Marie made a faint scoffing noise. A victim. Bah. The traitor had said as much to her himself a few times over the years, mixed among pleas for her to please stop worshiping Ruin and be a tame Inquisitor. She could remember the hated spark of pity in his voice as well as the order of the seasons.
But before she could reply to Kelsier, the girl attacked. Marie was so surprised (stupid of her, but she really hadn't expected the Survivor to use the child in such a late play) that Zola was able to get her in a hold, and dropped something in her hood.
The hold was fairly bad; she suspected the girl had planned it on her own, without guidance on where to position herself to take down a Steel Inquisitor - or anyone, really. It was just her two arms thrown around her midsection. Marie easily hooked Zola's wrists and broke the hold, stepping swiftly back while ducking under her own arms and maneuvering the small Tineye's hands up and over. In a second Marie held her attacker's wrists in front of her; she shot a glance at the Survivor and released the girl, then skittered another couple steps backward. She hadn't burned pewter, so Zola shouldn't have been badly hurt.
Rusts, rusts, rust and rusting Ruin, it was a good thing Zola hadn't asked her caretakers for tips on fighting Marie, or she might have been able to pull out an eyespike and distract her long enough to get the linchpin too. Maybe the Survivor had intended for this to be practice for her? Simply sending the kid against an Inquisitor seemed like a rather harsh first lesson, but then he and that Mistborn of his had ventured into Kredik Shaw before he was a Fullborn or had the duralumin to take control. Marie shook her head involuntarily, thinking it. Still sounded like an idea likely to get you killed.
She dropped a coin, but didn't Push off yet. As before, if he wanted her dead she would be, unless Harmony deigned to stop him. And she could fight off a Tineye any day. So was this a message? A humiliation?
Never taking her eyespikes off either of the two, she fished in her hood for a moment for the dropped item. It felt like very thin paper wrapping something conical, but it had a slight line pointing to it. The weight wasn't right for it to be metal, though.