The Watcher
also known as The Watcher
A tall, calm Mistborn in all black — trousers, silken shirt, gloves, no cloak — who walks unguarded into Keep Venture as Straff's envoy and reveals himself as the man Vin has known for months as the Watcher. He calls himself something of an ambassador, frames coming to Vin face to face as a courtesy, and bears the easy bearing of a Mistborn who has never been afraid in a room full of guards. MB1:WoA:Ch 17
A masked silhouette who has stalked Vin across Luthadel rooftops for months — a Mistborn she has crossed and chased through the mist more than once. He has never harmed her, never spoken to her, and never let her catch him. MB1:WoA:Ch 1 superseded at MB1:WoA:Ch 17
Known facts
- shoots-coins-for-vinBreaks his usual silence to fight on Vin's side from a rooftop above the assassins — pushing coins to deflect a hostile Coinshot and then putting a coin through the forehead of the Smoker who was hiding a Mistborn in the assassin team, so that Vin would notice the hidden burner before he killed her.MB1:WoA:Ch 2
- self-descriptionCaught at last by Vin in a fountain square, calls himself "an enemy" who helped her against Cett's assassins because he is "also insane". Asks why she plays "their games" — gesturing at Keep Venture — and seems disappointed by her answer that the people she loves are in danger. Wears no mistcloak; medium height, wiry build, dark-haired, lean-faced.MB1:WoA:Ch 8
- serves-straff-ventureIs the Mistborn that the kings of Luthadel had only been able to call rumour — Straff Venture's kept Mistborn — and is sent into the city openly as part of his father's posturing in the siege.MB1:WoA:Ch 17
- precise-steel-controlCan regulate the strength of an Allomantic Push on a single coin finely enough to hover for seconds, rotating in the air with his hand outstretched — a control of steel that Vin has never seen in another Mistborn and that Kelsier himself struggled to perform. Of little tactical value in a fight, but the gesture is the point: he is showing her she has not yet met an Allomancer her equal.MB1:WoA:Ch 17
- bastard-son-of-straffIs Straff Venture's bastard son, raised in near-squalor and hidden away while Elend was raised as heir — kept secret so that even rumours of Straff's Mistborn rarely make the connection that he is the king's own son. The hidden childhood made him hard. He is, in his own private accounting, Elend's brother.MB1:WoA:Ch 18
- hears-a-commanding-voiceHears a voice in his head that he calls God — a quiet, constant companion that commands him to kill nearly everyone he meets, including his father and every guard he passes. He believes himself insane and accepts the diagnosis as a manageable flaw; he kills when he wants to, not when it commands. To resist the worst promptings he cuts shallow gashes in his own arm with whatever blade is to hand, using pain to drown the voice.MB1:WoA:Ch 18
- own-atium-stockpileKeeps a personal stockpile of atium that Straff does not know about, and lets his father continue to believe the metal can be used as a leash — Straff doles out single beads as reward, and Zane never bothers to correct the misapprehension that those beads are the only atium he has.MB1:WoA:Ch 18
- ritual-assassinations-of-his-fatherRegularly poisons Straff's food and drink with detectable, survivable doses — birchbane in cinnamon tea is the latest — as a kind of standing appointment that both men maintain: Zane never quite kills his father, and Straff uses each attempt to remind Zane that he is the stronger of the two. Zane keeps the attempts coming because he is unwilling to use a knife on the man, and unwilling to stop trying.MB1:WoA:Ch 18
- hopes-vin-is-his-escape-from-straffHas been returning regularly to the Keep Hasting rooftop where he last fought Vin, in hopes of finding her again, and admits to himself the real reason: she may be the person who finally gives him a reason — and somewhere — to leave Straff. He cannot do it alone; until he has someone else to rely on, his father is all he has ever known. He also expects he will eventually be ordered to kill her, and is more troubled by how reluctant he is becoming than by whether he could win the fight.MB1:WoA:Ch 24
- was-in-pits-of-hathsinZane survived the Pits of Hathsin — Vin glimpses the layered white scars on his forearm in the mist outside Straff's tent, the same arm-scars she has seen on Kelsier, and he goes silent rather than deny it.MB1:WoA:Ch 27
- straff-venture-sonTells Vin outright, on the Keep Venture rooftop, that he is Straff Venture's son — Elend's half-brother by one of Straff's mistresses, born and raised in the shadows of the keep, unacknowledged because the obligators of the Final Empire would have made inheritance impossible. Once he Snapped as Mistborn, his father finally had a use for him. Elend does not know.MB1:WoA:Ch 34
