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Rlain said. “First off, why have you been keeping quiet when you could speak?” “I…” “He don’t gotta say nothin’ if he don’t wanna,” Lift said. She’d found their rations already, and was eating. Wow. “He’s Bridge Four,” Rlain said. “We’re family. Family doesn’t lie to one another.” “I’m sorry,” Dabbid said softly. “I just … didn’t want you to know I’m … different.” “We’re all different,” Rlain said, folding his arms. Storms, he was so frightening in carapace armor. “I’m more different,” Dabbid said. “I … I was born different.” “You mean born … you know … an idiot?” Rlain said. Dabbid winced. He hated that word, though Rlain didn’t use it hatefully. It was just a word to him. “Touched,” Lift said. “I’ve known lotsa kids like him on the street. They don’t think the same way as everyone else. It happens.” “It happens,” Dabbid agreed. “It happened to me. But you didn’t know. So you couldn’t treat me like I was … wrong. You know about being extra different, right Rlain?” “I guess I do,” he said. “You shouldn’t feel that you have to hide what you are though.” “I will be fixed,” Dabbid said, “when I get a spren. Becoming Radiant will heal me, because my brain isn’t supposed to be like this. I was hurt after I was born. The tower said so.” “The tower?” Rlain asked. “The tower can talk,” Lift said. “It’s a spren.” “And it promised to heal you, Dabbid?” He nodded. Though it hadn’t said that in so many words. He wondered now if it had been lying. The queen hadn’t been pleased by how he’d snuck around, doing tasks for the Sibling. Maybe he should be more suspicious. Even of spren. But someday … when he was Radiant … Rlain dug out a new set of blankets for Kaladin from the pile. Dabbid had washed those earlier, as he’d wanted something to do. They got Kaladin untangled from the sweaty ones, then wrapped him in— “What in storming Damnation are you fools doing?” a gruff voice said from behind them. Dabbid froze. Then turned around slowly. Lift was perched on the end of Teft’s shelf, absently munching on a ration bar—Soulcast grain, cooked and pressed. She was pulling her hand back from Teft’s exposed foot, Stormlight curling off her body. Teft, in turn, was pushing himself up to sit. Teft was awake. Dabbid let out a whoop and leaped up. Rlain just started humming like he did sometimes. “What?” Lift said. “Wasn’t I supposed to heal the stinky one too?” “Stinky?” Teft said, looking under his blanket. “Where in Damnation are my clothes? What happened to me? We were at the tavern, right? Storms, my head.” “You can wake the Radiants?” Rlain asked, rushing over and seizing Lift by the arms. “Why didn’t you say something?” “Huh?” she said. “Look, shellhead, I’ve been in a stormin’ cage. My spren vanished, said he was going to try to get help, and I ain’t heard from him since. Bet he joined the Voidbringers, storming
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traitor. I don’t know what’s been goin’ on in the tower. What’s wrong with the others?” “In a cage?” Teft said. “Why? And where are my storming clothes?” “There’s a lot to explain, Teft,” Rlain said. “The tower is occupied by the enemy and…” He stopped, then frowned, glancing toward Kaladin. Kaladin … Kaladin was stirring. They all hushed. Even Teft. Kaladin blinked and opened his eyes. He grew tense, then saw Rlain and Dabbid and relaxed, taking a deep breath. “Is this a dream?” he whispered. “Or am I finally awake?” “You’re awake, Kal,” Rlain said, kneeling to take Kaladin by the shoulder. “Thank the purest tones. You’re awake. It worked.” Dabbid stepped back as Teft said something, causing Kaladin to sit up—then laugh in joy. It had worked. Dabbid wasn’t Radiant. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t smart. But today he hadn’t been stupid either. Once, Kaladin had pulled Dabbid out of Damnation itself. It felt good to return that act of heroism with a small one of his own. As the war with the humans progressed, Venli became increasingly certain she’d made the correct decision. How could her people, after generations of stagnation, hope to stand by themselves in the world? If recent reports were true, the humans had Surgebinders again, like those spoken of in the songs. Ulim was right. A bigger war than this was coming. Venli’s people needed to be prepared. Venli stood with folded arms, attuned to Confidence as she watched a listener warband return from a raid. Eshonai and her soldiers had won the day, and they brought a large gemheart with them. Eshonai herself delivered it up to Denshil, their head of farming. Her warriors didn’t look like victors. Bloody, wounded, their ancient weapons sagging in their grips as if weighted by groundspren. More than a few of the soldiers walked alone. Warpairs who had lost a member. Venli watched with hidden glee. Surely they were close to breaking. If she could bring them a form of power … would they accept it? Venli remembered her hesitance, and weakness, when she’d started along this path years ago. She’d been technically a youth then, though fully grown. Now she was an adult. She saw as an adult did. She turned and cut through a side street of the ancient city, passing large crem-covered walls like tall ridges of natural stone. You’d have to cut deep with a Shardblade to find the worked stone at the heart. This was the more direct way, so she was waiting as Denshil walked past with the gemstone. He was scrawny even when wearing workform, and had a pattern of black and red skin that looked like true marblework, all rough and coarse. He jumped as he saw Venli. “What are you doing,” he hissed to Anxiety as she walked along beside him. “Acting naturally,” she said. “I’m head of our scholars. It’s normal for me to visit our farmers and see how their work is progressing.” He still acted nervous, but at least he attuned Peace as they walked.
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It didn’t matter. They passed few listeners on the streets. All who weren’t absolutely needed as farmers, caretakers, or other essential workers had joined Eshonai. In a perfect bit of poetry, this ensured that the bravest of the listeners—those most likely to resist Venli when she brought them stormform—fought on the front lines each day, dying. Each corpse brought Venli one step closer to her goal. She’d stopped pretending this was only about protecting her people. As she’d grown into herself and become more confident, she’d decided what she truly wanted. True freedom—with the power to make certain she’d never have to be dependent upon anyone else, listener or spren. True freedom couldn’t exist while someone else had power over you. So yes, her work was about helping her people, in part. But deep within her—where the rhythms began—Venli promised herself that she would be the one who obtained the most freedom. “How goes your work?” Venli asked to Confidence. Denshil’s rhythm slipped to Anxiety again. Foolish farmer. He’d better not give them away. “The others believe me,” he said softly, “and they should. I’m not saying anything that’s a lie, really. If we cut these gemhearts like the humans do, they hold more Stormlight. But I don’t mention the extra bits I cut off before delivering the faceted stone to the fields.…” “How much have you saved?” “Several hundred gemstones.” “I need more,” Venli said. He blatantly attuned Irritation. “More? What crazy rhythm are you listening to?” “We need one for every listener in the city.” “I can’t,” he said. “If you—” “You can,” Venli said to Reprimand. “And you will. Cut the gemstones smaller. Give less to the fields.” “And if we end up starving because of it? Gemstones break, you know, when you sing to them. We will run out.” “We won’t live long enough to starve, Denshil. Not if the humans get here. Not if they find your children and take away their songs…” The malen attuned Longing immediately. The listeners had few children these days. Most had stopped taking mateform years ago, and they had never been as fecund a people as the humans apparently were. “Think how you could improve,” Venli said. “For them, Denshil. For your daughter.” “We should bring this to the Five,” he said. “We will. You can watch me bring the proposal to them. This will be done properly—you and I are simply preparing the way.” He nodded, and Venli let him rush on ahead to the ancient building where he practiced gem cutting—an art Ulim had taught him. Say a name on the breeze and it will return, she thought, noting a red light glowing from within an old abandoned building. They’d had to cut the window out to get to the structure inside. She strolled over, and Ulim stepped out onto the windowsill—invisible to everyone but those he chose. “You’ve learned to lie very well,” he said to Subservience. “I have,” she said. “Are we ready?” “Close,” he said. “I feel the storm on the other side. I think it’s
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nearly here.” “You think?” Venli demanded. “I can’t see into Shadesmar,” he snapped to Derision. She didn’t quite understand his explanations of what was happening. But she knew a storm was mounting in Shadesmar. In fact, the storm had been building for generations—growing in fury, intensity. It barred the way to Damnation. That storm was where Ulim had originally come from. There were also thousands of another kind of spren in the storm: stormspren. Mindless things like windspren or flamespren. Venli had to find a way to pull those stormspren across and capture them. To that end, a large portion of the roiling storm had been broken off by the god of gods, the ancient one called Odium. This storm was his strength, his essence. Over painful months, he’d moved the storm across the landscape—unseen—until it arrived here. Kind of. Almost. “What will happen,” Venli asked to Curiosity, “when my storm comes to this world?” “Your storm?” “I am the one who summons it, spren,” she said. “It is mine.” “Sure, sure,” he said. A little too quickly, and with too many hand gestures. He had grown obsequious over the last few years—and liked to pretend that his betrayal of her in the Kholinar palace had never happened. “When this storm comes, you will serve me,” Venli said. “I serve you now.” “Barely. Promise it. You’ll serve me.” “I will serve,” he said. “I promise it, Venli. But we have to bring the stormspren to this side first. And persuade the listeners to take the forms.” “The second will not be a problem.” “You’re too certain about that,” he said. “Remember, they killed the Alethi king to prevent this from happening. Traitors.” He got hung up on that idea. Though he’d been the one to whisper about the location of the slave with the Honorblade—and he’d agreed to help start a war to make her people desperate—he could not get over the reasoning her people had used. Ulim hadn’t found out about Eshonai’s experience with King Gavilar until weeks later, and he’d been livid. How dare the listeners do exactly what he wanted, but for the wrong reason! Foolish little spren. Venli attuned Skepticism—and almost felt something different, something more. A better rhythm. Right outside her reach. “Focus less on that,” Venli said. “And more on your duties.” “Yes, Venli,” he said, voice cooing as he spoke to Subservience. “You’re going to be amazed by the power you get from stormform. And the massive storm you’ll bring through? It will be unlike anything the world has ever seen. Odium’s raw power, blowing across the world in the wrong direction. It will devastate the humans, leave them broken and easily conquered. Ripe for your domination, Venli.” “Enough,” she said. “Don’t sell it so hard, Ulim. I’m not the child you found when you first arrived here. Do your job, and get the storm into position. I’ll capture the stormspren.” “How, though?” How. “They are the spren of storms, right?” “Well, a storm,” Ulim said. “In the past, they mostly spent their time inside
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gemhearts. Odium would directly bless the singer, making them a kind of royalty. They didn’t really wander about much.” Royalty? She liked the sound of that. She smiled, imagining how Eshonai would act toward her then. “My scholars are confident,” Venli said. “From what you’ve told them, and the experiments we’ve done with other kinds of spren, we think if we can gather a small collection of stormspren in gemstones, others will get pulled through more easily.” “But we need that initial seed!” Ulim said. “How?” She nodded to the sky, where her imaginings had brought forth a gloryspren. An enormous brilliant sphere, with wings along the sides. “Those pop in when we think the proper thoughts. Feel the right things. So, what brings stormspren?” “A storm…” Ulim said. “It might work. Worth trying.” They’d have to experiment. Even with his help, it had taken several tries to figure out nimbleform—and that was a relatively easy form. Still, she was pleased with their progress. Yes, it had taken far, far longer than she’d anticipated. But over those many years, she’d become the person she was now. Confident, like her younger self had never been. She turned to make her way toward where her scholars studied the songs, written in the script she’d devised. Unfortunately, she soon spotted a tall, armored figure heading her direction. Venli immediately turned down a side road, but Eshonai called to her. Venli attuned Irritation. Eshonai would follow her if she hurried on, so she slowed and turned. Venli’s sister looked so strange in Shardplate. It … well, it fit her. It supernaturally molded to her form, making space for her carapace, shaping itself to her figure, but it was more than that. To Venli, some of the warforms seemed like they were playing pretend—their faces didn’t match their new shape. Not Eshonai. Eshonai looked like a soldier, with a wider neck, powerful jaw and head, and enormous hands. Venli regretted encouraging Eshonai to visit the former Shardbearer. She hadn’t expected that years later, she’d feel dwarfed by her sister. Though much about Venli’s life was enviable now—she had position, friends, and responsibility—there was a part of her that wished she’d been able to obtain this without Eshonai also gaining high station. “What?” Venli asked to Irritation. “I have work to do today, Eshonai, and—” “It’s Mother,” Eshonai said. Venli immediately attuned the Terrors. “What about her? What’s wrong?” Eshonai attuned Resolve and led Venli quietly to their mother’s home on the outskirts of town. A small structure, but solitary, with plenty of room for gardening projects. Their mother wasn’t in the garden, working on her shalebark. She was inside lying on a hard cot, her head wrapped in a bandage. One of Venli’s scholars—Mikaim, who was their surgeon—stepped away from the cot. “It’s not bad,” she said. “Head wounds can be frightful, but it was little more than a scrape. The bigger worry is how afraid she was. I gave her something to help her sleep.” Venli hummed to Appreciation and Mikaim withdrew. Eshonai stood opposite Venli
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over the cot, her helmet under her arm, and for a time the two of them hummed together to the Lost. A rare moment when they both heard the same rhythm. “Do you know what happened?” Venli finally asked. “She was found wandering one of the outer plateaus. Frightened, acting like a little child. She didn’t respond to her own name at first, though by the time she got here she had recovered enough to begin answering questions about her childhood. She didn’t remember how she hurt herself.” Venli breathed deeply, and listened to the haunting Rhythm of the Lost, a violent beat with staccato notes. “We might need to confine her to her house,” Eshonai said. “No!” Venli said. “Never. We can’t do that to her, Eshonai. Imprisonment on top of her ailment?” Eshonai attuned Reconciliation, settling down on the floor, her Shardplate scraping softly. “You’re right, of course. She must be allowed to see the sky, look to the horizon. We can get her a servant perhaps. Someone to keep watch over her.” “An acceptable accommodation,” Venli said, lingering beside the cot. She really should check on her scholars. Eshonai leaned—gingerly, because her Plate was so heavy—against the wall. She closed her eyes, humming to Peace. It was forced, a little loud. She was trying to override other rhythms. She looks more like herself sitting like that, Venli thought idly, remembering Eshonai as a child. The sister who would pick Venli up when she scraped her knee, or who would chase cremlings with her. Eshonai had always seemed so vibrant—so alive. As if she’d been trying to burst out, her soul straining against the confines of a flawed body. “You always led me toward the horizon,” Venli found herself saying. “Even as children. Always running to the next hill to see what was on the other side…” “Would that we could return,” Eshonai said to the Lost. “To those ignorant days?” “To that joy. That innocence.” “Innocence is more false a god than the ones in our songs,” Venli said, sitting beside her sister. “People who chase it will find themselves enslaved.” Venli felt tired, she realized. She’d been spending far too many nights thinking of plans. And it would only get worse, as she needed to start going out into storms to trap stormspren. “I’m sorry I brought us to this,” Eshonai whispered to Reconciliation. “We’ve lost so many. How far will it go? All because I made a snap decision in a moment of tension.” “That sphere,” Venli said. “The one King Gavilar gave you…” They’d all seen it, though it had faded several months later. “Yes. A dark power. And he claimed to be seeking to return our gods.” Ulim had been nervous about Gavilar’s sphere. The little spren said Gavilar hadn’t been working with him, or any of Odium’s agents—indeed, he’d been hostile to them. So Ulim had no idea how he’d obtained Odium’s Light. “Maybe,” Venli said, “if the humans are seeking to contact our gods, perhaps we should explore the option too. Perhaps the
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things from our songs are—” “Stop,” Eshonai said to Reprimand. “Venli, what are you saying? You better than most should know the foolishness of what you say.” I’m always a fool to you, aren’t I? Venli attuned Irritation. Unfortunately, this was the Eshonai she’d come to know. Not the child who encouraged her. The adult who held her back, ridiculed her. “Sing the song with me,” Eshonai said. “‘Terrible and great they were, but—’” “Please don’t turn this into another lecture, Eshonai,” Venli said. “Just … stop, all right?” Eshonai trailed off, then hummed to Reconciliation. The two of them sat for a time, the light outside dimming as the sun drifted toward the horizon. Venli found herself humming to Reconciliation as well. She explored the rhythm, finding a complementary tone to Eshonai’s, seeking again—for a brief moment—to be in tune with her sister. Eshonai quietly changed to Longing, and Venli followed. And then, cautiously, Venli switched to Joy. Eshonai followed her this time. Together they made a song, and Venli began singing. It had been … well, years since she’d practiced the songs. She’d long ago stopped thinking of herself as the apprentice song keeper; they had plenty of others to uphold their traditions, now that they’d united the families. She still remembered the songs though. This was the Song of Mornings. A teaching song, meant to train a young child for more complex rhythms and songs. There was something satisfying about a simple song you could sing well. You could add your own complexity. And you could sing the song’s soul—rather than struggle with missed lyrics or failed notes. She let her voice drift off at the end, and Eshonai’s humming quieted. Dusk fell outside. The perfectly wrong time for the Song of Mornings. She loved that it had worked so well anyway. “Thank you, Venli,” Eshonai said. “For all that you do. You don’t get enough credit for having brought us these forms. Without warform, we wouldn’t stand a chance of resisting the humans. We’d probably be their slaves.” “I…” Venli tried to attune Confidence, but it slipped away from her. “As long as you and Demid know what I did, I suppose it doesn’t sting so much when others pass me over.” “Do you think you could find me a different form?” Eshonai said. “A form that would let me talk better, more diplomatically? I could go to the humans and explain what happened. Maybe I could speak with Dalinar Kholin. I feel like … like he might listen, if I could find him. If I could make my tongue work. They don’t hear the rhythms, and it’s so difficult to explain to them.…” “I can try,” Venli said, Pleading sounding in her ears. Why Pleading? She hadn’t attuned that. “Then maybe I could talk to you,” Eshonai said quietly, drooping from fatigue. “Without sounding like I’m trying to lecture. You’d know how I really feel. Mother would understand that I don’t try to run away. I just want to see…” “You’ll see it someday,” Venli promised. “You’ll
