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“Sazed tells me you’re still finding some difficulty moving about in dresses,” Kelsier says by way of greeting.
Vin’s cup of ale hits the tabletop with a thunk , and her forehead is quick to follow. “By the Lord Ruler.”
“What have I said about—”
“Yes, yes,” Vin groans into the wood of the table. “It’s just– well, dresses are damned tricky business, Kelsier.”
“You’re a lady,” Kelsier says, as if it’s an innate talent of all ladies everywhere to be able to memorize ridiculous steps to ridiculous dances and trot about in their ridiculous layered monstrosities without a single misstep.
“Well, I’m not a very good one, then, am I?”
“Come on,” Kelsier says. There’s a shift and a creak and Vin lifts her head to see Kelsier sitting atop the table. His legs, which are dangling off the edge, are crossed at the ankle. He puts a hand behind himself to brace himself and leans towards her just a bit. “You’ve got to be a good one.”
“ Got to and currently am are two very different things.”
“If you’re going to call me out on linguistic technicalities, I’m going to have to insist you quit hanging around Ham and Breeze,” Kelsier says. “Now, really, Vin. Are you having a particular issue with the dresses Dox is getting for you? Because if that’s the case, I’m more than willing to chew him out for it. Goodness knows you should never send a man to do a– well, another man, is what I am, so, another man’s work, I suppose, though that’s nowhere near as pithy as I’d wished it might be.”
Vin stares at him blankly. Sometimes, she thinks, Kelsier talks just to hear the sound of his own voice. It’s a frustrating habit, even if it means he doesn’t expect me to talk as much.
Kelsier looks at her expectantly, drumming his fingers against the table.
Vin takes a long swig of her ale and says, “The dresses are fine. As dresses go.”
“As dresses go?”
“I’m not very used to dresses. And I’m not so sure I enjoy them. But the ones I have are fine, as dresses go; that’s not the matter.”
“Then what is?” Kelsier asks, cocking his head to the left. His gold hair falls to the side, a few strands of it visibly clumped together with product.
“I just need more practice,” Vin insists. “I’ll improve with time, I swear it. Haven’t I been improving impressively enough with our training?”
“Yes,” Kelsier admits.
“So there,” Vin says, and she considers the matter settled. She’ll go to more balls. She’ll get more experience. She’ll become a damn alleycat in petticoats and flats by the end of this thing, but she knows she’s got a rather steep learning curve. Still, she’s determined to be a quick study, if that’s what it takes. This is the role she’s playing in the rebellion and she’s got to play it properly. She knows too well what can come of a crewmember who slacks off. The repercussions could damage the group, and if they don’t damage the group, they’re sure as hell to affect the screwup of a crewmember himself.
Vin is determined to not muck this up because of something as pedestrian as imitating a proper noblewoman’s movement while wearing a stupidly impractical garment. She’s better than that.
“Mistborn training and dancing aren’t that different when you think about it,” Kelsier says.
“Perhaps you’re the one who needs to spend less time around Breeze and Ham.”
Kelsier laughs heartily. “You’re an insolent child, you know that?” And at Vin’s expression, he says, “No, no. It’s a very admirable trait to have.”
Vin is still sort of getting used to this whole be an individual, be a bit of a troublemaker even amongst friends, be your own authentic self thing. So it’s… nice to have Kelsier tell her that she’s doing it well. “Thank you,” she says, but she says it cautiously.
“Really, though,” Kelsier continues. “Obviously you mustn’t use your Allomancy in settings such as those social gatherings you attend, but it’s a similar concept, is it not?”
“It is not,” Vin says flatly. Kelsier really just says things a lot.
Kelsier ignores her, which is something he tends to do a lot to everyone once he’s dead-set on an idea. His stubbornness is equal parts infuriating and inspiring. Vin decides she’ll wait to see where he lands today. “If you’re burning pewter, you’re naturally enhancing your innate dexterity. Of which you’ve got a lot, by the way.”
