Beautiful Destroyer
Chapter Four
"There's always another secret."
-Mistborn
Louise studied her familiar. Vin stood in the corner, uncomfortable under the scrutiny. In some ways, a familiar was said to be a reflection of the mage, and Louise wasn't sure she liked what that said about her.
She was the youngest daughter of Duke Valliere, one of the most powerful and respected families in Tristain. Shouldn't her familiar be equally impressive?
But no matter how hard she tried, Louise couldn't deny that she came up short in more ways than one. Her magic didn't work like it was supposed to. She always did something when she cast a spell, so no one accused her of being a commoner in disguise, but that something was never the something she wanted. It was always chaotic and destructive.
Chaotic and destructive. She studied her familiar again, searching for some hint of danger, but there was none to be found. Vin was a frightened rabbit of a girl about the same height and build as Louise herself, and she had revealed no more about the monster who had attacked her than she had when she first woke up.
No, there was nothing wonderfully unique about her familiar, at least nothing that she could see, but in one week all of her classmates would perform at the Familiar Exhibition, and she needed Vin to be able to do something.
"Familiar," she said finally. "Do you know how to juggle?"
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After a few days of practice, Vin learned two things about juggling. The first was that it wasn't that difficult, as long as she had enough pewter to maintain her reflexes. The second was that she didn't like it.
"It isn't enough," Louise said. "People juggle cutlery all the time." Did they? Vin had never seen it before, but she supposed it could have been common entertainment for the nobility. "I got it! You can do it blindfolded." She grabbed a black silk scarf and handed it to her.
The silk was thin, which seemed to defeat the purpose of wearing a scarf, but much of what nobles did seemed frivolous to her. Vin put it on, and it was sheer enough for her to see through it when she burned tin.
"Good," Louise said, watching her resume her routine. "Now we just need to get you some more knives. Bigger knives. Butcher knives!"
Vin caught the silverware and set it down. She groaned inside, but she had tolerated much worse. "I could ask the cooks."
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The week passed, and the Familiar Exhibition came upon them. The day was bright and sunny in such a way that would have been impossible in the Final Empire, and Louise's entire class gathered in a crowd out in the courtyard. Vin didn't mind crowds as long as they didn't notice her, and they didn't. She was Louise's familiar, and even when people looked at her, they only saw Louise.
Unfortunately, just as Vin wanted to hide behind Louise, Louise wanted to put Vin on the stage to make her perform. Still, Louise often said that the accomplishments of the familiar were the accomplishments of the mage, so even in making a spectacle of herself, Vin might remain unnoticed.
"I don't believe it!" Louise whispered. "She actually came! Princess Henrietta herself!"
Vin followed Louise's gaze and saw a young woman in a white dress and violet cape instead of a student's uniform, flanked by guards and flagbearers. Vin wasn't sure what a princess's presence meant. In the Final Empire, there was the Lord Ruler, a creature more god than man who had not been challenged for centuries. Below him were his Obligators and high nobility, but they were far below him. Where a princess stood in that spectrum, Vin couldn't say - but judging by Louise's reaction, she was fairly high up.
The exhibition started, and one by one mages ascended a stage, made some manner of fantastic beast do a trick, and returned to the crowd. Louise turned back to the princess after each performance to gauge her reaction, and by the time Kirche's salamander breathed fire, Vin regretted not Soothing her.
"Fire!" Louise whispered. "Of course! What was I thinking?" She turned to Vin. "How hard would it be for you to juggle torches? It would be the same as knives, right? One end you can touch, one end you can't."
But knives had distinct handles. With tin, the gentle heat of a torch's flame would sear her hands. Still, there was only one answer to give. "I can, but is there time?"
Louise hesitated. She studied a sheet of paper covered in words Vin couldn't understand. A schedule. "Kirche just went," she said, mostly to herself. "Then her turn, his turn, him, then me. If each exhibition takes … two? Two minutes, then …" She swallowed. "You should be fine. Go back to the main tower and grab, let's see, five, yes, five torches. Can you carry five at once? Not if they're lit. I'll come with you."
She was rambling. Louise was not prone to rambling. Sullen silences, yes, but she was more likely to turn to ice than to fire. That, more than anything, told Vin how important this performance was to her. The noble girl made one last backwards glance towards the princess before starting towards the tower.
Applause broke out behind them, and no one seemed disturbed by their departure. It was best, Vin decided, if their own performance went at least passably well. She preferred hiding in the background to standing on the stage, but as long as she was staying with Louise, she needed to be useful to her. Just like with every other skaa crew leader she had served under.
When they came through the gateway of the Academy's outer wall, though, Vin stopped dead in her tracks, and not even Louise was able to miss the colossus before them.
It stood half as tall as the main tower itself, made out of rock and earth, with bits of grass still clinging to its form. It had arms and legs like a man, but its proportions were thicker and wider, and in place of a head it had a round, neckless lump … with a person standing on top. The construct drew its arm back, made a fist like the side of a cliff, and punched the tower wall.
The air rang like a thunderclap, the earth shook, but the tower stood. The tower, the narrow, spindly thing that it was, stood without a scratch. The thing pulled its arm back and punched again.
What was going on? If it was attacking the Academy itself in broad daylight, then where was the outcry, the alarm? No matter how focused everyone was on the Familiar Exhibition, they couldn't miss a walking hillside smashing a building, could they?
But even if they could, it was their problem, not hers. She picked her battles, and she had no reason to pick a fight with a hundred tons of shambling dirt. They could just walk back to whence they came, and let someone else deal with it, someone who was strong, brave, or stupid enough to challenge the thing.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing? I go to school there, you brute!"
Someone like Louise. She furrowed her brow at the indignity of the situation and pulled out her wand, not to cast a spell, but to intimidate it. Fifty feet of animated rock, and Louise chose to threaten it.
The person on the thing's head turned, noticing them. It was hard to tell at a distance, but Vin thought she saw a feminine curve through the person's cloak and a strand of waving hair longer than most men wore. The thing, a golem if Vin remembered from Louise's lessons, turned too, raised its hand, and swatted at them as though striking a fly.
Vin flared pewter and lunged at Louise, knocking both of them out of the way. The earth shook with the impact of the giant palm, bouncing Vin to her feet, but Louise lay in a disoriented tangle of her own long, pink hair. Reen's voice berated her in her head, telling her that she should be running, that she should be gone instead of staying here, risking her life for someone who would gladly use her up until there was nothing left. She ignored him.
In fact, she found herself thinking more of Kelsier than her brother. She had last seen him in another world, but other than that, the circumstances weren't that different. Then and now, she had stumbled across a monster she had not expected, that she was nowhere near ready for, and both times one of them had to stay to give the other time to run.
But this time, Vin was the one who knew how to respond. Despite being the same age, Louise had as much experience dealing with threats and monsters compared to her as Vin did compared to Kelsier, which meant that there was only one thing she could do.
"Louise," she said, not caring if she was using the proper address for a noble girl of her rank. "Run."
Louise stood up, seeming more upset at getting her clothes dirty than at nearly being crushed. "What? Run? I can't run. That would shame my–"
"Run!" Vin flared zinc, Rioting her fear. Louise inhaled sharply and seemed to nearly choke on her own tongue. She trembled, and seemed far younger than her sixteen years, for to be a child was to be afraid, and with one last look at the lumbering colossus, she ran.