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see the whole world. Every vibrant color. Every singing wind. Every land and people.” Eshonai didn’t respond. “I … I’ve been doing things you might not like,” Venli whispered. “I should tell you. You’ll explain that what I’m doing is wrong though, and you’re always right. That’s part of what I hate about you.” But her sister had already drifted off. The stiff Shardplate kept her in a seated position, slumped against the wall, breathing softly. Venli climbed to her feet and left. That night, she went into the storm to hunt stormspren for the first time. Maybe if I remembered my life, I’d be capable of being confident like I once was. Maybe I’d stop vacillating when even the most simple of decisions is presented to me. The weather turned energetic by the time Adolin’s trial arrived. The honorspren he passed chatted more, and seemed to have more of a spring to their steps as they flowed toward the forum on the southern plane of Lasting Integrity. He couldn’t feel the weather, though Blended said it was like a faint drumming in the back of her mind, upbeat and peppy. Indeed, the inkspren seemed chattier. He felt more nervous than at his first ranked duel—and far less prepared. Legal terms, strategies, even the details of his political training all seemed distant as he walked down the steps to the amphitheater floor. As Blended had feared, the place was packed with honorspren. Many wore uniforms or other formal attire, though some wore loose, flowing outfits that trailed behind them as they walked. These seemed more free-spirited. Perhaps their presence would help the crowd turn to his side. Blended said that was important. The High Judge—being who he was—would likely listen to the mood of the crowd and judge accordingly. Adolin wished someone had explained to him earlier how fickle his judge would be. That might favor Adolin, fortunately: he could depend on some level of erratic behavior from Kelek, whereas the honorspren were basically all against him from the start. They didn’t boo as he reached the floor of the forum; they had too much decorum. They hushed instead. He found Shallan seated next to Pattern over on the left side. She pumped her fist toward him, and he had the impression she was Radiant at the moment. Kelek sat upon a thronelike seat with a bench before it, both built in among the forum’s tiers. The Herald seemed imposing, and Adolin was reminded that—despite the man’s odd behavior—Kelek was thousands of years old. Perhaps he would listen. “All right, all right,” Kelek said. “Human, get over there on the podium and stand there until this show finishes and we can execute you.” “Holy One,” an honorspren said from his side. “We do not execute people.” “What else are you going to do?” Kelek said. “You don’t have prisons, and I doubt he’ll care if you exile him. Hell, half the people in this place would regard escaping your presence to be a reward.” “We are building a proper holding cell,” the
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honorspren said, looking toward Adolin. “So he can be kept healthy and on display for years to come.” Wonderful, Adolin thought, stepping into the place indicated. The consequences of failure, however, had always been far bigger than his own life. The war needed Radiants, and Radiants needed spren. If Adolin failed, it meant leaving thousands of troops to die without proper support. He needed to stand here, tall and confident, and win this challenge. Somehow. He turned to face the crowd. According to Blended, today would be the worst of the days. Three witnesses against him. Tomorrow he’d get to have his say. “Very well,” Kelek said. “I suppose you need to give trial terms, Sekeir?” The bearded honorspren stood up. “Indeed, Honored One.” “Make it fast,” Kelek said. Adolin took a moment of enjoyment from the affronted way Sekeir received that injunction. The honorspren had likely planned a lengthy speech. “As you wish, Honored One,” Sekeir said. “Today, we enter a trial as demanded by this human, Adolin Kholin, to determine if he can bear the sins of the Recreance—where men killed their spren. Since this event happened, which no one disputes, then we must simply prove that we are wise to stay away from all humans as a result.” “Right, then,” Kelek said. “Human, this works for you?” “Not exactly, Honored One,” Adolin said, using the opening statement Blended had helped him prepare. “I did not agree to be tried for my ancestors. I agreed to be tried for myself. I told the honorspren I personally bear no blame for what humans did in the past. Because of that, I contend that the honorspren are acting dishonorably by ignoring my people’s pleas for help.” Kelek rubbed his forehead. “So we’re arguing over even the definitions? This doesn’t bode well.” “There is no argument,” Sekeir said. “Honored One, he says he wishes to bear no sins of his ancestors, and we should instead prove why he specifically can’t be trusted. But the Recreance is a large portion of why we cannot trust his kind! We set the terms when he entered: He would have to stand trial for all humankind. He can dissemble if he wishes, but he did enter our fortress, and therefore agreed to our terms.” Kelek grunted. “That makes sense. Human, you’re going to have to stand trial as he wishes. That said, I’ll keep your arguments in mind when I finally judge.” “I suppose I must agree,” Adolin said. Blended had warned him not to push too hard here. “So … trial by witness, right?” Kelek said. “I’m to listen to the arguments presented, then decide. Either the honorspren are being selfish, denying honor, and I should command them to go to the battlefield. Or I decide they’ve been wise, that humans are not worthy of trust—and we throw this man in a prison as an example?” “Yes, Honored One,” Sekeir said. “Great,” Kelek said. “I assume you had no lack of volunteers, Sekeir. Who is first?” “Amuna,” said the honorspren. “Come, and bear your witness.” The
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audience whispered quietly as a female spren rose from her spot on the front row. She wore a warrior’s pleated skirt and a stiff shirt. She was slender and willowy, and when she stepped she was as graceful as a leaf in the wind. Adolin recognized her; this was the spren to whom he’d been forced to surrender Maya on their first day in Lasting Integrity. He’d occasionally seen Amuna again during his daily visits to Maya. The two honorspren sitting beside her bore ragged clothing and scratched-out eyes like Maya’s. On a glowing honorspren’s face, the scratches made a stark contrast. “You all know me,” said the spren in the pleated skirt, “so I will speak for the benefit of Highprince Adolin. I am Amuna, and my duty is to care for the deadeyes in Lasting Integrity. We take their care very seriously.” “And the ones watching outside?” Adolin asked. He was allowed to talk during testimonies, though Blended had warned him to be careful. If he was too belligerent, the High Judge could order him gagged. And he had to be careful not to address the audience in a way that invited them to interrogate him. “We … cannot accept them all in, unfortunately,” Amuna said. “We had not thought to see so many. We have tried to invite in all of the honorspren deadeyes.” “Are there many?” Adolin asked. “In total? We have some twenty deadeyed honorspren in the fortress now, though there were some two thousand honorspren alive at the time of your betrayal. A single one survived.” “Syl,” Adolin said. “The Ancient Daughter was in a catatonic state,” Amuna said, “and was spared. But every other honorspren—every single one—had answered the call of the Radiants during the False Desolation. Can you understand the magnitude of that tragedy, Highprince Adolin? The murder of an entire species, all in one day? Absolute extermination, performed by the most intimate of friends? “We often encounter deadeyes wandering aimlessly in the barrens, or standing in the shallows of the ocean. We bring them here, give them Stormlight, care for them the best we can. Frequently, we can do only a little before they are summoned away to your world—where their corpses are used to continue your brutal murders!” She turned, gesturing toward the two deadeyes on the bench—and though she faced Adolin, her words were obviously for the crowd. They, not the High Judge, were the true adjudicators. “This is what you’d have us return to?” she demanded. “You say you aren’t the same people who lived so long ago, but do you honestly think you’re any better than them? I’d contend you are worse! You pillage, and murder, and burn. You spare no expense nor effort when given an opportunity to ruin another man’s life. If the ancient Radiants were not trustworthy, then how can you possibly say that you are?” Murmurs of assent washed through the crowd. They didn’t jeer or call as a human audience might—he’d suffered that during many a dueling bout. Blended had warned him not to
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say too much by way of defense today, but they seemed to want something from him. “Every man fails his own ideals,” Adolin said. “You are right. I am not the honorable man I wish that I were. But my father is. Can you deny that the Stormfather himself was willing to take a chance upon a man from this epoch?” “This is a good point,” Kelek said, leaning forward. “The Stormfather is all we have left of old Tanavast. I would not have thought to find his Bondsmith again, no indeed.” Amuna spun toward Adolin. “Do you know what would happen, Prince Adolin, if the Stormfather were to be killed?” Adolin paused, then shook his head. “A wise answer,” she said. “As no one knows. We were fortunate that no Bondsmiths existed at the time of the Recreance, though how the Sibling knew to end their bond early is a matter of dispute. I can only imagine the catastrophe that awaits us when your father kills his spren.” “He won’t,” Adolin said. “My father is no common man.” “Such could be said of all the Radiants in times past,” Amuna said, stepping toward him. “But now, I am the one who cares for the betrayed. I hear their voiceless sorrow; I see their sightless pain. I would have Lasting Integrity pulled down, stone by stone, before I agree to send a single honorspren to suffer a similar fate.” She bowed to Kelek, then turned and sat between the two deadeyes. They continued to sit, faces forward, motionless. Adolin ground his teeth and glanced to Shallan for support. At least there was one friendly face out in that crowd. He forced himself to remain standing, hands clasped behind him in the posture his father used when he wanted to appear commanding. He’d worn his best coat. For all it mattered. Storms, he felt exposed here on the floor, surrounded by all the glowing figures. This was worse than when he’d been alone in the dueling arena facing four Shardbearers. At least then he’d had his Blade in hand and Plate on his back. They waited for Kelek to call the next witness. The High Judge, instead, spent a good twenty minutes writing in his notebook. He was a divine being, like a kind of ardent, if magnified a thousand times. It wasn’t surprising to see him writing. Adolin just hoped the notes he was taking related to the testimony. He half expected that the Herald was solving word puzzles like the ones Jasnah enjoyed. Eventually, the Herald dug something out of his pocket—fruit it seemed, though it was bright green and it crunched when Kelek took a bite. “Looks good,” Kelek said. “Nothing too unexpected, though I have to say he does have a good point. An unchained Bondsmith is dangerous, but the Stormfather did choose one anyway.…” “You know how erratic the Stormfather has been lately,” said an elderly female honorspren at Kelek’s side. “His wisdom is no longer something to trust.” “Valid, valid,” Kelek said. “Well then, next witness.” “Next
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to speak will be Blended,” Sekeir said. “Inkspren emissary to Lasting Integrity.” What? Adolin thought as his tutor stood up from the crowd and walked to the floor of the arena. The watching honorspren murmured together quietly at the sight. “Wait,” Adolin said. “What is this?” “They asked me to witness against you,” she said. “So a spren who is not an honorspren would have a chance to weigh in on this proceeding.” “But … you’re my tutor. Didn’t you volunteer to train me?” “I wanted you well-trained,” she said, “so the trial could be as fair as possible. This thing is. But my hatred of what your kind did also is.” She turned to Kelek. “Honored One, I was alive when men betrayed us. Unlike the honorspren, my kind were not so foolish as to assign all as Radiant spren. We lost over half our numbers, but some of us watched from outside.” She eyed Adolin. “We knew men as they were and are. Untrustworthy. Changeable. Spren find it difficult to break a bond. Some say it is impossible for us. Men, however, barely last a day without betraying some Ideal. “Why should we beings of innate honor have been surprised when the event happened? It is not the fault of men that they are as fickle as the falling rain. This thing is. They should not be trusted, and the shame of doing so is our fault. Never again should spren and men bond. It is unnatural.” “Unnatural?” Adolin said. “Spren and skyeels bond to fly. Spren and greatshells bond to grow. Spren and singers bond to create new forms. This is as natural as the changing seasons.” And thank you, Shallan, he thought, glancing at her, for your interest in all this. “Humans are not from this land,” Blended said. “You are invaders, and bonds with you are not natural. Be careful what you say—you will encourage us to return to the singers. They betrayed us long ago, but never on the scale of the humans. Perhaps the highspren have the correct idea in joining with the armies of the Fused.” “You’d side with them?” Adolin said. “Our enemies?” “Why not?” she said, strolling across the stage. “They are the rightful heirs of this land. They have been pushed to desperation by your kind, but they are no less reasonable or logical. Perhaps your kind would do better to acknowledge their rule.” “They serve Odium,” Adolin said, noticing many of the honorspren shifting in their seats, uncomfortable. “Men might be changeable, yes. We might be corrupt at times, and weak always. But I know evil when I see it. Odium is evil. I will never serve him.” Blended eyed the crowd, who nodded at Adolin’s words. She gave him a little nod herself, as if in acknowledgment of a point earned. “This tangent is irrelevant,” she said, turning to Kelek. “I can say, with some ease, that a good relationship between honorspren and inkspren is not. Any would acknowledge this. My testimony’s value is, then, of extra import. “I
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lived through the pain and chaos of the Recreance. I saw my siblings, beloved, dead. I saw families ripped apart, and pain flowing like blood. We might be enemies, but in one thing unification is. Men should never again be trusted with our bonds. If this one wishes to accept punishment for the thousands who escaped it, I say let him. Lock him away. Be done with him and any who, like him, wish to repeat the massacre of the past.” She looked directly at Adolin. “This truth is.” Adolin felt at a loss to say anything. What defense could he offer? “We are not the same as the ones before,” he said. “Can you promise you will be different,” she demanded. “Absolutely promise it? Promise that no further spren will be killed from bonds, if allowed to be?” “Of course not,” Adolin said. “Well, I can promise that none will die so long as no more bonds are made. The solution is easy.” She turned and walked back to her place. Adolin looked to Kelek. “There are no promises in life. Nothing is sure. She says spren won’t die without bonds, but can you say what will happen if Odium reigns?” “I find it most curious she’d prefer that possibility, young man,” Kelek said. He started writing in his notebook again. “But it is seriously damning of you that an inkspren would be willing to testify alongside an honorspren. Damning indeed…” Kelek took another bite of his fruit, leaving only the core, which he absently set on the table in front of him. Frustrated, Adolin forced himself to calm. The trial was proceeding well on at least one axis. The honorspren weren’t trying to force the actual sins of the Recreance on him; they were taking a more honorable approach of proving that men hadn’t changed, and bonds were too risky. Blended and he had decided this tactic was safer for Adolin; Kelek could very well decide that there was no reason to imprison him for things the ancients did. At the same time, Adolin was losing the hearts of the watching spren. What would it matter if he “won” the trial if the spren were even more strongly convinced they shouldn’t help in the conflict? He searched the crowd, but found mostly resentful expressions. Storms. Did he really think he could prove anything to them? Which of the ten fools was he for starting all this? No, I’m not a fool, he told himself. Just an optimist. How can they not see? How can they sit here and judge me, when men are dying and other spren fight? The same way, he realized, that the highprinces had spent so long playing games with the lives of soldiers on the Shattered Plains. The same way any man could turn his back on an atrocity if he could persuade himself it wasn’t his business. Men and spren were not different. Blended had tried to tell him this, and now he saw it firsthand. “The third and final witness,” the honorspren officiator said,
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“is Notum, once captain of the ship Honor’s Path.” Adolin felt his stomach turn as Notum—looking much improved from the last time Adolin had seen him—emerged from the top of the forum, where a group of standing honorspren had obscured him from Adolin’s view. Still, Adolin was shocked. Notum had been forbidden to enter Lasting Integrity despite his wounds, and had stayed with the others outside the walls—though the honorspren of the tower had delivered him some Stormlight to aid in his healing. Messages from Godeke had indicated that Notum had eventually returned to patrol. Now he was here—and in uniform, which was telling. He also wouldn’t meet Adolin’s eyes as he stepped down onto the floor of the forum. Spren might claim the moral high ground; they claimed to be made of honor. But they also defined honor for themselves. As men did. “Offered to end your exile, did they, Notum?” Adolin asked softly. “In exchange for a little backstabbing?” Notum continued to avoid his gaze, instead bowing to Kelek, then unfolding a sheet of paper from his pocket. He began to read. “I have been asked,” he said, “to relate the erratic behavior I witnessed in this man and his companions. As many of you know, I first encountered this group when they fled the Fused in Celebrant over one year ago. They used subterfuge to…” Notum trailed off and looked toward Adolin. Give him Father’s stare, Adolin thought. The stern one that made you want to shrivel up inside, thinking of everything you’d done wrong. A general’s stare. Adolin had never been good at that stare. “Go ahead,” he said instead. “We got you in trouble, Notum. It’s only fair that you get a chance to tell your side. I can’t ask anything of you other than honesty.” “I…” Notum met his eyes. “Go on.” Notum lowered his sheet, then said in a loud voice, “Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!” Adolin had never heard the statement before, but it seemed a trigger to the honorspren crowd, who began standing up and shouting in outrage—or even in support. Adolin stepped back, amazed by the sudden burst of emotion from the normally stoic spren. Several officials rushed the floor of the forum, pulling Notum away as he bellowed the words. “Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men! Honor is not—” They dragged him out of the forum, but the commotion continued. Adolin put his hand on his sword, uncertain. Would this turn ugly? Kelek shrank down in his seat, looking panicked as he put his hands to his ears. He let out a low whine, pathetic and piteous, and began to shake. The honorspren near him called for order among the crowd, shouting that they were causing pain to the Holy One. Many seemed outraged at Notum’s words, but a sizable number took up his cry—and these were pushed physically out of the forum. There was a tension to this society Adolin hadn’t seen before.
