“What is going on here!”
Kelsier recognized that voice. Oh, he’d never heard it specifically before – but he recognized the arrogance in it, the self-assuredness. The contempt. He found himself rising, brushing past Gemmel, stepping back into the lab.
A man in a fine suit, white shirt buttoned to the neck, stood in the laboratory. His hair was short, after the most current trends, and his suit looked to have been shipped in from Luthadel – it certainly was tailored after the most fashionable styles.
He looked at Kelsier, imperious. And Kelsier found himself smiling. Really smiling, for the first time since the Pits. Since the betrayal.
The nobleman sniffed, then raised a hand and tossed a coin at Kelsier. After a brief moment of surprise, Kelsier Pushed on it right as Lord Shezler did. Both were thrown backward, and Shezler’s eyes widened in shock.
Kelsier slammed back against the wall. Shezler was Mistborn. No matter. A new kind of anger rose within Kelsier even as he grinned. It burned like a metal, that emotion did. An unknown, glorious metal.
He could fight back. He would fight back.
The nobleman yanked on his belt, dropping it – and his metals – from his waist. He whipped a dueling cane from his side and jumped forward, moving too quickly. Kelsier flared his pewter, then his steel, and Pushed on the apparatus on one of the tables, flinging it at Shezler.
The man snarled, raising an arm and Pushing some of it away. Again, the two Pushes – one from Kelsier, one from his foe – struck one another, and they were both slammed backward. Shezler steadied himself against a table, which shook. Glass broke and metal tools clattered to the ground.
“Have you any idea what all of that is worth?” Shezler growled, lowering his arm and advancing.
“Your soul, apparently,” Kelsier whispered.
Shezler prowled forward, coming close, then struck with the cane. Kelsier backed away. He felt his pocket jerk, and he Pushed, shoving the coins out of his coat as Shezler Pushed on them. A second later, and they would have cut through Kelsier’s stomach – as it was, they ripped out of his pocket, then shot backward toward the wall of the room.
His coat’s buttons started to shake, though they only had some metal leaf on them. He pulled off the coat, removing the last bit of metal he was carrying. Gemmel should have warned me about that! The leaf had barely registered to his senses, but still he felt a fool. The older man was right; Kelsier wasn’t thinking like an Allomancer. He focused too much on appearance and not enough on what might kill him.
Kelsier continued to back away, watching his opponent, determined not to make another mistake. He’d been in street brawls before, but not many. He’d tried to avoid them – brawling had been an old habit of Dockson’s. For once, he wished he’d been less refined in that particular area.
He edged along one of the tables, waiting for Gemmel to come in from the side. The man didn’t enter. He probably didn’t intend to.
This was all about finding Shezler, Kelsier realized. So that I could fight another Mistborn. There was something important in that . . . It suddenly made sense.
Kelsier growled, and was surprised to hear the sound coming from him. That glowing anger inside of him wanted vengeance, but also something more. Something greater. Not just revenge against those who had hurt him, but against the entirety of noble society.
In that moment, Shezler – arrogantly striding forward, more concerned for his equipment than the lives of his skaa – became a focus for it all.
Kelsier attacked.
He didn’t have a weapon. Gemmel had spoken of glass knives, but had never given one to Kelsier. So, he snatched up a shard of broken glass from the floor, heedless of the cuts on his fingers. Pewter let him ignore pain as he jumped toward Shezler, going for his throat.
He probably shouldn’t have won. Shezler was the more accomplished and practiced Allomancer – but it was obvious he was unaccustomed to fighting someone as strong as he was. He battered at Kelsier with the dueling cane. But with pewter, Kelsier could ignore that, and instead punched his shard of glass into the man’s neck – three times.
In seconds it was over. Kelsier stumbled back, aches beginning to register. Shezler might have broken some of his bones with his battering; the man had pewter too, after all. The nobleman lay in his own blood though, twitching. Pewter could save you from a lot of things, but not a slit throat.
The man choked on his own blood. “No,” he hissed. “I can’t . . . not me . . . I can’t die . . .”
“Anyone can die,” Kelsier whispered, dropping the bloodied shard of glass. “Anyone.”
And a thought, a seed of a plan, began to form in his mind.
“That was too quick,” Gemmel said.
Kelsier looked up, blood dripping from the tips of his fingers. Shezler croaked a final attempt at breath, then fell still.
“You need to learn Pushes and Pulls,” Gemmel said. “Dancing through the air, fighting as a real Mistborn does.”
“He was a real Mistborn.”
“He was a scholar,” Gemmel said, walking forward. He kicked at the corpse. “I picked a weak one first. Won’t be so easy next time.”
Kelsier walked back into the room with the skaa. He freed them, one by one. He couldn’t do much more for them, but he promised that he’d see them safely out of the keep’s grounds. Maybe he could get them in touch with the local underground; he’d been in the city long enough to have a few contacts.
Once he had them all freed, he turned to find them looking toward him in a huddled group. Some of the life seemed to have rekindled in their eyes, and more than a few were peeking into the room where Shezler’s corpse lay on the floor. Gemmel was picking through a notebook on one of the tables.
“Who are you?” asked the matronly woman he’d spoken to earlier.
Kelsier shook his head, still looking toward Gemmel. “I’m a man who has lived through things he shouldn’t have.”
“Those scars . . .”
Kelsier looked down at his arms, sliced with hundreds of tiny scars from the Pits. Removing his coat had exposed them.
“Come on,” Kelsier said to the people, resisting the urge to cover up his arms. “Let’s get you to safety. Gemmel, what in the Lord Ruler’s name are you doing?”
The older man grunted, leafing through a book. Kelsier trotted into the room and glanced at it.
Theories and suppositions regarding the existence of an Eleventh Metal, the scrawl on the page read. Personal notes. Antillius Shezler.
Gemmel shrugged and dropped the book to the table. Then he carefully and meticulously selected a fork from the fallen tools and other scattered laboratory remains. He smiled and chuckled to himself. “Now that is a fork.” He shoved it into his pocket.
Kelsier took the book. In moments, he was ushering the wounded skaa away from the keep, where soldiers were prowling the yards, trying to figure out what was happening.
Once they were out into the streets again, Kelsier turned back to the glowing building, which was lit with bright colors and beautiful windows. He listened in the curling mists as the guards’ shouting became frantic.
The numbness was gone. He’d found something to replace it. His focus had returned. The spark was back. He’d been thinking too small.
A plan began to bud, a plan he barely dared consider for its audacity.
Vengeance. And more.
He turned into the night, into the waiting mists, and went to find someone to make him a mistcloak.