(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

TenSoon, back in Luthadel and still wearing the wolfhound's body he took at the Homeland, trots through the city in growing alarm. He had assumed that, with the Lord Ruler dead and the imperial machinery shattered, the place would have thinned out. Instead every tenement, alleyway, and street corner is packed with skaa families living on top of one another in ash and filth; people are sick, coughing in the gutters, eyeing him hungrily enough that he has to growl twice and run twice. The siege Vin and Elend had been bracing for when he left — the koloss horde, Straff Venture at the gates — is over, somehow, but he does not know how it ended or for whom. Elend's banner of spear and scroll still flies from the wall, but anyone could have raised someone else's banner.

He hates himself for having left her. His foolish kandra sense of duty: he had taken what he knew back to the Homeland when he should have stayed and told Vin. He makes for Keep Venture, the windows boarded over where the stained glass used to be, but with guards still posted at the front. He flops in the refuse near the gate, expands his eardrums, and listens.

The two soldiers are bored and not particularly happy. They speak of the mists not killing them, as if the mists had killed others; they speak nervously of the king, then the second guard rebukes the first for it. One name surfaces — King Penrod — and one detail TenSoon does not understand: an emperor whose authority Penrod is wielding. TenSoon's first fear is that the emperor is Straff. But he cannot believe Vin dead — she has killed the impossible three times in a row, the Lord Ruler and Zane among them, and along the way she befriended a kandra who had been determined to hate her.

Eavesdropping will not be enough. He needs answers fast, and he has one card no one else can play. He slips off into the night and finds his way — by memory of patrol routes and by the precise instructions OreSeur had given him under torture years before, preserved word-for-word in the Blessing of Presence — to the warehouse where Kelsier's weapons had once been hidden. It is now a shrine of the Church of the Survivor, with a spear plaque out front explaining its importance. The story it does not tell is one TenSoon knows in full: that on the night Kelsier died, OreSeur — under Kelsier's own orders — had taken the Survivor's body, digested it, and appeared to the faithful skaa to give them encouragement. The whole religion was born of a kandra in Kelsier's bones, and TenSoon eventually killed that kandra for the betrayal. Before he killed OreSeur he extracted every detail he could, including where the real bones had been buried.

He rounds the building, finds the disturbed cobbles in the ash, and digs them up. They are old, and there will be no hair, so the Survivor he wears will have to be bald — but the chance is too valuable to leave in the ground.

At the gates of Keep Venture, Wellen is still leaning on his spear, watching the mists he does not trust the way his partner Rittle trusts them. A figure walks out of the mist in a deep black cloak, hood up, face visible — and Rittle grabs his small silver-spear pendant and drops to his knees. Wellen recognises the scarred arms an instant later: this is the face from a hundred painted icons of the Survivor. "The Survivor" gravely commends their faith, then declares that he does not approve of how the city is being run — his people are sick, starving, dying. Rittle cries that the mists are killing them; the Survivor disclaims that. He asks who runs the city, and finds out: King Penrod, for "Emperor Elend Venture," who is away at war. Wellen adds, against his partner's nervous glance, that Penrod is mad — talks to the air, claims he sees the Lord Ruler at his side, forces skaa to fight each other for food, kills those who object. The Survivor asks after his Heir, the Hero of Ages, Vin. Wellen remembers a quiet resupply visit a few months back: Breeze was with the troop, and they were headed north to Urteau to put down a rebellion. The Survivor tells them to pass on a warning — when the mists leave, the people are to shelter underground; the old training caverns will do — and then walks back into the mist.

He doubles back to the warehouse to retrieve his sack of bones and is caught by a man in a sleeping robe in the doorway. Lantern light flares behind him: the faithful have taken up residence inside the shrine, praying for the Survivor to come give them counsel. TenSoon tries to keep the sack behind him as the people fall to their knees. He had been tempted to confess himself, but cannot, looking at their faces. Instead he tells them their king has been corrupted by Ruin — the thing seeking to destroy the world — and that they must gather the faithful and get out of the city before Penrod kills them all, sending them to the two guards at Keep Venture for the underground location.

He flees, changes back to the dog's body in an empty building, and packs Kelsier's bones away. It seems foolish to discard so potent a tool. He ties the sack onto his back with the dexterous paws he has given the wolfhound, and leaves Luthadel by the north gate at full hound speed. He is going to Urteau to find Vin, and to hope he has the right road.