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Spook finds Beldre sitting on the rocky shore of the underground lake in the cache, watching the still black water in the windless air while Sazed and a working party of Goradel's men, somewhere out of sight, hammer at the project to dam the cavern's inflow. He brings her a mug of tea — too hot to him with his savant-flared tin off the bandage, just right for everyone else. He has been letting her wander the cavern; there is nothing she can sabotage and no way out, with the ladder up to the trapdoor removed except on his authorisation.

She is the most unguarded person he has met since coming up to Urteau. He thinks, watching her, that this is what people might look like in a world without Inquisitors and assassins; even Allrianne, who plays the puff, has the edge of someone used to surviving. Beldre has none. He tries to apologise for kidnapping her — explains he had considered taking her from the gardens and decided against it, only for her to walk into his hands. She says, bitterly, that it is her own fault: her brother has always told her she is too trusting.

She tells him about herself. She was a devout little noblewoman who paid the obligators extra and called them in to witness the smallest things, then learned she was half-skaa when they came to take her for execution. Her noble father had wanted children badly enough to take them with a servant; her mother had approved. She went with the obligators in a daze — and the crew's overthrow of the Lord Ruler saved her, by accident, in the chaos. She believed her brother Quellion would be a good ruler. He really is, she insists, a good man — he wants peace and security — but the things he does to people now frighten her. Spook listens; he was a streetborn kid raised by an uncle. He tells her, more honestly than he means to, that he was never really part of the crew the way the others were — that he was the errand boy who refilled Breeze's cup a hundred times during the first year. Sazed is the one actually in charge of Urteau. Breeze outranks Spook too; Spook just does the job Breeze is too lazy to do.

She is amused enough by his self-deprecation to take her first sip of tea. She asks what Vin and Elend are really like; he laughs at the rumours she has heard (Elend's ash-resistant robes, Vin's death-aura) and tells her Elend is a forgetful scholar twice as scattered as Sazed, and that Vin alternates between looking frail as a child and killing Inquisitors. He admits he tried to court her once, by handkerchief, before she figured out what it meant and turned him down. Beldre, smiling, says he is not as forgettable as he thinks; but, she adds, she would be more likely to think kindly of him if he let her go.

He says, gently, that he will not. He does not threaten to use her against her brother — threats only work if you would actually carry them out, and he will not hurt her. She will, he believes, be safer with him than back in Quellion's palace. She makes him promise to try to spare her brother and the city; he promises, hedged but real, to try. Rising to leave, he lays a hand on her arm in return when she warns him not to lust so hard after power. He has somewhere to be, he says. He is going to be seen.

Across the city, in a back room of one of Durn's inns, the two of them settle the terms of the coup. Durn wants primary trade contracts on every canal in Urteau and a noble title from Elend; Spook grants both, with Sazed and Breeze briefed and ready to draft the paperwork. Spook tells Durn to dam the mouth of the Harrows before the flood — Spook is going to push water back up into the canals at evening, when the markets are empty, and the streetslot beggars will die if the lock fails. Durn confirms he has the old lock system that was stripped off the Harrows when they were new, and can refit it in time.

Then Durn walks him through the bars. Spook wears his burned cloak, the symbol he has accidentally become known by, and the patrons rise when he enters. He has the bartenders break out cavern wine — stolen by him on a string of nights — and announces only that no one has to pay for Quellion's liquor tonight. After that he visits tables, mostly listening, asking after problems, drinking with mourners. Pewter keeps him sober no matter how many mugs are passed to him; the people have already turned that into a story. He does not spread the rumour that Quellion is an Allomancer — he lets Breeze do that elsewhere, more carefully.

Bar by bar, the night blurs. Durn leans in eventually to ask if he is all right — his tenth mug — and Spook says he is, distracted. He cannot stop turning Beldre's words over: power can be a terrible thing. He looks up at a room cheering him as Survivor of the Flames and weighs whether he wants to become someone who deserves that cheering — whether he can finally stop being the boy at the back of the room. Kelsier's voice tells him he deserves it. That is all the confirmation he needs. He stands and raises his arms to the cheering bar.