Mistborn: secret history

Yes. I… I’m trying….

“Nice work.”

I can’t talk to them… Fuzz said. I’m dying, Kelsier….

“Hang on,” Kelsier said. “I’ve found something; it’s here in my pack. I took it from those creatures you

mentioned. The Eyree.”

I do not sense anything, Fuzz said.

Kelsier hesitated. He didn’t want to reveal the object to Ruin. Instead he picked up the thread, which had

enough slack for him to slip it into the pack and press it against the orb.

“How about that?”

Ahh… Yes…

“Can this help you somehow?”

No, unfortunately.

Kelsier felt his heart sink further.

The power… the power is hers…. But Ruin has her, Kelsier. I can’t… I can’t give it….

“Hers?” Kelsier asked. “Vin? Is she here?”

The thread vibrated in Kelsier’s fingers like the string of an instrument. Waves came along it from one

direction.

Kelsier followed them, noticing again how Preservation had covered this city with his essence. Perhaps he

figured that if he was going to be strung out anyway, he should lie down like a protective blanket.

Preservation led him to a small city square clogged with glowing souls and bits of metal on the walls.

They glowed so brightly, particularly in contrast to his months out alone. Was one of these souls Vin?

No, they were beggars. He moved among them, feeling at their souls with his fingertips, catching

glimpses of them in the other Realm. Huddled in the ash, coughing and shivering. The fallen men and

women of the Final Empire, the people even the common skaa tended to dismiss. For all his grand plans,

he hadn’t made the lives of these people better, had he?

He stopped in place.

---

That last beggar, sitting against an old brick wall… there was something about him. Kelsier backed up,

touching the beggar’s soul again, seeing a vision of a man with hands and face wrapped in bandages,

white hair sticking out from beneath. Stark white hair, a fact not quite hidden by the ash that had been

rubbed into it.

Kelsier felt a sudden shock, a painful spike that ran up his fingers into his soul. He jumped back as the

beggar glanced his direction.

“You!” Kelsier said. “Drifter!”

The beggar shifted in place, but then glanced another direction, searching the square.

“What are you doing here?” Kelsier demanded.

The glowing figure gave no response.

Kelsier whipped his hand back and forth, trying to shake out the pain. His fingers had actually gone

numb. What had that been? And how had the white-haired Drifter managed to affect him in this Realm?

A small glowing figure landed on a rooftop nearby.

“Oh, hell,” Kelsier said, looking from Vin to the Drifter. He responded immediately, throwing himself

toward the wall of the building and climbing desperately up it to Vin’s side. “Vin. Vin, stay away from that

man.”

Of course yelling was pointless. She couldn’t hear him.

Still, Kelsier seized her by the shoulders, seeing her in the Physical Realm. When had she grown so

confident, so knowing? Those shoulders of hers had once cringed, but now they gave her the posture of a

woman fully in control. Those eyes that had once widened in wonder were now narrowed with keen

perception. Her hair was longer, but her slight build somehow seemed far more powerful than it had

when he’d first met her.

“Vin,” Kelsier said. “Vin! Listen, please. That man is trouble. Don’t approach him. Don’t–”

Vin cocked her head, then leaped off the roof, away from the Drifter.

“Hell,” Kelsier said. “Did she actually hear me?”

Or was it a coincidence? Kelsier leaped after Vin, tossing himself carelessly from the building. He didn’t

have Allomancy, but he was light, and could fall without getting hurt. He landed softly and sprinted across

the springy ground, tailing Vin as best he could, running through buildings, ignoring walls, trying to stay

close. She still got ahead of him.