Mistborn #03 The Hero of Ages

world that gives them all such a fetish for it. It's not a very nice place these days."
    Vin did a quick check with bronze, but the man burned nothing. What was his game? "I was told that you could give me information," she said carefully.
    "That I can certainly do," the man said. Then he smiled, glancing at her. "I have a wealth of information—though somehow I suspect that you might find most of it useless."
    "I'll listen to a story, if that's what it will cost."
    The man chuckled. "There's no surer way to kill a story than to make it a 'cost,' young lady. What is your name, and who sent you?"
    "Vin Venture," Vin said. "Cett gave me your name."
    "Ah," the man said. "That scoundrel still alive?"
    "Yes."
    "Well, I suppose I could chat with someone sent by an old writing friend. Come down off that railing—you're giving me vertigo."
    Vin climbed down, wary. "Writing friend?"
    "Cett is one of the finest poets I know, child," said Slowswift, waving her toward a chair. "We shared our work with one another for a good decade or so before politics stole him away. He didn't like stories either. To him, everything had to be gritty and 'real,' even his poetry. Seems like an attitude with which you'd agree."
    Vin shrugged, sitting in the indicated chair. "I suppose."
    "I find that ironic in a way you shall never understand," the old man said, smiling. "Now, what is it you wish of me?"
    "I need to know about Yomen, the obligator king."
    "He's a good man."
    Vin frowned.
    "Oh," Slowswift said. "You didn't expect that? Everyone who is your enemy must also be an evil person?"
    "No," Vin said, thinking back to the days before the fall of the Final Empire. "I ended up marrying someone my friends would have named an enemy."
    "Ah. Well then, Yomen is a fine man, and a decent king. A fair bit better a king than Cett ever was, I'd say. My old friend tries too hard, and that makes him brutal. He doesn't have the subtle touch that a leader needs."
    "What has Yomen done that is so good, then?" Vin asked.
    "He kept the city from falling apart," Slowswift said, puffing on his pipe. The smoke mixed with the swirling mists. "Plus, he gave both nobility and skaa what they wanted."
    "Which was?"
    "Stability, child. For a time, the world was in turmoil—neither skaa nor nobleman knew his place. Society was collapsing, and people were starving. Cett did little to stop that—he fought constantly to keep what he'd killed to obtain. Then Yomen stepped in. People saw authority in him. Before the Collapse, the Lord Ruler's Ministry had ruled, and the people were ready to accept an obligator as a leader. Yomen immediately took control of the plantations and brought food to his people, then he returned the factories to operation, started work in the Fadrex mines again, and gave the nobility a semblance of normalcy."
    Vin sat quietly. Before, it might have seemed incredible to her that—after a thousand years of oppression—the people would willingly return to slavery. Yet, something similar had happened in Luthadel. They had ousted Elend, who had granted them great freedoms, and had put Penrod in charge—all because he promised them a return to what they had lost.
    "Yomen is an obligator," she said.
    "People like what is familiar, child."
    "They're oppressed."
    "Someone must lead," the old man said. "And, someone must follow. That is the way of things. Yomen has given the people something they've been crying for since the Collapse—identity. The skaa may work, they may be beaten, they may be enslaved, but they know their place. The nobility may spend their time going to balls, but there is an order to life again."
    "Balls?" Vin asked. "The world is ending, and Yomen is throwing balls? "
    "Of course," Slowswift said, taking a long, slow puff on his pipe. "Yomen rules by maintaining the familiar. He gives the people what they had before—and balls were a large part of life before the Collapse, even in a smaller city like Fadrex. Why, there is one happening tonight, at Keep Orielle."
    "On the very day an army arrived to besiege the city?"
    "You just pointed out that the world seems very close to disaster," the old man said, pointing at her with his pipe. "In the face of that, an army doesn't mean much. Plus, Yomen understands something even the Lord Ruler didn't—Yomen always personally attends the balls thrown by his subjects. In doing so, he comforts and reassures them. That makes a day like this, when an army arrived, a perfect day for a