The golem reached a long, broad arm towards Louise, but Vin took one of the ten knives she had strapped to her belt and threw it at the woman on the golem's head. It was metal instead of glass, next to useless against an Allomancer, but more than sufficient for juggling. And with a bit of steel burning in her stomach, the knife flew like an arrow.
She missed, of course. She had no practice with throwing knives, and a such a distance she'd have had as much of a chance with her eyes closed. The knife sailed harmlessly over the woman's head, but it got her attention and gave Louise enough time to escape.
The golem brought its hand back and swatted at her, but she dived out of the way and then jumped back onto the earthen hand as it pulled away. She stabbed it with her second knife under the pretense of steadying herself, which did as much damage as she expected - but when she burned iron, she saw a blue line between her and the knife. Good. Metal inside a living thing was impossible to Push or Pull, but the golem didn't count as alive and as long as the knife stayed in place it would make a good anchor.
She wondered briefly if Kelsier had made it out of Kredik Shaw, but she'd likely never find out. She focused instead on being a fly, the sort that you could never catch no matter how fast you were, that would stand as still as a stone until right before your hand came down on it, and then move with reflexes that required Atium to match.
She half climbed, half ran up the golem's arm toward the head.
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Louise was halfway back to the Exhibition before she steeled herself. What was she doing? No, she knew what she was doing, exactly what she was doing. She was running away like no Valliere had ever done and had abandoned her familiar like no noble worthy of her title would sink to.
She had submitted to fear. And fear had no part in the Rule of Steel.
Louise de La Valliere, called Louise the Zero by some, turned around and ran back to retain what was left of her honor and her pride. What she found in the courtyard behind the tower amazed her.
She had expected to find her familiar lying broken on the ground as a testament to Louise's most recent failure, if she remained even in one piece. After all, Vin was a frail thing, timid and shy who had spent her first week lying in bed recovering from being nearly cut in half by some enigmatic monster, and the mage controlling the golem had to be triangle class at least. Or maybe, if she was very lucky, Vin would be evading the golem's attacks, running like a rabbit from a wolf.
She had not expected to find Vin dancing across the golem's thrashing limbs with the inhuman grace of a spider, as though she had made a hobby of doing cartwheels through collapsing buildings during an earthquake. Yet there she was, dressed in cheap peasant's clothes, armed with kitchen knives more suited for cutting bread and butter than combat, holding her own against a triangle class mage. Timid? No. Her posture, when she stood still long enough for it to be read, seemed to say, "I've faced worse."
Vin darted up the golem's arm and across its chest, aided only by a knife embedded into the construct to use as a handhold, but when she got close to the woman on its head, the mage drove her back with magic, drawing earth from the golem itself and repelling Vin with boulders and stone walls.
No, Vin wasn't winning. She was barely holding her own, which was more than impressive for a commoner, but she only had to be unlucky once. Louise wasn't going to give her time for her luck to run out, so she began chanting a spell. She had never cast this spell successfully before, but it was either that or nothing, and if she had been content to do nothing she would have stayed away.
"Fireball!" she said, finishing the spell. For a moment, nothing happened, not the slightest spark or flame. Then the golem exploded. She had been aiming at the head, hoping to knock the mage off from her perch, but the spell hit the golem in the shoulder, making its entire left arm fall off. That would have been precisely perfect and far better than expected, had that arm not been the one Vin was standing on. She fell through the air like so much dirt and stone, finally caught off balance.
"Levitate!" Louise shouted, hoping to catch her familiar before she hit the ground, but that spell, cast more frantically than the first one, missed by an even wider margin and hit the tower instead, blasting a hole into the white, reinforced stone. A hole that the golem's very own fists had been unable to make.
Vin, unable to get her feet beneath her in time, landed on all fours like a cat. In that moment, the golem could have stepped on her to finish her off, but the mage seemed more interested in the hole in the tower and jumped off the golem's head to fly into it.
Louise hurried over to her familiar's side, hoping to pull her out of danger through more mundane means, as her magic was unreliable at best and catastrophic nearly always. After a forty foot drop, Vin should still be alive, but walking might challenge her depending on how she landed. She found her lying in the earthen remnants of the golem's arm, but before she reached her, the golem moved, and Louise heard laughter overhead. Then the golem walked away, stepping over the outer wall, and the mage went with it as though the youngest daughter of Duke La Valliere was no one to worry about.
She would have been insulted had it not been true. Besides, Louise had concerns of her own.
Vin, though, despite the golem, the mage, and the fall, stood up with no sign of injury. No broken bones, no bruises, and she moved with an unnatural speed, as though she existed in a more attenuated time.
"Are you okay?" she asked, but Louise felt foolish as soon as the words came out of her mouth. There was no evidence that her familiar was anything less than well, though neither was there an explanation for how she could be anything more than a smear on the golem's palm after what had happened.
Vin watched the golem disappear before turning to Louise, her dark brown eyes unreadable. "You came back." She seemed smaller all of a sudden, as though she had begun turning from the acrobatic warrior she had been to the quiet, timid servant Louise knew her as.
"Um, what? Of course I came back. A noble who runs away is …" Well, she had run away, even though she returned afterwards. "I mean, a master who abandons her own familiar …" She had done that too. She set her jaw and looked away. "You know what? Let's just forget this ever happened, okay?"
But still she felt Vin's eyes on her, the same unreadable expression on her face and an unspoken question in her voice, and she softly whispered, as though to herself, "You came back."
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As guards swarmed around the debris and patrolled the surrounding area, Louise made an official report to the Headmaster, an old man with an agenda Vin could only guess at. A few hours later, Louise answered his summons to tell him anything she might have missed the first time, and the next morning she talked to him again. The third meeting began with a crude drawing and a lead, and it ended with Louise volunteering to retrieve a stolen treasure.
And that was how Vin found herself riding in a cart through the forest on a quest to reclaim something called the Sword of Destruction stolen by the golem's mage who had named herself Fouquet in a note she left behind.
She wasn't alone with Louise, of course. Oh no, that would have been too simple. As soon as Louise volunteered to go on a dangerous and–if successful–glorious mission, Kirche von Zerbst offered to go as well. Vin knew little about her, only that she and Louise were enemies and that Kirche was a relentless flirt.
Even though the wagon was big enough for several times their number, Kirche sat so close to Vin their hips were touching. "So, you're the familiar Louise summoned." There was laughter in her voice as she inspected her. "Does she make you sleep in the bed with her, or does she have you sleep on the floor like a good little dog?"
Kirche was a noble, but not directly above Louise so she wasn't directly above Vin either, meaning that Vin was expected to treat her with respect, but not obedience. She hoped. "My apologies, Lady Zerbst, but it is not my place to say."
She let out a laugh, a noise that carried more judgement than reaction. "Lady Zerbst? How quaint! Where did you learn such manners? Or is that 'not your place to say,' either? Whatever. If you ever get tired of dealing with short, pink, and perpetually nettled over there, take a break and come over to my room." She leaned in close and whispered in Vin's ear, "I know how to take care of people."
Vin's body when tense. Her whole life, she had tried to be seen as a thief and crewmember first and a girl second. She wore a shirt and trousers and kept her hair short, and only recently had she started wearing her mother's earring under Kelsier's suggestion even though it made her look more feminine. It was a necessity when the people sleeping next to you would gladly break your bones for a few coppers if they didn't kill you outright. When you didn't have power, being unnoticed was the next best thing. Vin suddenly realized that her choice in appearance might have backfired.
"You know I'm a girl, don't you?"
