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Elend sits in his study above the balcony, dragging himself through one more pass of the parlay proposal he intends to put before the Assembly in two days. He has read more political theory than anyone he knows; he had not realised how much patience a council of twenty-four men would require to govern with. Through the open balcony doors his father's campfires shine in the mist. The Assembly is divided into a treaty faction, an attack faction, and — gaining strength every day — a surrender faction; the proposal will at least lock them all in place until he has spent his king's right of parlay on Straff. He admits to himself that the Final Empire was, in its way, stable, and then puts the thought down: he does not want to govern the way the Lord Ruler governed. Overhead he hears Vin making her rounds across the keep roof.

She is on the copper sheeting just above his skylight, watching him scribble and trying not to think about how much of him is exposed every hour she is not standing next to him. Her bruises from the fight still throb. She slips to the skylight to check that he is alive and reflects that, despite the stories, what she really did the morning the Lord Ruler died was guess his trick and get lucky — and that she has yet to find the line where the reputation ends and the woman begins. She has also, as a private matter, never told anyone except Elend and Marsh that she can sense Allomancers burning metals through a coppercloud. Marsh has confirmed that Steel Inquisitors can do it; she is sure the Lord Ruler could; she does not know why she can. There is also what she did with the mists themselves the morning of the kill — something she has never been able to repeat and is not yet brave enough to name.

Burning bronze on watch, she feels a faint, muffled pulse — the kind a copperclouded burner should not be making to anyone. She drops to a crouch and tries to read it: rhythm of pewter, ripple of iron, neither clean. The source is right in front of her on the rooftop. Her eyes argue with her ears. Then she sees it. Not a figure in the mist but a figure of it, holding just enough shape — a thin body, a long head — to be human. Vin gasps, the spirit takes a single step toward her, she Pushes a handful of coins straight through it, and it dissipates into the windblown curls of the night. She does not yet have a word for what she has just seen.

Elend downstairs finishes the proposal and re-reads, beside his lamp, the short yellow letter from his father — Straff has secured the Northern Dominance, is returning to the family seat in Luthadel, and expects to be handed the city. He has known his father long enough to know what comes after a letter like that. The Lord Ruler's cache of atium has not turned up in a year of searching, and every warlord in the old empire still assumes Elend is sitting on it; that, more than his throne, is what they keep sending men through her for.

Vin drops in through the skylight rather than the open balcony — she likes a fresh sweep of the room — and confirms in passing that the Watcher was out tonight but that her bones do not think he is coming for Elend this time. She does not yet tell him what she saw on the roof; when she does, halting, his answer is to put his arms around her and say she is pushing herself too hard. She lets him hold her — a thing she still has to override something inside her to allow. She also confesses that the bead she spent tonight was her last; six was all Kelsier had left them, and the only mine for atium is the one Kelsier tore down. If a Mistborn comes with atium tomorrow, she will not be able to fight him.

Ham arrives at the door before they can go further, apologetic, with a finding. The dead assassins were not Straff's men at all — they were Westerners, nobles of Houses Gardre and Conrad, almost certainly sent by Ashweather Cett out of Fadrex City. They must have slipped into the city through the recent congestion at the gates; the timing against Straff's arrival is a coincidence. Elend is not consoled. Every tyrant in the area has eventually decided he is worth removing, his own father included; Straff has only refrained so far because he has not yet decided Elend is worth the trouble. They send Ham off to arrange a crew meeting. Vin curls up on the rug in her mistcloak rather than leaving the room. Tonight, she is not going to be far from him.