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The honorspren were no monolith; disagreement and tension swam in deep waters here—far below the surface, but still powerful. The officiators cleared the forum—even Shallan and Pattern were forced out. Everyone basically ignored Adolin. As the place finally settled down, and only a few officials remained, Adolin walked up the few forum steps to the High Judge’s seat. Kelek lounged in his seat, ignoring the fact that he’d been curled up on the floor trembling mere moments earlier. “What was that?” Adolin asked him. “Hmmm?” Kelek said. “Oh, nothing of note. An old spren argument. Your coming has opened centuries-old wounds, young man. Amusing, isn’t it?” “Amusing? That’s all?” Kelek started whistling as he wrote in his notebook. They’re all insane, Adolin thought. Ash said so. This is what thousands of years of torture does to a mind. Perhaps it was best not to push on the raw wound. “That went well for me today, wouldn’t you say?” Adolin asked him. “Hmm?” Kelek said. “One witness could not refute my point about my father,” Adolin said. “Another made my argument for me by pointing out that siding against the Radiants is practically serving Odium. Then Notum put his honor before his own well-being. It went well for me.” “Does it matter?” Kelek asked. “Of course it does. That’s why I’m here.” “I see,” Kelek said. “Did the ancient Radiants betray their spren, killing them?” “Well, yes,” Adolin said. “But that’s not the question. The question is whether modern humans can be blamed.” Kelek continued writing. “Honored One?” Adolin asked. “Do you know how old I am, young man?” Kelek looked up and met Adolin’s eyes, and there was something in them. A depth that made him, for the first time, seem distinctly inhuman. Those eyes seemed like eternal holes. Bored through time. “I,” Kelek said softly, “have known many, many men. I’ve known some of the best who ever lived. They are now broken or dead. The best of us inevitably cracked. Storms … I ran when the Return came this time, because I knew what it meant. Even Taln … Even Taln…” “He didn’t break,” Adolin said. “The enemy is here, so he did,” Kelek said firmly. He waved toward the honorspren. “They deserve better than you, son. They deserve better than me. I could never judge them for refusing to bond men. How could I? I could never order them back into that war, back into that hole. To do so would be to … to abandon what little honor I have left.…” Adolin took a deep breath. Then he nodded. “I just told you that your cause is hopeless,” Kelek said, turning to his writing. “You do not seem concerned.” “Well, Honored One,” Adolin said. “I agreed to this trial—even with Sekeir’s insistence I be blamed for what my ancestors did—because it was the only way to get a chance to talk to the honorspren. Maybe you will judge against me—but so long as I get a chance to have my say, then that will be enough. If I
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persuade even one or two to join the battle, I’ll have won.” “Optimism,” Kelek said. “Hope. I remember those things. But I don’t think you understand the stakes of this trial, child—nor do you understand what you’ve stumbled into. The things that inkspren said—about joining Odium’s side—are on the minds of many spren. Including many in this very fortress.” That hit Adolin like a gut punch. “Honorspren would join the enemy?” Adolin said. “That would make them no better than the highspren!” “Indeed; I suspect their dislike of highspren is part of why they hesitate. The honorspren in favor of joining the enemy worried how such a suggestion would be received. But here you are, giving them a chance to make their arguments, acting as a magnet for all of their frustration and hatred. “Many are listening. If honorspren start joining the enemy … well, many other varieties of spren would soon follow. I dare think they’d go in large numbers.” Kelek didn’t look up. “You came here to recruit. But I suspect you will end up tipping these finely balanced scales, and not in the direction you desire.” * * * About an hour after the first stage of the trial—an hour she’d spent consoling Adolin in his sudden terror that he would accidentally cause a mass defection of spren to the side of the enemy—Shallan climbed a tree. She stretched high, clinging to a branch near the top. It was a normal tree, one of the real ones the honorspren managed to grow here. It felt good to feel bark beneath her fingers. She reached with one arm into the open space above the tree, but couldn’t feel anything different. Had she hit the barrier yet? Maybe a little farther … She shimmied a little higher, then reached out, and thought she felt an oddity as she got exactly high enough. An invisible tugging on the tips of her fingers. Then her foot slipped. In a second she was tumbling through the air. She didn’t fall all the way to the base of the structure, merely to the floor of her plane. She hit with a loud crack, then lay dazed before letting out a loud groan. Lusintia the honorspren was at her side a moment later. As I suspected … Veil thought. She always seems to be nearby. She’d clearly been assigned to watch Shallan. “Human!” she said, her short hair hanging along the sides of her white-blue face. “Human, are you hurt?” Shallan groaned, blinking. “Mmm…” Pattern said, stepping over. “Rapid eye blinks. This is serious. She could die.” “Die?” Lusintia said. “I had no idea they were so fragile!” “That was a long fall,” Pattern said. “Ah, and she hit her head when she landed on the stones here. Not good, not good.” Other honorspren were gathering, muttering to themselves. Shallan groaned again, then tried to focus on Pattern and Lusintia, but let her eyes slip shut. “We must act quickly,” Pattern said. “Quickly!” “What do we do!” Lusintia said. “You have no hospital here?” “Of course
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we don’t have a hospital!” Lusintia said. “There are only a couple dozen humans here.” “Mmm … but you won’t let them come back in if they leave, so they are basically caged here. You should feel bad. Very bad. Yes.” Storms, Veil thought. Is that the best he can do? How did we ever let him fool us? “Tell me what to do!” Lusintia said. “Do we carry her out to that Edgedancer?” “It will take too long. She will die. Poor human whom I love very much. It will be tragic for her to die here, in the center of honorspren power and protection. Unless, of course, she were to be given Stormlight.” “Wait … Stormlight?” “Yes, she is Radiant,” Pattern said. “It would heal her.” Shallan suppressed a smile. Pattern was a tad transparent, but the honorspren here plainly had little experience with humans. They swallowed the bait without question, and soon Shallan was being carried by a team of four. She tucked away the piece of cloth-wrapped stone she’d used to smack the ground as she landed, giving the impression that she’d hit her head. In reality, her arm did ache. She had undoubtedly bruised it when she hit, though this wasn’t the worst self-inflicted wound she’d sustained in the name of science. At least this time her scheme hadn’t involved deliberately embarrassing herself in front of several attractive men. She made sure to groan occasionally, and Pattern kept exclaiming how worried he was. That kept Lusintia and the other honorspren motivated as they hauled Shallan to a specific building, their footfalls echoing against enclosing stone. They had a hushed but urgent conversation with a guard. Shallan made a particularly poignant whimper of pain at exactly the right moment, and then she was in. Light surrounded her as she was brought someplace brilliant. They hadn’t let her in here last time, when they retrieved Stormlight for Adolin’s healing. She let her eyes flutter open and found that most of the Stormlight was contained in a large construction at the center of the room. A kind of vat, or tall jar. This was technology Shallan hadn’t heard of before coming to Shadesmar, and apparently not even the honorspren knew how it worked. They could be purchased from a group of strange traveling merchants called the Eyree. Shelves nearby held a collection of loose gemstones, each glowing brightly. The wealth of Lasting Integrity: gemstones—gathered over millennia—so flawless, so perfect, that they didn’t leak. She’d been told a gemstone like this could, with repeated exposures to storms, absorb far more Stormlight than its size should be able to contain. She tested this, reaching out with a weak hand toward one of them and sucking in a breath of Stormlight—which streamed to her as a glowing, misty white light. She immediately felt better: invigorated, alert. Storms, how she’d missed that. Simply holding Stormlight was stimulating. She grinned—not part of the act—then decided to leap to her feet. The ache in her arm vanished; she felt like dancing with joy. Instead she let
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Veil take over. This next part needed her—Shallan remained the better actress, but Veil was better at most other espionage skills. Veil made a show of touching her head where she’d been “wounded.” “What happened?” she asked. “I don’t remember. I was trying to see if I could reach the barrier where the gravity of the plane ran out.” “You were very foolish, human,” Lusintia said. “You are so fragile! How could you endanger yourself in such a manner? Do you not realize that mortals die if broken?” “It was in the name of science,” Veil said, reaching to her waist where she’d secured her notebook before climbing. She yanked it out and dropped it in a flurry. At the same time she swept her safehand to the side and dropped a dun emerald in place of a brightly glowing one. The sleight of hand—performed hundreds of times beneath Tyn’s watch, then perfected on her own—was covered as she stumbled and brushed the shelf, disturbing the many gems and shaking their light. She was able to slip the stolen emerald into her black leather glove. This all happened in the moment the honorspren focused on her falling notebook. Veil quickly snatched it off the ground and held it to her chest, grinning sheepishly. “Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.” “We would not have you die,” Lusintia said. “Death is a terrible thing, and we…” She trailed off, looking at the shelf and the dun emerald it now contained. “Storms alight! You ate the entire thing? Human, how…” Another spren, an angry male in uniform, began shoving Shallan out. “That was years’ worth of stored Stormlight!” he exclaimed. “Get out! Go, before you eat anything more! If you fall again, I will have you turned away!” Veil smothered her grin, apologizing as she stumbled out and met Pattern outside. An embarrassed Lusintia was forced to stay behind and fill out a report on the incident. “Mmm…” Pattern said. “Thank you for letting me lie. Did it work?” Veil nodded. “Mmm. They are stupid.” “Stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing,” Veil said. “They’re just unaccustomed to both humans and subterfuge. Come on. Let’s make ourselves scarce before someone thinks to search me.” A banging came on the door, and Eshonai pulled it open and stared out into a tempest. Grand lightning flashes shattered the blackness in brief emotional bouts, revealing Venli, her eyes wide, grinning and soaked, clutching something in two hands before her. She stumbled into the room, trailing water—which caused their mother to chide her. Jaxlim was in one of her … episodes where she saw the two of them as children. Venli—seemingly oblivious to anything other than the gemstone—wandered past their mother. She rubbed her thumb on the gemstone, which was about a third the size of her fist. “Storms,” Eshonai said, pushing the door closed. “You did it?” She set the beam in place, then left it rattling in the wind as she stepped over to Venli. But … no, the gemstone wasn’t glowing. Was it?
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Eshonai leaned closer. It was glowing, but barely. “It worked,” Venli whispered to Awe, clutching the stone. “It finally worked. The secret is lightning, Eshonai! It pulls them through. When I drew close enough right after a strike, I found hundreds of them. I snagged this one before the others returned to the other side.…” “The other side?” Eshonai asked. Venli didn’t respond. She seemed like a different person lately, always exhausted from working long nights—and from her insistence on going out in each and every storm to try to capture a stormspren. And now this. Venli cradled the gemstone, ignoring the water streaming from her clothing. “Venli?” Eshonai said. “If you want my help in bringing this to the Five, you will need to let me see what you’ve done.” Venli stared at her, quiet, no rhythm at all. Then she stood tall and hummed to Confidence, proffering the gemstone. Eshonai attuned Curiosity and took it. Yes … it did have a spren inside, though it glowed with an odd light. Too dark, almost dusty. Smoky. It was difficult to tell its color through the green of the emerald, but it seemed shadowed, like lightning deep within the clouds. “This spren is unlike any I’ve ever seen,” Eshonai said. “Stormform,” Venli whispered. “Power.” “Dangerous power. This could destroy the listeners.” “Eshonai,” Venli said to Reprimand, “our people are already being destroyed. Don’t you think that this time, instead of making a snap decision based on songs from thousands of years ago, we should at least try a different solution?” Rumbling thunder outside seemed to agree with Venli’s words. Eshonai handed the gemstone back, then hummed to Betrayal to indicate what she thought of Venli’s argument. But the rhythm didn’t express how deeply the words cut. Turning her back on her sister, Eshonai walked to the door again and threw aside the bar. Ignoring both Venli and her mother as they cried objections, Eshonai stepped out into the storm. The wind hit her hard, but in warform’s armor she barely felt the icy raindrops. She stood in the light spilling from the door until Venli pushed it closed, plunging Eshonai into darkness. She attuned the Rhythm of Winds and started walking. Humans feared the storms. They always hid indoors. Eshonai respected the storms, and usually preferred to meet them with a stormshield. But she did not fear them. She walked away from her mother’s house, eastward into the wind. These days, her life had constantly been against the wind. It blew so hard, she barely felt she was making progress. Maybe she’d have been better off letting it steer her. If she hadn’t fought so much—if she hadn’t spent so much time thinking about her explorations or her dreams—would she have settled into her role as general faster? If she’d doubled down on her raids at the start, would she have been able to shove the humans out of the warcamps before they got a foothold? Like a rockbud, humans were. Soft at first, but capable of gripping onto the stone and
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growing into something practically immovable. In this—despite their lack of rhythms—they belonged to Roshar better than the listeners did. If she could truly travel the world, would she find them growing in every crevice? She neared the edge of the plateau that made up the central heart of Narak, the city of exile. She walked carefully, letting flashes of lightning guide her way. She stepped right up to the edge of the chasm, facing into the wind. “What do you want from us?” she shouted. “Answer me, Rider! Spren of the storm! You’re a traitor like us, aren’t you? Is that why you sent Venli those little spren?” The wind blasted her, as if to push her off balance. Debris spun and sputtered in the wind, spiraling around her—the lightning making each piece seem frozen in the moment. A quick sequence of bolts struck nearby, and the thunder vibrated and rattled her carapace. Absolute darkness followed. At first she thought maybe the Rider of Storms had chosen to appear to her. However, this darkness was ordinary. She could still feel the wind, rain, and debris. “What kind of choice is this?” she demanded. “Either we let the humans destroy us, or we turn away from the one thing that defines us? The one value that matters?” Darkness. Rain. Wind. But no reply. What had she expected? An actual answer? Was this a prayer, then? Didn’t make a lot of sense, considering that the very thing she resisted was a return to her people’s old gods. Those gods had never deserved reverence. What was a god who only made demands? Nothing but a tyrant with a different name. “Everything I’ve done,” she said into the wind, “has been to ensure we remain our own people. That’s all I want. I gave up my dreams. But I will not give up our minds.” Brave words. Useless words. They would have to take Venli’s discovery to the Five, and they would have to let her test it. Eshonai knew that as well as she knew the Rhythm of Peace. They couldn’t reject a potential new form now. She turned to go, then heard something. Rock scraping on rock? Was the plateau cracking? Though she could barely hear it, the noise must be quite loud to reach her over the din of the tempest. Eshonai stepped backward—but her footing seemed unsteady, and she didn’t want to move without a flash of lightning to guide her. What if— Branching light flashed in the heavens far to the east. It lit the sky white, highlighting debris, illuminating the land around her. Everything except for an enormous shadow silhouetted in front of her. Eshonai’s breath caught. The rhythms froze in her head. That shape … sinuous, yet massive. Claws as thick as her body gripping the rim of the chasm mere feet in front of her. It couldn’t be— Lightning flashed again, and she saw its face. A chasmfiend snout, with jagged swords for teeth, head cocked to the side to watch her. She didn’t run. If it wanted
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her, she was already dead. Prey ran, and the beasts were known to play with things that acted like prey, even if they weren’t hungry. Still, standing there in pitch-darkness—not daring to attune a rhythm—was the hardest thing she’d ever done. When the lightning next flashed, the chasmfiend had lowered its incredible head toward her, its eye close enough that she could have stabbed it without needing to lunge. Darkness fell. Then a small burst of light appeared directly ahead of her. A small spren made of white fire. It zipped forward, trailing an afterimage. Like a falling star. It moved closer, then spun around her. By its light, she could see the chasmfiend slowly retreat into the chasm, its spikelike claws leaving scores on the stone. Her heart beating like thunder, Eshonai attuned Anxiety and hurried home. The strange little spren followed her. Instead I think, if I were to remember my life in detail, I would become even worse. Paralyzed by my terrible actions. I should not like to remember all those I have failed. Days passed. Navani barely noticed. For the first time in her life, she let go completely. No worries about Dalinar or Jasnah. No worries about the tower. No thoughts about the million other things she should be doing. This was what she should be doing. Or so she allowed herself to believe. She let herself be free. In her little room of a laboratory, everything fit together. She’d met scholars who claimed they needed chaos to function. Perhaps that was true for some, but in her experience, good science wasn’t about sloppy inspiration. It was about meticulous incrementalization. With no distractions, she was able to draw up precise experiments—charts, careful measurements, lines. Science was all about lines, about imposing order on chaos. Navani reveled in her careful preparations, without anyone to tease her for keeping her charts so neat or for refusing to skip any steps. Sometimes Raboniel visited and joined in the research, writing her own musings alongside Navani’s in their notebook. Two opposing forces in harmony, focused on a single goal. Raboniel gave her the strange black sand, explaining the difference between static and kinetic Investiture. Navani observed and measured, learning for herself. The sand slowly turned white when exposed to Stormlight or Voidlight. However, if a fabrial was using the Light, the sand changed faster. You could wet the sand to reset it to black, though it had to be dry again before it could turn white. It was a useful way to measure how much Light a given fabrial was using. She noticed that it also changed colors in the presence of spren. This was a slow change too, but she could measure it. Anything you could measure was useful to science. But for these few blessed days, it seemed like time was not properly measurable—for hours passed like minutes. And Navani, despite the circumstances, found herself loving the experience. * * * “I don’t know exactly where the sand comes from,” Raboniel said, settled on her stool beside the wall,
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flipping through Navani’s latest set of charts. “Offworld somewhere.” “Offworld?” Navani asked, looking up from the fabrial she’d been housing. “As in … another … planet?” Raboniel hummed absently. A confirmation? Navani felt she could tell what this rhythm meant. “I wanted to go, for years,” Raboniel said. “Visit the place myself. Unfortunately, I learned it wasn’t possible. I’m trapped in this system, my soul bound to Braize—you call it Damnation—a planet farther out in orbit around the sun.” To hear her speak of such things so casually amazed Navani. Other worlds. The best telescopes couldn’t do more than confirm the existence of other celestial bodies, but here she was, speaking to someone who had visited one of them. We came from another, Navani reminded herself. Humans, migrating to Roshar. It was so strange for her to think about, to align the mythos of the Tranquiline Halls with an actual location. “Could … I visit them?” Navani asked. “These other worlds?” “Likely—though I’d stay away from Braize. You’d have to get through the storm to travel there anyway.” “The Everstorm?” Raboniel hummed to an amused rhythm. “No, no, Navani. You can’t travel to Braize in the Physical Realm. That would take … well, I have no idea how long. Plus there’s no air in the space between planets. We sent Heavenly Ones to try it once. No air, and worse, the strange pressures required them to carry a large supply of Voidlight for healing. Even so prepared, they died within hours. “One instead travels to other worlds through Shadesmar. But again, stay away from Braize. Even if you could get through the barrier storm, the place is barren, devoid of life. Merely a dark sky, endless windswept crags, and a broken landscape. And a lot of souls. A lot of not particularly sane souls.” “I’ll … remember that.” Other worlds. It seemed too vast a concept for her to grasp right now—and that was saying something, as she was presently contemplating the death of a god. She turned to her experiment. “Ready.” “Excellent,” Raboniel said, closing the book. “Mizthla?” Navani’s stormform guard entered the room, seeming somewhat annoyed. Though that was common for him. “Mizthla” was his singer name; he said the Alethi had called him Dah. A simple glyph instead of a true name, because it was easier to remember. Perhaps if she had lived her entire life called something because of its utility, Navani would have shared his disposition. She presented him with the fabrial, which was … well, not a true fabrial. The housing was a mere coil of copper wires around some gemstones. Raboniel knew a method of changing the polarity of a magnet, a process involving the lightning channeled from a stormform. Captive lightning seemed to have boundless potential applications, but Navani kept herself focused—maybe the polarity-swapping process would also work on gemstones filled with Voidlight. Navani and Raboniel left the room, as the lightning could be unpredictable. “Remember,” Navani said on her way out, “only a tiny release of energy. Don’t melt the coils this time.”