Kirche laughed again, this time as a reaction. "Yeah, I may have had my suspicions. But seriously, what's with that getup? Your cloak is so tattered it looks like its last owner had tried to make love to a bear, and the rest of you looks like Louise dressed you up as a pretty young man because she knew she'd never get a boyfriend."
Vin pulled her Mistcloak around her reflexively. In Luthadel, the Mistcloak had been a symbol that she was not someone to be questioned or challenged, if she were even seen. Here, it meant nothing, and it was useless without any mists to blend into, but she wore it all the same because … she wasn't sure why. It felt right, and that was reason enough.
"That's not true!" Louise said, finally intervening. "Those are just the clothes she was wearing when I summoned her."
"Uh-huh," Kirche said. "And if you had summoned her while she was taking a bath, would you have kept her naked the whole time? If I had summoned Vin here, the first thing I would have done would be to throw out her old clothes and dress her up in something so it at least wouldn't look like I found her on a random street corner."
"Yeah right, Kirche. That's why your salamander is still wearing nothing but the scales you summoned it in."
"Hey! First of all, Zero, that … that's a pretty good idea, actually." Kirche leaned back thoughtfully. "Huh. I'll have to look into that when we get back."
"What? No! That was my idea! You can't steal it."
Kirche smiled smugly. "I'm not stealing it, you gave it to me. Flame would look real good in a tux. Now I just need to find a tailor who specializes in pets."
A shadow passed over them as a dragon blocked out the sun. They didn't have dragons in the Final Empire, and even here they were rare, majestic beasts, large enough to swallow a man or carry him in flight. Tabitha had summoned one, a blue one with a white underbelly she had named "Sylphid," and had brought it with her for their journey.
Vin knew even less of Tabitha than she did of Kirche. The girl had blue hair and glasses, and was the shortest member of the group. She was friends with Kirche, and had volunteered to help right after Kirche did. Considering the relationships between the three of them, Vin would have suspected Kirche and Tabitha of planning to kill Louise and claim that she had been a tragic casualty of the mission, had not a far more obvious threat been holding the reins of the wagon and leading them further and further from everywhere Vin knew.
Miss Longueville sat in the front, humming to herself, her face the picture of innocence. A little over a week ago, Vin had overheard her wheedling information out of Professor Colbert about both the treasury and the Sword of Destruction. Vin had been involved with enough scams to tell idle curiosity from a conwoman, and Miss Longueville's questions had been far too intent. Colbert had told her that the treasury's weakness was physical force, and a week later Fouquet tried to smash her way through for the same sword.
That alone could have been a coincidence. If nothing else had happened, Vin could have believed that Longueville had been planning her own heist and Fouquet had beat her to it, but right afterwards, Longueville had shown up with Fouquet's description and home address from some unnamed informant. Fouquet, apparently, had traveled from the Academy directly to her hideout without changing out of her signature cloak, and despite her hideout being a shack in the middle of the forest, someone had stumbled across it just as Fouquet arrived.
No one at the Academy found that suspicious.
Lord Ruler, between Kirche and Louise bickering about lizard suits and Tabitha reading her book, Vin felt like the only one who had considered how easily the surrounding trees could conceal an ambush. As things were, Vin's greatest concern was the green haired woman who was connected to Fouquet, if she wasn't Fouquet herself.
Should she warn one of the others? No. Louise was the only one she knew at all, and if Louise didn't believe her, then all that would do would be to warn Longueville. Taking a preemptive strike was out too; given Vin's ratio of suspicious to facts, an unbiased judge would consider it murder.
So throughout the cart ride through the woods, Vin studied the back of Longueville's head and pondered what her game was.
They arrived at the abandoned shack surrounded by a clearing. Vin didn't see any sign of ambush, but anything could be hiding in the trees or in the building, so she burned bronze and iron. No Allomantic pulses warned her of a spell being cast, and the only metal nearby was in the shack, and it wasn't moving. Good. In Luthadel, the nobility wore metal as a sign of bravado, and here they wore it because they didn't know any better. Buttons, belt buckles, they all wore at least a bit of it, so even if an enemy were hiding behind a wall, Vin would see them.
"This is the place," Longueville said, stepping out of the wagon. "Good luck."
Louise looked at her in surprise. "What, you're not coming with us?"
Longueville smiled and shrugged. "I'm just the guide, it's you lot who are the glory seekers. I'll stay here as the, um, lookout. I'll yell, 'Look out!' if I see anything."
"So that's why it's called that," Louise mused. "I'll stay out here too. This way, we can watch all the exits in case Fouquet tries to sneak out the back door."
Kirche raised an eyebrow at that. "So you're going to stay out here where it's safe and let me and Tabitha face mortal peril on our own?"
"What? I–"
Kirche waved a hand dismissively. "Hey, don't worry about it. It's not like you would have been any help in a fight anyway."
Vin flared brass and Soothed both of them. Lord Ruler, Louise's noble pride was going to get her killed, if Kirche didn't do it first. Vin still wasn't sure about her.
Louise bit her lip and flipped her hair back, as though Kirche wasn't worth responding to, and Kirche and Tabitha approached the house. They made a great show of moving as quietly as possible, which was a bit pointless after all the noise they made arguing, and Tabitha cast a spell before entering, but Vin focused more on Longueville.
She didn't wear much metal, and Vin would have lost track of her entirely if it weren't for the coin pouch she carried. If Vin had been back in Luthadel, she would have expected her to part ways with her coins to send Vin on a false trail, but here in a world without Allomancy … well, she still suspected it, but not as much.
"Mistress Louise," Vin said softly, eyeing the blue line that marked Longueville through the old building. She lost it for a moment, confusing it with the lines from nails and the two girls, but she caught it again. "If you were Fouquet and wanted to lay a trap for us, what would you do?"
Louise stared at her. "What kind of question is that? I'm a noble. You can't expect me to understand the mind of some wretched thief."
Vin bowed her head. "I'm sorry. I mean no offense." It was a good thing she hadn't voiced her suspicions about Longueville. Kelsier had sought out her input on occasion, but most of the other crew leaders she had served under wanted nothing but silent obedience.
"I mean, nothing about this makes sense," Louise continued as though she hadn't heard her. "With all the artefacts in the treasury, why take just one? She could have carried more. And why take the Sword of Destruction at all?"
"It sounds powerful," Vin prodded.
"Oh, yes, very powerful. Also completely useless. If you use it, you die. If you just look at it, you might go insane. There's no market for cursed weapons that destroy their owner, and if you can't sell it and you can't use it, why steal it? The only reason Osmond hasn't destroyed it yet is because, well, I don't think he can."
Vin frowned. It didn't make sense for a sword to be unusable, but if Vin could design a weapon, she'd want to make sure it couldn't be used against her. It was like a lock; you wanted it to open for you, but no one else. But if Fouquet had the key to this sword, or at least had found a way to pick its lock …
She felt a pulse, signaling her that someone had used magic. Longueville? Or was it Kirche, or Tabitha? They were all in the same direction, so she couldn't tell.
"Mistress Louise," Vin said as a thought struck her. "How much are the three of you worth in terms of ransom?"
Louise smirked. "What, do you think that Fouquet broke into the treasury to steal some random showpiece and let us track her down just to lead us into the middle of nowhere in order to take us hostage for an easy few hundred thousand?" She tried to laugh, but ended up sounding frantic. "That's crazy. You're being paranoid, Vin. Stop being paranoid."
Vin felt another pulse, marked by a rumble as trees fell over. "Look out!" she said, pointing.
