Chapter Text
Vin
The small flakes fluttered down, like little motes of soft white ash. Snow was somewhat uncommon in the Final Empire, even in winter, at least it was in the Central Dominance. Vin watched the snow fall lazily down through the trees. That was what caught her attention next. Forests like this were even more rare, with the timber they provided being a jealously guarded resource. These trees were tall, taller than any she had seen, and standing densely enough together that she could hardly see the sky. But that wasn’t what caught her attention.
No, what caught her attention was the trees’ leaves. They were long and thin, almost like tiny needles, rather than the broad, flat leaves of the trees found in the Central Dominance. But even that was inconsequential in comparison to what else distinguished them. They were green. Vin took a cautious step forward, as if the trees and their leaves were an illusion that might vanish if she got too close. They remained. She plucked a cluster of them from one of the nearest branches. They pricked her fingers slightly. Sharp. Sharp and green. What in the Lord Ruler’s name?
She heard a gasp, and a quiet murmur from behind her. “Fascinating”, she heard Sazed say as she turned around to look at him. The tall, wiry, dark skinned Terrisman was studying a similar set of needle-like leaves intently. His brows were furrowed in concentration. “My metalminds tell me that the trees in the Eastern Dominance have needles like this, though those aren’t nearly so tall.”
Behind Sazed, Vin heard a chuckle. “Or as green, I would assume?” Elend Venture said as he stepped out from behind the taller man. Elend wore his characteristically loose, comfortable nobleman’s suit, his hair shaggy and disheveled. “As far as I know, green plants can’t be found in any Dominance. This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Where in the Lord Ruler’s name are we, Sazed?”
Sazed wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, his copper bracers glinting slightly in the sunlight. “I don’t rightly know, Master Venture. This fits the description of Pre-Ascension plants that the oldest records speak of. Narrow, tall trees with green leaves.” Sazed went on to continue talking, but something caught Vin’s eye. She turned and bent down to look at the diminutive plant hiding in the shade of the tall trees. It was thin, with an almost gracefully slender stalk, even more vibrantly green than the needles of the trees. Smaller leaves came off the sides, but what was most distinctive was the top, which had a collection of leaves that were a bright, royal blue.
Just like in the picture Kelsier showed me so long ago, she thought to herself. The one his wife had kept. What was the thing called? A flower? Gently, she pulled up the small plant and put it to her nose, and inhaled. It smelled sweeter than the finest perfume she had worn while masquerading as Vallete Renoux. Faintly, however, she thought she smelled something else behind the scent. Vin’s brows furrowed slightly. What was it? It wasn’t like something was there that shouldn’t be, in fact it seemed the opposite. Something was missing, a smell she had taken for granted since birth.
Vin focused, and burned Tin. The internal physical metal enhanced the senses of the Allomancer burning it. Suddenly, the copse of trees grew much brighter, the breeze colder, the distant songbirds louder. She took a deep breath in through the nose.
Smoke. Ash. That’s what you’re not smelling, she realized with a start. The air was cold, yet, but it was also pure and clean and wonderful. How had she not realized how wonderful it felt to breathe cleanly before? With a nearly giddy smile she explained her newfound discovery to her companions, who nodded, now recognizing the differences for themselves as well.
“Unfortunately,” Elend said after a moment of thought, “that doesn’t help us narrow down where we are.” Elend sat down on a log, looking to her just as he had back in Luthadel while trying to figure out a proposal to placate the Assembly that he had created out of the ashes of the Lord Ruler’s government.
Vin’s mind began to churn as well, and she slowly turned to Sazed. “Saze, you mentioned something, about how the tree matches the description of something before the Ascension?”
Sazed nodded slightly, “Yes mistress, I believe I did. That flower that you hold is an even greater connection than that. We still have trees in the Final Empire, after all, but no living soul has ever seen a flower in the flesh.” He shook his head in wonderment.
