Gemmel glared at him, then shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. Kelsier readied his metals, prepared to fight back. But Gemmel turned his hand to the side and sprayed them across a pair of guards who were jogging up the path to see who was walking through the grounds at night.
The men fell, one of them yelling. Gemmel didn’t seem to care that it might reveal the two of them. He stalked on ahead.
Kelsier hesitated for a moment, glancing at the dying men. Employed by the enemy. He tried to feel something for them, but he couldn’t. That part of him had been ripped out by the Pits of Hathsin, though a different part was disturbed at how little he felt.
He hurried on after Gemmel, who had found what appeared to be a groundskeeping shed. When he pulled open the door, however, there were no tools, just a dark set of steps leading downward.
“Steel burning?” Gemmel asked.
Kelsier nodded.
“Watch for movement,” Gemmel said, grabbing a handful of coins from his pouch. Kelsier raised a hand toward the fallen guards and Pulled on the coins Gemmel had used against them, flipping them up toward him. He’d seen Gemmel Pull on things lightly, so that they didn’t streak toward him at full strength. Kelsier hadn’t mastered that trick yet, and he had to crouch down and let the coins spray over his head into the wall of the shed. He gathered them up, then started down after an impatient Gemmel, who was watching him with displeasure.
“I was unarmed,” Kelsier explained. “Left my pouch on top of the building.”
“Mistakes like that will end with you dead.”
Kelsier didn’t reply. It had been a mistake. Of course, he’d planned to fetch the coin pouch – and would have, if Gemmel hadn’t knocked him off the spire.
The light grew dim, then neared blackness as they continued down the steps. Gemmel didn’t produce a torch or lantern, but instead waved at Kelsier to go first. Another test of some sort?
Steel burning within Kelsier let him identify sources of metal by their blue lines. He paused, then dropped the handful of coins to the ground, letting them bounce down the steps. In falling, they let him see where the stairs were, and when they came to a rest that gave him an even better picture.
The blue lines weren’t really “seeing,” and he still had to walk carefully. However, the coins helped a great deal, and he did see a door latch as it drew near. Behind, he heard Gemmel grunt, and for once it seemed appreciative. “Nice trick with the coins,” the man murmured.
Kelsier smiled, approaching the door at the bottom. He felt out for it, grabbing the metal latch. He carefully eased it open.
There was light on the other side. Kelsier crouched – despite what Gemmel might think, he’d done his share of infiltrating and quiet nighttime thefts. He wasn’t some new sprout. He had simply learned that survival for a half-breed like him meant either learning to talk or learning to sneak; fighting head-on in most situations would have been foolish.
Of course, not one of the three – fighting, talking, or sneaking – had worked that night. The night he’d been taken, a night when nobody could have betrayed him but her. But why had they taken her too? She couldn’t have–
Stop, he told himself, padding into the room in a crouch. It was full of long tables crowded with various kinds of smelting apparatus. Not the bulky smithing kind, but the small burners and delicate instruments of a master metallurgist. Lamps burned on the walls, and a large red forge glowed in the corner. Kelsier felt fresh air blow through from somewhere; the other side of the room ended in several corridors.
The room appeared empty. Gemmel entered, and Kelsier reached back to Pull the coins to him again. Some were stained with the blood of the fallen guards. Still in his crouch, he passed a desk full of writing implements and small, cloth-bound books. He glanced at Gemmel, who was striding through the room without any attempt at stealth. Gemmel put his hands on his hips, looking around. “So where is he?”
“Who?” Kelsier said.
Gemmel started muttering under his breath, moving through the room, sweeping some of the implements off the tables and sending them crashing to the floor. Kelsier slipped around the perimeter, intent on peeking into the side corridors to see if anyone was coming. He checked the first one, and found that it opened into a long, narrow room. It was occupied.
Kelsier froze, then slowly stood up. There were half a dozen people in the room, both men and women, bound by their arms to the walls. There were no cells, but the poor souls looked as if they’d been beaten within an inch of their lives. They wore only rags, and those were bloodied.
Kelsier shook himself out of his daze, then padded to the first woman in the line. He pulled off her gag. The floor was damp; probably someone had been here recently to toss buckets of water on the prisoners to keep the laboratory from stinking. A gust of wind from the distant end of the hallway that the room eventually opened into brought a breath of fresh air.
The woman grew stiff as soon as he touched her, eyes snapping open and growing wide with terror. “Please, please no . . .” she whispered.
“I won’t hurt you,” Kelsier said. That numbness inside of him seemed to be . . . changing. “Please. Who are you? What is going on here?”
The woman just stared at him. She winced when Kelsier reached up to untie her bonds, and he hesitated.
He heard a muffled sound. Glancing to the side, he saw a second woman, older and matronly. Her skin had been all but flayed from beatings. Her eyes, however, were not nearly as frantic as those of the younger woman. Kelsier moved over and removed her gag.
“Please,” the woman said. “Free us. Or kill us.”
“What is this place?” Kelsier hissed, working on her arm bonds.
“He’s searching for half-breeds,” she said. “To test his new metals on.”
“New metals?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said, tears on her cheeks. “I’m just skaa, we all are. I don’t know why he picks us. He talks about things. Metals, unknown metals. I don’t think he’s completely sane. The things he does . . . he says they are to bring out our Allomantic side . . . but my lord, I’ve no noble blood. I can’t . . .”
“Hush,” Kelsier said, freeing her. Something was burning through that deep knot of numbness inside of him. Something that was like the anger he felt, but somehow different. It was more. It made him want to weep, yet it was warm.
Freed, the woman stared at her hands, wrists scraped raw from the bindings. Kelsier turned to the other poor captives. Most were awake now. There wasn’t hope in their eyes. They just stared ahead, dull.
Yes, he could feel it.
How can we stand a world like this? Kelsier thought, moving to help another captive. Where things like this happen? The most appalling tragedy was that he knew this sort of horror was common. Skaa were disposable. There was nobody to protect them. Nobody cared.
Not even him. He’d spent most of his life ignoring such acts of brutality. Oh, he’d pretended to fight back. But he’d really just been about enriching himself. All of those plans, all of those heists, all of his grand visions. All about him. Him alone.
He freed another of the captives, a young, dark-haired woman. She looked like Mare. After being freed, she just huddled down on the ground in a ball. Kelsier stood over her, feeling powerless.
Nobody fights, he thought. Nobody thinks they can fight.
But they’re wrong. We can fight. . . . I can fight.
Gemmel strode into the room. He looked over the skaa and barely seemed to notice them. He was still muttering to himself. He had taken just a few steps into the room when a voice yelled from the laboratory.