"For what?" Louise looked up and saw what Vin saw, the top half of an earth golem emerging from the forest as a giant wading through a green sea. It had the same proportions as Fouquet's golem the day before, broad and thick, but it was shorter now, only a bit more than half the size as the first. Louise screamed. "Kirche! Tabitha! Get out of there!"
It hadn't arrived from Longueville's direction, but it had appeared at the same time as a pulse from her direction. That was more evidence, but not quite proof. Not that it mattered. Even if Vin had proof, it would still be her word against Longueville's, and that wasn't a gamble she was willing to take. The golem ignored her and stepped forward with its clumsy, loping gait. It was large enough to crush the small wooden building and everyone in it, but it didn't. It grabbed the roof with both hands and ripped it from the walls.
Why? The house was still ruined, and the stolen sword would survive a collapsed roof better than the two intruders. Why begin a conflict in the one way that wouldn't result in an instant victory?
This was a trap. Vin knew it was a trap from the start, and like an idiot she had walked right into it, hoping that she'd be able to unravel Fouquet's plan before the snap. Now the trap had sprung, and Vin was no wiser than she had been at the start.
"We need to run," she said. She had fought the golem before, and its only weak spot was Fouquet herself … who had vanished. She must have retreated into the woods until the blue line from her coin pouch had dwindled into nothing.
"No," Louise said. "No."
The wind howled as Vin felt another pulse marking a spell being cast, and torrent of air blasted against the golem, doing nothing more than carrying off a bit of dirt. A blast of fire followed, burning off some of moss on the golem's back, but that was all. Vin had hoped that Kirche and Tabitha could distract it long enough for them to escape, but that didn't seem likely.
"You don't have a choice!" Louise had never been cruel or abusive to her, but Vin suspected that she'd pay for speaking to her so sharply later. It would be worth it if she got the girl out alive. She needed Louise–she needed the protection and opportunities her position under Louise offered her.
"Yes I do! I can do this!" She raised her wand and cast a spell at the golem, blasting off a few pebbles–and gaining its attention. It raised a fist, and if Vin hadn't pushed her out of the way, both of them would have been crushed.
That didn't make sense either. It tried to smash Louise immediately, but it only glared at the two people in the house? What am I missing?
Vin rolled to her feet and faced the golem, which had gone still. Waiting for something? What? Or maybe controlling it from a distance added extra complications? She had spent weeks in this world, and there was still so much she didn't know.
"This isn't a fight we can win," Vin insisted. Should she use Allomancy? It had worked before.
"I've already run away once!" Louise said, standing up. "I won't again! I can't!"
Noble pride. Worth dying for, it seemed. Noble stupidity, Reen seemed to say. Either way, emotional Allomancy was out of the question, not if it compromised the core of what Louise thought she was. And that left Louise with only one choice.
She burned pewter, slung Louise over her shoulder, and ran.
"Hey!" Louise thrashed and kicked her feet, but while they were about the same size, as long she had pewter she could overpower a grown man. Or a horse. "Stop that! Put me down! Put me down right now! I order you!"
Louise would be furious when they got back. Lord Ruler, she was furious now, but if it meant getting her out alive, she'd pay whatever price it took, even Louise's ire. Tabitha's blue dragon landed on the far end of the clearing, and Kirche and Tabitha had already started climbing on its back. If Vin could reach them in time … but she couldn't. They were too far away, and with the golem following her, they'd take off without her and …
They stayed. Kirche even waved her arms as though cheering Vin on. Vin ran, and with a pewter-enhanced jump, leaped onto the dragon's back. The dragon spread its massive wings, flapped, and shot into the air, leaving the golem on the distant ground.
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Louise sat on Sylphid, feeling numb despite the undulating motions of the dragon's flight pattern. She hadn't run away; that was good. She had tried to stay and fight, and would have if it weren't for her familiar. Unfortunately, given protecting her was one of the familiar's duties, she couldn't really be angry with her, though they would need to have a discussion about the proper relationship between a master and a servant later.
They had obtained the Sword of Destruction, or at least the box it had always been held in. "Are you sure it's in there?" she asked.
Tabitha nodded and Kirche answered. "Tabitha cast Detect Magic on the box, so there's definitely something in there, and I'm willing to take a leap of faith on the idea that Fouquet isn't a complete idiot.
Louise nodded to herself. If someone like Fouquet had tried to use the sword, she'd be dead right now instead of attacking them, and even if she had switched the sword out with another magical item, no one would think less of them for not checking more than they already had.
Or at least, more than Kirche and Tabitha already had. They were the ones who ventured into the shack and found the sword. Even their less than gallant escape was possible due to Tabitha's dragon. During the entire mission, Louise had contributed … not a lot. And with the golem still looking up at them from the ground and Fouquet still at large, the whole thing felt … unsatisfactory.
"Wait!" she said suddenly. "We can't leave yet! Miss Longueville's still back there!"
Kirche snapped her head back and her eyes widened. "Oh Brimir, that's not good. Can we land?"
Tabitha shook her head.
"Typical. Louise, where was the last place you saw her?"
"It was right after you two went in. She was right on the other side of the little hut, but when the golem appeared she was gone!"
"Do you think Fouquet got to her?"
"I don't know! I was distracted by the golem! We have to go back!"
"We should leave," Vin said.
Louise blinked in surprise. Some of the things her familiar said made her seem like a coward, but Vin didn't sound scared. If anything, she sounded angry.
"No," Louise said firmly. "She's with us. We're not abandoning her. Either we all go back together, or none of us do." The line sounded good. She wished she had the magical prowess to back up her bravado.
"Fouquet may have already found her," Kirche said, looking down over Sylphid's side. "And even if she's okay, Longueville isn't going to draw attention to herself with that golem looming about."
"So we need to get rid of it," Louise said.
"Yeah, because that will be so easy."
Kirche had a point. Kirche's fire had done no more than Tabitha's wind, and Louise's explosions weren't that effective either. But as Louise eyed the box at Kirche's side, she thought of something she hadn't tried.
"I have an idea." A stupid, reckless idea, but the only one she could come up with. And if it worked, no one would call her Zero ever again. Of course, if the idea failed, she'd die, but that was the inherent risk of being noble. "Tabitha, could you cast Feather Fall on me, please? Okay, thanks."
Before anyone could stop her, before anyone even understood what she intended to do, she grabbed the box containing the cursed sword, and jumped off the dragon's back.
Wind whipped past her making her hair trail behind her, and her stomach lurched, but Tabitha, being a skilled wind mage and not given to emotions like surprise, slowed her so she landed gently on the ground.
The golem noticed her and began lumbering towards her slowly. Louise set down the box, a heavy, metal case that seemed like it was made out of lead, and opened it up.
Inside, she saw a long black sword. It lay in an ornate scabbard lined with silver, as though the box wasn't protection enough from its curse. And even if she hadn't known what was in front of her, if she had never heard the story of the Sword of Destruction, she would still have known that the weapon was evil.
Suddenly, Louise didn't like swords. Crude, brutal things, they were. A wand or a staff could be used for creation, destruction, and everything in between. Hammers could be used for smithing, and axes cut wood more often than people. Even spears and bows could be used for hunting, but a sword was only ever used by people to kill people.
And this was a sword unlike any other.
She had planned to use it, to see if it could live up to its name and destroy Fouquet's golem, but now that she had seen the thing, she knew she couldn't touch it as she had planned. Instead, she just felt sick.