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“I’m not an idiot,” the Regal said to her. “Anymore.” Outside, Navani glanced down the hallway—lined with boxes of equipment, some hiding her traps—toward the shield around the Sibling. It seemed darker inside than before. She and Raboniel avoided the topic. Working closely together did not make them allies, and both recognized it. In fact, Navani had been trying to find a way to hide future discoveries from Raboniel, if she made any. Lightning flashed in the room, then Mizthla called for them. They hurried in as he set the coiled-up fabrial on the desk. It was likely still hot to the touch, so Navani gave it a few minutes, despite wanting to rip the gemstones out immediately to inspect the result. “I have noticed something in your journals,” Raboniel said as the two of them waited. “You often remark that you are not a scholar. Why?” “I’ve always been too busy to engage in true scholarship, Ancient One,” Navani said. “Plus, I don’t know that I have the mind for it; I’m not the genius my daughter is. So I’ve always seen it as my duty to grant patronage to true scholars, to publicize their creations and see them properly encouraged.” Raboniel hummed a rhythm, then picked up the fabrial with the copper coiling it. The metal burned her fingers, but she healed from it. “If you are not a scholar, Navani,” she said, “then I have never met one.” “I admit that I have trouble accepting that, Ancient One. Though I’m pleased to have fooled you.” “Humility,” Raboniel said. “It’s not a Passion my kind often promote. Would it help you believe if I told you that you no longer have to use titles when speaking to me? Your discoveries so far are enough to recommend you as my equal.” This seemed an uncommon privilege. “It does help, Raboniel,” Navani said. “Thank you.” “Thanks need not be provided for something self-evident,” Raboniel said, holding up the fabrial. “Are you ready?” Navani nodded. Raboniel pulled the gemstones out from within the coil, then inspected them. “The Voidlight seems unchanged to me,” she said. Navani hadn’t expressly told Raboniel she was hunting for anti-Voidlight. She shrouded her quest in many different kinds of experiments—like this one, where she explained she simply wanted to see if Light responded to exposure to lightning. She suspected that Raboniel suspected, however, that Navani was at least still intrigued by the idea of anti-Light. Navani sprinkled some of the black sand on the tabletop, then placed the gemstone in the center, measuring the strength of the Investiture inside. But because the air didn’t warp around this gemstone, she secretly knew her experiment had failed. This was not anti-Voidlight. She made a note in her log. Another failed experiment. Raboniel hummed a rhythm. A regretful one? Yes, that was what it seemed to be. “I should return to my duties,” she said, and Navani could pick out the same rhythm in her voice. “The Deepest Ones are close to finding the final node.” “How?” Navani asked. “You know
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I can’t tell you that, Navani.” Though she had spoken of leaving, she remained sitting. “I’m so tired of this war. So tired of capturing, killing, losing, dying.” “We should end it then.” “Not while Odium lives.” “You’d actually kill him?” Navani asked. “If you had the chance?” Raboniel hummed, but looked away. That humming is … embarrassment? Navani thought. She recognizes she’s lied to me, at least by implication. She doesn’t truly want to kill Odium. “When you were hunting the opposite of Voidlight, you didn’t want to use it against him,” Navani guessed. “You teased me with the idea, but you have another purpose.” “You learn to read rhythms,” Raboniel said, standing up. “Or I simply understand logic.” Navani stood, and took Raboniel’s hands. The Fused allowed it. “You don’t have to kill the Sibling. Let’s find another path.” “I’m not killing the Sibling,” Raboniel said. “I’m … doing something worse. I’m unmaking the Sibling.” “Then let’s find another path.” “You think I haven’t searched for one already?” She removed her hands from Navani’s, then picked up and proffered their notebook, the one where they logged their experiments. Rhythm of War, they called it. Odium and Honor working together, if only for a short time. “I’ve run some experiments on the conjoined rubies you created—the ones of different sizes,” Raboniel said. “I think you’ll like the implications of what I’ve discovered; I wrote them in here earlier. This might make moving your enormous sky platforms easier.” “Raboniel,” Navani said, taking the notebook. “Negotiate with me, help me. Let’s join forces. Let’s make a treaty, you and I, ignoring Odium.” “I’m sorry,” the Fused said. “But the best chance we have of ending this war—barring a discovery between us—is for my kind to control Urithiru. I will finish my work with the Sibling. Ultimately, we are still enemies. And I would not be where I am—able to contemplate a different solution—if I were not fully willing to do what has been asked of me. Regardless of the cost, and regardless of the pain it causes.” Navani steeled herself. “I had not thought otherwise, Lady of Wishes. Though it leaves me sorrowful.” On a whim, she tried humming to the Rhythm of War. It didn’t work—the rhythm required two people in concert with one another. In return, however, Raboniel smiled. “I would give you something,” she said, then left. Confused, Navani sat at the table, feeling tired. These days of furious study were catching up to her. Had it been selfish to spend so much time pretending to be a scholar? Didn’t Urithiru beg for a queen? Yes, it would be wonderful to find a power to use against Odium, but … did she really think she could solve such a complex problem? Navani tried to return to her experiments. After an hour, she conceded that the spark wasn’t there. For all her talk of control and organization, she now found herself subject to the whims of emotion. She couldn’t work because she didn’t “feel” it. She would have called that nonsense—though
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of course not to their face—if one of her scholars had told her something similar. She stood abruptly, her chair clattering to the ground. She’d picked up a habit of pacing from Dalinar, and found herself prowling back and forth in the small chamber. Eventually Raboniel appeared in the doorway, accompanied by two nimbleform singers. The Fused waved, and the femalens hurried into the room. They carried odd equipment, including two thin metal plates perhaps a foot and a half square and a fraction of an inch thick, with some odd ridges and crenellations cut into them. The nimbleforms attached them to Navani’s desk with clamps, so the metal plates spread flat, one on each side—like additions to the desk’s workspace. “This is an ancient form of music among my kind,” Raboniel said. “A way to revel in the rhythms. As a gift, I have decided to share the songs with you.” She gestured and hummed to the two young singers, who jumped to obey, each pulling out a long bow—like one might use on a stringed instrument. They drew these along the sides of the metal plates, and the metal began to vibrate with deep tones, though they had a rougher texture to them. Full and resonant. Those are Honor’s and Odium’s tones, Navani thought. Only these were the shifted versions that worked in harmony with one another. Raboniel stepped up beside Navani. In accompaniment to the two tones, she played a loud rhythm with two sticks on a small drum. The sequence of beats grew loud and stately, then soft and fast, alternating. It wasn’t exactly the Rhythm of War, but it was as close as music could likely get. It vibrated through Navani, loud and triumphant. They continued at it for an extended time, before Raboniel called a stop and the two young singers—sweating from the work of vigorously making the tones—quickly gathered the plates, unclamping them from the sides of the desk. “Did you like it?” Raboniel asked her. “I did,” Navani said. “The tones were a terrible cacophony when combined, but somehow beautiful at the same time.” “Like the two of us?” Raboniel asked. “Like the two of us.” “By this music,” Raboniel said, “I give you the title Voice of Lights, Navani Kholin. As is my right.” Raboniel hummed curtly, then bowed to Navani. With no other words, she waved for the singers to take their equipment and go. Raboniel retreated with them. Feeling overwhelmed, Navani walked up to the open notebook on her desk. Inside, Raboniel had written about their experiments in the women’s script—and her handwriting was growing quite practiced. Navani understood the honor in what she’d just been given. At the same time, she found it difficult to feel proud. What did a title, or the respect of one of the Fused, mean if the tower was still being corrupted, her people still dominated? This is why I worked so hard these last few days, Navani admitted to herself, sitting at the desk. To prove myself to her. But … what good was
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that if it didn’t lead to peace? The Rhythm of War vibrated through her, proof that there could be harmony. At the same time, the nearly clashing tones told another story. Harmony could be reached, but it was exceedingly difficult. What kind of emulsifier could you use with people, to make them mix? She closed the notebook, then made her way to the back of the room and rested her hand on the Sibling’s crystal vein. “I have tried to find a way to merge spren who were split by fabrial creation,” she whispered. “I thought it might please you.” No response came. “Please,” Navani said, closing her eyes and resting her forehead against the wall. “Please forgive me. We need you.” I … The voice came into her mind, making Navani look up. She couldn’t see the spark of the Sibling’s light in the vein, however. Either it wasn’t there, or … or it had grown too dim to see in the light of the room. “Sibling?” she asked. I am cold, the voice said, small, almost imperceptible. They are killing … killing me. “Raboniel said she is … unmaking you.” If that is true I … I will … I will die. “Spren can’t die,” Navani said. Gods can die … Fused can … can die … Spren can … die. If I am made into someone else, that is death. It is dark. The singer you promised me though … I can see him sometimes. I like watching him. He is with the Radiants. He would have made … a good … a good bond.… “Then bond him!” Navani said. Can’t. Can’t see. Can’t act through the barrier. “What if I brought you Stormlight?” Navani said. “Infused you the same way they’ve been infusing you with Voidlight? Would that slow the process?” Cold. They listen. I’m afraid, Navani. “Sibling?” I don’t … want … to die.… And then silence. Navani was left with that haunting word, die, echoing in her mind. At the moment, the Sibling’s fear seemed far more powerful than the Rhythm of War. Navani had to do something. Something more than sitting around daydreaming. She stalked back to her desk to write down ideas—any ideas, no matter how silly—about what she could do to help. But as she sat, she noticed something. Her previous experiment rested there, mostly forgotten. A gemstone amid sand. When the singers had set up their plates, they hadn’t disturbed Navani’s work. The music of the plates had caused the entire desktop to vibrate. And that had made the sand vibrate—and it had therefore made patterns on her desktop. One pattern on the right, a different on the left, and a third where the two mixed. Stormlight and Voidlight weren’t merely types of illumination. They weren’t merely strange kinds of fluid. They were sounds. Vibrations. And in vibration, she’d find their opposites. Regardless, I write now. Because I know they are coming for me. They got Jezrien. They’ll inevitably claim me, even here in the honorspren stronghold. Adolin stepped onto his podium
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at the honorspren forum. The circular disc had been pulled out to the center of the arena. Today, he would have the stage all to himself. He’d arrived early, so he wouldn’t have to push his way through the crowd. He wanted to appear in control, awaiting their scorn rather than taking the long walk down the steps with everyone watching. One felt like the action of a man who had orchestrated his situation. The other felt like a prisoner being led to execution. Shallan and Pattern seated themselves as others began to arrive. The forum could hold a couple hundred spren, and as the honorspren—all glowing faintly white-blue—settled, he noted that far more of them wore uniforms today. The ones who had seemed sympathetic to Notum’s proclamation were conspicuously absent from the seats. Adolin found that frustrating, though he did notice some spren from yesterday crowding around the top, where they could stand and watch. The honorspren seemed determined to seed the seated positions with those who were predisposed against him. No reason to sweat, Adolin thought, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. It’s just your one chance to speak for yourself. Your one chance to turn all this around. Ideally, this would be the day that went best for him. He could explain his case and answer questions from the audience. Kelek’s words from the day before weighed heavily upon him; this wasn’t merely about the honorspren and whether some would join the Windrunners. It was a much larger argument. Was humankind worth fighting for? Adolin somehow had to make that argument today. Blended had warned him he’d need to fend off questions and keep the argument on topic. He couldn’t afford to engage the crowd too directly, couldn’t afford to let them control the conversation. That done, the trial would convene for one final meeting, where the honorspren could present a single last witness, whom Adolin could question, to rebut his arguments. He bowed to Kelek as the Herald arrived. He’d changed into official-looking violet robes, a marked difference from yesterday. Did that mean he was taking this more seriously? Adolin waited respectfully for the High Judge to seat himself among the group of honorspren officials. Adolin had learned that six of them were among the “ten honored by storms.” The ten oldest existing honorspren, other than Syl. Hierarchy was important to this group. “All right,” Kelek said. “Let’s get this over with. You may speak.” “Thank you, Honored One,” Adolin said, then turned toward the crowd. “I don’t think my words today will surprise anyone. Yet I’ve staked my future on the opportunity to say them to you. In person. To look you in the eyes, and ask you if you truly think this is justice. “Men hold grudges. It is one of our greatest failings. Sometimes families will continue a cycle of hatred for generations, all for some slight that no one remembers. While I won’t compare your very real pain and betrayal to something so insignificant, I hope to find in you—immortal pieces of
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Honor—a more perfect way of—” “Did you know,” a spren in the front row interrupted, “that your father almost killed the Stormfather?” Adolin stumbled in his speech. “I will answer questions at the end,” he said. “As I was saying, I had hoped to find—” “Did you know about it?” the honorspren demanded, shouting. “Did you know he almost killed the Stormfather?” “I find that difficult to believe,” Adolin said. He glanced up at the top of the forum, where the standing spren were shuffling and whispering to one another. The audience fell quiet, waiting for Adolin. A question had been asked, but he didn’t have to answer it, not yet. He controlled the floor. So he remained focused as Blended had taught him, then purposefully continued his statement. “In you,” Adolin said to the crowd, “I had hoped to find honor. Ancient spren bonded with us because they believed that together, we became something stronger, something better than we were alone. “I admit to human weakness. I will not hide it. But I have not seen you admit to your weakness. You claim to be creations of honor. That you are better than men. Yet you refuse to prove it, to show it. “I know of spren who do. Brave spren, who have come to the battle to join with men. In so doing, they have become stronger. They grow, like the people who bond them. Why do we need Radiants? Because they represent our best selves. We are of Honor and Cultivation. Honor, for an ideal. Cultivation, for the power to reach toward that ideal. “The Stormfather himself agrees that this is the correct choice. People may not be perfect, but they’re worth helping strive for perfection. And you are worth more than you can ever be sitting alone and refusing to grow.” That went over well. The honorspren liked a good speech, he’d learned—and those at the top in particular seemed swayed. He took a breath, preparing to move to his next point. Unfortunately, in the pause, that same honorspren from before leaped to his feet. “The Stormfather made his choice,” the spren said loudly, “and in so doing, put himself in danger—he nearly died. Did you know about this?” Kelek leaned forward in his judge’s seat. That was dangerously close to a statement, which the audience was not allowed to make. Trial by witness allowed Adolin to make declarations, but the audience could only question. “I did not know of this event,” Adolin told the spren. “So I cannot offer insight into why it happened, or what the circumstances were.” “How could you not know?” a different spren, in the second row, demanded. “If you’ve come to persuade us to become Radiant spren, shouldn’t you know the cost of what you’re asking? I think—” “Enough of that,” Kelek snapped. “Do you want to be ejected, Veratorim?” The spren quieted immediately. “Proceed, human,” Kelek said, settling back and lacing his fingers before himself. “My second argument,” Adolin said, “is to show to you that the kingdoms of the world
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have put aside their differences to unite together to face this challenge. I brought a letter from my cousin, Jasnah, which was torn up. Fortunately, I can quote parts to you. She proves that the modern kingdoms are—” “Has she tried to kill her spren?” the spren in the first row asked. “She proves,” Adolin continued, “that our modern kingdoms are united in ways that—” “Yes, but has she tried to kill her spren?” “Look,” Adolin snapped, “do you want me to talk or not? Do you want to hear my testimony, like you’ve offered, or do you just want to take shots at me?” The spren smiled. And Adolin realized what he’d done. By asking a question, Adolin had invited an answer. “I think,” the spren said, standing up, “that the most relevant question is if these new Radiants can be trusted. That’s what you need to prove. The Stormfather told us that Dalinar Kholin forced him to physically manifest. Dalinar Kholin, your father, using the Stormfather’s essence to work one of the Oathgates!” “That’s against his oath!” another one exclaimed. “Did you know about your father’s actions?” “I’m sure he had good reasons,” Adolin said. “If you would—” “Good reasons?” the standing honorspren said. “He was running away. Does this seem like the kind of behavior we should trust in a Bondsmith? From the man you said was ideal, that you promised would never betray us. How do you respond to this?” Adolin looked to Kelek. “Can I please continue my witness?” “You invited this discussion, son,” Kelek said. “You need to engage him now.” Kelek nodded toward the crowd at the top of the forum. Those who had joined with Notum yesterday waited quietly, wanting answers. Adolin sighed, glancing to Shallan for strength before continuing. “I cannot speak for my father. You’ll have to ask him. I trust him; the Stormfather trusts him; that should be enough.” “He is a walking disaster,” the spren said. “He is a murderer by his own testimony. This is no Bondsmith.” Adolin ignored that, as it wasn’t a question. And theoretically, he could let this subject die and continue. “Jasnah’s letter,” he began, “is—” “Kaladin Stormblessed almost killed his spren too,” a completely different honorspren said. “The Ancient Daughter, most precious of children. Did you know that?” Adolin ground his teeth. “I do know what happened between Kaladin and Syl. It was a difficult time for all of us, a point of transition. Kaladin didn’t know he was breaking his oaths—he was merely having a difficult time navigating conflicting loyalties.” “So you’re ignorant and dangerous,” the spren in the second row said. “Your Radiants barely know what they’re doing! You could kill your spren by accident!” Kelek waved, and the spren was grabbed by attendants and carried up and out of the forum. But Adolin saw this for what it was. A coordinated attack, and the ejection a calculated risk to get the words out. “We’re not killing our spren,” Adolin said to the crowd. “These incidents are isolated, and we don’t have