He pauses, as if expecting a response from Vin. She keeps her mouth closed.
Kelsier says, “And if you’re wearing a dress, it’s as if you’re restricting that dexterity of yours, yes? So it’s almost like reverse Allomancy?”
“This seems far too complicated an analogy for—”
“So,” Kelsier continues, a bit louder, though that might just be to be heard over the clatter outside Clubs’ shop. Luthadel’s a noisy place. “You’ve just got to think about it that way. Grace isn’t something you think about, Vin, it’s something that you—and here I mean you specifically, not
you
in a universal sense—just naturally embody. But when you’re dancing in those dresses, from what I’ve heard, you have to actually put your mind to it. So it really
isn’t
all that different from Allomantic training, is it? There’s a reserve of dance skills inside your stomach; you just have to work to master burning it in a tenable and productive way.”
Kelsier looks very pleased with himself and his bullshit metaphor. Vin thinks that the bullshit metaphor is, well, bullshit, so she keeps her face blank. And she stays silent for five long inhales and exhales, because she’s learned that if she keeps silent, usually someone else talks to fill the silence.
Kelsier, talkative as he is, does not take her bait. Perhaps they’ve spent long enough around each other that he’s picked up on her tricks. That thought is not nearly as upsetting as it would have been a few months ago, or even a few weeks ago, and instantly, Vin thinks, you’re getting weak. You’re letting your guard down. You’re standing unarmed in front of a man who’s got a thousand daggers .
She pushes that thought aside as quickly as she can, though. As obnoxious and needlessly verbose as he is, Kelsier might have a point. Vin knows she’s capable of being a good dancer, because absolutely all of the skills required are skills she already has. She’s quick on her feet; she’s got a sharp memory; she is a well-practiced con artist.
It’s just. Well. Dresses.
Dresses.
So she says, “Okay. But… dresses.”
“Ah, we’re back to the dresses. Vin, you can’t attend a dance in a shirt and trousers.”
“No matter how much I’d like that,” she grumbles.
“Nor could you even attend in a suit. Though, honestly, you and your unconventional fashion tastes might not look too bad in it. But no matter. A woman in a suit in high society is an insane thought, and though I’m sure you’d have a bit of an easier time stepping around in men’s clothes—”
Vin nods, not at all dispassionately.
“—that isn’t an option. So you have to learn not to fight the dresses.”
“I don’t like the dresses, though,” Vin says petulantly. “Also, they’re tricky.”
Kelsier considers her obstinacy for a moment, then launches himself off the table and lands nimbly on his feet next to her. Snapping his fingers, he says, “I’ve got an idea. How about you wear a dress when you go out training with me tonight?”
Not for the first time, Vin thinks that Kelsier must be absolutely, incurably insane. “What,” she says. And then she takes another long drink of ale, because, by the Lord Ruler, she sure as hell is going to need it if he continues talking his way down this absurdly pothole-riddled path.
“It’s combining something you’re good at with something you’re not, so it’ll effectively cancel out, won’t it? And if you can chase me about the streets of Luthadel in a dress, you can surely dance in one.”
“Wouldn’t it be more prudent,” Vin says slowly, just to ensure that Kelsier properly hears her and takes in her words and stops being so insane, “to simply practice dancing some more.”
“It would,” Kelsier says, tapping the side of his nose. “However, someone—”
“You can say Sazed, Kelsier.”
“—someone tells me you avoid dance practice like the plague.”
Vin shrugs uncomfortably. “Like I said. The dresses.”
“ Which brings us back to my idea,” Kelsier says grandly. “I think it’s a brilliant one.”
You would , Vin thinks. She says nothing.
“If you really hate it, we can just practice dancing itself,” Kelsier offers.
Vin puts her ale down mid-drink. “That’s not fair, though. That wasn’t on the agenda for my time in Luthadel. That’s a Fellise activity; Luthadel is for Mistborn training and Fellise is for Valette training.”