She felt a shadow pass over her, and part of her was aware that the golem was right on top of her, but instead of being afraid, she just wanted to throw up.
"You," a familiar voice said behind her, "are rapidly becoming the second most insane person I've ever worked with."
Vin.
Her familiar picked her up with an amount of strength that belied her size, stepped over the lead box, and jumped at least fifty feet into the air. They landed on the dragon's back, and now that she was away from that horrible, hellish weapon, she could think again.
"You," she whispered, "you can do magic."
WWW
Kelsier always said that there was always another secret, and now hers was out. Pewter could be mistaken for exceptional physical abilities, but steel was flashy. She knew all along that she might have to reveal her Allomancy eventually, and it wasn't like this world had an order of invincible priests dedicated to hunting down people like her, but she still felt … less without her secret. More vulnerable.
"Dang, girl," Kirche said. "You've been holding out on us."
Vin didn't answer. She didn't owe anyone an explanation, and Kirche hadn't asked a question.
"As impressive as that was," Kirche continued, "you left the sword behind, which was kind of the point of coming here. Hey, Tabitha, can you levitate that up here?"
Tabitha glanced down once and shook her head. "Too far."
Not for me. Their magic, like Allomancy, had limitations, and from attending Louise's classes the spell Levitation was limited by weight and distance, but for Allomancy, a larger source of metal only made it easier to Pull on.
She grabbed onto the base of the dragon's wing and flared iron, and the entire beast lurched downwards as she Pulled the metal box upwards. The box shot up into the air behind them and arced towards them as she Pulled it forward and downward before she burned pewter to catch it.
It was empty.
Fantastic.
Vin set the box down on the dragon's back, which had more than enough room, and burned iron again to Pull on the sword. She saw nothing. She looked down over the side, and though she could see where sword lay, it had only the thinnest blue line coming off of it.
That didn't make sense. A sword that size should have had more than enough metal to Pull on, even at this distance, but from an Allomantic perspective it was less than a coin. Was it made of wood? A sword too dangerous to be used that was made of wood?
Well, there was only one thing to do. If she couldn't Pull on the sword with Allomancy, she'd just have to get it herself. She grabbed the box and dropped it off the dragon, jumping off after it, and Pushed on it to slow her fall. It crashed against the ground, its lead frame warping on impact, while she landed on top of it as lightly as a feather, and then dashed for the sword.
She reached it, a black, sinuous blade in a silver lined scabbard, and grabbed it by the hilt. She had planned to take it and run, as any thief with enough sense would know to, but as soon as the sword was in her hand, the familiar runes engraved into her skin flared like the sun, all thoughts of escape fled out of her head, and she heard a voice, cheerful and childish, greet her in her mind.
"Hello," the voice said. "Would you like to destroy some evil today?"
She had never held a sword before, but it felt right in her hand, just like soaring through the mists after she'd discovered her Allomancy had felt right.
The golem lumbered toward her, slow, huge, and clumsy, as though she could be intimidated by size alone. It was a crude and ugly thing, something that needed to be … destroyed.
Did she want to destroy some evil today? There was only one answer to that question, and only one way to express it.
She unlatched the scabbard and pulled the sword free.
Black smoke burst from the blade, like an erupting ashmount. No, it wasn't like ash. It was black mist.
They say you drive people mad if they just look at you, she thought.
"So? Madness is just in your head."
So it is. She couldn't bring herself to feel as suspicious as she usually did. Besides, what did it matter if she if she went mad and started hearing voices? Her own mother heard voices, and Kelsier was as insane as could be. Are you going to kill me when this is over?"
She heard laughter in her mind. "Why would I do that? I only destroy evil."
And that's why they call you the Sword of Destruction? It was a remarkably surreal experience, talking to a sword, somehow made even odder with the sword talking back to her.
"Is that what people call me? That's a bit unimaginative. My real name is Nightblood, not that anyone bothers to ask."
Nightblood? My name is Vin.
"Pleased to meet you."
The golem raised hand to strike, but Vin neatly sidestepped the blow and cut through its arm like … even water would have provided more resistance. It was like the rock and dirt had disintegrated before she even touched it. And disintegrated was the right word–it had evaporated the earth into black mists, the golem's hand gone entirely and its stump a dead gray instead of brown.
But that didn't surprise her. Somehow she knew exactly what the sword was capable of, just as she knew to burn all eight metals in her stomach as long as Nightblood was unsheathed. Why, she didn't know, but she didn't need to know why, only what.
She struck again before the golem could respond, destroying its leg. It fell, and she struck again and again until there was nothing left but a small, gray lump, unable to get up.
She sheathed Nightblood and extinguished her metals. She continued holding it, and the runes on her left hand continued to glow.
The dragon landed, and while Tabitha remained seated and Kirche eyed her cautiously, Louise jumped off and ran towards her.
"Vin! You did it! What were you thinking? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." She was, wasn't she?
Louise hesitated. "You're not, um, crazy or anything, are you? I mean, you should be dead right now, but you're not, and you're not crazy, right?"
For some reason, Vin couldn't help but smile. "You ask me that now? You ask me that?"
Louise frowned and puffed out her chest. "What's that supposed to mean? I've always been sane, and I have a perfectly legitimate reason to inquire after the mental health of my own familiar."
Before she could answer, Longueville emerged from the forest, and Vin stopped smiling.
"Destroy evil?" Nightblood said hopefully.
"My, that was impressive," Longueville said. She sounded far too smug, and she adopted a tone of false embarrassment. "Sorry about running off like that. The golem appeared, I panicked, and, well, you get the idea. But you seemed to have managed everything by yourselves, so it all worked out."
"Yeah," Kirche agreed. "Apparently Louise's familiar is a mage or something?" It came out as more a question than a statement–while Vin displayed abilities impossible for normal people, she hadn't used a wand like a mage.
"She could use the Sword of Destruction without being destroyed," Louise said as though Longueville hadn't seen the whole thing. "I don't even know how that would be possible."
Nightblood, she thought, not taking her eyes off of Longueville. Is Longueville Fouquet?
The sword gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. "No idea. I don't know who Longueville is, and I don't know who Fouquet is either."
Vin gritted her teeth. Is this woman the one who stole you?"
"Oh. Right, yes. I didn't know I was being stolen, but that's the one who took me here. I recognize her BioChroma."
She didn't know what BioChroma was, but it was a good enough answer for her.
Longueville studied the sword in her hand appraisingly. "Maybe the stories about the sword have been exaggerated. I can't imagine anyone testing something to make sure it would cause madness and death, and maybe people just said that to prevent others from trying to use it."
Kirche nodded in agreement. "And maybe Vin here was just the first one reckless enough to call their bluff."
Louise frowned at that. "Still, she took down Fouquet's golem like it was nothing."
"Indeed," Longueville said. She looked at the sword with hunger in her eyes. "May I see it? If it's not as dangerous as people say, it shouldn't cause any trouble."
"Sure," Louise said. Vin didn't move, didn't take her eyes off of Longueville, didn't even blink. "Um, Vin? You can give her the Sword of Destruction now."
"His name," Vin said, "is Nightblood." Longueville's smile fell from her face and her body grew tense. "And he remembers you, Fouquet."
Longueville stepped back, her eyes wide, and Kirche and Tabitha reached for their wands. "It might be too early to call the stories exaggerations."
"Um, Vin?" Louise said. "What are you talking about? This is Miss Longueville, remember? She came here with us. And what do you mean, he remembers her?"
