Metal." He claimed that there were legends of a mystical metal that would let one slay the Lord Ruler—and that Kelsier himself had located that metal through intense research.
Nobody really knew what Kelsier did in the years between his escape from the Pits of Hathsin and his return to Luthadel. When pressed, he simply said that he had been in "the West." Somehow in his wanderings he discovered stories that no Keeper had ever heard. Most of the crew didn't know what to make of the legends he spoke of. This might have been the first seed that made even his oldest friends begin to question his leadership.
23
IN THE EASTERN LANDS, near the wastelands of grit and sand, a young boy fell to the ground inside a skaa shack. It was many years before the Collapse, and the Lord Ruler still lived. Not that the boy knew of such things. He was a dirty, ragged thing—like most other skaa children in the Final Empire. Too young to be put to work in the mines, he spent his days ducking away from his mother's care and running about with the packs of children who foraged in the dry, dusty streets.
Spook hadn't been that boy for some ten years. In a way, he was aware that he was delusional—that the fever of his wounds was causing him to come in and out of consciousness, dreams of the past filling his mind. He let them run. Staying focused required too much energy.
And so, he remembered what it felt like as he hit the ground. A large man—all men were large compared with Spook—stood1 over him, skin dirtied with the dust and grime of a miner. The man spat on the dirty floor beside Spook, then turned to the other skaa in the room. There were many. One was crying, the tears leaving lines of cleanliness on her cheeks, washing away the dust.
"All right," the large man said. "We have him. Now what?"
The people glanced at each other. One quietly closed the shack's door, shutting out the red sunlight.
"There's only one thing to be done," another man said. "We turn him in."
Spook looked up. He met the eyes of the crying woman. She looked away. "Wasing the where of what?" Spook demanded.
The large man spat again, setting a boot against Spook's neck, pushing him back down against the rough wood. "You shouldn't have let him run around with those street gangs, Margel. Damn boy is barely coherent now."
"What happens if we give him up?" asked one of the other men. "I mean, what if they decide that we're like him? They could have us executed! I've seen it before. You turn someone in, and those . . . things come searching for everyone that knew him."
"Problems like his run in the family, they do," another man said.
The room grew quiet. They all knew about Spook's family.
"They'll kill us," said the frightened man. "You know they will! I've seen them, seen them with those spikes in their eyes. Spirits of death, they are."
"We can't just let him run about," another man said. "They'll discover what he is."
"There's only one thing to be done," the large man said, pressing down on Spook's neck even harder.
The room's occupants—the ones Spook could see—nodded solemnly. They couldn't turn him in. They couldn't let him go. But, nobody would miss a skaa urchin. No Inquisitor or obligator would ask twice about a dead child found in the streets. Skaa died all the time.
That was the way of the Final Empire.
"Father," Spook whispered.
The heel came down harder. "You're not my son! My son went into the mists and never came out. You must be a mistwraith."
Spook tried to object, but his chest was pressed down too tight. He couldn't breathe, let alone speak. The room started to grow black. And yet, his ears—supernaturally sensitive, enhanced by powers he barely understood—heard something.