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proper context to discuss them.” “Is that so?” yet another honorspren said. “You can swear that none of your Radiants have killed their spren?” “Yes! None of them have. They…” He trailed off. Damnation. He’d met one, hadn’t he? Killed recently—that Cryptic in the market. “They what?” the spren demanded. If he answered the question truthfully, it could be the end. Adolin took a deep breath, and did what Blended had warned him against. He engaged the audience. “I could answer, but you don’t care, do you? You obviously planned together how to attack me today. This is an ambush. You don’t care about honor, and you don’t care what I have to say. You simply want to throw things at me.” He stepped forward and lifted his hands to the sides. “All right. Go ahead! But know this! You say that spren don’t lie, that spren are not changeable like men? Next time you try to pretend that is true, remember this day! Remember how you lied when you said I’d have a fair trial. Remember how you treated the man who came to you in good faith!” The crowd fell silent. Even his most vocal challengers sat. “You were warned about this trial multiple times, human,” Kelek said from behind. “They have made their choice.” “Not all of them,” Adolin said. “I thought I’d find rational people inside these gates. Honorable spren. But you know what? I’m happy I didn’t. Because now I know you for what you are. You’re people, like any of us. Some of you are scared. It makes you afraid to commit. It makes you consider things you would once have thought irrational. “I understand that. I am glad to find you are like humans, because I know what it means. It means you question—that you’re afraid, you’re uncertain. Believe me, I feel these things too. But you can’t sit here and pretend that all humans are the same, that all humans deserve to be thrown away, when you yourselves are as flawed as we are. This trial proves it. Your hearts prove it.” He stared out at them. Daring them. Challenging them. Finally, looking uncomfortable, the spren in the first row cleared his throat and stood. “Did you know—” “Oh, cut the act,” Adolin said to him. “You want to continue this farce? Fine. Do what you’re going to do. I’ll make it legal and ask—what is it you’ve obviously planned next to try to discredit me?” The spren searched about the audience, uncertain. “I … Well, did you know about this?” He waved toward the top of the forum. The spren there parted, and everyone turned, looking up at someone being led down the steps by Amuna, the limber honorspren who kept the deadeyes. Today she led a Cryptic—one with a broken pattern, the head wilted. Damnation. It was as he’d feared. “Do you know this Cryptic?” Amuna demanded from the steps. “If it’s the same one I saw when I first landed on these shores,” Adolin said, “then no. I just saw them
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once, in the market where the caravans cross.” “You know her story?” “I … Yes, I was told it by a shopkeeper.” “She was killed only a few years ago,” Amuna said. “This is proof of your lies. Modern Radiants cannot be trusted.” “There is no evidence that a Radiant did this,” Adolin said. “We encountered humans—who have nothing to do with my people—who attacked Notum. Perhaps they attacked her.” “That kind of attack leaves a spren who can eventually be healed, with enough Stormlight,” Amuna said. “The only true death for a spren—the only way to create a deadeye—is through broken Radiant oaths.” Amuna gestured toward the deadeye. “This Cryptic didn’t fall during the days of the Recreance. She was killed less than a decade ago. By one of your Radiants.” “Likely someone new, untested,” Adolin said. “Someone we don’t know about. Not one of ours; a poor new Radiant who didn’t understand what they were doing. If you’d simply…” But he knew he’d lost them. The crowds shifted, pulling away from the Cryptic, scooting in their seats. Another spren from the first row stood up and shouted questions at Adolin, joined by a dozen others, their words piling atop one another. How many spren would have to die before he admitted Radiants were a bad idea? Did he know the old Radiants had killed their spren because they worried about something more dangerous? Adolin lowered his arms before the assault. Blended had tried to prepare him as best she could, but Adolin was no expert in legal defenses. He’d let himself be maneuvered, like being backed into unfavorable footing in a duel. The reveal of the Cryptic overshadowed anything else he might say, any other arguments he could make. He looked to Kelek, who nodded, then gestured for him to go. Angry questions battered Adolin as he walked up the steps with as much dignity as he could manage. He knew when a duel was rigged. They’d been telling him from the beginning that it would be. And still he’d believed he could convince them. Idiot. * * * Some hours after Adolin’s second day of trial, Shallan closed her eyes, resting her head against his bare chest, listening to his heartbeat. She would never have thought she’d find that sound so comforting. For most of her life, she’d never considered what it would mean to be this close to someone. It would have been alien for her to imagine the blissful warmth of skin against skin, her safehand reaching alongside his face, fingers curled into his hair. How could she possibly have anticipated the wonderful intimacy of feeling his breath on her hair, of listening to his heartbeat, louder to her than her own. The rhythm of his life. Lying there, everything seemed—for a moment—perfect. Adolin rested his arm across her bare back. The room was dark, their drapes drawn closed. She wasn’t accustomed to darkness; usually you had a chip sitting out to give at least a little light. But here they had no spheres. Except what she
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had hidden in the trunk. Sequestered with the cube that spoke between realms. And a very special knife. “I love you,” Adolin whispered in the dark. “What did I do to deserve you?” “Blaspheme, perhaps,” she said. “Or play pranks on your brother. I’m not sure what a person might do to make the Almighty curse them with me. Perhaps you were simply too slow to run away.” He trailed his hand up her bare spine, making her shiver as he finally rested it on the back of her head. “You’re brilliant,” he whispered. “Determined. Funny.” “Sometimes.” “Sometimes,” he admitted, and she could hear the smile on his lips. “But always beautiful.” He thought that. He actually did. She tried to believe she deserved it, but it was difficult. She was so wrapped up in lies, she literally didn’t know who she was anymore. What if he found out? What if he knew what she really was? “Your terrible taste in women,” Shallan whispered, “is one of the things I love most about you.” She pressed her head to his chest again, feeling the blond hairs tickle her cheek. “And I do love you. That’s the only thing I’ve figured out about my life.” “After today, I have to agree with you on this trial idea of mine. It was a terrible plan.” “I’d be the world’s biggest hypocrite if I couldn’t love you despite your occasional stupid idea.” He rubbed the back of her head through her hair. “They’re going to imprison me,” he said. “They’re already building the cell. I will be a symbol to them, a display for other spren to come and see.” “I’ll break you out,” Shallan said. “How?” “I stole some Stormlight,” she said. “I’ll grab my agents and Godeke, and we’ll stage a rescue. I doubt the honorspren will give chase; they’re too paranoid for that.” Adolin breathed out in the darkness. “Not going to forbid me?” Shallan asked. “I … don’t know,” he said. “There are some here who want to listen to me, Shallan. Some I can persuade. But they’re afraid of dying, and I find myself uncertain. Not everyone is suited to war, and that’s what I’m recruiting them for. I can’t truthfully promise them they’ll live, that their Radiants won’t betray them. Maybe it’s not right to demand they join us.” “Kelek told you their leaders were considering going to the enemy’s side,” Shallan said. “If that happens, those spren will end up bonding people anyway, regardless of what they think now. And the people they’ll bond aren’t the type to worry about the safety of their spren.” “True,” Adolin said. “Storms, I wish I could get through to everyone here. Maybe tomorrow. I have a chance to rebut their witness, ask my own questions.…” “Adolin? You said this is a terrible plan. Will the last day change that?” “Maybe not,” he said. “But at least it’s a terrible plan that lets me engage with them. It lets them see a human trying to be honorable. Even if he’s terrible at
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it.” “You’re not terrible at being honorable.” He grimaced. “Someone smarter could have won this,” he said softly. “Jasnah could have made them see. Instead it’s just me. I wish … I wish I knew, Shallan. What to do. How to make them see.” She squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to return to that earlier moment of perfection. She couldn’t. There was too much pain in his voice. His heartbeat had sped up. His breathing no longer felt serene to her, but frustrated. It tore her apart to hear him like this. This was the man who had kept them all together when Kholinar fell, the man who was normally so optimistic. He’d come here determined to prove to his father—and maybe to himself—that he was still valuable. This stupid trial was going to take that from him. Unless. No, Radiant thought. We can’t fulfill Mraize’s plan. He’s manipulating you. We do what two of us agree to, Shallan said. And I agree it is time to do as Mraize wants. We will take Kelek’s soul, and we will imitate him at the trial. Veil and I will— No, Veil thought. Shallan’s breath caught. What? I change my mind, Veil said. I side with Radiant. I will not go kill Kelek. Two against one, Shallan. Something stirred deep inside of Shallan. “I…” Adolin whispered. “I wish I could find out who killed that poor Cryptic. That’s what ruined it today. Ruined it all.” It is time. “This trial is not ruined,” Formless said to Adolin. “You know, the more I contemplate it, the more I think maybe this trial wasn’t such a bad idea. You’re right. At least you’re getting a chance to show them what an honorable man looks like.” “For all the good it’s doing,” Adolin said. “I don’t know,” Formless said. “The High Judge is one of the Heralds. Maybe he’ll end up surprising you.…” And so, I’ll die. Yes, die. If you’re reading this and wondering what went wrong—why my soul evaporated soon after being claimed by the gemstone in your knife—then I name you idiot for playing with powers you only presume to understand. Teft felt like a wet sack of socks that had been left out in a storm. The honest-by-Kelek’s-own-breath truth was that he’d figured he’d done it again. When he’d woken up naked and sickly, he’d assumed he’d gone back to the moss. In that moment, he’d hated himself. Then he’d seen Dabbid and Rlain. When he saw their joy—more heard it in Rlain’s case—Teft knew he couldn’t truly hate himself. This was where the oaths had brought him. His self-loathing was, day by day, fading away. Sometimes it surged again. But he was stronger than it was. The others loved him. So, whatever he’d done, he would get up and make it right. That was the oath he’d taken, and by the Almighty’s tenth name, he would keep it. For them. Then he’d found out the truth. He hadn’t broken. He hadn’t taken up the moss. It wasn’t his fault. For once in
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his storming excuse for a life, he had been kicked to the gutter and woken up with a headache—and it hadn’t been due to his own weakness. A few days of healing later, he still found it remarkable. His streak held strong. Almost seven months with no moss. Damnation. He had an urge for some moss now, honestly. It would take the edge off his pounding headache. But Damnation. Seven months. That was the longest he’d gone without touching the stuff since … well, since joining the army. Thirty years. Never count those years, Teft, he told himself as Dabbid brought him some soup. Count the ones you’ve been with friends. The soup had some meat in it, finally. What did they think would happen if he ate something proper? He’d been out for a few days, not a few years. That wasn’t enough time to turn into some kind of invalid. In fact, he seemed to have weathered it better than Kaladin. Stormblessed sat on the floor—refused to take the bench because it was “Teft’s.” Had a haunted look to him and was a little shrunken, like he’d been hollowed out with a spoon. Whatever he’d seen when suffering those fevers, it hadn’t done him any good. Teft had felt that way before. Right now he was mostly aches, but he’d felt that way too. “And we were supposed to be off storming duty,” Teft grumbled, eating the cold soup. “Civvies. This is how we end up? Fate can be a bastard, eh, Kal?” “I’m just glad to hear your voice,” Kaladin said, taking a bowl of soup from Dabbid. “Wish I could hear hers…” His spren. He’d lost her somehow, in the fighting when he’d gotten wounded. Teft glanced to the side, to where Phendorana sat primly on the edge of his bench. He’d needed to reach to summon her, and she said she didn’t remember anything that had happened since he went unconscious. She’d been … sort of unconscious herself. Phendorana manifested as an older human woman, with mature features and no-nonsense Thaylen-style clothing, a skirt and a blouse. Her hair blew free as if in a phantom wind. Unlike Syl or some of the other honorspren, Phendorana preferred to manifest at the same size as a human. She glanced at Teft, and he nodded toward Kaladin. Phendorana drew in a breath and sighed pointedly. Then—judging by how Kaladin’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth—she let the others in the room see her. “Your Surgebinding still works?” Phendorana asked Kaladin. “Not as well as it did before the last fight,” Kaladin said. “But I can draw in Stormlight, stick things together.” It was the same for Teft, but they’d found that if Lift didn’t show up and do her little Regrowth thing to him every ten hours or so, he’d start to slip back into a coma. Something was definitely strange about that kid. “If you can Surgebind,” Phendorana said, “your bond is intact. The Ancient Daughter might have lost herself through separation—it is difficult for us to exist
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fully in this realm. However, I suspect she will stay close by instinct. If you can get to where you lost her, you should be fine.” “Should be,” Kaladin said softly, then started eating again. He nodded in thanks as Dabbid brought him a drink. They hadn’t pushed Dabbid too hard on the fact that he could talk. It wasn’t a lie, keeping quiet like he had. Not a betrayal. They each fought their own personal Voidbringers, and they each chose their own weapons. When it had come time to face the storm, Dabbid had done right by Teft and Kaladin. That was what mattered. That was what it meant to be Bridge Four. A man could choose not to talk if he didn’t want to. Wasn’t no law against it. Teft knew a handful of people who should maybe try a similar tactic. They continued eating in silence. After their initial joy at reuniting, their enthusiasm had dampened. Each thing Teft heard about their situation seemed worse than the one before. Fused in the tower. The queen captive. Radiants fallen. The tower spren slowly being corrupted, to the point that it was almost dead. Kaladin couldn’t get it to talk to him anymore, and neither could Dabbid. Grim days he’d awakened to. Almost wished they’d left him in a storming coma. What good was he at fixing any of this? Phendorana glanced at him, sensing his emotions. He pointed his spoon at her and winked in thanks. No, he wasn’t going to be down on himself. He’d sworn an Ideal. Regardless. Grim days. Grim storming days. The door opened a short time later, and Rlain entered with Lift, who scuttled forward and sniffed at the pot of soup. She wrinkled her nose. “Be glad we have anything,” Kaladin said. “That ardent in the monastery deserves credit. More than we gave him when we visited, Teft.” “Most people want to be helpful,” Teft said. “Even if they need a nudge now and then. Kelek knows I do.” Lift hopped up onto his bench and stepped around Phendorana, then touched Teft, infusing him with Stormlight. He took a deep breath. And storm him, the air felt a little warmer. At least now he wouldn’t fall asleep in his soup. Rlain closed the door, then settled on the ground in the tight confines, his back to the stone wall, bits of his carapace scraping the stone. “No news from the queen,” Rlain said. “Lift managed to talk to one of the scholars, and she says Navani has been isolated for over two weeks now. She’s imprisoned, forced to sleep in the scholars’ rooms by herself.” “We’re all basically imprisoned,” Teft said. “Every storming one of us.” “No,” Kaladin said. “We five are free.” “So what do we do?” Rlain asked. “We don’t know where the last node is, the one keeping that shield up on the Sibling. If we did, it’s not like we could protect it.” Kaladin had told them, in disheartening detail, about how difficult it had been to get in and