"Louise?" Kirche said. "You might want to step out of sword-reach from her."
Louise twitched and shot her a glare. "You stay out of this, Kirche. And you can point your wand somewhere else while you're at it! She's my familiar, so I'll handle it."
They weren't evil. They just didn't know what she knew. Vin could distract them, Push on the metal claps they wore to pin their capes on and run Fouquet through. She wouldn't even need to unsheath him first. And if everyone thought that Nightblood drove people insane, then she could kill Fouquet and blame him afterwards.
"Vin?" Louise stepped closer to her, her lower lip trembling. "Please, Vin, put the sword down. Everything will be alright, just … just put it down."
She reached within her, and found that her metal reserves had been depleted. Steel and iron were gone, and she had nothing left but a bit of tin. She felt strong and light like she was burning pewter, but there was no pewter in her stomach. Was it enough? Could she avoid Kirche's and Tabitha's spells long enough to take out Fouquet?
"Destroy evil?" Nightblood asked hopefully.
No. Not now. She shot Fouquet one last glare, turned around, and put the sword back in his box.
WWW
The ride home was silent, and seemed longer than the ride there. Tabitha was as unreadable as ever, and Kirche seemed to half expect Vin to explode in a fit of homicidal glee. Louise sat next to her and seemed to think that Vin needed emotional support, but Vin spent most of the time watching Longueville.
She made sure that she sat between her and Nightblood, but she felt no desire to take him out of his box to talk to him again. Now that he was no longer in her hand, her mind felt clearer and she realized how little of what just happened had made sense.
Somehow, the sword had Soothed away her suspicions, even though she was burning copper. Normally, she would never have used a weapon that everyone had told her would kill her just because she assumed that she could handle it, but when she held Nightblood, she knew things that she had never learned and believed things that never would have passed through her natural skepticism.
And she could talk to him–it, whatever the sword was–and Nightblood could speak directly into her thoughts. Or so she thought. Louise had said that the sword caused madness, and sane people didn't talk to weapons. Could she trust anything she thought the sword had said? And it wasn't just words. The sword made her want things that she had never wanted before, care about … about destroying evil, with no explanation of its moral criteria.
But she didn't think the sword had been lying about Longueville. It might not have been wise to confront her as she had, but she was sure that the woman was Fouquet. She trusted her gut on that.
When they returned to the academy, they went up to the Headmaster's office with Tabitha carrying the box along via a levitation spell. Vin didn't feel bad about that. With all her pewter used up, the lead case would have been too heavy for her anyway.
But even without pewter, I felt strong with the sword in my hand. She shook her head. No matter how powerful the sword was, it wasn't worth it if it could control her more than she could control it.
They entered the office, and Headmaster Osmond greeted them with a smile. "Ah! You did it! Wonderful! You have no idea how much paperwork you've saved me."
Professor Colbert was there too, and his eyes spent an extra moment on Longueville when he smiled. "You got it back, yes?" He looked at the box floating in the air. It was closed, but it was damaged too much to be latched. "The sword is in there, isn't it?"
"Oh, it's in there," Louise said. "It is definitely there."
Colbert's eyes widened. "You didn't look at it, did you?"
"Oh, we did a lot more than look at it," Kirche said. Louise shot her a look which she ignored. "Louise's familiar went and used the freaky thing."
The bald scholar's eyes widened further. "You didn't! Founder, you're lucky you didn't try to unsheathe it." Vin hung her head, wishing that she had some brass left, and the others shuffled uncomfortably. Colbert gasped. "What happened?"
Louise sighed. "My familiar used the sword and destroyed Fouquet's golem. That's all. She didn't go insane and try to kill everyone, or anything like that."
"Well," Kirche said, "she didn't try very hard." Vin was starting to understand why Louise hated that girl.
Longueville spoke up. "She seemed convinced that I was Fouquet." She smiled, as though the idea was amusing. "Fortunately, Miss Louise was able to talk her out of it. Apparently the sword's power was overcome by their familiar bond."
Colbert sighed in relief, but Osmond cocked an eyebrow in interest. He knew something. "Vin, was it?" the old man asked, leaning forward in his desk. "When you held the Sword of Destruction, did your familiar runes behave oddly?"
Vin's eyes widened in surprise, but she tried to hide it. "I … I don't remember." What do you know?
"They did!" Louise said. "They lit up and were glowing until she put the sword down." She turned to her kindly. "You probably just don't remember that because you were temporarily insane."
Vin smiled outwardly but winced inwardly. Louise meant well, but she was far too trusting.
Osmond and Colbert exchanged a glance. So they're both in on this, whatever this is. "Interesting. In the interest of scholarship, is there anything you would like to tell us about the experience? You are, after all, the only known person to survive using the weapon."
That I would like to? "No, sir."
"Didn't you name it Nightblood or something?" Kirche asked.
Vin grimaced. Tabitha was rapidly becoming her favorite person in the room, Tabitha, who had taken out a book and had started reading it. "Oh, right. That didn't seem important."
"Not important?" Colbert said. "You can never overestimate the value of knowing the names of things, especially artifacts such as this. I shall be certain to replace the label when I return this to the treasury."
"Well," Osmond said, leaning back in his chair, "that's settled, it seems. A pity Fouquet is still free, but all of you have performed spectacularly in regaining the sword. Congratulations, all of you. I hope you have a wonderful time at tonight's ball."
Kirche slapped her forehead. "Of course! The Ball of Frigg is tonight! I completely forgot about it!"
"Yes, yes," Osmond said, smiling. "I'm sure you'll all want to go and get ready and dress up and enjoy yourselves and go, so I won't keep you further."
They left, and Longueville flashed Colbert a smile on her way out. Part of her wanted to follow the woman, but she wouldn't try anything so soon, and she'd be wary of Vin.
Instead, she felt her pockets and gasped after Longueville was out of sight. "I think I may have dropped something. Excuse me, I'll be right back."
She doubled back and went up the steps to the Headmaster's office. She waited outside the door and burned what was left of her tin.
"Hardly a conventional weapon," she heard Colbert say, "but a weapon nonetheless, Headmaster. You can hardly argue with the results."
"Yes," Osmond agreed. "I wish I could have seen it in person, but it appears that we may have found Gandalfr. Anyone else would have ended up crazed, dead, or both."
"I wonder where she got that name–'Nightblood.' Do you think she was able to speak to it?"
"You've done more research on the subject than I have."
"Windalfr could talk to animals, so it makes sense. A bit. Of course, that was no ordinary sword, so we have an enchantment like no other combined with an enchantment that we haven't seen in thousands of years. Should we inform …"
His voice trailed off as Vin used up the last of her tin, and she heard them say nothing else.
WWW
Louise sat down on her bed. She would have looked more authoritative standing up, but Founder she was tired. She hadn't slept well the night before, after her first run in with Fouquet and her own episode of cowardice, and her second encounter with Fouquet's golem and her familiar's brush with madness had been exhausting in every sense of the word.
Part of her wanted to go right to bed, but she needed to resolve something. "So you're a mage," she said to her familiar. Vin seemed smaller than she was, standing with her back to the wall. She always seemed able to do that, but Louise was starting to feel like that was a facade. "Is there a reason you kept that a secret?"
Vin looked at her, as though measuring her and deciding whether to lie to her. She closed her eyes and mouthed a few words silently.
"What was that?" Even if they were both mages, even if it seemed like Vin was a more skilled mage than Louise herself was, she was still her familiar and Louise was still her master.