- offers-vin-escapeBeats Vin in a brief fight on the Keep Venture rooftop by burning atium against her — confirming for himself that the rumors of the city's atium stash are false — then asks her to come away with him as an alternative to killing her. Both Straff and Elend would lose their Mistborn; he and she would be free of both. She refuses.MB1:WoA:Ch 34
- poisons-straff-routinelyZane dosing his father is a recurring ritual: he times the poisons to take effect at a chosen moment, asks Straff for the hour like a man checking his own work, and walks away smiling when Straff proves able to survive. By this point Straff is keeping Amaranta on hand precisely so the next dose can be caught.MB1:WoA:Ch 39
- gives-vin-atium-beadZane drops a small bead of atium — enough for roughly two minutes of burning, easily worth twenty thousand boxings before the Collapse — on Vin's bedstand, tells her to be ready for Cett's next assassins, and launches out the window.MB1:WoA:Ch 40
- burns-atium-freelyDuring the Hasting assault Zane burns atium freely — through entire floors of hazekillers — and uses it again to slip Vin's grip when she lunges to keep him off Cett, confirming that he has access to atium in quantities she has only ever glimpsed in single beads.MB1:WoA:Ch 43
- frames-demoux-to-vinAt Elend's bedside Zane tells Vin that Captain Demoux is the inside man who reached out to Straff before the Assembly vote at Cett's direction — an accusation she cannot disprove on the spot and that pushes her over the edge into the Keep Hasting attack he has been steering her toward.MB1:WoA:Ch 43
- god-voice-never-targeted-vinThe voice Zane calls God has ordered him to kill every other person it ever spoke to him about; Vin is the sole exception. He takes this as the sign that she is meant to save him, and tries to convince her to leave Luthadel with him on the same night his father sends assassins to his tent.MB1:WoA:Ch 46
- carries-spike-through-chestZane carries a metal spike driven all the way through his torso, head against his sternum and tip protruding between his shoulder blades. He refuses to wear cloaks because the point catches on the cloth, and his mind goes fuzzy whenever he tries to consider the spike directly.MB1:WoA:Ch 46
- spares-straff-after-assassination-attemptAfter surviving four assassins sent into his tent, Zane walks straight into Straff's pavilion, refuses his father's offers of atium and named heirship, hands him Luthadel by telling him to pull back and let the koloss take the city, and leaves him alive — telling him that a man should not kill his father.MB1:WoA:Ch 46
- gave-vin-a-lead-decoy-instead-of-atiumThe bead Zane gave Vin as atium was a lump of lead with a thin shell of atium plated over it. When she swallowed and burned it during their fight, her atium reserve flashed out in a single instant and left her with nothing.MB1:WoA:Ch 47
- engineered-vins-doubts-about-elendZane reveals during the fight that he engineered most of the pressure pushing Vin away from Elend: he placed an Allomancer among Cett's hirelings so that she would suspect Cett of the attack on the Assembly; he forced her to fight in front of Elend so that he would seem afraid of her; he pushed her to keep killing so that she would frighten herself with how powerful she had become.MB1:WoA:Ch 47
Events
- MB1:WoA:Ch 17 Stands in black with hands behind his back, calls himself ambassador rather than messenger, holds firm to Straff's insistence that any parley happen inside the Venture camp, and uses the audience to look at Vin.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 17 Sparring partner in the chase through Keep Hasting — wins the bout with a coin hidden inside his mouth, shows Vin precision Pushing she has never seen, and tells her that the Mistborn's place is in the mists, not at her king's table.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 24 Lands on the back of Keep Venture's roof in his usual black-on-black with no mistcloak, asks Vin what she would do without constraints, Pulls her dropped coin back to his hand without looking, and leaves into the mists rather than risk overstaying.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 27 Steps out of the mists beside Vin as she Soothes Straff flat through the tent canvas, whispers at her ear that her king has just made her a knife, and lets her see — for the first time — the layered white scars of the Pits of Hathsin on his forearm before bowing and jumping away.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 27 Walks out of the mists to Straff after the carriage rolls away, confirms that the threat was real and unhelped, accepts the new order to kill Vin and asks for a strike team of Straff's bastard-born Mistings to do the job.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 31 Sits in the audience at the back of the chamber watching Elend rather than Vin, then meets her eyes once when she finds him in the crowd.