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destroy the previous two. Protecting one against the entire might of Odium’s forces? Impossible. Teft agreed on that. “If we break this last one,” Teft said, “that’s it. Tower’s finished. But if we wait, the Fused will find a way to break it themselves. Tower’s finished.” “We can’t fight an entire army on our own,” Kaladin said. “Teft and I have barely recovered, and our powers are temperamental at best. Two of us have lost our spren.” “The girl can wake the other Radiants,” Teft said. “The other Radiants are guarded,” Kaladin said. “Guards can be distracted or dealt with,” Rlain said. “We did something similar to get Lift out. Venli is on our side. Or at least she’s not on the other side—and she’s Voice to the head Fused leading the occupation. We have resources.” Kaladin tipped his head back, his eyes closed. “Lad?” Teft asked. “I don’t want any of you to take this the wrong way,” Kaladin said, not opening his eyes. “I’m not giving up. I’m not broken. No more than usual. But I’m tired. Extremely tired. And I have to wonder. I have to ask myself. Should we keep fighting? What do we want to accomplish?” “We want to win,” Rlain said. “Free the tower. Restore the Radiants.” “And if we can’t plausibly do that?” Kaladin leaned his head forward and opened his eyes. They’d gone dark again, of course, now that he’d been days without his Blade. The longer you kept your spren bonded, the more slowly the color faded. “I have to at least ask. Is it possible my father is correct? I’m starting to worry about what we might cause people to do if we keep fighting.” They grew quiet. And storm Teft if it wasn’t a valid question. One not enough soldiers asked themselves. Right here, right now, should I be fighting? Is there a better way? Teft took a spoonful of soup. “Did Sigzil ever explain to you boys how I got my father killed?” The other occupants of the room turned to stare at him with slack jaws. He knew the rumors of what he’d done had moved through Bridge Four—and in the past he’d snapped at people who’d asked him about it. Storming fools. “What?” Teft said. “It happened a long time ago. I’m over it, mostly. And a man shouldn’t hide from what he’s done. Gotta air things like this.” He dug into his soup, but found his appetite waning. He set the bowl aside, and Phendorana put her hand on his. “You were … young, weren’t you?” Kaladin asked, carefully. “I was eight when my father died,” Teft said. “But the problems all started far earlier. It was some travelers, I think, who introduced the idea to the people of my hometown. Not quite a city. You might know it. Talinar? No? Nice place. Smells like flowers. Least in my memory it does. Anyway, the people of the town started meeting secretly. Talking about things they shouldn’t have. The return of the Lost Radiants.” “How do you think
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they knew?” Kaladin asked. “You gave me Stormlight when I was dying, all the way back when I didn’t know what I was doing. You recognized that it would heal me.” “Teft and I used to think,” Phendorana said, “that the group who visited Teft’s hometown—the Envisagers, they called themselves—were servants of some important lighteyes in Kholinar. Maybe they overheard what people like Amaram were planning, and ran with it. Only…” “… Only that was forty-five years ago,” Teft said. “And when I asked Brightness Shallan about the group Amaram was part of, everything she’d found indicated they’d started less than ten years ago. But that’s beside the point. I mean, I only met the leaders once, when my parents brought me to the initiation ceremony.” He shivered, remembering. The blasphemous things they’d chanted—shrouded in dark robes, with spheres affixed to masks to represent glowing eyes—had terrified the boy he’d been. But that hadn’t been the worst. The worst had been what they’d done to try to become Radiants. The things they’d pushed their members to do. His mother had been one of those.… “It turned dark,” Teft said. “The things my people—my family—did … Well, I was around eight when I went to the citylord. I told him, thinking he’d run the worst of the troublemakers out of town. I didn’t realize…” “What nahn was your family?” Kaladin asked. “Sixth,” Teft said. “Should have been high enough to avoid execution. My mother was already dead by then, and my father…” He glanced up at the rest of them, and felt their sympathy. Well, he didn’t want any storming sympathy. “Don’t look at me like that. It was a long time ago, like I said. I eventually joined the military to get away from that town. “It haunted me for a long time. But ultimately, you know what? You know Kelek’s own storming truth? Because of what my parents did and taught me, I was able to save you, Kal. They won in the end. They were right in the end.” He picked up his soup and forced himself to begin eating it. “We can’t storming see the future, like Renarin can. We’ve gotta do what we think is best, and be fine with that. It’s all a man can do.” “You think we should keep fighting?” Rlain said. “I think,” Teft said, “that we need to rescue those Radiants. Maybe we don’t need to fight, but we’ve got to get them out. I don’t like the smell of what you’ve been telling me. Lined up like that, watched over? The enemy is planning something for our friends.” “I can wake them,” Lift said. “But they ain’t gonna be in fightin’ shape. And I’ll need a whole bunch of food. Like … an entire chull’s worth.” “If we can wake them,” Rlain said, “we don’t need to fight. We can have them run. Escape.” “How?” Kaladin asked. “We can’t possibly hope to get all the way to the Oathgates.” “There’s a window,” Rlain said. “In the infirmary room. We can break it
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maybe, and escape out that way.” “To fall hundreds of feet,” Kaladin said. “That might take the Windrunners out of the influence of the tower,” Teft said with a grunt. He thought about dropping hundreds of feet, not knowing if his powers would reactivate before he hit bottom. “I’d try it, and prove it can be done. The rest of you could watch and see if I fly up in the distance. If I do, you could follow.” Kaladin rubbed his forehead. “Assuming we could break the glass. Assuming we could get enough Stormlight to infuse the Windrunners. Assuming they’re strong enough, after being incapacitated for so long, to try something that insane. Look, I like that we’re exploring ideas … but we need to take time to consider all our options.” Teft nodded. “You’re the officer. I leave the decision to you.” “I’m not an officer any longer, Teft,” Kaladin said. Teft let the objection slide, though it was completely wrong. One thing a good sergeant knew was when to let the officer be wrong. And Kaladin was an officer. He’d acted like one even when he’d been a slave. Like he’d been raised by a bunch of lighteyes or something. His official status or rank couldn’t change what he was. “For now,” Kaladin said, “we wait. If we have to, we will break in and rescue the Radiants. But first we need to recover, we need to plan, and we need to find a way to contact the queen. I’d like her input.” “I might be able to get in to see her,” Rlain said. “They have servants cart food and water to her and her scholars. Venli’s people are often assigned that detail, and I could hide my tattoo and substitute for one of them.” “Good,” Kaladin said. “That would be great. And while we wait, we don’t do anything too rash. Agreed?” The others nodded, even Lift and Dabbid. Teft too, though this wasn’t the sort of situation where you had luxuries like time to come up with the perfect plan. Teft determined he’d just have to be ready to act. Take that next storming step. You couldn’t change the past, only the future. He ate his soup as the conversation turned to lighter topics, and found himself smiling. Smiling because they were still together. Smiling because he’d made the right decision to stay in the tower when Kal needed him. Smiling because he had survived so long without moss or drink, and was able to wake up and see color to the world. Smiling because, for how bad everything could be, some things were still good. He shifted as Phendorana poked him. He looked over and caught her grinning as well. “Fine,” he muttered. “You were storming right. You have always been right.” Teft was worth saving. The bond is what keeps us alive. You sever that, and we will slowly decompose into ordinary souls—with no valid Connection to the Physical or Spiritual Realms. Capture one of us with your knives, and you won’t be left with
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a spren in a jar, foolish ones. You’ll be left with a being that eventually fades away into the Beyond. Venli stood dutifully beside Raboniel, acting as her Voice as daily reports were delivered. Mostly Venli was here to interpret. While Raboniel had learned Alethi quite well—she claimed to have always been talented at languages—many of their current group of Regals spoke Azish, having been parshmen in that region. Today Raboniel took the reports while sitting on a throne at the mouth of the hallway with the murals. This meant they were at the bottom of the stairwell leading upward to the ground floor. Venli couldn’t help but be reminded of the humans who had died in the last hopeless push to reach the crystal pillar. Those memories were laced with the scents of burning flesh and the sounds of bodies hitting the ground. Venli glanced at the freshly built portion of steps, hastily constructed with scaffolding underneath to replace the part broken during the fighting. Then she attuned Indifference—a rhythm of Odium. She had to be certain those rhythms continued to punctuate her words, though lately they made her mouth feel coated in oil. “The Lady of Wishes hears your report,” Venli said to the current Regal, who stood bowed before them. “And commends you on your Passion for the search—but you are wrong, she says. The Windrunner is alive. You are to redouble your efforts.” The Regal—wearing a sleek form known as relayform, often worn by scouts—bowed lower. Then she retreated up the steps. “I believe that is the last of them, Ancient One,” Venli said to Raboniel. Raboniel nodded and rose from her throne, then walked into the hallway leading to the two scholar rooms. Her specially tailored Alethi-style dress fluttered as she walked, accentuating the lean, thin pieces of carapace armor along her arms and chest. Venli followed; the Fused hadn’t indicated she should withdraw. Though Raboniel had a workstation and desk set up at the end of the hallway, she always preferred to take reports out near the stairwell. It was as if Raboniel lived two separate lives here. The commander-general of the singer armies seemed so different from the scholar who cared nothing for the war. The second Raboniel was the truer one, Venli thought. “Last Listener,” Raboniel mused. “Last no more. Your people were the only group of singers to successfully reject Fused rule and make their own kingdom.” “Were there … unsuccessful attempts?” Venli dared ask, to Craving. “Many,” Raboniel said. She hummed to Ridicule. “Do not make the same mistake as the humans, assuming that the singers have always been of one mind. Yes, forms change our thinking at times, but they merely enhance what’s inside. They bring out different aspects of our personalities. “Humans have always tried to claim that we are nothing but drones controlled by Odium. They like that lie because it makes them feel better about killing us. I wonder if it assuaged their guilt on the day they stole the minds of those they enslaved.” Raboniel’s desk was
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nestled right up against the shield—which, once a bright blue, had grown dark and violet. Raboniel sat and began looking through her notes. “Do you regret what you personally did, Last Listener?” she asked to Spite. “Do you hate yourself for your betrayal of your people?” Timbre pulsed. Venli should have lied. Instead she said, “Yes, Ancient One.” “That is well,” Raboniel said. “We all pay dearly for our choices, and the pain lingers, when one is immortal. I suspect you still crave the chance to become a Fused. But I have found in you a second soul, a regretful soul. “I am pleased to discover it. Not because I admire one who regrets their service—and you should know Odium does not look favorably upon second-guessing. Nevertheless, I had thought you to be like so many others. Abject in your cravings, ambitious to a fault.” “I was that femalen,” Venli whispered. “Once.” Raboniel glanced at her sharply, and Venli realized her mistake. She’d said it to the Lost. One of the old rhythms that Regals weren’t supposed to be able to hear. Raboniel narrowed her eyes and hummed to Spite. “And what are you now?” “Confused,” Venli said, also to Spite. “Ashamed. I used to know what I wanted, and it seemed so simple. And then…” “Then?” “They all died, Ancient One. People I … loved dearly, without realizing the depth of my feelings. My sister. My once-mate. My mother. All just … gone. Because of me.” Timbre pulsed reassuringly. But Venli didn’t want reassurance or forgiveness at that moment. “I understand,” Raboniel said. Venli stepped closer, then knelt beside the table. “Why do we fight?” she asked to Craving. “Ancient One, if it costs so much, why fight? Why suffer so much to secure a land we will not be able to enjoy, because all those we love will be gone?” “It is not for us that we fight,” Raboniel said. “It is not for our comfort that we destroy, but for the comfort of those who come after. We sing rhythms of Pain so they may know rhythms of Peace.” “And will he ever let us sing to Peace?” Raboniel did not respond. She shuffled through a few papers on her table. “You have served me well,” she said. “A little distractedly, perhaps. I ascribe that to your true allegiance being to Leshwi, and your reports to her interfering with your duties to me.” “I am sorry, Ancient One.” Raboniel hummed to Indifference. “I should have arranged for a regular meeting for you to give her your spy reports. Maybe I could have written them for you, to save time. At any rate, I cannot fault you for loyalty to her.” “She … doesn’t like you very much, Ancient One.” “She is afraid of me because she is shortsighted,” Raboniel said. “But Leshwi is among the best we have, for she has managed to not only remember why we fight, but to feel it. I am fond of Leshwi. She makes me think that once we win, there will be
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some Fused who can rule effectively. Even if she is too softhearted for the brutalities we now must perpetuate.” Raboniel selected a paper off the desk and handed it to Venli. “Here. Payment for your services. My time in the tower runs short; I will finish unmaking the Sibling, and then will be on to other tasks. So I will now dismiss you. If you survive what comes next, there is a chance you may find some peace of your own, Venli.” Venli took the paper, humming to Craving. “Ancient One,” she said, “I am a weak servant. Because I am so confused about what I want, I do not deserve your praise.” “In part, this is true,” Raboniel said. “But I like confusion. Too often we belittle it as a lesser Passion. But confusion leads a scholar to study further and push for secrets. No great discovery was ever made by a femalen or malen who was confident they knew everything. “Confusion can mean you have realized your weaknesses. I forget its value sometimes. Yes, it can lead to paralysis, but also to truth and better Passions. We imagine that great people were always great, never questioning. I think they would hum to Ridicule at that idea. Regardless, take that gift and be off with you. I have much to do in the coming hours.” Venli nodded, scanning the paper as she rose. She expected a writ of authority—given by Fused to favored servants, granting them extra privileges or requisitions. Indeed, there was exactly that on the front. But on the back was a hastily sketched map. What was this? “I had hoped to find good maps of the tower,” Raboniel noted to Fury. “But Navani had some burned, and disposed of the others—though she feigns ignorance. This, however, is a report from a human scout who was flying along the eastern rim of the Shattered Plains.” Upon closer inspection, the page read in the human femalen writing system, it appears the group we assumed were Natan migrants are instead Parshendi. A group of a few thousand, with a large number of children. Venli read it again. “Did some of your kind leave?” Raboniel asked absently. “Before the coming of the Everstorm?” “Yes. Rebels who did not want the new forms, along with the children and the elderly. They … escaped into the chasms. Shortly before the storms met, and the floodwaters came. They … they should have been completely destroyed.…” “Should have. What a hateful phrase. It has caused me more grief than you could know.” She began writing in one of her notebooks. “Perhaps it has treated you with kindness.” Venli clutched the paper and ran, not giving Raboniel a proper farewell. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. RHYTHM OF WAR Copyright © 2020 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC Mistborn®, The Stormlight Archive®, Reckoners®, Cosmere®, and Brandon Sanderson® are registered trademarks of Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Cover art © Michael Whelan All illustrations © Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC, except when otherwise notedIllustrations preceding chapters 11 and 61 by Dan dos SantosIllustrations preceding the prologue, chapters 22, 24, 29, 36, 53, 75, and 78, and interludes 5 and 7 by Ben McSweeneyIllustrations preceding chapters 3, 6, 41, 84, and 97 by Kelley HarrisMap of Roshar, sword glyphs, chapter arches, and illustrations preceding chapters 20, 46, and 73 by Isaac StewartViewpoint icons by Isaac Stewart, Ben McSweeney, Howard Lyon, and Miranda Meeks A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates 120 Broadway New York, NY 10271 www.tor-forge.com Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-0-7653-2638-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-250-78426-1 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability) ISBN 978-1-250-79367-6 (signed) ISBN 978-1-4299-5204-0 (ebook) eISBN 9781429952040 Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com. First Edition: 2020 The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. For Isaac Stewart, Who paints my imagination. Burdens, Our Calling. Songs of Home, a knowledge: Knowing a Home of Songs, called our burden. —Ketek written by El, Fused scholar of human art forms, to commemorate the restoration of the Sibling Poem is curious in its intentional weighting of the last line, where Alethi poets traditionally weight the center word and build the poem around it. Singers, it can be seen, have a different interpretation of the art form. Wit strolled the hallways of Elhokar’s old palace on the Shattered Plains, searching for an audience. He flipped a coin in the air, then caught it before snapping his hand forward and spreading his fingers to show that the coin had vanished. But of course it was secretly in his other hand, palmed, hidden from sight. “Storytelling,” he said to the hallway, “is essentially about cheating.” He tucked the coin into his belt with a quick gesture, keeping up the flourishes of his other hand as a distraction. In a moment he could present both hands empty before him. He added to the theatrics by pushing back his sleeves. “The challenge,” he said, “is to make everyone believe you’ve lived a thousand lives. Make them feel the pain you have not felt, make them see the sights you have not seen, and make them know the truths that you have made up.” The coin appeared in his hand, though
