"I am doing the emotion bubble. I do it because I've tried different things over the centuries, and this is remarkably effective. If I stopped, there wouldn't be immediate riots in the streets but the marginal crime would be committed instead of not, and removing the happiness part would have the obvious negative effects. Order gets weakened, and a lot of people get unnecessarily hurt.

And I'm looking for Allomancers. Especially ones not attached to any noble house. They're powerful people and good to know about, so I can capture the ones who need capturing and try to recruit the ones who don't. In case of capital crimes, I do have a way of preserving part of the power and distributing it. This forms a part of the motivation for focussing on people with Allomancy, but by no means all.

The rest of the magic I'm doing affects only myself. Keeping myself a bit faster, stronger, more awake, and also alive.

I'm not doing anything urgent right now other than magic—" he tries and fails to gesture toward the fact that he's holding a book— "as most of the direct ruling is done by the various Ministries. I do handle cases that skip through the bureaucracy for one reason or another, and I set general policy. But neither of those is likely to matter on a scale of hours."

So he didn't have to tell her he's not burning copper. Interesting. There probably won't be any Inquisitors burning brass or zinc close enough right now, but the fact that they could conceivably see the extremely unprecedented fear coming from this room is something.