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Vin dresses for the parley in her bedroom while OreSeur watches from the floor and tells her, plainly and in order, that walking into Straff Venture's camp is a bad idea: the man is deceitful even by human standards, and the wall-attack the day before was a warning, not a serious assault. She agrees with most of it; she has spent her own life avoiding rooms with only one door. But the point of the parley, as Elend has framed it, is precisely to walk in looking weak, so that Straff will believe his bullying has already done its work. The new dress argues in his favour. Feldeu the dressmaker has tailored it for a Mistborn without ever having to be asked — bodice tight for jumping, skirts cut to resist flaring, vial-slots inside each cuff, a hidden ripple along each forearm for a strapped dagger. She finds the dress easy to move in, and finds herself liking it more than she will quite admit. She tells herself she is wearing it once. She keeps no metal on her person but her coins, her vial and the earring Kelsier long ago insisted she leave in, and leaves OreSeur behind — bringing a pet wolfhound to dinner would only complicate her cover.

Down the hall Elend is having his own version of the same argument with Ham, who wants to ride along as coachman and is told, gently, that one extra man will not change anything if the night turns bad. Dockson brings a sealed complaint from the Assembly about the missed evening session, and Vin arrives at the door in the blue gown — sapphire barrettes catching the light, Ham visibly surprised that she has put on a dress at all. They share a kiss that costs her makeup, establish a no-makeup rule for the rest of the night, and are called down by Captain Demoux when Straff's carriage rolls up. Up on Luthadel's wall a small group of friends stands and watches them roll away as the sun fails into the mists.

In the carriage, Elend reads the evening as another piece of his father's posturing — he was told to come at dusk so he would have to ride out through the mist, a reminder of who controls the schedule. He explains the man they are about to meet: Straff held the Lord Ruler's atium-mine contract for years, kept dozens of mistresses, treated allies as servants, treated skaa mistresses as expendables; the throne of the Northern Dominance is his because he is patient and crafts long plans. Vin, the dress quietly pulling Valette's court mannerisms back to the surface, tells him she has known crewleaders like that too, and that she survived them by crawling on the ground until they stopped noticing her — exactly what she is asking him to do tonight. Through the carriage window they pick out a tattooed obligator working among the tents, and Elend realises his father is running the army's logistics through Ministry men — a tell that Straff still considers himself, on some level, the Lord Ruler's subject.

Straff meets them outside his tent in a sharp suit and a new beard, taller and broader than his son and rather pleased about it, and opens with a half-real threat to have Elend killed where he stands. Elend takes the threat away from him — points out that he has always been within his father's reach, that nothing about coming tonight changes that — and earns three places at the dinner table. Before they go in Straff tells Elend to have the girl stop Soothing him; Vin deliberately let him notice.

Inside, the dinner is a show piece. The tent is over-stuffed with cushions Straff does not use; the meal is barely cooked beef carried in by beaten skaa in torn smocks, and Straff takes care to slap one of them on the way out so that Vin will see it happen. Elend notes on the side that his father is a Tineye and almost certainly heard every word said outside. The opening play — Elend proposing a joint ride against Cett in exchange for eventually opening the gates of Luthadel to his father — does not land. Straff is hesitant but unmoved. When Vin silently signals Elend to push at the real reason his father came, Elend mentions the atium outright; the conversation sharpens. Mid-meal Straff sends for Hoselle, a fifteen-year-old mistress selected to look enough like Vin to be a point, who comes in scared and sits silent and ornamental at his elbow in a red gown. Watching the smirk in his father's eyes Elend remembers, with a clean fresh hatred, exactly why he hates him.

Straff tries to bargain the atium out of them — a delivery in exchange for moving on Cett — and Vin cuts the bargain off at the ankles by simply telling him the truth: Kelsier tore down the empire for that cache and they never found it, and it probably was not in the city in the first place. Straff believes her — mutters something about Zane having said as much — and changes the temperature of the table. He dismisses Hoselle and then dismisses Vin as well. She does not like leaving Elend alone in the room, but accepts that an absent Mistborn will make him look smaller and easier to lean on. She withdraws into the mist outside the canvas walls, with the dinner about to turn.