"Yes," she said. "There is a reason." Louise motioned her to continue, feeling like she had to pull each word from her mouth like a tooth. "I'm not from here, and where I'm from we have different rules."
"And where is that?"
"Another world."
Louise narrowed her eyes. "I'm serious."
"So am I." She didn't sound timid. She didn't sound like she had ever been timid. "In my world, the sun is red, green plants are things of myth, ash falls from the sky, and the nights are full of mists so thick you can barely see your own feet. And we have different rules."
Did she believe her? Vin didn't seem to be lying, but what she said didn't seem possible either. "What rules are those?"
Vin hesitated. "Like here, only the nobles are mages, and there are rules to prevent noble blood and skaa–commoner blood from mixing."
Louise raised an eyebrow at that. Her own father would never sleep with a peasant, but many of the less honorable nobles had mistresses. While not forbidden, any illegitimate child was a lifelong scandal. "How is that?"
She swallowed. "Commoner whores are slaughtered every few weeks, and half breeds are hunted down and killed." Her tone was bitter, but not theatric, as though relating a basic, cruel reality.
Louise blanched. "What? That's–that's horrible! Why would people put up with such butchery?"
Vin looked down. "Not everyone does. But those who oppose it don't last long. The rest don't last long either."
"And when you talk about half breeds," Louise said. "That means you, right?"
Vin nodded.
"And when I first summoned you and you were all beat up, that was part of it?"
She nodded again.
Louise stood up and started pacing. She had always thought that there was something off about her familiar. She was so cautious and jumpy, Louise had just assumed that the girl had endured a rough childhood, which wasn't false, but to spend your whole life in a world that forbade you from being born? Well, Vin had never seemed homesick, and now she knew why.
"You didn't use a wand," Louise said. She had been out of it for a bit after getting so close to the Sword of Destruction, but Vin had been practically able to fly, and there had been no wand in sight.
Vin nodded again. "Our magic is different."
"Is it like Ancient magic?" Elves used magic like that, and from what she had read, it was supposed to be incredibly powerful.
Vin shook her head. "I don't know what that is. My abilities are called Allomancy. It draws power from different alloys I swallow."
Louise frowned. So was it based off of potions? "Can you show me?"
"I can." Her tone implied that she would rather not.
Well, there was no hurry. Still, this changed things. A commoner summoned as a familiar to serve a mage was a servant like any other, but what was a mage summoned to the same purpose? Now that she knew what she knew, did she have any right to have Vin wash her clothes or sleep on the floor?
No. Even if she was a … a person of mixed heritage, Vin was still a mage. If she could learn magic, then the simplest solution was for her to acquire a title as soon as possible. Fortunately, Louise knew a girl who could help with that. Until then …
"One last question," Louise said. "Have you ever been to a ball?"
WWW
The first ball Vin ever attended, a world away from here, had been incredible, lavish, ridiculous, and beautiful, and it had been made even more so by the knowledge that if anyone had discovered what she was, she would have been killed.
Her second ball was far more relaxed. There were no tattooed Obligators watching everything, no imminent threat of death, and there was even the chance that she might end up having fun.
She wore one of Louise's gowns. They were the same size, and with only two or three balls a year, Louise seemed happy to see one of her twenty formal gowns get used. Louise wore a pink dress a lighter shade than her hair, and Vin had put on a black one. She thought it suited her.
They were greeted by music, lights, and mingling groups and couples of young nobles, with servants gliding among them unnoticed. Not all of the nobles present were dancing–only most of them.
"Is something wrong?" Louise asked, noticing her apprehension.
"I … I don't know how to dance," she said, feeling suddenly foolish.
"Oh. That's no problem. See, the thing you need to understand is that boys have no spine."
"What?"
Louise nodded. "None at all. So if you step on his foot, it's not an accident. Either he deserved it because of something he did or said–you can make it up on the spot, really, he'll believe anything–or it was his fault for sneaking his foot underneath yours."
Vin nodded. Sazed had given her lessons to prepare for her part in Kelsier's plan, but Luthadel's social etiquette was a far cry from what was expected in Tristain.
"Is there anything else?"
"Yes. Would you mind keeping my abilities a secret? My Allomancy?"
Louise gave her a longsuffering look. "Vin, I told you, no one is going to try to kill you here."
"It's not that, it's …" There's always another secret. "Today, Fouquet was prepared for you, Kirche, and Tabitha, but she wasn't ready for me. My abilities are going to be far more useful if no one knows about them."
Louise sighed. "Fine, fine, I won't interfere with you and your precious comfort zone. If you'd rather live as a commoner instead of as a mage, that's your decision, but how are you going to explain coming to the ball?"
She shrugged. "I have an exceptionally doting and generous master?"
Louise seemed to consider that. "Well, okay. But it won't make any difference if the others talk. Tabitha, well, she can teach silence to a stone, but Kirche …"
Vin nodded. "I'll talk to her."
"Good luck." Her tone implied that luck wouldn't be enough. Fortunately, Vin had replenished her metal reserves.
She entered the mingling crowd, just another gown in the hall. Just as when she first woke up in this world and dressed herself in Louise's uniform, the people around her didn't recognize her, but didn't see her as a commoner. A boy her age caught her eye and started to approach her, but she burned zinc, Rioting his anxiety and inhibitions until he walked past her as though that were what he had first intended. She searched the crowd for Kirche's distinctive red hair, but she didn't see her.
She did, however, see someone else. Siesta, in her usual maid uniform, walked through the crowd with a tray full of wine glasses which she exchanged for empty ones.
"Siesta!" Vin said, flashing her a smile.
Siesta jumped when she saw her and nearly dropped her tray. "Vin! What are you doing here?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Does Lady Valliere know you're here?"
"Of course. She did invite me, after all."
Her eyes widened. "Oh! You are so lucky! This is just like in The Goose Girl's Grace. Are you going to dance with anyone?"
"I might," she said. "But first need to speak with someone. Have you seen Lady Kirche around here?"
"Um, she's the one from Germania, isn't she?"
Louise had a few nicknames for her along those lines. "Yes."
"She's over there," Siesta said, pointing to a crowd of young men with their backs turned.
"I don't see her. Are you sure?"
Siesta nodded. "She's like a real life version of Lady White from Snows of Passion, but don't tell her I said that."
"I won't. Thank you."
Siesta smiled. "Just be sure to tell me everything afterwards."
Vin approached the crowd, and sure enough, she found Kirche right in the middle of it. She sat in one of the cushioned chairs that lined the walls with the boys paying attention to her every motion, if not her every word. She wore a dark purple dress with as daring a cut as Vin might have expected from the girl, with a neckline so low it looked like it was being held up by magic. For all she knew, it was.
"Pardon me, Lady Kirche," Vin said politely, slipping into the circle. "But might I have a moment of your time?"
Kirche dropped a dismissive glance in her direction and shook her head. "Okay, first of all, I don't know who you are, but if this is about–" Her eyes widened. "Vin? Vin? Founder Brimir, when I talked to Zero about dressing you up, I didn't expect her to … what's going on?"
Vin smiled and curtsied as she had been trained too. "This will take only a moment, I assure you."
Kirche blinked. "Okay. You lot, out. Girl talk, no boys allowed." She had no emotional Allomancy, as far as Vin knew, but Breeze could not have dispersed a crowd as easily. "First of all, you look amazing. Second of all, what?"