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he’d simply slipped it out of his belt again. He rolled it across his knuckles, then made it split into two—because it had always been two coins stuck together. He tossed those up, caught them, and then made them appear to be four after adding the two he’d been palming in his other hand. “You use the same dirty tricks for storytelling,” Wit said, “as you do for fighting in an alley. Get someone looking the wrong direction so you can clock them across the face. Get them to anticipate a punch and brace themselves, so you can reposition. Always hit them where they aren’t prepared.” With a flourish, he presented both hands forward, empty again. On his coat, Design made a peppy humming sound. “I found one!” she said. “In your belt!” “Hush,” Wit said. “Let the audience be amazed.” “The audience?” Wit nodded to the side, where a few odd spren were following in the air. Almost invisible, and trailing red light. Windspren—but the wrong color. She was expanding her influence, that old one was. He was curious where it would lead. Also horrified. But the two emotions were not mutually exclusive. “I don’t think they care about your tricks,” Design said. “Everyone cares about my tricks.” “But you can make the coins vanish with Lightweaving,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter how many you hide in your belt. And if you do something amazing, everyone will assume it was done with Surgebinding!” Wit sighed, tossing four coins in the air, then catching them and presenting one solitary coin. “They don’t even use those for money here,” Design added. “So you’ll only distract them. Use spheres.” “Spheres glow,” Wit said. “And they’re tough to palm.” “Excuses.” “My life is only excuses.” He wound the coin across his knuckles. “The illusion without Lightweaving is superior, Design.” “Because it’s fake?” “Because the audience knows it’s fake,” Wit said. “When they watch and let themselves be amazed, they are joining in the illusion. They’re giving you something vital. Something powerful. Something essential. Their belief. “When you and the audience both start a performance knowing that a lie is going to be presented, their willing energy vibrates in tune with yours. It propels you. And when they walk away at the end, amazed but knowing they’ve been lied to—with their permission—the performance lingers in their minds. Because the lie was real somehow. Because they know that if they were to rip it apart, they could know how it was done. They realize there must have been flaws they could have caught. Signs. Secrets.” “So … it’s better…” Design said, “because it’s worse than an illusion using real magic?” “Exactly.” “That’s stupid.” Wit sighed. He bounced his coin off the ground with a metallic pling, then caught it. “Would you go bother someone else for a while?” “Okay!” Design said excitedly. She moved off his coat and to the floor, then zipped away. His audience of corrupted windspren trailed after her. Traitors. Wit started down a side hallway, but then felt something. A tingling that
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made his Breaths go wild. Ah … he thought. He’d been expecting this; it was why he had left the tower, after all. Odium couldn’t find him there. He hiked to Elhokar’s former sitting room and made himself available—visible, easy to reach. Then, when the presence entered the nondescript stone chamber, Wit bowed. “Welcome, Rayse!” Wit said. “It’s been not nearly long enough.” I noticed your touch on the contract, a dramatic voice said in his head. “You’ve always been a clever one,” Wit said. “Was it my diction that clued you in, my keen bargaining abilities, or the fact that I included my name in the text?” What game do you play here? “A game of sense.” … What? “Sense, Odium. The only kind I have is nonsense. Well, and some cents, but cents are nonsense here too—so we can ignore them. Scents are mine aplenty, and you never cared for the ones I present. So instead, the sense that matters is the sense Dalinar sensibly sent you.” I hate you. “Rayse, dear,” Wit said, “you’re supposed to be an idiot. Say intelligent things like that too much, and I’ll need to reevaluate. I know you adjusted the contract, trying for an advantage. How does it feel to know that Dalinar bested you?” I shall have my vengeance, Odium said. Even if it takes an eternity, Cephandrius, I will destroy you. “Enjoy that!” Wit said, striding toward the door. “Let me know how the brooding treats you. I spent a century doing it once, and I think it improved my complexion.” So interesting, Odium said. How did I never see you there, in all my planning … Tell me, whom would you pick as champion? If you were in my place? “Why does it matter?” Wit asked. Humor me. Wit cocked his head. There was something odd about this change in tone from Odium. Asking whom Wit would choose? Rayse wouldn’t care to know. Never mind, Odium said quickly. It matters not. Whomever I pick, they will destroy Dalinar’s champion! Then I will use him, and my minions on this planet, to finally do whatever I wish! “Yes, but where will you find that many willing horses…” Wit said, continuing on his way out the door. He started whistling as Odium’s presence remained behind. That had gone exactly as he’d imagined. Except that last part. He slowed, turning the words over in his mind. Was Rayse growing more thoughtful? Wit didn’t need to worry, did he? After all this, Odium would be safely imprisoned, no matter what happened. There was no way out.… Unless … Wit’s breath caught, but then he forced himself to keep whistling and walking. A power slammed into him from behind. A golden energy, infinite and deadly. Wit’s eyes went wide, and he gasped, sensing something horribly wrong about that power. I have made an error, I see, the power said, soft and thoughtful. I am new to this. I should not have pushed for information. It’s all about giving you what you expect. Even a being
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thousands of years old can be tricked. I know this from personal experience now. “Who are you?” Wit whispered. Odium, the power said. Let me see … I cannot harm you. But here, you have used this other Investiture to store your memories, haven’t you? Because you’ve lived longer than a mortal should, you need to put the excess memories somewhere. I can’t see your mind, but I can see these, can’t I? For the first time in a long, long while, Wit felt true terror. If Odium destroyed the Breaths that held his memories … I don’t believe this will cause you actual harm … Odium said. Yes, it seems my predecessor’s agreements will allow me to— Wit stopped in the hallways of Elhokar’s old palace on the Shattered Plains. He searched around, then cocked his head. Had he heard something? He shook his head and continued forward, looking for an audience. He flipped a coin in the air, then caught it before snapping his hand forward and spreading his fingers to show that the coin had vanished. But of course it was secretly in his other hand, palmed, hidden from sight. “Storytelling,” he said to the empty hallway, “is essentially about cheating.” He tucked the coin into his belt with a quick gesture, keeping up the flourishes of his other hand as a distraction. Then he heard a pling as something slipped free of his belt. He stopped and found one of his fake coins on the ground, the ones that could be stuck together to appear as one. But just one half? That should have been safely tucked away in the little pocket hidden in his shirt. He picked it up, glanced around to see that no one had noticed the mistake. “Pretend you didn’t see that, Design,” he said. But she wasn’t there on his coat. Storming spren. Had she slipped away when he hadn’t been looking? He put a hand to his head, feeling an odd disorientation. Something was wrong. But what? “The challenge…” he said, tucking away the fake coin, “is to make everyone believe you’ve lived a thousand lives.… Make them feel the pain, the sights, the truths…” Damn. It was wrong somehow. “You use the same dirty tricks for storytelling,” Wit whispered, “as you do for fighting in an alley. Always be ready to hit them where they aren’t prepared.” But no one was listening. Hadn’t there been a couple of Sja-anat’s minions following him earlier? He vaguely remembered … Design chasing them away? Wit stared around himself, but then felt something. A tingling that made his Breaths go wild. Ah … he thought. He’d been expecting this; it was why he had left the tower. Odium couldn’t find him there. He hiked the short distance to Elhokar’s former sitting room and made himself available—visible, easy to reach. Then, when the presence entered the nondescript stone chamber, Wit bowed. “Welcome, Rayse!” Wit said. “It’s been not nearly long enough.” I noticed your touch on the contract, a dramatic voice said in his head. “You’ve
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always been a clever one,” Wit said. “Was it my brilliant prose that clued you in, my keen bargaining abilities, or the fact that I included my name right there for you to read?” What game do you play here? “A game of sense.” … What? “Sense, Odium. The only kind I have is nonsense. Well, and some cents…” He glanced down at the coin he still held in his hand, then cocked his head. I hate you. “Rayse,” Wit said, looking up, “you’re supposed to be an idiot. Say intelligent things like that too much, and I’ll need to reevaluate.… Anyway, I know you adjusted the contract, trying for an advantage. How does it feel to know that Dalinar Kholin, a simple mortal, has gotten the better of you?” I shall have my vengeance, Odium said. Even if it takes an eternity, Cephandrius, I will destroy you. “Enjoy that!” Wit said, striding toward the door. “Let me know how you enjoy the time with yourself. The Beyond knows, no one else can stand your company.” It doesn’t matter! Odium roared. My champion will destroy Dalinar’s, and then I will use him and my other minions here to do whatever I wish! “Yes, well,” Wit said from the door, “once you’re done, at least try to remember to wash your hands.” He slammed the door, then spun and continued on his way. He tried to find a tune to whistle, but each one sounded wrong. Something was fiddling with his perfect pitch. Odium’s presence had remained behind. Was … something wrong? Don’t trouble yourself, he thought. This is working. After all, Wit’s first face-to-face meeting with Odium in over a thousand years had gone exactly as he had imagined. THE END OF Book Four of THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Tom Doherty Associates ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. Thank you for buying this Tom Doherty Associates ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. I am proud to present to you Rhythm of War, Book Four of the Stormlight Archive. It’s been ten years now since I began this series, and it has been an increasingly satisfying experience to see the story grow and fulfill the vision I’ve had for it all these years. In particular, one scene at the end of this book is among the very first I ever imagined for the series, over twenty years ago! We are approaching the last book of this sequence of the Stormlight Archive. (I imagine the series as two sets of five books, with two major arcs.) Thank you for sticking with me all these years! My goal is to keep delivering these
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in a timely manner. And as always, deadlines for this one were tight, and a lot of people put in a lot of hours to bring it to pass. This list will be a little long, but each and every one of them deserves to be commended for their efforts. At Tor Books, my primary editor on this novel was Devi Pillai, and she was tireless, punctual, and a wonderful advocate for the Stormlight Archive. This is my first Cosmere book that wasn’t done with my longtime editor Moshe Feder, who still deserves a great deal of thanks for shepherding this series during its early years. But I want to give a special thanks to Devi for helping make this transition smooth and easy. As always, thanks go to Tom Doherty, who gave me my first chance in publishing. Devi and Tom’s team at Tor who worked on this book with us include Rachel Bass, Peter Lutjen, Rafal Gibek, and Heather Saunders. At Gollancz, my UK publisher, I want to give special thanks to Gillian Redfearn who provides editorial support through the entire process, and who also works very hard to make the books look great. Our copyeditor was the always-great Terry McGarry, and joining us for the first time as a line editor was Kristina Kugler. I’ve wanted to work with Kristina for a long time on a Cosmere book, and she did an excellent job with this one. For the audio book, Steve Wagner was our producer. And returning to the series are the excellent Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, the best audio narrators in the world. They have my hearty thanks for continuing to humor us by taking on these fifty-plus-hour beasts of an epic fantasy series. My primary agent for this book was JABberwocky Literary Agency, with Joshua Bilmes at the helm. Assisting him were Susan Velazquez, Karen Bourne, and Valentina Sainato. Our UK agent is John Berlyne at the Zeno Literary Agency. I continue to be grateful for their work and advocacy on my behalf. At my own company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, we have my wonderful wife Emily Sanderson as our manager. The Ineffable Peter Ahlstrom is our vice president and editorial director, and Isaac Stewart is our Art Director. Normally I do something silly with his name, but considering that this book is dedicated to him, I figured I’d let him off this time. Isaac not only is the one who creates our beautiful maps, but is the person who introduced me to my wife. (On a blind date, no less.) So if you ever get a chance to meet him, have him sign your copy of this book, and be sure to swap stories with him about your favorite LEGO sets. Also at Dragonsteel Entertainment are Karen Ahlstrom, our continuity editor, and Kara Stewart, our warehouse manager and CFO. Adam Horne is my in-house publicist, personal assistant, and all around “I can do that” guy who gets things done. Our other store employees include Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Emily “Mem” Grange, Lex Willhite, and Michael Bateman. They’re
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the ones who get you your T-shirts, posters, and signed books. Their assistants, the “mini minions” of our team, include: Jacob, Hazel, Isabel, Matthew, Audrey, Tori, and Joe. Additionally, thanks to all those who volunteer, especially to the always awesome Christi Jacobson. The artists who contributed to Rhythm of War braved not only pandemic and tragedy during the completion of the art, some even braved literal storms to deliver it. I’m in awe of their talent and commitment, and to all of them I not only give my heartfelt thanks, but I also wish them peace through the turbulent times they’ve faced. One of the highlights of my career is getting to work with Michael Whelan. I’m humbled that he is so supportive of the books that he sets aside personal projects for a time to create the beautiful paintings he’s done for the series. I would have been grateful for just one of his cover illustrations, so I feel incredibly lucky that he continues to work his magic for Rhythm of War, producing what I think is the best Stormlight cover so far. It’s without a doubt a masterpiece, and I am in awe of it. In Oathbringer, we printed portraits of the Heralds on the front and back endpapers, and we continue that tradition here. Early in the writing process for this book, we commissioned the remaining six Heralds, knowing that two of them would have to be saved for a future book. Each artist stepped up to the task and provided masterpieces. Donato’s Herald Talenelat is careworn yet triumphant, and I’m thrilled to have his beautiful vision of this character. Miranda Meeks is no stranger to the Stormlight Archive—we love getting to work with her any chance we have—and her Herald Battah is regal and mysterious. Karla Ortiz, whose work I’ve been a fan of for some time, has given us glorious and nigh-on-perfect visions of Heralds Chanaranach and Nalan. Lastly, Magali Villeneuve’s Heralds Pailiah and Kelek are stunning and wonderful. Howard Lyon collaborated with her to paint amazing oil versions of these last two, which will eventually be displayed with the others. Dan dos Santos is a living legend and a good friend. He brings his signature style to the fashion plates in this volume, tackling the difficult challenge of portraying the singers as alien but also in a way that readers can identify with them emotionally. I think he’s done a fantastic job walking that line. Ben McSweeney joined the Dragonsteel team full time this year, and the book showcases some of his best art. Shallan’s spren pages especially continue to help fill out the visual aesthetic of Roshar. I love how Ben’s piece detailing Urithiru’s atrium helps convey the immensity of the city; special thanks here to Alex Schneider, who consulted on some of the architectural layout. A great big thanks to Kelley Harris, a core member of our Stormlight team who always brings Navani’s notebook pages to life with an impeccable design sense that reminds me of Alphonse Mucha’s product designs from the early twentieth
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century. Additionally, many artists and others helped behind the scenes on this book and deserve a huge thank-you: Miranda Meeks, Howard Lyon, Shawn Boyles, Cori Boyles, Jacob, Isabel, Rachel, Sophie, and Hayley Lazo. We had a few very important subject experts help us with this book. Shad “Shadiversity” Brooks was our primary historical martial arts consultant. Carl Fisk also lent us some of his expertise in this area—though if I got something wrong, it’s not their fault. It’s almost assuredly something I either didn’t show them on time, or forgot to change. Our expert on Dissociative Identity Disorder was Britt Martin. I truly appreciate her willing to give me raw feedback on how to get better at how I represent mental illness in these books. She was our secret Knight Radiant for this novel, always there urging me forward. Special thanks go to four of the beta readers in particular, for their detailed feedback on a certain aspect of sexuality: Paige Phillips, Alyx Hoge, Blue, and First Last. The book is better off with your contribution. Our writing group on this book was Kaylynn ZoBell, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Eric James Stone, Darci Stone, Alan Layton, Ben “can you please just spell my name right for once, Brandon” Olzedixploxipllentivar, Ethan Skarstedt, Karen Ahlstrom, Peter Ahlstrom, Emily Sanderson, and Howard Tayler. And a better group of merry men/women you will not find. They read huge chunks of this book each week, and dealt with me making constant and enormous changes, in order to help me get the novel into shape. Our expert team of beta readers this time included Brian T. Hill, Jessica Ashcraft, Sumejja Muratagić-Tadić, Joshua “Jofwu” Harkey, Kellyn Neumann, Jory “Jor the Bouncer” Phillips (Congrats, Jory!), Drew McCaffrey, Lauren McCaffrey, Liliana Klein, Evgeni “Argent” Kirilov, Darci Cole, Brandon Cole, Joe Deardeuff, Austin Hussey, Eliyahu Berelowitz Levin, Megan Kanne, Alyx Hoge, Trae Cooper, Deana Covel Whitney, Richard Fife, Christina Goodman, Bob Kluttz, Oren Meiron, Paige Vest, Becca Reppert, Ben Reppert, Ted Herman, Ian McNatt, Kalyani Poluri, Rahul Pantula, Gary Singer, Lingting “Botanica” Xu, Ross Newberry, David Behrens, Tim Challener, Matthew Wiens, Giulia Costantini, Alice Arneson, Paige Phillips, Ravi Persaud, Bao Pham, Aubree Pham, Adam Hussey, Nikki Ramsay, Joel D. Phillips, Zenef Mark Lindberg, Tyler Patrick, Marnie Peterson, Lyndsey Luther, Mi’chelle Walker, Josh Walker, Jayden King, Eric Lake, and Chris Kluwe. Our special beta reader comment coordinator was Peter Orullian, an excellent author in his own right. Our gamma readers included many of the beta readers, plus Chris McGrath, João Menezes Morais, Brian Magnant, David Fallon, Rob West, Shivam Bhatt, Todd Singer, Jessie Bell, Jeff Tucker, Jesse Salomon, Shannon Nelson, James Anderson, Frankie Jerome, Zoe Larsen, Linnea Lindstrom, Aaron Ford, Poonam Desai, Ram Shoham, Jennifer Neal, Glen Vogelaar, Taylor Cole, Heather Clinger, Donita Orders, Rachel Little, Suzanne Musin, William “aberdasher,” Christopher Cottingham, Kurt Manwaring, Chris Macy, Jacob Hunsaker, Aaron Biggs, Amit Shteinheart, Kendra Wilson, Sam Baskin, and Alex Rasmussen. I know a lot of you reading this would like to join the beta or gamma reader team—but know that it’s not quite as sweet
