Chapter Eleven

A few things to watch out for. There might be an extra “Silver” or “Silvereye” stuck in the books somewhere.

If you read the annotations in the last book, you’ll know that I changed the Allomantic metal of silver into tin at the last minute. I couldn’t find a good alloy of silver, and though I liked “Silvereye” as a word much better than “Tineye” I decided to go with the choice that was more logical for worldbuilding, rather than the one that sounded better.

There could still be a spare silver or two hanging around in this book, since it was written before I made the swap. (I just found one in Book Three and got it changed right in time.)

Here we get the return of Breeze, a perennial favorite of the Mistborn world. He gets far more screen time–and depth of characterization–than Ham, Clubs, or Dockson do. You just can’t develop everyone. (Especially if you’re not George R. R. Martin.) I did my best with the side characters, and Breeze and Spook turned out the best, in my opinion. You’ll see more of both of them, and learn more about them, as the series moves along.

I love this rescue scene, and I got to use the “Vin splits and arrow with its own arrowhead” scene, which was one of the coolest moments in Mistborn Prime. (Long story. Read the Mistborn 1 annotations.) There’s a certain arrogant flare to this scene, and it ends up working quite well, I think.

Kandra are a race that will also get a lot of development as the series progresses. During the development of this book, I tried to resist using the ‘there’s a spy among us’ plot, but in the end, I just couldn’t do it. The pieces were all there, and I wanted to play with the concepts of trust and reliability.

In the first book, Vin learned to trust. She learned that it was better to trust and be betrayed than to suspect everyone. The nice twist on that in book one was that there WAS no traitor in the book. Everyone stayed true to Kelsier and his vision.

So, in this book, I had to sew seeds of distrust. I wanted Vin to have to deal with those problems again, and really have to confront her suspicions and paranoia. The only way to do that was to have her begin suspecting members of the crew.

Besides, you don’t just put in a race of shapeshifters then ignore the tension of people wondering if someone they know has been replaced. That would just be irresponsible.