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 32 Remains in the audience as Vin watches Cett declare himself.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 34 Waits outside Elend's study window for Vin, carries her up to the Keep Venture roof, beats her in a short atium fight to confirm she has none, tells her his father has ordered her death and offers her escape with him, discloses he is Elend's half-brother, and warns her about the koloss sack of Suisna and the refugees being sent through.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 39 Walks beside Straff's horse out from camp, hides his deeper reasons behind a polite apology for the failed strike, lurks at the edge of the parley, and stays after Penrod leaves to ask whether the new king would actually surrender the atium if he found it.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 40 Stands in the shadows of Vin's room with the shutters thrown open, tells her the Assembly Hall assassins were Cett's, explains Penrod's deal with Straff, leaves her a bead of atium, and goes back out the window.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 43 Walks in from the balcony with the mist pooling at his feet, names Demoux as Cett's inside man, invokes Kelsier to push her off the edge, and leaves out the window.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 43 Fights side by side with Vin through the Hasting tower — sharing Pushes through a single coin to fling soldiers apart — and burns atium freely in the upper floors. When Vin spares Cett he means to finish him himself and only stops when she begs, then leaves disappointed.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 43 The second of the two figures who sweep over Wellen on the wall after the coins fall, leaving him standing alone with the corpses of his squad.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 47 Steps in from the misted balcony to ask Vin to leave with him; when she refuses, attacks for real with atium and duralumin and her own atium turned against her. Dies on the floor with her knife in his windpipe, the voice he called God speaking to him for the last time.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 2 Stands silhouetted on a nearby rooftop through the fight, breaking his silence twice to intervene on Vin's behalf.
- MB1:WoA:Ch 8 Stands openly on a watchtower for Vin to spot, lets her chase him across the city, hides behind a derelict shutter she sees through anyway, and finally comes down to speak with her in a quiet street after she collapses from the duralumin burn.
Relations
- relatedElend Venture — Zane tells Vin he is Elend's half-brother — a Straff Venture son by one of his mistresses, raised unacknowledged in the shadow of Keep Venture. MB1:WoA:Ch 34
Backreferences
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 11
- factTenSoon
- factTenSoon
- factFirst Contract
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 20
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 48
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 52
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 63
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 78
- factTenSoon
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 1
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 2
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 3
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 8
- factVin
- factVin
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 17
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 24
- factVin
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 26
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 27
- factStraff Venture
- factStraff Venture
- factZane
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 29
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 31
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 33
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 34
- factZane
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 39
- factStraff Venture
- factZane
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 40
- factAshweather Cett
- factZane
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 43
- factVin
- factVin
- factZane
- factZane
- factWellen
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 44
- factAshweather Cett
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 46
- factZane
- factZane
- factZane
- factZane's chest spike
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 47
- factVin
- factVin
- factTenSoon
- factZane
- factZane
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 48
- factVin
- factElend Venture
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 49
- factAmaranta
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 50
- factStraff Venture
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 51
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 53
- factVin