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Philen sits in the Assembly chamber a quarter hour before the meeting and rehearses, in private, how superior he has become. He was never skaa, whatever the noblemen on the benches around him still think; he was a broker for nobleman merchants under the Final Empire, a wealthier man today than any of them, and within the hour he will have placed a king of his own choosing on the throne. He greets Lord Penrod sweetly — solicitous about last week's stomach trouble he would rather had finished the old man off — and counts down the chamber: seven noblemen, eight merchants, eight skaa workers reeking of forges and shops, all of them about to be put back in their proper place once he has done what he came here to do. He notes that Elend Venture is, unusually for him, late, and lets himself hope the boy will not show at all.

He is rising to call the meeting himself when the back doors burst open. Elend strides up the aisle in white cape and a military-cut suit, a dueling cane at his hip and a wolfhound at his heel, Vin on his arm in a noblewoman's gown, and the whole Survivor's crew — Ham, Breeze, Dockson, Clubs, Spook — and both Sazed and Tindwyl in Terris robes ranged at his back. The deposed king sees Philen still on his feet and asks, mildly, whether Philen is the chamber's chancellor — the presiding officer the Assembly is required to elect when no king sits. Philen sits.

Elend takes the floor and nominates Penrod for the post, on the explicit ground that he himself is too biased a party today. Penrod is voted in. Then Penrod gives the deposed king his statutory first slot, and Elend uses it not to fight his deposition but to report on his parley with Straff Venture. He tells the chamber that his father will not assault Luthadel while one threat in particular stands inside it, then names that threat: the Survivor is dead, but his apprentice is not, and she — Vin, at his elbow — is the most powerful Mistborn alive, the heir of the man who killed the Lord Ruler, and she has already put a knife to Straff's throat once. He intends the speech to carry past the chamber, to the city, and to the spies he can see in the audience — Zane among them.

Vin sits twisted in her seat as he says it. The publicity sickens her even as Tindwyl turns and tells her, quietly, that the king needs the link to the Survivor — that the man has no other authority to draw on. Vin does not argue. She is also still hearing the northern thumping under her bronze, louder than it was, and trying not to think about what it might mean if Elend is binding her to Kelsier's legacy at the same moment she is half-wondering whether she is the Hero of Ages returned. She makes herself watch Zane instead. When he finally looks up, he meets her eyes and goes back to studying Elend.

Elend finishes three minutes early and tries to sit. Penrod calls him back: is he really not going to defend himself on the deposition? Elend says he is not. He has already given the chamber his answer by letter, he says; they know him and they know what he intends to do for the city, and that will have to stand as his argument. He will not stand at a public lectern and recite his own virtues. Tindwyl frowns at that — it is not the speech they drilled — but Vin finds, to her own surprise, that she trusts Elend's instincts here over Tindwyl's.

Before Penrod can close, Elend reminds him that under the code a new king's nominations must be held three days before the vote, and offers the chamber the choice of holding them now or letting the kingdom drift the full month. Penrod opens nominations. One of the skaa assemblymen rises and nominates Penrod himself. The chamber waits. Finally Penrod stands and nominates Elend Venture — and only after Elend catches her eye does Vin see what Breeze is already whispering behind her: Elend put Penrod in the chair precisely so Penrod would feel honor-bound to nominate him back, sparing him from having to nominate himself.

Then Philen rises with his own. He waves off the merchants' obvious assumption that he is naming himself — he is, he says with practiced humility, only a simple merchant — and asks, with apparent innocence, whether the nomination must be drawn from sitting assemblymen. Elend tells him no: under the code he wrote, the king need not be a member; the throne can go to anyone. Granted that opening, Philen nominates Lord Ashweather Cett for the throne of Luthadel and gestures into the audience. A bearded man in a skaa cloak throws the hood back and stands revealed: the besieging warlord from the Western Dominance himself, sitting in the chamber of the city he has come to take. Breeze confirms it under his breath — that is really him — and tells Vin flatly that they may be in trouble.