Kelsier kept smiling. He’d do so until it felt natural. Until that numbness, tied in a knot within him, started to unravel and he began to feel again. If that was possible.

It is. Please let it be.

“Drawing those pictures makes you think of the past,” Gemmel snapped. The aging man had a ragged grey beard, and the hair on his head was so unkempt, it actually looked better-groomed when it was being whipped around by the wind.

“It does,” Kelsier said. “I won’t forget her.”

“She betrayed you. Move on.” Gemmel didn’t wait to see if Kelsier continued arguing. He moved away; he often stopped in the middle of arguments.

Kelsier didn’t squeeze his eyes shut as he wanted to. He didn’t scream defiance to the dying day as he wanted to. He shoved aside thoughts of Mare’s betrayal. He should never have spoken his concerns to Gemmel.

He had. That was that.

Kelsier broadened his smile. It took effort.

Gemmel glanced back at him. “You look creepy when you do that.”

“That’s because you’ve never had a real smile in your life, you old heap of ash,” Kelsier said, joining Gemmel by the short wall at the edge of the roof. They looked down on the dreary city of Mantiz, nearly drowning in ash. The people here in the far north of the Western Dominance weren’t as good at cleaning it up as people were back in Luthadel.

Kelsier had assumed there would be less ash out here—only one of the ashmounts was nearby, this far out. It did seem that the ash fell a little less frequently. But the fact that nobody organized to clean it up meant that it felt like there was far more.

Kelsier curled his hand around the coping of the wall. He’d never liked this part of the Western Dominance. The buildings out here felt … melted. No, that was the wrong term. They felt too rounded, with no corners, and they were rarely symmetrical—one side of the building would be higher, or more lumpy.

Still, the ash was familiar. It covered the building here just the same as everywhere, giving everything a uniform cast of black and grey. A layer of it coated streets, clung to the ridges of buildings, made heaps in alleys. Ashmount ash was sootlike, much darker than the ash from a common fire.

“Which one?” Kelsier asked, rotating his gaze among the four massive keeps that broke the city skyline. Mantiz was a large city for this dominance, though—of course—it was nothing like Luthadel. There weren’t any other cities like Luthadel. Still, this one was respectable.

“Keep Shezler,” Gemmel said, pointing toward a tall, slender building near the center of the city.