“Well,” Vin continued, somewhat bashfully, “what if, when we killed the Lord Ruler, the world returned to the way it was before?” She smiled hopefully. That would be truly wonderful, Kelsier’s dream for his dead wife would finally be fulfilled.
The scholarly Terrisman shook his head slightly. “I believe that to be highly unlikely, mistress. Most sources believe that the changing of the world after the Ascension was gradual, over several hundred years. Ecosystems are difficult to change so completely so quickly.”
“Then what…” Elend began from his seat upon the log, but Vin hushed him. She could hear something faintly in the distance, her tin-enhanced ears picking it up where a normal person’s wouldn’t have. Vin flared her tin, and she caught it. <Horses.> Vin burned pewter, strengthening her muscles and took off in the direction of the sound.
“Follow me, “ she called out to the other two. Grumbling, they seemed to be getting up, though they couldn’t nearly keep up with a mistborn burning pewter at a mad sprint.She followed the sound for a while, dashing between trees, crunching fallen leaves and brush underfoot. The sound of horses was soon joined with a clangerous din of rattling sheets of metal. Tentatively, she reached out and burned steel, letting her tin drop. Blue lines shot out before her, clustered together in one direction. Forward. She could still hear the horses and clattering of what had to be armored riders, without the enhanced hearing burning tin provided.They were close. Quite close.
She took a moment to catch her breath as the other two caught up. Sazed seemed to be only a little out of breath by the run, probably due to some feruchemical storage, but Elend was practically wheezing and coughing up his lungs. “We’re close to them,” she said quietly, “and I think they’re soldiers of some kind. I’ll sneak a head and scout out the group. You two stay here.” Elend nodded, gasping, waving her off as he sat heavily. She took a step towards Sazed and said in a low whisper, “Keep an eye on him, Sazed. Even if we are a thousand miles from Luthadel, he’s still the king.”
Sazed nodded, his usual sage and serious expression covering his face.
“I understand, Mistress. I will protect him with my life.” Vin began to turn away. Then Elend spoke.
“Don’t count me out entirely, Vin. While some of us might not have had the opportunity to become decides, that doesn’t mean I’m hopeless in a fight. I rescued you from the dungeons of Kredik Shaw, didn’t I?” Elend’s good humor came through, shining in his face and ringing in his words. That was the man she loved, the honest, clever man she had met on her first mission as part of Kelsier’s insane plan to overthrow the Lord Ruler. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“I seem to remember your guards doing most of the work, Elend,” she replied, lifting a single eyebrow. “And anyway, you happen to be unarmed at the moment. Even if you had your dueling cane, I have more than a sneaking suspicion that these men are armed and armored.” She eyed him. “Stay.”
She turned and followed the chord of blue lines. The trees began to thin out before her, suggesting some type of clearing. She was in unfamiliar territory, about to spy on what appeared to be a group of armed horsemen, so she resumed burning tin to keep her senses sharp. The old Vin, the terrified street urchin, practically screamed at her for that. Vin ignored that part of herself, the part that had never known friendship, the part that had never known love. The suspicious, distrustful Vin had been able to survive on the streets of Luthaldel. Barely. She wouldn’t go back to that for anything.
The clearing opened up before her, and Vin moved behind the tallest nearby tree. She dug a hand into her coin pouch, produced a single boxing, and dropped it on the ground. Then she flared steel, pushing hard against the small piece of metal. Vin flew up into the air beside the tree, and lazily swung up onto a branch. Switching to iron, she pulled the coin back up after her, catching it easily in her hand and returning it to the pouch. She now had a good vantage from which to see the clearing, and what she saw was all too familiar not to chill her blood.
There were about twenty horsemen in all, arranged in a circle around a crumbling stone wall. Many of the riders had dismounted, and almost all bore weapons of some kind, swords and lances for the most part. A few wore armor. In the center were several dismounted men, two of which were untying a man in ragged and greasy black clothing from the crumbling wall. Another was unsheathing a massive, dark bladed sword. Vin was all too familiar with this scene, though in Luthadel it happened in the Fountain Square.
