Mistborn #01 The Final Empire

Orthodoxy, the Ministry should . . . change during the next few years. I’ll move slowly and carefully, but by the time I’m done, the obligators won’t even realize what they’ve lost. Those other Inquisitors could present a problem, though.”
    Vin nodded. “How many are there outside of Luthadel?”
    “I don’t know,” Marsh said. “I wasn’t a member of the order for very long before I destroyed it. However, the Final Empire was a big place. Many speak of there being around twenty Inquisitors in the empire, but I never was able to pin anyone down on a hard number.”
    Vin nodded as Marsh left. However, the Inquisitors—while dangerous—worried her far less now that she knew their secret. She was more concerned about something else.
    You don’t know what I do for mankind. I was your god, even if you couldn’t see it. By killing me, you have doomed yourselves. . . .
    The Lord Ruler’s final words. At the time, she thought he’d been referring to the Final Empire as the thing he did “for mankind.” However, she wasn’t so certain anymore. There had been . . . fear in his eyes when he’d spoken those words, not pride.
    “Saze?” she said. “What was the Deepness? The thing that the Hero from the logbook was supposed to defeat?”
    “I wish that we knew, Mistress,” Sazed said.
    “But, it didn’t come, right?”
    “Apparently not,” Sazed said. “The legends agree that had the Deepness not been stopped, the very world would have been destroyed. Of course, perhaps these stories have been exaggerated. Maybe the danger of the ‘Deepness’ was really just the Lord Ruler himself—perhaps the Hero’s fight was simply one of conscience. He had to choose to dominate the world or to let it be free.”
    That didn’t sound right to Vin. There was more. She remembered that fear in the Lord Ruler’s eyes. Terror.
    He said “do,” not “did.” “What I do for mankind.” That implies that he was still doing it, whatever it was.
    You have doomed yourselves. . . .
    She shivered in the evening air. The sun was setting, making it even easier to see the illuminated Keep Venture—Elend’s choice of headquarters for the moment, though he might still move to Kredik Shaw. He hadn’t decided yet.
    “You should go to him, Mistress,” Sazed said. “He needs to see that you are well.”
    Vin didn’t reply immediately. She stared out over the city, watching the bright keep in the darkening sky. “Were you there, Sazed?” she asked. “Did you hear his speech?”
    “Yes, Mistress,” he said. “Once we discovered that there was no atium in that treasury, Lord Venture insisted that we go seek help for you. I was inclined to agree with him—neither of us were warriors, and I was still without my Feruchemical storages.”
    No atium, Vin thought. After all of this, we haven’t found a speck of it. What did the Lord Ruler do with it all? Or . . . did someone else get to it first?
    “When Master Elend and I found the army,” Sazed continued, “its rebels were slaughtering the palace soldiers. Some of them tried to surrender, but our soldiers weren’t letting them. It was a . . . disturbing scene, Mistress. Your Elend . . . he didn’t like what he saw. When he stood up there before the skaa, I thought that they would simply kill him too.”
    Sazed paused, cocking his head slightly. “But . . . the things he said, Mistress . . . his dreams of a new government, his condemnation of bloodshed and chaos . . . Well, Mistress, I fear that I cannot repeat it. I wish I’d had my metalminds, so that I could have memorized his exact words.”
    He sighed, shaking his head. “Regardless, I believe that Master Breeze was very influential in helping calm that riot. Once one group started listening to Master Elend, the others did too, and from there . . . well, it is a good thing that a nobleman ended up as king, I think. Master Elend brings some legitimacy to our bid for control, and I think that we will see more support from the nobility and the merchants with him at our head.”
    Vin smiled. “Kell would be angry with us, you know. He did all this work, and we just turned around and put a nobleman on the throne.”
    Sazed shook his head. “Ah, but there is something more important to consider, I think. We didn’t just put a nobleman on the throne—we put a good man on the throne.”
    “A good man . . .” Vin said. “Yes. I’ve known a few of those, now.”

    Vin knelt in the mists atop Keep