Kelsier nodded. “Shezler. I can get in the door easily. I’ll need a costume—fine clothing, some jewelry. We need to find a place I can fence a bead of atium—and a tailor who can keep his mouth shut.”

Gemmel snorted.

“I’ve got a Luthadel accent,” Kelsier said. “From what I heard on the street earlier, Lord Shezler is absolutely infatuated with the Luthadel nobility. He’ll fawn over someone who presents himself right; he wants connections to society closer to the capital. I—”

“You aren’t thinking like an Allomancer,” Gemmel cut him off, his voice gruff.

“I’ll use emotional Allomancy,” Kelsier said. “Turn him to my—”

Gemmel suddenly roared, spinning on Kelsier, moving too quickly. The ragged man snagged Kelsier by the front of his shirt and shoved him to the ground, looming over him, rattling the roof tiles. “You’re Mistborn, not some street Soother working for clips! You want to be taken again? Snatched up by his minions, sent back to where you belong? Do you?”

Kelsier glared back at Gemmel as the mists began to grow in the air around them. Sometimes Gemmel seemed more beast than man. He began muttering to himself, speaking as if to a friend Kelsier couldn’t see or hear.

Gemmel leaned closer, still muttering, his breath pungent and sharp, his eyes wide and frenzied. This man wasn’t completely sane. No. That was a gross understatement. This man had only a fringe of sanity left to him, and even that fringe was beginning to fray.

But he was the only Mistborn who Kelsier knew, and dammit, Kelsier was going to learn from the man. It was either that or start taking lessons from some nobleman.

“Now you listen,” Gemmel said, almost pleading. “Listen for once. I’m here to teach you how to fight. Not how to talk. You already do that. We didn’t come here so you could saunter in playing nobleman, like you did in the old days. I won’t let you talk through this, I won’t. You’re Mistborn. You fight.”

“I will use whatever tool I have to.”

“You’ll fight! Do you want to be weak again, let them take you again?”

Kelsier was silent.

“You want vengeance on them? Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Kelsier growled. Something massive and dark shifted within him, a beast awakened by Gemmel’s prodding. It cut through even the numbness.

“You want to kill, don’t you? For what they did to you and yours? For taking her from you? Well, boy?”

“Yes!” Kelsier barked, flaring his metals, shoving Gemmel back.

Memories. A dark hole lined by crystals sharp as razors. Her sobs as she died. His sobs as they broke him. Crumpled him. Ripped him apart.

His screams as he remade himself.