An execution.
Vin scanned the crowd, and quickly found an oddity. Four younger men, the oldest about her own age of nineteen, two who looked fourteen, and a small boy who couldn’t be older than eight mounted on a pony. They stood out among the soldiery they were surrounded by like silver coins among coppers. What kind of man would bring children to an execution.
A nobleman. Vin could tell by searching the group who it was, if by his bearing more than his relatively simple clothes and furs. He was the one given the dark-bladed greatsword, and began to speak as he approached the old, ragged man about the be beheaded. Vin flared her tin as much as she dared, straining to hear the man’s words.
“In the name of Robert Baratheon,” the man began, most of his inflection being lost by the distance between them, “First of his name, King of the Andals, and the Rhoynar, and the First Men, lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the sword of Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to die.” The lord, Eddard, lifted the sword high overhead, then brought it down, cleanly slicing the man’s head from his shoulders. The head rolled towards the group of boys, and the eldest of them kicked it. Vin’s blood began to boil, memories of the cruelty of noblemen flooding back to her. A small boy in a keep courtyard, killed by a noble’s guardsman for making a scene during a ball. Vin examined the scene once again. It was obvious that the man had been skaa, his clothes and bent back showed that much. Who had he been? A runaway? A rebel?
The men began to remount their horses, and the lord handed the sword to one of his men. Slowly, the men gathered together and left the clearing, leaving the headless corpse behind. Vin mulled over what she had seen. The lord had claimed that he served a “King Robert Baratheon”, and that he himself was the lord of some place called Winterfell and the “Warden of the North.” Did that mean they were in the Northern Dominance then? Vin hadn’t been able to keep track of all the other various kings that had sprung up since the demise of the Lord Ruler’s Final Empire. She determined to ask Elend and Sazed.
***
When she returned to her party, they had no answers for her. Elend told her that his father Straff was currently in control of the Northern Dominance, and that neither of them had ever heard of Winterfell or a King Robert Baratheon.
“So… what do we do?” Elend asked hesitantly. He rubbed his jaw line with a hand, his brow furrowed in concentration. “We might not be in the Final Empire anymore at all. We might even, as ludicrous as it sounds, be back in times before the Ascension. Sazed, do you know anything about any Seven Kingdoms before the Lord Ruler came to power?”
The tall terrisman shook his pierced head sadly. “I have gone over my historical metalminds a dozen times, Lord Elend, and there is nothing in them that talks about these Seven Kingdoms, nor any domain called Winterfell. Though, with the amount of knowledge that actually survived the Ascension, that might not mean anything.” He tapped the side of his head. “I have another theory, however. There was a group in the Southern Islands whose names were lost to history, that had a myth about what they called the ‘Traveling Dusts’, a trickster spirit of knowledge who was able to travel between worlds to spread knowledge and mischief, and was able to send others to different worlds. Perhaps that is what happened to us.”
Vin shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as any.” She turned and looked out into the forest of green. It was still so awe inspiring, looking out at all the beautiful plants. But even if it was more beautiful, even if the air was more clean, the world was still too much like what she remembered from home. Nobles still killed the common people with impunity. “I say we follow the party back to this Winterfell.”
Elend looked up at her skeptically. “Vin, you watched them behead someone. Are you sure these are the kind of people you want to follow around an unfamiliar land?”
Vin’s face took on a dark and serious cast. It was the face she used in combat. “I want to know why they killed him, and I want to find where in the Lord Ruler we are. If either of those answers don’t satisfy me…” she traced a hand almost gently over the pommel of her obsidian daggers. Yes. She would learn about this new land, learn about its people, about this Eddard Stark. And if he was just another Lord Ruler, oppressing and slaughtering his people, well… she had killed God. This nobleman couldn’t be harder than that.