Three months out of the Pits of Hathsin and newly Snapped as a Mistborn, Kelsier rides north into the Western Dominance with the volatile, half-mad Allomancer Gemmel to break into Keep Shezler in the city of Mantiz. In the keep's hidden underground laboratory they find a group of skaa prisoners Lord Antillius Shezler has been torturing in his hunt for half-breed Allomancers and a theoretical eleventh metal. Shezler, the trained duellist, faces Kelsier on his own ground and is killed when Kelsier rides his pewter through the duelling cane and finishes him with a shard of glass. Gemmel digs Shezler's notebook out of the lab and Kelsier takes it with him as they shepherd the surviving skaa back into the night. The numb hole left by Mare's betrayal closes a fraction and Kelsier begins, for the first time, to think a plan bigger than vengeance.