"I've done this sort of thing before," Vin explained. "Louise lent me one of her extra gowns. I don't know why she has so many, but that's besides the point. I wanted to talk to you about earlier today. I was wondering if you could understate my role in events from earlier today."
She raised an eyebrow. "So do you want me to say that the golem just collapsed on its own? And I imagine you want me to leave out the part about you using magic entirely."
"If it's not too much trouble." In a more serious tone, she added, "I don't care if you tell people that you did everything, or Tabitha, or if you give Louise all the credit. Just as long as I'm not involved."
Kirche's eyes narrowed. "Did Louise put you up to this?"
Vin cocked her head. "Why would she do that?"
"Well, it would be kind of embarrassing if she got showed up by her own familiar." She looked her up and down. "Of course, she doesn't seem to mind you showing her up in other areas."
Vin stepped closer and dropped the volume of her voice. "I just don't like people talking about me. It's not too much trouble, is it?" She burned brass to make Kirche more complacent.
Kirche sighed. "Fine, fine, it's your obscurity."
"And could you ask Tabitha to do the same?" she asked, still burning brass.
Kirche smiled. "Yeah. Because if she finishes her book she might grow desperate and talk to people."
Vin curtsied again and walked away, satisfied that her work was done. Now, she had the rest of the evening to herself. It was a new experience for her. Her first ball had been part of a job, and before time to herself meant time alone, because being alone meant being safe. But now, she was safe, her enemies left behind in another world. No one was trying to kill her.
But then she saw Longueville passing through the crowd, arm in arm with Professor Colbert, and Vin remembered that someone had already tried to kill her.
She was beautiful in a shimmering green gown, a woman grown among children. Colbert grinned broadly at her side, happy to be with her, not knowing what she was. A disturbance broke out among the dancers, and Colbert departed to settle it leaving Longueville alone.
Longueville turned to her a moment later, as though feeling Vin glaring at her, and she smiled. "Why, good evening, Vin. I was not expecting you to be joining us tonight."
Vin gritted her teeth. She had little patience for formalities with her friends, and wasn't going to dance courtesies with her. "Why'd you do it? Why would you steal the sword, and then lead us to it?"
For a moment Vin worried that she would feign ignorance, and she had no patience for that either so she Soothed away her caution and suspicion. Finally, the woman sighed. "Oh, alright. I thought the name sounded impressive, but after I took it I had no idea how to use it. I heard the stories about it, about madness and such, so I thought I'd lead someone else to it so they could try to use it. If they succeeded, I could figure out the trick, and if they didn't, then I'd be no worse off." She shrugged. "Of course, you had to be the one to pick it up, which tells me nothing, with you being what you are."
Vin frowned. "And what am I?"
Longueville raised an eyebrow. "Don't you know? Do you think that anyone could just pick up a weapon like that without consequence? Haven't you noticed anything different since you came here? Do you not know the name written on your hand?"
Vin resisted the urge to look at the markings on her left hand. "I know that I'm going to kill you." Nightblood's words echoed in her mind. Destroy evil.
Her eyes widened, half in surprise and half in amusement. "What, you're not holding a grudge about earlier, are you? No one got hurt, and your friends all came back looking like heroes, so there's no harm done. If anything, you girls ended up better off for what happened."
"I don't care about that! You betrayed them."
Longueville frowned. "How so?"
"I never trusted you, but they did. After your golem attacked, they made it to their dragon and I wanted them to leave, but they refused because you weren't with them. They refused to abandon you, they trusted you, you betrayed them, and I will kill you."
For the first time, she seemed off balance. "I never asked them to stay. I didn't even expect them to be the ones to volunteer to come after me. I thought that one of the teachers here would have the stomach for it, not a bunch of children!" She closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed. "I'm not going to stay here much longer anyway. I don't care about the sword anymore, and in a day or two I'm going throw a fuss over Osmond's behavior, resign, and you'll never see me again."
"I'd better not, because I won't forget this, or you."
Longueville rolled her eyes. "Would it make any difference if I told you that all the proceeds of my heists were donated to hungry orphans?"
"If I believed you it might. Which I don't."
"Yeah, no one ever does." She turned away, finished with the conversation, but Vin wasn't.
"What is written on my hand?"
"What? Oh. I suppose that not many people can read runes these days. It means Gandalfr."
Vin frowned. She had heard that word before, when Colbert and Osmond were talking about her. "And what is Gandalfr?"
Longueville bit back a smile. "Gandalfr? Familiar of Brimir? Left Hand of God? You're not very religious, are you Vin?" She shrugged. "It's for the best, I suppose. After a few sermons, you might end up wanting to kill God too."
She walked away, rejoining with Colbert, and Vin didn't follow her. Longueville didn't seem bothered by her threat … but Vin had delivered it while Soothing her. She extinguished her brass, leaving Longueville to her natural worries and anxieties. Hopefully–now, later, in the dead of night–she would remember Vin's words, and she would feel that icy twinge of fear that Vin had lived with her whole life.
If that happened, even if they never met again, that would be enough.
WWW
A/n I was not planning on making the chapter this long, but this was the first good stopping point. In my last chapter, I added a list of Vin's Allomantic abilities for people who haven't read the books (a tragedy that you must rectify immediately), so I figure I should do the same for Nightblood.
Nightblood is a sword from Warbreaker. That's not the same world as Mistborn, but it's from the same universe, and since Mistborn didn't have any good swords or staffs or anything I could use as an artefact of destruction, I had to branch out a bit. Each world in Brandon Sanderson's universe has its own magic system, and in Warbreaker people could enchant items with specific directions. You could command a rope to grab onto something or command a corpse to stand downwind of you, and so forth.
Under special conditions, an item could be granted sentience as well, and some people got it into their head to create an intelligent sword, and gave it the single command, "Destroy evil." And that's where Nightblood came from.
When you first see Nightblood, one of two things will happen. If you're good, you'll feel sick and want to have nothing to do with him. If you're evil, you'll want to take the sword and kill yourself with him. In Warbreaker, one of the main characters would often throw Nightblood into a crowd of enemies and pick him up when he was done. It doesn't work every time, especially if you know what to expect, but it can still come in handy.
For the most part, the people who use Nightblood keep him sheath, and for some reason manage to kill people just fine that way, either because the scabbard is exceptionally sharp or because Nightblood's magic seeps through. When unsheathed, Nightblood destroys everything he touches in three separate realities, but he requires an incredible amount of energy. In Warbreaker, that energy was Breath, in The Stormlight Archive it would be Stormlight, and here I had Vin use Allomancy. I imagine that an Halkeginian mage could use willpower, but so far none of them have tried it.
Finally, Nightblood can communicate telepathically with the person holding him and can even read his mind. That link goes further, however, and at sometimes it seems like Nightblood is the one wielding the human rather than the other way around. As Gandalfr has the ability to use any weapon, much of that control is diminished, but it's still there. It's kind of like what I imagine would happen if the Mind of God got her hands on Majora's Mask (now that's a crossover I'd like to see happen).
And that's pretty much all you need to know about Nightblood. Thank you everyone who left reviews. It may not seem like a lot on your end, but I always enjoy reading them. Also, as usual, thank you Magery and Stone Mason for editing this chapter. You guys caught errors that I can't believe I've written, which I imagine is one of the drawbacks of writing while asleep.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave a review or a private message, and I'll try to get back to you. Other than that, thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a filling Thanksgiving, should you live in a culture that celebrates that. Otherwise, feel free to stuff yourselves with turkey for the fun of it.