How can we stand a world like this? Kelsier thought, moving to help another captive. Where things like this happen? The most appalling tragedy was that he knew this sort of horror was common. Skaa were disposable. There was nobody to protect them. Nobody cared.

Not even him. He’d spent most of his life ignoring such acts of brutality. Oh, he’d pretended to fight back. But he’d really just been about enriching himself. All of those plans, all of those heists, all of his grand visions. All about him. Him alone.

He freed another of the captives, a young, dark-haired woman. She looked like Mare. After being freed, she just huddled down on the ground in a ball. Kelsier stood over her, feeling powerless.

Nobody fights, he thought. Nobody thinks they can fight. But they’re wrong. We can fight.… I can fight.

Gemmel strode into the room. He looked over the skaa and barely seemed to notice them. He was still muttering to himself. He had taken just a few steps into the room when a voice yelled from the laboratory.

“What is going on here?”

Kelsier recognized that voice. Oh, he’d never heard it specifically before—but he recognized the arrogance in it, the self-assuredness. The contempt. He found himself rising, brushing past Gemmel, stepping back into the lab.

A man in a fine suit, white shirt buttoned to the neck, stood in the laboratory. His hair was short, after the most current trends, and his suit looked to have been shipped in from Luthadel—it certainly was tailored after the most fashionable styles.

He looked at Kelsier, imperious. And Kelsier found himself smiling. Really smiling, for the first time since the Pits. Since the betrayal.

The nobleman sniffed, then raised a hand and tossed a coin at Kelsier. After a brief moment of surprise, Kelsier Pushed on it right as Lord Shezler did. Both were thrown backward, and Shezler’s eyes widened in shock.

Kelsier slammed back against the wall. Shezler was Mistborn. No matter. A new kind of anger rose within Kelsier even as he grinned. It burned like a metal, that emotion did. An unknown, glorious metal.

He could fight back. He would fight back.

The nobleman yanked on his belt, dropping it—and his metals—from his waist. He whipped a dueling cane from his side and jumped forward, moving too quickly. Kelsier flared his pewter, then his steel, and Pushed on the apparatus on one of the tables, flinging it at Shezler.

The man snarled, raising an arm and Pushing some of it away. Again, the two Pushes—one from Kelsier, one from his foe—struck one another, and they were both slammed backward. Shezler steadied himself against a table, which shook. Glass broke and metal tools clattered to the ground.

“Have you any idea what all of that is worth?” Shezler growled, lowering his arm and advancing.

“Your soul, apparently,” Kelsier whispered.