POV: sazed
Summary
Sazed walks the highway south at Marsh's side under a dusty sky. No horses; most animals will not come within range of an Inquisitor. He studies his friend as they walk and is troubled. There has always been something straightforward about Marsh — that was its own kind of difficulty in conversation — but since the conversion something harder has set in beneath it. The man's eyes are spike-heads now. He stares at things Sazed cannot see. He has stopped using body language while he speaks. Most of the rest of the crew kept their distance from Marsh after the change, and Sazed had been the one to keep up the friendship for both of them; he still cannot tell whether his effort has ever been welcome. He remembers, in passing, Spook mentioning that Marsh's old pre-Inquisitor nickname had been Ironeyes, a piece of street wit that had turned out to be more accurate than was comfortable.
The errand itself is suspicious. Marsh is a Steel Inquisitor and an experienced Seeker; he hardly needs a soft-spoken Keeper of no martial skill to back him up in a possibly empty stronghold. Sazed had let himself be persuaded anyway, partly out of curiosity, partly out of unease. And then Marsh opens with something closer to the point.
Sazed should be in Luthadel. Sazed objects, gently: the rest of the Final Empire also has need of a Keeper, and one city should not be allowed to monopolize his time. Marsh is unmoved. These peasants will forget him within a generation, he tells him; no one will forget what is about to happen in the Central Dominance. The Keepers have no business in politics anyway, now that the Lord Ruler is dead — most of Sazed's order would say they had no business in it before, either, and that is precisely the objection his brethren never forgave him. He has answered it by walking the southern roads alone, teaching, refusing to be drawn back into the wars of the king.
Then Marsh asks, more quietly, what about his friends. The question lands. Sazed thinks of Vin, who he had promised Kelsier he would look after, and who has long since outgrown anything resembling physical protection he could give her; but who needs other kinds of protection — counsel, presence, the steadiness of someone who knew her before. He tells Marsh that he has sent what help he can. Marsh calls it not good enough. The things happening in Luthadel are too important to ignore. He has chosen the wrong duty. He will, once their business at the Conventical is done, return to Luthadel.
Sazed opens his mouth to argue and closes it again. There is no argument. He knows Marsh is right. Whether the something he has felt growing under the surface of the world is real or just his own restlessness, the next move is the same — north, to the city — and he will once again be the Keeper who refused to stay in his place. He walks the rest of the road in silence behind his friend, and rather hopes, in fact, that no ghostly threat lies under the world. The alternative makes him deeply uncomfortable.