“I don’t see why we can’t switch things up a bit. Tonight we’ll dance.”
“But that’s– Kelsier, that’s unwise,” Vin says. Better to appeal to the small bit of rationale he has than to blunt-force attack him. Vin knows better to think she could beat Kelsier in a battle of sheer stubbornness. “It’s a waste of a night that could be used teaching me how to be a better Mistborn.”
“And it’s another night geared towards ensuring you play your assigned part in this whole operation as best as possible,” Kelsier’s quick to counter. “Remember, your role is to be our man—or, really, woman , I suppose—on the inside. That’s your primary objective: being Lady Valette. Being our mole. Being able to dance is a much more valuable skill for a proper lady to have than being able to toss around coins by sheer force of will, no?”
Vin crosses her arms. “I’m not going to end up having much of a say in this matter, aren’t I.”
“You’re a bright girl, Vin,” Kelsier says, and Vin snorts derisively. “But I’m willing to make a compromise. If you do a bit of dancing practice now—”
“Now? I was going to rest!”
“You barely ever rest,” Kelsier says, which is true. Vin’s not one for mid-afternoon naps. Still, she might have tried to take one. It’s easier to fall asleep with ale in her system. Not that one cup of it does much, even to her tiny frame, but that’s beside the point. It’s more about the principle of the thing than the nature of it.
By the Lord Ruler , she thinks, shaking her head in disbelief. These men have me arguing with myself like some long-dead moral philosopher. It’s ridiculous!
“So,” Kelsier says, “we can do a bit of dancing practice now, and then tonight we’ll properly go out training again.”
This makes Vin perk up a bit. Kelsier’s been frustratingly light-handed with her since her injury, and she very much wants to get back to the maelstrom of chaos and coin-tossing that her nights in the mists once were.
“You have a deal,” Vin says. “But don’t even think about suggesting I wear a dress out for training again. In what situation would I be wearing one of those things and having to leap around on bars of iron and steel?”
“You never know,” Kelsier says. “It’s good to prepare for any situation. Besides, maybe one day you’ll grow to like ‘those things’.”
“I won’t,” is Vin’s definitive response. “So. I’ve tolerated your allegories about Allomancy and dancing, and now I’ll tolerate dancing practice, and in return, you’ll bring me out for training—proper Mistborn training—again tonight.”
Kelsier abruptly sticks out his hand, which causes Vin to take a step backward.
“Easy,” he says. “We’re shaking on the deal.”
Vin grasps his hand. Hers is tiny in comparison, and their arms, extended outward, could not look more different. One’s a tanned mess of white lines; one’s a malnourished, pallid, much less scarred stick.
They shake.
“Dox dropped off a new dress this morning,” Kelsier says. “It should be in the back room.”
“So you’ve been planning this,” Vin says, wagging a finger in his face. “You knew all along that you were going to talk me into dancing if I wanted to go back to training.”
“Would you have expected anything less?”
And, well. Vin doesn’t have anything to say to that, because no. No, she would not.
The dress in the back room is a relatively simple thing, thankfully. It’s deep green, the color she’s been told things like trees once were, and it brushes her ankles. The bodice is uncomfortably tight, more so than usual, but the neck is high, which is nice. Vin hates when dresses have shockingly low-cut necks. It’s not as if she’s got much to show off in the first place, and what she does have she’s fine keeping out of sight of the eyes of noblemen.
There’s a white sort of underlayer situation that pokes out the top of her dress as a puffy collar and reaches down to her wrists, cinched at the thinnest point and held in place by a series of green-painted buttons. Other than a bit of white piping along the hem of the dress and at the waist, it’s overall not too ornate of a contraption. She’s fine to get inside it herself, and the skirt is blessedly unobtrusive as skirts go, with only a few layers working to impede her mobility. A hat that goes with it is resting on a nearby shelf, but it’s a silly piece that, at a real dance, Vin would probably forgo in favor of accentuating her short hair with clips as she usually does, so she leaves it be.
