Mistborn #01 The Final Empire

given up his thieving ways, and turned his considerable attention toward working for the skaa rebellion! Men, we are preparing for something grand. Something that may, indeed, end up being our last struggle against the Final Empire. Join with us. Join with your brothers. Join with the Survivor himself!”
    The dining room fell silent.
    “Bright red,” Breeze said. “I want those men to leave feeling passionate about what they’ve heard.”
    “The emotions will fade, won’t they?” Vin said as a red-clothed serving girl entered the crowd.
    “Yes,” Breeze said, sitting back and sliding the panel closed. “But memories stay. If people associate strong emotion with an event, they’ll remember it better.”
    A few moments later, Ham entered through the back door. “That went well. The men are leaving invigorated, and a number of them are staying behind. We’ll have a good set of volunteers to send off to the caves.”
    Breeze shook his head. “It’s not enough. Dox takes a few days to organize each of these meetings, and we only get about twenty men from each one. At this rate, we’ll never hit ten thousand in time.”
    “You think we need more meetings?” Ham asked. “That’s going to be tough—we have to be very careful with these things, so only those who can be reasonably trusted are invited.”
    Breeze sat for a moment. Finally, he downed the rest of his wine. “I don’t know—but we’ll have to think of something. For now, let’s return to the shop. I believe Kelsier wishes to hold a progress meeting this evening.”

    Kelsier looked to the west. The afternoon sun was a poisonous red, shining angrily through a sky of smoke. Just below it, Kelsier could see the silhouetted tip of a dark peak. Tyrian, closest of the Ashmounts.
    He stood atop Clubs’s flat-roofed shop, listening to workers returning home on the streets below. A flat roof meant having to shovel off ash occasionally, which was why most skaa buildings were peaked, but in Kelsier’s opinion the view was often worth a bit of trouble.
    Below him, the skaa workers trudged in despondent ranks, their passing kicking up a small cloud of ash. Kelsier turned away from them, looking toward the northern horizon . . . toward the Pits of Hathsin.
    Where does it go? he thought. The atium reaches the city, but then disappears. It isn’t the Ministry—we’ve watched them—and no skaa hands touch the metal. We assume it goes into the treasury. We hope it does, at least.
    While burning atium, a Mistborn was virtually unstoppable, which was part of why it was so valuable. But, his plan was about more than just wealth. He knew how much atium was harvested at the pits, and Dockson had researched the amounts that the Lord Ruler doled out—at exorbitant prices—to the nobility. Barely a tenth of what was mined eventually found its way into noble hands.
    Ninety percent of the atium produced in the world had been stockpiled, year after year, for a thousand years. With that much of the metal, Kelsier’s team could intimidate even the most powerful of the noble houses. Yeden’s plan to hold the palace probably seemed futile to many—indeed, on its own, it was doomed to fail. However, Kelsier’s other plans . . .
    Kelsier glanced down at the small, whitish bar in his hand. The Eleventh Metal. He knew the rumors about it—he’d started them. Now, he just had to make good on them.
    He sighed, turning eyes east, toward Kredik Shaw, the Lord Ruler’s palace. The name was Terris; it meant “The Hill of a Thousand Spires.” Appropriate, since the imperial palace resembled a patch of enormous black spears thrust into the ground. Some of the spires twisted, others were straight. Some were thick towers, others were thin and needlelike. They varied in height, but each one was tall. And each one ended in a point.
    Kredik Shaw. That’s where it had ended three years before. And he needed to go back.
    The trapdoor opened, and a figure climbed onto the roof. Kelsier turned with a raised eyebrow as Sazed brushed off his robe, then approached in his characteristically respectful posture. Even a rebellious Terrisman maintained the form of his training.
    “Master Kelsier,” Sazed said with a bow.
    Kelsier nodded, and Sazed stepped up beside him, looking toward the imperial palace. “Ah,” he said to himself, as if understanding Kelsier’s thoughts.
    Kelsier smiled. Sazed had been a valuable find indeed. Keepers were necessarily secretive, for the Lord