POV: kelsier
Summary
Kelsier limps back to Clubs's shop sliced, bruised, his right side burning under flared pewter, and Dockson tears into him for taking Vin to Kredik Shaw. Kelsier does not defend himself. He cracks the kitchen table with his fist instead and snaps back that yes, he is the lunatic Dox always said he was, that perhaps he should have stayed dead in the Pits and saved them all the trouble. The room sits in stunned quiet while a Clubs apprentice binds his largest gash. Outside, the rain that hid the approach to the palace picks up again, pounding the building with what feels like reproach.
Ham and Clubs are silent at the side of the room; Breeze is off in a suburb; Lestibournes hovers in the doorway. Kelsier gives them the part that matters: three Inquisitors were waiting for them in the central chamber, two of them peeled off after Vin specifically, and he could not get to her in time. Dockson downs a cup of brandy and pales. The hidden thought neither of them speaks is that Kelsier barely escaped with years of Mistborn practice behind him, and that Vin has had a few months at most. Kelsier divides the crew anyway: he and Ham back toward the palace, Dockson and Lestibournes to the city's other crews for street rumour, an apprentice riding for Manor Renoux in case she ran for Fellise instead. He does not say aloud what he hears in his own head — that he is about to bring death to a second crew, that he led the Inquisitors to them as surely as he led Mare into Hathsin.
Lestibournes bolts in from the front before they can move. Someone is coming through the rain to the back door, a tall man in robes. The kitchen pulls knives and bracing-staves, convinced an Inquisitor has found them. The door opens on Sazed, soaked, carrying Vin in his arms. He asks for pewter at once; her own supply is burned out. Ham pours a vial down her throat, Kelsier's bronze sense picks up the soft second heartbeat of Allomantic burning, and her colour steadies enough for Sazed to begin.
He sets aside a heavy leather-strapped tome he had been carrying tucked beneath her — a book he took from a side altar at the palace, written in Khlenni — calls for boiled water and clean bandages, and operates on the kitchen table the way Keepers are trained to, with pewter inside her holding her body together long enough for him to stitch her gut closed. The wound is the kind that kills slowly. Clubs clears the apprentices from the room. The procedure runs a long time. When it is done Ham carries her limp form up the stairs to bed and Sazed tells Kelsier honestly that he does not know whether she will live — that pewter buys her time to remake blood but he has seen strong men go from smaller wounds. He had used an entire metalmind running from Fellise in time, and still very nearly hadn't been fast enough.
With everyone else cleared from the kitchen, Kelsier sits with Dockson over the rainwater-stained tome. Dockson calls the raid what it was — stupid, the same stunt that killed Mare three years ago — and Kelsier is too drained to argue. He admits the part of himself he has kept from the others. He is afraid the plan will not work as long as the Lord Ruler lives. Ordinary wounds do not stop the man. A burning inn left him a skeleton that grew its skin back in seconds; decapitation only annoys him. Two years of looking for a way to kill him turned up nothing but the story of the Eleventh Metal, and the Eleventh Metal will not burn for him. Something in that locked chamber would tell them how to stop the Lord Ruler — he is sure of it — and that is why he went back. Dockson asks whether the stunt was worth nearly killing both himself and the child. Kelsier says to ask him again when they know whether Vin lives.