Mistborn #02 The Well of Ascension

think. Come, we must speak with His Majesty. I have news of a rather disconcerting nature."
    Vin let go, looking up at his kindly face, noting the tiredness in his eyes. Exhaustion. His robes were dirty and smelled of ash and sweat. Sazed was usually very meticulous, even when he traveled. "What is it?" she asked.
    "Problems, Lady Vin," he said quietly. "Problems and troubles."

The Terris rejected him, but he came to lead them .

23
    "KING LEKAL CLAIMED THAT HE had twenty thousand of the creatures in his army," Sazed said quietly.
    Twenty thousand ! Elend thought in shock. That was easily as dangerous as Straff's fifty thousand men. Probably more so.
    The table fell silent, and Elend glanced at the others. They sat in the palace kitchen, where a couple of cooks hurriedly prepared a late-night dinner for Sazed. The white room had an alcove at the side with a modest table for servant meals. Not surprisingly, Elend had never dined in the room, but Sazed had insisted that they not wake the servants it would require to prepare the main dining hall, though he apparently hadn't eaten all day.
    So, they sat on the low wooden benches, waiting while the cooks worked—far enough away that they couldn't hear the hushed conversation in the alcove. Vin sat beside Elend, arm around his waist, her wolfhound kandra on the floor beside her. Breeze sat on the other side of him, looking disheveled; he'd been rather annoyed when they'd woken him. Ham had already been up, as had Elend himself. Another proposal had needed work—a letter he would send to the Assembly explaining that he was meeting with Straff informally, rather than in official parlay.
    Dockson pulled over a stool, choosing a place away from Elend, as usual. Clubs sat slumped on his side of the bench, though Elend couldn't tell if the posture was from weariness or from general Clubs grumpiness. That left only Spook, who sat on one of the serving tables a distance away, legs swinging over the side as he occasionally pilfered a tidbit of food from the annoyed cooks. He was, Elend noticed with amusement, flirting quite unsuccessfully with a drowsy kitchen girl.
    And then there was Sazed. The Terrisman sat directly across from Elend with the calm sense of collectedness that only Sazed could manage. His robes were dusty, and he looked odd without his earrings—removed to not tempt thieves, Elend would guess—but his face and hands were clean. Even dirtied from travel, Sazed still gave off a sense of tidiness.
    "I do apologize, Your Majesty," Sazed said. "But I do not think that Lord Lekal is trustworthy. I realize that you were friends with him before the Collapse, but his current state seems somewhat. . .unstable."
    Elend nodded. "How is he controlling them, you think?"
    Sazed shook his head. "I cannot guess, Your Majesty."
    Ham shook his head. "I have men in the guard who came up from the South after the Collapse. They were soldiers, serving in a garrison near a koloss camp. The Lord Ruler hadn't been dead a day before the creatures went crazy. They attacked everything in the area—villages, garrisons, cities."
    "The same happened in the Northwest," Breeze said. "Lord Cett's lands were being flooded with refugees running from rogue koloss. Cett tried to recruit the koloss garrison near his own lands, and they followed him for a time. But then, something set them off, and they just attacked his army. He had to slaughter the whole lot—and lost nearly two thousand soldiers killing a small garrison of five hundred koloss."
    The group grew quiet again, the clacking and talking of the cooking staff sounding a short distance away. Five hundred koloss killed two thousand men , Elend thought. And the Jastes force contains twenty thousand of the beasts. Lord Ruler . . .
    "How long?" said Clubs. "How far away?"
    "It took me a little over a week to get here," Sazed said. "Though it looked as if King Lekal had been camped there for a time. He is obviously coming this direction, but I don't know how quickly he intends to march."
    "Probably wasn't expecting to find that two other armies beat him to the city," Ham noted.
    Elend nodded. "What do we do, then?"
    "I don't see that we can do anything, Your Majesty," Dockson said, shaking his head. "Sazed's report doesn't give me much hope that we'll be able to reason with Jastes. And, with the siege we're already under, there is little we can do."
    "He might just turn around and go," Ham said. "With two armies already here. . ."
    Sazed