POV: kelsier
Summary
Kelsier looks out from the soot-stained top of Luthadel's city wall, watching the dawn skaa crews sweep ash to the river while the spires of Kredik Shaw rise like a black insect over the centre of the city. He has spent three years away. He wears the suit and cloak of a middle-class nobleman so the gate patrols will not stop him, and his hood is up because there are still people in the city who might recognise his face. Dockson joins him along the battlement with the same nondescript stockiness and short half-beard he has always worn.
They greet each other half in old jokes. Dockson asks if Kelsier was behind the burned-out manor up north of the city; Kelsier shrugs and says it had been more accident than design — two knives in Lord Tresting's chest, since one is never enough. He laughs that Tresting was no great loss to the world. The two stand a long while at the railing, watching the cleaning crews work, looking east through the falling ash. They run through the night's planned meeting. Breeze and Ham will be there, and are already curious about what Kelsier has been doing in the years since the Pits. Their old Smoker, Trap, is dead — beheaded by the Ministry some months back. Kelsier wants Clubs in his place, even though Clubs is famously hard to work with. He also wants Yeden, who is footing the bill, and eventually his brother Marsh, who Dockson warns will not even speak to Yeden anymore. Before they leave the wall, Dockson tells him there is something he wants to show him first.
What Dockson shows him is the back of the Canton of Finance, where a fat thief in nobleman's clothes is leading a half-dozen "servants" into a private audience. Inside, Kelsier and Dockson eat the obligators' little red-frosted cakes in the waiting room while, in the audience chamber behind a closed door, Camon negotiates with a High Prelan named Arriev — not the Prelan Laird he had expected, an interview Camon has come to in person specifically to double-cross his partner Theron and walk out with a Ministry advance. Camon ends up with the contract he needs and a chest of three thousand boxings. Vin stands against the back wall of the chamber. She does not see the two noblemen-dressed strangers eating sweets a few seats away.
Dockson explains how he learned about the girl: Kelsier's brother Marsh caught Camon trying to Soothe him in a meeting some months back, brought her to Dockson's notice, and the bribes did the rest. Kelsier watches the dingy little thing in skaa overalls follow her crewleader out of the Canton — pale, jumpy, one cheek discolored with bruise — and decides on the spot that she has to come with them. Marsh thinks she is more than a Misting, and Kelsier is inclined to trust him. She has just used Allomancy on an obligator inside a Ministry building without realising what she was doing, which is a thing trained obligators are watching for.
The watcher in the doorway behind Camon a moment later confirms it. A second figure walks out behind the prelan: a Steel Inquisitor, iron spikes driven hilt-to-point through both eye sockets and out the back of his clean-shaven skull, the intricate eye tattoos of his rank ringing his face. Two Ministry tails fall in behind Camon's crew at an unhurried pace. The Inquisitor glances once at the well-dressed pair across the street, sees no Allomancy burning, and turns the way Camon has gone. Dockson will handle the tails so they cannot follow Camon back to his lair. Kelsier downs a vial of the eight basic Allomantic metals and goes after the Inquisitor — not to kill the creature, which he calls too dangerous, but to drag his attention with a Riot on his emotions and lead him on a chase the other way.