When she comes back out, Kelsier’s standing by the table. He’s rolled his sleeves down and put on a jacket (procured from who knows where), buttoning the top two buttons in the fashion of a nobleman. He gives her a smile, and it’s an unsettlingly natural thing, stretching across his face and warming Vin from the depths of her uncomfortably-boxed-in-chest.
“You look wonderful, Vin,” he says earnestly.
“Thank you,” is her hesitant response. She always feels off-balance in the face of… things like this. The affection Kelsier has for her is confusing and illogical, because she’s a kid and a liability and a man such as him should not care so much about her, but she’s trying her best to understand it. And even if she’s never able to do that, she’s trying her best to at least appreciate it.
Kelsier bows dramatically. “May I have this dance, Lady Valette?”
Vin’s about to say yes, but then she pauses. “Do you even know how to dance?”
“Good question,” Kelsier laughs. “I am obviously not a big frequenter of balls, but I know enough to get by, if the situation were ever to call for it. Besides, the best way to learn is to teach, or so I’ve been told, so I’m alright letting you take the reins here. Which doesn’t mean you’re to dance the man’s part,” he’s quick to explain. “That would be a bad habit for you to get into.
But, my Lady Valette, it’s time for you to tell me what you’ve learned.”
Vin steps forward. She’s wearing new shoes, too, and they pinch her toes and cause her to almost trip over her own feet, and she instinctively goes to burn pewter to right herself, but at the last second thinks better of it. As Kelsier said, she’s got innate skill enough to keep herself upright. So keep herself upright she does.
“There’s no music playing,” she says.
“You’ll make do with the music of the city,” Kelsier responds, which is an absurd thing to say, but it’s a very Kelsier thing to say, so Vin doesn’t react more than to tsk once with humor.
She takes one of his hands in her own and puts her other hand on her shoulder. His hand at her waist feels massive, because she’s much more used to doing this with men about her age, men who have spent more time at dinners and parties than doing manual labor and getting physically fit. Still, she gets a feeling of grounding here that she never gets at any dances. And her body, though it’s still shouting at her with sixteen years of instincts that want her to run away from a strong man and his grip on her, protests less to Kelsier’s touch than it does to the hands that lords will place on her shoulder as they talk, or the fingers that graze her side as she walks from table to table gathering gossip and keeping an eye out for—
This is not the time to think about that Elend boy. She derails that train of thought before it can go much further.
“Okay,” Vin says. “So, since you’re the man—”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously. Since you’re the man, you’re the one who has to take the first step, naturally. You lead; I follow. And I’m sure you know this already, but you said to teach, so—”
“Vin,” Kelsier cuts in. He squeezes her hand lightly. “Over-explain all you’d like. You can never be too detailed.”
Vin nods, her hair flying forward in a sheet of dark, choppy brown. “You lead and I follow. We’re doing a box step, and we’re doing it on a one-two-three-pause-four-five-six rhythm. In an ideal situation, we’d have free reign to turn about the floor in whichever direction you direct me—or I direct you, if I’m subtle enough and you’re stupid enough, which I’ve found men often are—”
Kelsier coughs, which Vin is pretty sure is his way of covering up a laugh.
“—but this is obviously not an ideal situation.” Vin juts her chin forward and around, pointing in her own way at the clutter of chairs and tables that litter the floor of the shop. “So we’ll have to be careful.”
“Tell me how to box step,” Kelsier says.
“It’s the base of the majority of dances,” Vin recites. “The man steps forward with his leading foot—”
At this, Kelsier steps forward with his right foot, and Vin steps backward with her left. “And the woman follows?”
“You’re a quick learner,” Vin says.
“I come by it naturally,” Kelsier responds, smiling again at her, and Vin feels an overwhelming urge to deflect before the conversation gets any more… kind.
