Curiously, the light from the walls was dimmer in the room. The effect was particularly noticeable near where one of the creatures was sitting or standing. It was like… they themselves were drawing in the light.
He was at least able to pick out the woman from before, with her wizened lips and long fingers. Her robe had a thicker band of silver. “We must move up our timetable,” she was saying to the others. “I do not believe this sighting was a coincidence.”
“Bah,” said a seated man who held a cup of glowing liquid. “You always jump at stories, Alonoe. Not every coincidence is a sign of someone drawing upon Fortune.”
“And do you disagree that it is best to be careful?” Alonoe demanded. “We have come too far, worked too hard, to let the prize slip away now.”
“Preservation’s Vessel has nearly expired,” another woman said. “Our window to strike is approaching.”
“An entire Shard,” Alonoe said. “Ours.”
“And if that was an agent of Ruin the guards spotted?” asked the seated man. “If our plans have been discovered? The Vessel of Ruin could have his eyes upon us at this very moment.”
Alonoe seemed disturbed by this, and she glanced upward as if to search the sky for the watching eyes of the Shard. She recovered, speaking firmly. “I will take the chance.”
“We will draw his anger either way,” another of the beings noted. “If one of us Ascends to Preservation, we will be safe. Only then.”
Kelsier chewed on this as the creatures fell silent. So someone else can take up the Shard. Fuzz is almost dead, but if someone were to seize his power as he died…
But hadn’t Preservation told Kelsier that such a thing was impossible? You wouldn’t be able to hold my power anyway, Preservation had said. You’re not Connected enough to me.
He’d seen that now firsthand, in the space between moments. Were these creatures somehow Connected enough to Preservation to take the power? Kelsier doubted it. So what was their plan?
“We move forward,” the seated man said, looking to the others. One at a time, they nodded. “Devotion protect us. We move forward.”
“You won’t need Devotion, Elrao,” Alonoe said. “You will have me.”
Over my dead body, Kelsier thought. Or… well, something like that.
“The timetable is accelerated then,” said Elrao, the man with the cup. He drank the glowing liquid, then stood. “To the vault?”
The others nodded. Together they left the room.
Kelsier waited until they were gone, then tried pushing himself through the window. It was too small for a person, but he wasn’t completely a person any longer. He could meld a few inches with the stone, and with effort he was able to contort his shape and squeeze through the wide slit.
He finally tumbled into the room, shoulders popping into their previous shape. The experience left him with a splitting headache. He sat up, back to the wall, and waited for the pain to fade before standing to give this room a thorough ransacking.
He didn’t come up with much. A few bottles of wine, a handful of gemstones left casually in one of the drawers. Both were real, not souls pulled through to this Realm.
The room had a door leading into the inner parts of the fortress, and so – after peeking through – he slipped in. This next room looked more promising. It was a bedroom. He rifled through the drawers, discovering several robes like the wizened people had been wearing. And then, in the small table by the hearth, the jackpot. A book of sketches filled with strange symbols like the one he had visualized. Symbols that he felt, vaguely, he could understand.
Yes… These were writing, though most of the pages were filled with terms he couldn’t begin to comprehend, even once he began to be able to read the symbols themselves. Terms like Adonalsium, Connection, Realmatic Theory.
The end pages, however, described the culmination of the notes and sketches. A kind of arcane device in the shape of a sphere. You could break it and absorb the power within, which would briefly Connect you to Preservation – like the lines he’d seen in the place between moments.
That was their plan. Travel to the place of Preservation’s death, prime themselves with this device, and absorb his power – Ascending to take his place.
Bold. Exactly the kind of plan Kelsier admired. And now, he finally knew what he was going to steal from them.
3
Thievery was the most authentic form of flattery.
What could be more satisfying than knowing the things you possessed were intriguing, captivating, or valuable enough to provoke another man to risk everything to obtain them? This was Kelsier’s purpose in life, to remind people of the value of the things they loved. By taking them away.
These days, he didn’t care for the little thieveries. Yes, he’d pocketed the gemstones he’d found up above, but that was more out of pragmatism than anything else. Ever since the Pits of Hathsin, he hadn’t been interested in stealing common possessions.
No, these days he stole something far greater. Kelsier stole dreams.
He crouched outside the fortress, hidden between two spires of twisting black rock. He now understood the purpose of creating such a powerful building, here at the reaches of Preservation and Ruin’s dominion. That fortress protected a vault, and inside that vault lay an incredible opportunity. The seed that would make a person, under the right circumstances, into a god.
Getting to it would be nearly impossible. They’d have guards, locks, traps, and arcane devices he couldn’t plan for or expect. Sneaking in and robbing that vault would test his skills to their utmost, and even then he was likely to fail.
He decided not to try.
That was the thing about big, defended vaults. You couldn’t realistically leave most possessions in them forever. Eventually you had to use what you guarded – and that provided men such as Kelsier with an opportunity. And so he waited, prepared, and planned.
It took a week or so – counting days by judging the schedules of the guards – but at long last an expedition sallied forth from the keep. The grand procession of twenty people rode on horseback, holding aloft lanterns.
Horses, Kelsier thought, slipping through the darkness to keep pace with the procession. Hadn’t expected that.
Well, they weren’t moving terribly quickly even with the mounts. He was able to keep up with them easily, particularly since he didn’t tire as he had when alive.
He counted five of the wizened ancients and a force of fifteen soldiers. Curiously, each of the ancients was dressed almost exactly the same, in their similar robes with hoods up and leather satchels over their shoulders, the same style of saddlebags on each horse.
Decoys, Kelsier decided. If someone attacks, they can split up. Their enemy might not know which of them to follow.
Kelsier could use that, particularly since he was relatively certain who carried the Connection device. Alonoe, the imperious woman who seemed to be in charge, wasn’t the type to let power slip through her spindly fingertips. She intended to become Preservation; letting one of her colleagues carry the device would be too risky. What if they got ideas? What if they used it themselves?