Mistborn #03 The Hero of Ages

power of the Well of Ascension. Vin had killed the Lord Ruler, then taken that same power. She'd given up the power, true, but she'd filled the same role.
    It all came to a head. The reason why the skaa worshipping her, calling her their savior, felt so wrong. Suddenly, her real role in it all seemed to snap into place.
    "I'm not the Survivor's Heir, Yomen," she said sickly. "I'm the Lord Ruler's."
    He shook his head dismissively.
    "When you first captured me," she said, "I wondered why you kept me alive. An enemy Mistborn? Why not just kill me and be done with it? You claimed that you wanted to give me a trial, but I saw through that. I knew you had another motive. And now I know what it is." She looked him in the eyes. "You said earlier that you planned to execute me for the Lord Ruler's murder, but you just admitted that you think he's still alive. You say that he'll return to topple me from my place, so you can't kill me, lest you interfere with your god's plans."
    Yomen turned away from her.
    "You can't kill me," she said. "Not until you're certain of my place in your theology. That's why you kept me alive, and that's why you risk bringing me in here to talk. You need information only I can give—you have to get testimony from me in a trial of sorts because you want to know what happened that night. So you can try to convince yourself that your god still lives."
    Yomen didn't respond.
    "Admit it. I'm in no danger here." She stepped forward.
    And Yomen moved. His steps suddenly became more fluid—he didn't have the grace of pewter or the knowledge of a warrior, but he moved just right. She dodged instinctively, but his atium let him anticipate her, and before she could so much as think, he'd thrown her to the floor, holding her pinned with a knee against her back.
    "I may not kill you yet," he said calmly, "but that hardly means that you're in 'no danger,' Lady Venture."
    Vin grunted.
    "I want something from you," he said. "Something more than what we've discussed. I want you to tell your husband to send his army away."
    "Why would I do that?" Vin said, face pressed against the cold stone of the floor.
    "Because," Yomen said, "you claim to want my storage cache, yet you claim to be good people. You now know that I will use the food in it wisely, to feed my people. If your Elend really is as altruistic as you claim, he certainly won't be so selfish as to throw away lives to war, just so you can steal away our food and use it to feed your own."
    "We can grow crops," Vin said. "We get enough light in the Central Dominance, while you don't. The seed stock you have will be useless to you!"
    "Then trade me for it."
    "You won't talk to us!"
    Yomen stepped back, releasing the pressure on her back. She rubbed her neck, sitting up, feeling frustrated. "It's about more than the food in that cache, Yomen," she said. "We control the other four of them. The Lord Ruler, he left clues in them. There is something to the whole group that can save us."
    Yomen snorted. "You were down there all that time, and you didn't read the plaque that the Lord Ruler left?"
    "Of course I did."
    "Then you know that there is nothing more in those caches," Yomen said. "They're all part of his plan, true. And for some reason that plan requires that men think he is dead. Regardless, you know now what he said. So, why take the city from me?"
    Why take the city from me? The real reason itched inside of Vin. Elend had always found it an unimportant one, but to her, it held powerful appeal. "You know full well why we have to take the city," Vin said. "As long as you have it, we have reason to conquer you."
    "It?" Yomen asked.
    Ruin stepped forward, curious.
    "You know what I mean. The atium. The Lord Ruler's supply."
    "That?" Yomen asked, laughing. "This is all about the atium? Atium is worthless!"
    Vin frowned. "Worthless? It's the single most valuable commodity in the Final Empire!"
    "Oh?" Yomen asked. "And how many people are there around to burn it? How many noble houses remain to play petty politics and vie for power by showing how much atium they can leach from the Lord Ruler? The value of atium was based in the economy of an empire, Lady Venture. Without the trappings of a reserve system and an upper class giving the metal implied worth, atium has no real value." Yomen shook his head. "To a starving man, what is more important—a loaf of bread, or an entire jar of atium he can't use, eat, or sell?"
    He waved for the guards to take her. They