“Next you step to the side with your left and then follow that up by closing the step with your right.”
Kelsier does that; Vin follows.
“And then we take a brief pause. Up-tempo it’s briefer, of course.”
“Of course,” Kelsier parrots, a glimmer in his eye.
Vin just barely holds herself back from sticking her tongue out at him. “And then you essentially reverse the situation. You do what I did at the start: you step back with your left, side with your right, then close your left to your right. And then pause again, and then repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat.”
They begin to dance. It’s a bit of an awkward situation, considering Vin has to direct her dresses away from stray furniture legs and Kelsier’s less-than-practiced feet, but Vin’s nothing if not adroit, so she manages. They box-step around the room as a pair, and Vin feels, without the judgmental eyes of a crowd, without the focus on keeping the mask of Lady Valette up, like this is something easy.
They flow through a few other steps relatively quickly. Kelsier’s easy to “teach” because he already has a semi-decent understanding of how formal dancing works, so they rapidly progress to dancing an actual, real, multi-step dance in between the tables and chairs in a shop in Luthadel, and it feels, to Vin, that this is what dancing was made for. Friends and family and the freedom to laugh at Kelsier when he makes a dumb joke, or when he accidentally steps on her toes. It doesn’t need to be all laces and corsets and high-society politicking; maybe it should just be for fun.
“See?” Kelsier says, interrupting her thoughts. He steps away from her, still holding her hand, and spins her twice before pulling her back in. “You’re great at dancing.”
“To you, perhaps. In comparison to a nobleman, though?”
“What, are you saying I’m not as worthy as they are to judge you, Lady Valette? Now that’s a social faux pas if ever I saw one. Also, you seem to be doing fine in the dress.”
Vin smiles. It’s a secretive, precious thing. “It’s easier here with you than it is in a ballroom with all those people around.”
“ What, amongst the tables and dirt? You’re a strange one,” Kelsier says.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Do you take out the earring for social events?”
“Not if I can help it,” Vin says. She steps back and to the side, altering her stance against Kelsier slightly, and, following her guidance, Kelsier slips into a different step.
It’s surprisingly easy to lead from the follower’s position. Vin’s gotten decently good at it. Not good enough, obviously, because she in general is not yet good enough, but she’s improving. It’s easier when she spends the night dancing with just a few men, or just one, because then they get lazy.
“The second dance is always the most difficult,” she finds herself saying.
Kelsier looks down at her, very clearly delighted by the fact that she’s initiating conversation about a frivolous topic. “Whatever do you mean by that, Lady Valette?”
“Oh, are we playacting now?”
“Indeed,” Kelsier says.
That’s fine. That’s good, actually, because Vin’s gotten great at separating Vin and Lady Valette , and to practice dancing as Vin is an entirely different matter than to practice dancing as Lady Valette. So she straightens her spine and forces her shoulders to relax just a touch and says, “Well, Lord Kelsier. The first dance I take with a man tends to be a jumble of nerves on both ends. I don’t know if the man will have too tight a grip, or step on my skirts—”
“I could never imagine a man stepping on a lady’s skirt,” Kelsier says, nimbly avoiding Vin’s layers of green silk.
Vin tilts her head up and gives him a stern look, at which he says, “I apologize for interrupting. Do forgive my impropriety.”
Impropriety . He certainly is a dramatic one . “And the man must be wondering if I’m at all a good follower, or if I’ll get confused, or be too domineering. It’s just a mess of not-knowing and getting-to-know. So typically for the first dance, I’m on equal footing with my partner. By the second, though, we’ll have figured each other out.”
“And then it’s just a question of who is a better dancer?” Kelsier asks. He drops her waist and they pull out and back before meeting in the middle, touching hands, and doing a spin to each other's backs.
Vin puts her hand back on his shoulder. “It’s a question of who is a better dance partner ,” she corrects. “There’s a difference. But once we get accustomed to each other, the man’s guard typically drops a bit, and he starts being less obsessive about if I’m as decent a dance partner as he was expecting.”
