The following is commentary, written by Brandon, about one of the chapters of MISTBORN: THE WELL OF ASCENSION. If you haven’t read this book, know that the following will contain major spoilers. We suggest reading the sample chapters from book one instead. You can also go to this book’s introduction or go to the main annotations page to access all annotations for all books. For those who have read some of MISTBORN 2, any spoilers for the ending of this book will be hidden, so as long as you’ve read up to this chapter, you should be all right.

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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Zane’s Plan

For those of you trying to figure it out, this is Zane’s plan: First, he got a group of untraceable Allomancers from his father. Then, he got a couple of them onto Cett’s staff as serving men to work the kitchens. Vin saw these men, and associated them with Cett.

Then, Zane had them attack her in a public place, where he was counting on her to completely slaughter them. This gave Zane two potential gains. First off, people are always shocked when they see brutality–even when that brutality comes while protecting them. Zane expected Vin’s effectiveness to work against her with the Assemblymen and with Elend, making them scared of her.

Secondly, he now knows that Vin–hopefully–will connect the assassins to Cett, not Straff. She saw one of them on Cett’s staff. Zane can divert blame for the attack onto Cett, thereby helping his father secure the city. A win-win situation, execpt for the six half-brothers Zane just let get killed.

Zane and Straff meet with Penrod in the night

We haven’t had a Straff Viewpoint in a while, though from here out they get a little more frequent. Mostly, I had to include this to let you know why the merchants switched sides, and to give you a little hint of what was going on behind the scenes in places the heroes couldn’t see.

I also wanted to remind you of Zane’s penchant for poisioning his father, and Straff’s own use of that mistress to heal him. This entire plot cycle (with the poisoning) was a late addition to the book in the revision process, added to give more dynamic between Zane and his father.

The really funny thing about all of this posturing, searching, and threatening in order to get the atium is this: atium is worthless. Or, rather, it only has worth as long as people give it worth.

In the minds of all of the characters, this cache is a fabulous treasure. Don’t judge them too harshly–think how hard it would for you to pass up gold or diamonds, even if you were in the middle of a catastrophy. That’s what’s going on here. They still see atium as being incredibly valuable, even though the truth is that it was only valuable because the Lord Ruler made it so much a foundation of his economy.

True, atium can be used by Mistborn to do some pretty amazing things. However, you don’t need a whole cache for that. Zane has proven that he has enough atium to kill Vin if he wants, and so more really isn’t nessissary for the Ventures.

Another worry, however, is that there eniemes will get it–and that will let the enemies use their Mistborn to assassinate without as much fear of repercussion.