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Vin crouched down on the rough, cool stone Pewter, steel, and iron were of relatively little use at the uards, but it would be risky, since she couldn't afford to make any noise She didn't knohere the cache was--and therefore couldn't afford to make a disturbance, not yet
Vin closed her eyes, burning brass and zinc She carefully--and slowly--Soothed the emotions of the two soldiers She heard theainst the side of the corridor Then, she Rioted their sense of boredole e the pressure on, waiting
One of the men yawned A few seconds later, the other one did Then they both yawned at once And Vin scuttled straight across the landing and into the shadowed hallway beyond She pressed herself up against the wall, heart beating quickly, and waited No cry ca tired
Vin s time since she'd had to truly sneak She had spied and scouted, but had trusted on the mists, the darkness, and her ability to move quickly to protect her This was different It reled houses
What woulddown the corridor on unnaturally light, quiet feet He'd think I've gone crazy, sneaking into a building not for wealth, but for information To Reen, life had been about survival--the simple, harsh facts of survival Trust nobody Make yourself invaluable to your tea Be ruthless Stay alive
She hadn't abandoned his lessons They'd always be part of her--they hat had kept her alive and careful, even during her years with Kelsier's crew She just no longer listened to them exclusively She tempered theet you killed someday, Reen seemed to whisper in the back of her mind But, of course, even Reen hi Vin, refusing to give her up to the Inquisitors, even though doing so ht have saved his life
Vin continued forward It soon becarid of narrow corridors surrounding larger roo the door open, and found sos, flour and the like--not the carefully canned, organized, and catalogued long-tere cache
There uessed It probably slopes up, leading to that subcanal that runs into the city
Vin moved on, but she knew she wouldn't have time to search each of the basement's many rooms She approached another intersection of corridors, and crouched down, frowning Elend's diversion wouldn't last forever, and someone would eventually discover the woet to the cache quickly
She glanced around The corridors were sparsely lit by the occasional la from the left She moved down this corridor, and the laht the sound of voices, and sheanother intersection She peeked down it To the left, she noted a pair of soldiers standing in the distance To her right, there were four
Right it is, then, she thought However, this was going to be a littlecarefully She could hear both groups of soldiers, but there seeroups in the distance Vin picked one of these and begin to Pull with a powerful Riot of e weren't blocked by stone or steel--during the days of the Final Empire, the Lord Ruler had set up Soothers in various sections of the skaa slu the hundreds, even thousands, of people at once
She waited Nothing happened She was trying to Riot the er and irritability However, she didn't even know if she was Pulling in the right direction In addition, Rioting and Soothing weren't as precise as Pushing steel Breeze always explained that the ehts, instincts, and feelings An Alloe
Unless
Taking a deep breath, Vin extinguished all of her metals Then, she burned duraluuards, hitting them with a powerfully enhanced burst of emotional Alloh the hallway Vin cringed Fortunately, the noise wasn't directed at her The guards in the corridor perked up, and the argurew louder, more fervent Vin didn't need to burn tin to hear when the scuffle broke out, uards to the left rushed away,to find out what the source of the disturbance was The ones to her right left two men behind, however, and so Vin drank a vial oftheir senses of curiosity to the point of breaking
The twoafter their companions, and Vin scurried down the corridor She soon saw that her instincts had proven right--the four e rooms Vin took a deep breath, then opened the door and ducked inside The trapdoor inside was closed, but she knehat to look for She pulled it open, then jumped into the darkness beneath her
She Pushed down a coin as she fell, using the sound of its hitting to let her kno far down the floor was She landed on rough stonework, standing in complete darkness--pitch black beyond even what tin would let her see in She felt around, however, and found a lantern on the wall She pulled out her flint, and soon had light
And there it was, the door in the wall leading into the storage cavern The rock s had been torn apart, the door forced The as still there, and the door itself was intact, but getting it open had obviously taken sohtly, barely wide enough for a person to get through It had obviously taken Yoet it that far
He ht Butwhy break it open like this? He has a Mistborn who could have opened the door with a Steelpull
Heart fluttering in anticipation, Vin slipped through the opening and into the silent storage cache She i for the plate that would contain the Lord Ruler's inforainst stone behind her
Vin spun, feeling an instant of sharp and dreadful realization