“What, do you distract him with your conversational skills?”
Vin raises an eyebrow at him. You’re not the end-all-be-all of charm!
“I mean that seriously!” he insists. “I’m sure those noblemen have never met a lady such as yourself.”
“Likely because I’m not a lady,” Vin laughs. She guides him subtly, turning so that they circle around one table and end up moving counterclockwise instead of clockwise.
“You play the part convincingly,” Kelsier assures her. “And– Vin, did you just bring us over to this side of the room without my knowing?”
“Not without it,” she says. “As you’re clearly in the know of it now.”
“You are good,” Kelsier says. “But try and stay a bit more on your toes when you move. Most of the ladies wear heels, and I know throwing your weight forward feels a bit off-balanced, but that’s what the men would be accustomed to.”
Vin nods in understanding. She’s feeling more comfortable in herself and her talents with each passing minute. She was able to direct Kelsier while still letting him lead, and he likely only noticed it—and after the fact, to boot!—because they’re alone in the shop.
I should have known he was up to something when it was just the two of us in here on our own, she thinks. Clubs’ shop is never empty without reason.
Her lack of foresight aside, though, she’s quite proud with her deft manipulation of Kelsier’s movements. Damn him for his unnecessary rant about dancing as Allomancy, but it feels a bit like she’s managed to Soothe without burning brass. And here, there are no loud gossips to distract Kelsier, no glittering lights and plates of food. In a real dance, he never would have realized what she was doing. In a real dance, she could have literally waltzed her way next to a figure of some political interest and overheard their chatter.
It’s not a real dance, though, and Vin’s grateful for that. She’s enjoying dancing around with her… well, Vin doesn’t know if she believes that one can really ever have friends —or at least that she can’t, not in good conscience—but Kelsier is certainly her ally. She doesn’t hesitate to think he has her back. And that’s more than she can confidently say she’s had in many, many years.
“If you don’t attend balls, what use do you have for dancing?” Vin asks.
Kelsier gets a look in his eye, misty and far-off, and Vin instantly feels supremely uncomfortable. She highly doubts he’s about to cry, but he looks dangerously close to expressing some sort of similar emotion, and Vin does not know—nor does she want to know—how to handle a thirty-eight-year-old man’s tears.
“Dancing is fun. I know less about the proper steps and order than you do at this point,” he says, and if Vin had heard that a few months ago, she would have thought she’d woken up in some absurd alternate universe, “but that doesn’t matter. Dancing is… well, I think you should dance with people you care about.”
“I don’t care about most of the people at those balls,” Vin says bluntly.
“And you certainly don’t have to care about them for any reason beyond mercenary or political. You shouldn’t, really.”
Vin squashes a tiny, tiny bit of Elend-shaped guilt that springs up in her heart at that. It’s tiny, though. Very small.
“Dancing is fun,” Kelsier says again. “Simply put—which is not something I do often, so take what I’m saying seriously—the use I have for dancing is to be able to share my affection with my friends.”
He pauses his movement, the two of them static beings in the midst of a city of movement.
“Mare was a pretty dancer,” Kelsier says. “Not good , really, because none of us actually knew any formal steps; we had no reason to, nor did we have a good enough way to really learn. But– she was a pretty dancer.”
And that’s enough of an answer for Vin. She squeezes his hand and takes a step back, and they begin their box-step once again.
After a few more rotations about the shop, Kelsier drops her hand and her waist and grabs a nearby chair. Spinning it around, he sits so that his legs are straddling either side it, and he leans forward, his head atop his folded arms atop the top of the back of it. “So? Aren’t you glad we spent some time practicing?”
“No,” Vin lies.
Kelsier grins as if he can see right through her facade. Which he probably can. It’s infuriating. “Go change back into your shirt and trousers. We’ll have dinner, and then after that, it’s time to get back to training."