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Elend reaches the canal mouth below Fadrex and gets his first close look at what he has come to take. The Conway Canal swings northwest into the distance; to the south, broken red and orange wind-cut rock formations rise around a city he has not seen since his father once paraded him through the Final Empire's cultural centres. Fadrex has no formal city wall — only Luthadel was ever allowed one — but the natural rock terraces are walls of a different kind, and Cett chose this place over the older capital because it is smaller, more defensible, and sits at a junction of canal routes. Ham joins him on the prow and notes what the defenders have done: cleared the trees from the shelves and plateaus to deny attackers cover, cut several trough-pits across the only narrow canyon approach, and stationed archers on the heights above. The only easy access is through that single bottleneck, with Yomen's men looking down into it from both sides.

Ham is also looking the other way. The canal is barely passable behind them — too much ash; their boats only just got through; if they retreat, it will be on foot. He says, half-joking and half-not, that it feels portentous, as though something is trying to strand them here. Elend tells him everything seems portentous to Ham and gives the order to dock in an inlet upriver and set camp on the nearby mesa. Ham keeps looking back toward Luthadel.

That night, in the lit command tent on the mesa above the inlet, the bonfires on the Fadrex heights burn high — confident fires, Elend thinks, not the warding fires men light against the mists. Ham, Cett, and Vin are inside; Demoux is absent, still recovering from the mist sickness he survived. Elend is conscious of how thin the empire is spread — Spook and Breeze in the North in Urteau, Penrod holding Luthadel, Felt watching the eastern cache. Ham reports the scouts' first count: about twenty-five thousand defenders inside Fadrex proper, fewer than Elend expected. Cett explains. Yomen cannot pull the rest of his army into the city — if he did, the other Western cities would revolt; not to switch back to Cett's side but to grab their own kingdoms in the vacuum. The Final Empire is gone; every petty obligator with half a taste of power thinks he can run one. Ham notes that Elend and Vin tried it and succeeded. So has Yomen, Elend reminds them. He has held this kingdom since Cett marched on Luthadel. Elend orders the guards doubled and patrols tripled, particularly in the early-morning daymist that gives raiders cover; he orders the soldiers to stay in their tents at night but ready to spring, in the hope of baiting one of Yomen's "surprise" attacks.

But none of that gets them past those natural rock walls. Cett tells him not to try: hold the canal, station sentries on the upper formations to prevent secret resupply, and *move on* — take the surrounding cities, which are barely fortified. Elend declines. They did not come to reconquer Cett's homeland; they came for the storage cache the Lord Ruler left inside Fadrex. Cett tells him this is a fool's chase, that there is no magical answer in any of Rashek's caches, that the man was a sadist and the only way to survive the coming years is to seize the high, sun-blessed plateaus and farm them. The arguments are good ones; Elend keeps his answer to himself. The Lord Ruler did not hate his people. He left food and water in his caches. If he left anything else, it will be in this one. *There has to be something.* The cache stays the target. Vin is smiling. Elend gives the orders: engineers under cover of mist to find a way across the troughs, scouts to look for streams that might let them reach the city's water supply, spies into the city to map and ruin its food stores. Cett offers the obvious shortcut: they have two Mistborn; one quiet night of work could rip the head off the city. Elend refuses it. He will try diplomacy first. Ham approves. Cett, pointing out that if there is an alliance with Yomen he does not get his city back, gets a flat reminder from Elend that he did not team up with the empire; he knelt to it. He will be given a kingdom. He does not get to pick where, or when.

The meeting breaks. Elend sends Cett off to write up a list of Fadrex noblemen who might be bribed for information. He asks Vin to scout the city — a rhetorical request, she points out — and steps outside into the mists to look up at those confident bonfires on the heights. She comes up beside him quietly. She is thinking about Cett's influence on him, he knows; she noted that he did not promise *no* assassination, only *not yet*. He answers that if it comes to it, he will choose what is best for the empire. She lets it go and offers, only half-seriously, that he could come with her. *No,* she says, kissing him. *You're noisy. And you smell.* Like an emperor. A Tineye would pick him out in seconds. She has the same scent, she admits — but she knows how to get rid of it. He does not. He hands her Cett's short list of informants, tells her to have fun, and watches her drop a coin between them and shoot up into the night.