Page 259 of The Well of Ascension
Vin frowned. “Following us?”
“They must be.”
Straff’s scouts,she thought. “We’ll let Elend decide what to do about them.”
Spook shrugged, walking over to sit on her rock. “You going to wake him?”
Vin turned back. “Let him sleep a little longer.”
Spook shrugged again. He watched as she walked over to the firepit and unwrapped the wood they’d covered the night before, then began to build a fire.
“You’ve changed, Vin,” Spook said.
She continued to work. “Everyone changes,” she said. “I’m not a thief anymore, and I have friends to support me.”
“I don’t mean that,” Spook said. “I mean recently. This last week. You’re different than you were.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. You don’t seem as frightened all the time.”
Vin paused. “I’ve made some decisions. About who I am, and who I will be. About what I want.”
She worked quietly for a moment, and finally got a spark to catch. “I’m tired of putting up with foolishness,” she finally said. “Other people’s foolishness, and my own. I’ve decided to act, rather than second-guess. Perhaps it’s a more immature way of looking at things. But it feels right, for now.”
“It’s not immature,” Spook said.
Vin smiled, looking up at him. Sixteen and hardly grown into his body, he was the same age that she’d been when Kelsier had recruited her. He was squinting against the light, even though the sun was low.
“Lower your tin,” Vin said. “No need to keep it on so strong.”
Spook shrugged. She could see the uncertainty in him. He wanted so badly to be useful. She knew that feeling.
“What about you, Spook?” she said, turning to gather the breakfast supplies. Broth and mealcakes again. “How have you been lately?”
He shrugged yet again.
I’d almost forgotten what it was like to try and have a conversation with a teenage boy,she thought, smiling.
“Spook…” she said, just testing out the name. “What do you think of that nickname, anyway? I remember when everyone called you by your real name.” Lestibournes—Vin had tried to spell it once. She’d gotten about five letters in.
“Kelsier gave me my name,” Spook said, as if that were reason enough to keep it. And perhaps it was. Vin saw the look in Spook’s eyes when he mentioned Kelsier; Clubs might be Spook’s uncle, but Kelsier had been the one he looked up to.
Of course, they all had looked up to Kelsier.
“I wish I were powerful, Vin,” Spook said quietly, arms folded on his knees as he sat on the rock. “Like you.”
“You have your own skills.”
“Tin?” Spook asked. “Almost worthless. If I were Mistborn, I could do great things. Be someone important.”
“Being important isn’t all that wonderful, Spook,” Vin said, listening to the thumpings in her head. “Most of the time, it’s just annoying.”
Spook shook his head. “If I were Mistborn, I could save people—help people, who need it. I could stop people from dying. But…I’m just Spook. Weak. A coward.”
Vin looked at him, frowning, but his head was bowed, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
What was that about?she wondered.
