POV: lestibournes
Summary
Spook leaves Breeze at the door of one of the larger, more reputable taverns of Urteau, with a handful of Goradel's soldiers in plain worker's clothes for cover. Breeze is in brown utilitarian dress for the night — incongruous on him — and threatens to come along to the poor end of town with Spook on the grounds that the destitute talk more freely. Spook tells him he would stand out anyway, and demonstrates the problem by scooping up a handful of ash and offering to rub it into the Soother's clothes. Breeze freezes and politely agrees to meet him back at the safehouse. Spook heads for the Harrows alone. Kelsier's voice in his head observes, on the way out, that he never did like Breeze.
He drops twenty feet off the lip of a streetslot rather than take the road and lands easily on pewter. Without it he would have shattered both legs. With it he is the dextrous and tireless thing he had only ever envied in Vin and Kelsier; the simplest motions — walking, leaping debris, kicking the door of Durn's hollow off its hinges — feel full of grace and force, and the kick lands harder than he had any intention of asking for. He has too little experience with pewter to judge his own strength yet. The two guards out front sit staring at the splintered door; he is past them, down a corridor lit by nothing he needs, before they catch up. Kelsier's voice in his head observes that he might have to kill them. He decides he just has to move faster. He has spent weeks waiting to confront Durn about the rumours of his name and his death that have been circling Urteau taverns. The interruption Sazed and Breeze caused on their arrival is over. He kicks the door in harder than he meant to, walks down the corridor without needing a lantern, throws the inner door open on Durn mid chip-game, and turns the other three players out. Durn does not object.
The chips are marked. Durn confesses it freely — practice run with his readers — and then explains the rumours: a Tineye with apparently bottomless funds, spending half his time in the Luthadel palace, with eyes that are noticeably wrong, was never going to stay anonymous. Durn has been seeding the Survivor's crewmember angle into Urteau gossip because the city loves the Survivor and any link the Citizen forges between his violence and one of the Survivor's own is fuel for an eventual turn. He admits his motive is not altruism: the Citizen has been ruinous for business — Venture-vintage wine moving at a fraction of a clip, smuggling chains throttled to a trickle — and he says, if Spook's friends in the old Ministry building are serious about removing the Citizen, the underworld of Urteau is smaller than it was but capable of surprising damage if pointed correctly.
Spook gives him Breeze — a man Soothing for information in the tavern on Westbrook Lane, the best Soother Durn will ever meet, easy to identify because he stands out — and tells Durn to send a contact to him. He asks Durn not to use his own name or admit he is alive. He leaves, walking back into the brightness that, through tin, a starlit Urteau night is.
The exit is more useful than the meeting. Spook is still trying to decide whether he learned anything when his enhanced hearing catches footsteps. He spins, hand at his dueling cane; Kelsier's voice tells him there is no danger. One of the gamblers from Durn's table has chased him down. The man begs — when they realised who he was, he had already left — for help with his sister, Mailey, a seven-year-old hidden away with a woman who sold her for the Citizen's noble-blood bounty. The Citizen is going to burn her in days. Spook opens his mouth to ask what the man expects him to do, and stops. He is not the old Spook anymore. He can do something a Kelsier-shaped thing. He turns the appeal into a bargain — ten men, friends, willing to take part in some late-night work — and tells the man this is the price for saving his sister. The man nods, eager. Spook tells him to gather them tonight; they start now.