POV: elend-venture
Summary
Elend watches Vin and Ham spar in the palace barracks yard from the open hallway, ash drifting down, soldiers pausing in their passage to enjoy what has become a recurring diversion. He has a speech to revise and the will to do none of it. Ham keeps the rules tight — staves only, pewter only, no Pushing or Pulling — and Vin in her trousers and buttoned shirt circles him warily. Clubs limps up to the railing, slaps down a ten-boxing coin on Vin to win, and bullies Elend into matching the bet against his better judgment. The general's report on the army is sour: a year is not enough to train soldiers, and right now he would not back his boys against old women with sticks. Straff is digging perfunctory fortifications, resting his men, and will attack by the end of the week.
A bearded soldier behind them puts down another coin on Vin. Elend turns to find Spook grinning under a fake beard and a stolen uniform — taller than the gangly boy Elend met a year ago, now well over six feet at sixteen, his Eastern street cant down to occasional nostalgic flourishes. He slipped into the city ahead of Dockson and has been resting before reporting in. The news from the west, he says, is bad: the old rumor that the Lord Ruler's atium is hidden somewhere in Luthadel is back, louder than ever, despite half a year of Breeze's team seeding alternative stories — and to a street-trained ear it smells planted. Someone wants the western warlords pointed squarely at Elend.
The bout in the yard turns serious. Vin takes a hit she should not have survived, lands on a shoulder, kips back up — and then darts inside Ham's guard, takes a massive swing aimed at her chest by leaping a clear seven feet over it without a coin to Push against, comes down on a low sweep that takes his legs out, and finishes by landing on his chest and tapping his forehead. The hallway of soldiers murmurs. Drinks are fetched. Ham, rubbing a bruised calf, walks Elend through what they just saw: a Thug Allomancer's strength comes from the metal, not the body, which means Vin's tiny frame can hold the same store of force a big man's can — and because she is not carrying the mass of muscle that big man wears, she can do things with it the big man cannot. Clubs collects his winnings, Spook needles Elend into paying out as well, and Vin declines to pour Spook a drink on principle. The talk drifts to old assassins, to women Elend used to know, to the joke about Vin killing off her competition; she stiffens fast at the suggestion that he might one day leave her, and he steers them away to the kitchens.
That night, after Elend has insisted she eat, the two of them walk up to Vin's rooms and find a perfect copy of the day's wolfhound sitting on the floor. Each hair is in place; it would be indistinguishable from the animal she clubbed unconscious that morning if it did not speak. OreSeur explains that he can improvise the voice without bone — voice is flesh, not skeleton — and that the delay in finishing was the fur, which has to be set individually. Asked plainly what he thinks of the body, OreSeur tells Elend it is offensive and degrading; asked next whether he will wear it anyway, he says of course, because he would die before breaking the Contract — the Contract, he says, is life. Elend takes the answer as proof of the kandra's loyalty. Vin does not. She tells OreSeur they will be spending a great deal more time together and asks him whether he can keep up with her; when he says well enough, she takes him with her into the night.