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a gig as you might imagine. These folks have to read the book often under a great time crunch, and they have to experience it in an unfinished form. In a lot of ways, they’re giving up the chance to experience the book in its best form, getting an inferior experience, so they can make the book better for the rest of you. I appreciate their tireless work, and their feedback. This book is much better for their efforts. That was a huge list, I know. It gets bigger in each book! But I sincerely appreciate every one of them. As I often say, my name goes on the cover, but these novels really are a group effort, using the talents and knowledge of a great array of dedicated people. Because of them, you can now experience Rhythm of War, Book Four of the Stormlight Archive. May you enjoy the journey. Of course the Parshendi wanted to play their drums. Of course Gavilar had told them they could. And of course he hadn’t thought to warn Navani. “Have you seen the size of those instruments?” Maratham said, running her hands through her black hair. “Where will we put them? And we’re already at capacity after your husband invited all the foreign dignitaries. We can’t—” “We’ll set up a more exclusive feast in the upper ballroom,” Navani said, maintaining a calm demeanor, “and put the drums there, with the king’s table.” Everyone else in the kitchens was close to panicking, assistant cooks running one direction or another, pots banging, anticipationspren shooting up from the ground like streamers. Gavilar had invited not only the highprinces, but their relatives. And every highlord in the city. And he wanted a double-sized Beggar’s Feast. And now … drums? “We’ve already put everyone to work in the lower feast hall!” Maratham cried. “I don’t have the staff to set up—” “There are twice as many soldiers as usual loitering around the palace tonight,” Navani said. “We’ll have them help you set up.” Posting extra guards, making a show of force? Gavilar could always be counted on to do that. For everything else, he had Navani. “Could work, yes,” Maratham said. “Good to put the louts to work rather than having them underfoot. We have two main feasts, then? All right. Deep breaths.” The short palace organizer scuttled away, narrowly avoiding an apprentice cook carrying a large bowl of steaming shellfish. Navani stepped aside to let the cook pass. The man nodded in thanks; the staff had long since stopped being nervous when she entered the kitchens. She’d made it clear to them that doing their jobs efficiently was recognition enough. Despite the underlying tension, they seemed to have things well in hand now—though there had been a scare earlier when they’d found worms in three barrels of grain. Thankfully, Brightlord Amaram had stores for his men, and Navani had been able to pry them out of his grip. For now, with the extra cooks they’d borrowed from the monastery, they might actually be able to feed all the
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people Gavilar had invited. I’ll have to give instructions on who is to be seated in which feast room, she thought, slipping out of the kitchens and into the palace gardens. And leave some extra space in both. Who knows who else might show up with an invitation? She hiked up through the gardens toward the side doors of the palace. She’d be less in the way—and wouldn’t have to dodge servants—if she took this path. As she walked, she scanned to make certain all the lanterns were in place. Though the sun hadn’t yet set, she wanted the Kholinar palace to shine brightly tonight. Wait. Was that Aesudan—her daughter-in-law, Elhokar’s wife—standing near the fountains? She was supposed to be greeting guests inside. The slender woman wore her long hair in a bun lit by a gemstone of each shade. All those colors were gaudy together—Navani preferred a few simple stones themed to one color—but it did make Aesudan stand out as she chatted with two elderly ardents. Storms bright and brash … that was Rushur Kris, the artist and master artifabrian. When had he arrived? Who had invited him? He was holding a small box with a flower painted on it. Could that be … one of his new fabrials? Navani felt drawn toward the group, all other thoughts fleeing her mind. How had he made the heating fabrial, making the temperature vary? She’d seen drawings, but to talk to the master artist himself … Aesudan saw Navani and smiled brightly. The joy seemed genuine, which was unusual—at least when directed at Navani. She tried not to take Aesudan’s general sourness toward her as a personal affront; it was the prerogative of every woman to feel threatened by her mother-in-law. Particularly when the girl was so obviously lacking in talents. Navani smiled at her in turn, trying to enter the conversation and get a better look at that box. Aesudan, however, took Navani by the arm. “Mother! I had completely forgotten about our appointment. I’m so fickle sometimes. Terribly sorry, Ardent Kris, but I must make a hasty exit.” Aesudan tugged Navani—forcefully—back through the gardens toward the kitchens. “Thank Kelek you showed up, Mother. That man is the most dreadful bore.” “Bore?” Navani said, twisting to gaze over her shoulder. “He was talking about…” “Gemstones. And other gemstones. And spren and boxes of spren, and storms! You’d think he would understand. I have important people to meet. The wives of highprinces, the best generals in the land, all come to gawk at the wild parshmen. Then I get stuck in the gardens talking to ardents? Your son abandoned me there, I’ll have you know. When I find that man…” Navani extricated herself from Aesudan’s grip. “Someone should entertain those ardents. Why are they here?” “Don’t ask me,” Aesudan said. “Gavilar wanted them for something, but he made Elhokar entertain them. Poor manners, that is. Honestly!” Gavilar had invited one of the world’s most prominent artifabrians to visit Kholinar, and he hadn’t bothered to tell Navani? Emotion stirred deep inside her, a
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fury she kept carefully penned and locked away. That man. That storming man. How … how could he … Angerspren, like boiling blood, began to well up in a small pool at her feet. Calm, Navani, the rational side of her mind said. Maybe he intends to introduce the ardent to you as a gift. She banished the anger with effort. “Brightness!” a voice called from the kitchens. “Brightness Navani! Oh, please! We have a problem.” “Aesudan,” Navani said, her eyes still on the ardent, who was now slowly walking toward the monastery. “Could you help the kitchens with whatever they need? I’d like to…” But Aesudan was already hurrying off toward another group in the gardens, one attended by several powerful highlord generals. Navani took a deep breath and shoved down another stab of frustration. Aesudan claimed to care about propriety and manners, but she’d insert herself into a conversation between men without bringing her husband along as an excuse. “Brightness!” the cook called again, waving to her. Navani took one last look at the ardent, then set her jaw and hurried to the kitchens, careful not to catch her skirt on the ornamental shalebark. “What now?” “Wine,” the cook said. “We’re out of both the Clavendah and the Ruby Bench.” “How?” she said. “We have reserves.…” She shared a glance with the cook, and the answer was evident. Dalinar had found their wine store again. He’d grown quite ingenious at secretly draining the barrels for himself and his friends. She wished he’d dedicate half as much attention to the kingdom’s needs. “I have a private store,” Navani said, pulling her notebook from her pocket. She gripped it in her safehand through her sleeve as she scribbled a note. “I keep it in the monastery with Sister Talanah. Show her this and she’ll give you access.” “Thank you, Brightness,” the cook said, taking the note. Before the man was out the door, Navani spotted the house steward—a white-bearded man with too many rings on his fingers—hovering in the stairwell to the palace proper. He was fidgeting with the rings on his left hand. Bother. “What is it?” she asked, striding over. “Highlord Rine Hatham has arrived, and is asking about his audience with the king. You remember, His Majesty promised to talk with Rine tonight about—” “About the border dispute and the misdrawn maps, yes,” Navani said, sighing. “And where is my husband?” “Unclear, Brightness,” the steward said. “He was last seen with Brightlord Amaram and some of those … uncommon figures.” That was the term the palace staff used for Gavilar’s new friends, the ones who seemed to arrive without warning or announcement, and who rarely gave their names. Navani ground her teeth, thinking through the places Gavilar might have gone. He would be angry if she interrupted him. Well, good. He should be seeing to his guests, rather than assuming she’d handle everything and everyone. Unfortunately, at the moment she … well, she would have to handle everything and everyone. She let the anxious steward lead her up to
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the grand entryway, where guests were being entertained with music, drink, and poetry while the feast was prepared. Others were escorted by master-servants to view the Parshendi, the night’s true novelty. It wasn’t every day the king of Alethkar signed a treaty with a group of mysterious parshmen who could talk. She extended her apologies to Highlord Rine for Gavilar’s absence, offering to review the maps herself. After that, she was stopped by a line of impatient men and women brought to the palace by the promise of an audience with the king. Navani assured the lighteyes their concerns were being heard. She promised to look into injustices. She soothed the crumpled feelings of those who thought a personal invitation from the king meant they’d actually get to see him—a rare privilege these days, unless you were one of the “uncommon figures.” Guests were still showing up, of course. Ones who weren’t on the updated list an annoyed Gavilar had provided for her earlier that day. Vev’s golden keys! Navani forcibly painted on an amicable face for the guests. She smiled, she laughed, she waved. Using the reminders and lists she kept in her notebook, she asked after families, new births, and favorite axehounds. She inquired about trade situations, took notes on which lighteyes seemed to be avoiding others. In short, she acted like a queen. It was emotionally taxing work, but it was her duty. Perhaps someday she’d be able to spend her days tinkering with fabrials and pretending she was a scholar. Today, she’d do her job—though a part of her felt like an impostor. However prestigious her ancient lineage might be, her anxiety whispered that she was really just a backwater country girl wearing someone else’s clothing. Those insecurities had grown stronger lately. Calm. Calm. There was no room for that sort of thinking. She rounded the room, pleased to note that Aesudan had found Elhokar and was chatting with him for once—rather than other men. Elhokar did look happy presiding over the pre-feast in his father’s absence. Adolin and Renarin were there in stiff uniforms—the former delighting a small group of young women, the latter appearing gangly and awkward as he stood by his brother. And … there was Dalinar. Standing tall. Somehow taller than any man in the room. He wasn’t drunk yet, and people orbited him like they might a fire on a cold night—needing to be close, but fearing the true heat of his presence. Those haunted eyes of his, simmering with passion. Storms alight. She excused herself and made a brief exit up the steps to where she wouldn’t feel so warm. It was a bad idea to leave; they were lacking a king, and questions were bound to arise if the queen vanished too. Yet surely everyone could get on without her for a short time. Besides, up here she could check one of Gavilar’s hiding places. She wound her way through the dungeonlike hallways, passing Parshendi carrying drums nearby, speaking a language she did not understand. Why couldn’t this place have a
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little more natural light up here, a few more windows? She’d brought the matter up with Gavilar, but he liked it this way. It gave him more places to hide. There, she thought, stopping at an intersection. Voices. “… Being able to bring them back and forth from Braize doesn’t mean anything,” one said. “It’s too close to be a relevant distance.” “It was impossible only a few short years ago,” said a deep, powerful voice. Gavilar. “This is proof. The Connection is not severed, and the box allows for travel. Not yet as far as you’d like, but we must start the journey somewhere.” Navani peered around the corner. She could see a door at the end of the short hallway ahead, cracked open, letting the voices leak out. Yes, Gavilar was having a meeting right where she’d expected: in her study. It was a cozy little room with a nice window, tucked away in the corner of the second floor. A place she rarely had time to visit, but where people were unlikely to search for Gavilar. She inched up to peek in through the cracked door. Gavilar Kholin had a presence big enough to fill a room all by himself. He wore a beard, but instead of being unfashionable on him, it was … classic. Like a painting come to life, a representation of old Alethkar. Some had thought he might start a trend, but few were able to pull off the look. Beyond that, there was an air of … distortion around Gavilar. Nothing supernatural or nonsensical. It was just that … well, you accepted that Gavilar could do whatever he wanted, in defiance of any tradition or logic. For him, it would work out. It always did. The king was speaking with two men that Navani vaguely recognized. A tall Makabaki man with a birthmark on his cheek and a shorter Vorin man with a round face and a small nose. They’d been called ambassadors from the West, but no kingdom had been given for their home. The Makabaki one leaned against the bookcase, his arms folded, his face completely expressionless. The Vorin man wrung his hands, reminding Navani of the palace steward, though this man seemed much younger. Somewhere … in his twenties? Maybe his thirties? No, he could be older. On the table between Gavilar and the men lay a group of spheres and gemstones. Navani’s breath caught as she saw them. They were arrayed in a variety of colors and brightness, but several seemed strangely off. They glowed with an inverse of light, as if they were little pits of violet darkness, sucking in the color around them. She’d never seen anything like them before, but gemstones with spren trapped inside could have all kinds of odd appearances and effects. Those … they must be meant for fabrials. What was Gavilar doing with spheres, strange light, and distinguished artifabrians? And why wouldn’t he talk to her about— Gavilar suddenly stood up straight and glanced toward the doorway, though Navani hadn’t made any sound. Their
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eyes met. So she pushed open the door as if she had been on her way in. She wasn’t spying; she was queen of this palace. She could go where she wished, particularly her own study. “Husband,” she said. “There are guests missing you at the gathering. You seem to have lost track of time.” “Gentlemen,” Gavilar said to the two ambassadors, “I will need to excuse myself.” The nervous Vorin man ran his hand through his wispy hair. “I want to know more of the project, Gavilar. Plus, you need to know that another of us is here tonight. I spotted her handiwork earlier.” “I have a meeting shortly with Meridas and the others,” Gavilar said. “They should have more information for me. We can speak again after that.” “No,” the Makabaki man said, his voice sharp. “I doubt we shall.” “There’s more here, Nale!” the Vorin man said, though he followed as his friend left. “This is important! I want out. This is the only way.…” “What was that about?” Navani asked as Gavilar closed the door. “Those are no ambassadors. Who are they really?” Gavilar did not answer. With deliberate motions, he began plucking the spheres off the table and placing them into a pouch. Navani darted forward and snatched one. “What are these? How did you get spheres that glow like this? Does this have to do with the artifabrians you’ve invited here?” She looked to him, waiting for some kind of answer, some explanation. Instead, he held out his hand for her sphere. “This does not concern you, Navani. Return to the feast.” She closed her hand around the sphere. “So I can continue to cover for you? Did you promise Highlord Rine you’d mediate his dispute tonight of all times? Do you know how many people are expecting you? And did you say you have another meeting to go to now, before the feast begins? Are you simply going to ignore our guests?” “Do you know,” he said softly, “how tired I grow of your constant questions, woman?” “Perhaps try answering one or two, then. It’d be a novel experience, treating your wife like a human being—rather than like a machine built to count the days of the week for you.” He wagged his hand, demanding the sphere. Instinctively she gripped it tighter. “Why? Why do you continue to shut me out? Please, just tell me.” “I deal in secrets you could not handle, Navani. If you knew the scope of what I’ve begun…” She frowned. The scope of what? He’d already conquered Alethkar. He’d united the highprinces. Was this about how he had turned his eyes toward the Unclaimed Hills? Surely settling a patch of wildlands—populated by nothing more than the odd tribe of parshmen—was nothing compared to what he’d already accomplished. He took her hand, forced apart her fingers, and removed the sphere. She didn’t fight him; he would not react well. He had never used his strength against her, not in that way, but there had been words. Comments. Threats. He took the
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strange transfixing sphere and stashed it in the pouch with the others. He pulled the pouch tight with a taut snap of finality, then tucked it into his pocket. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you?” Navani demanded. “You know my love of fabrials. You taunt me specifically because you know it will hurt.” “Perhaps,” Gavilar said, “you will learn to consider before you speak, Navani. Perhaps you will learn the dangerous price of rumors.” This again? she thought. “Nothing happened, Gavilar.” “Do you think I care?” Gavilar said. “Do you think the court cares? To them, lies are as good as facts.” That was true, she realized. Gavilar didn’t care if she’d been unfaithful to him—and she hadn’t. But the things she’d said had started rumors, difficult to smother. All Gavilar cared about was his legacy. He wanted to be known as a great king, a great leader. That drive had always pushed him, but it was growing into something else lately. He kept asking: Would he be remembered as Alethkar’s greatest king? Could he compete with his ancestors, men such as the Sunmaker? If a king’s court thought he couldn’t control his own wife, wouldn’t that stain his legacy? What good was a kingdom if Gavilar knew that his wife secretly loved his brother? In this, Navani represented a chip in the marble of his all-important legacy. “Speak to your daughter,” Gavilar said, turning toward the door. “I believe I have managed to soothe Amaram’s pride. He might take her back, and her time is running out. Few other suitors will consider her; I’ll likely need to pay half the kingdom to get rid of the girl if she denies Meridas again.” Navani sniffed. “You speak to her. If what you want is so important, maybe you could do it yourself for once. Besides, I don’t care for Amaram. Jasnah can do better.” He froze, then looked back and spoke in a low, quiet voice. “Jasnah will marry Amaram, as I have instructed her. She will put aside this fancy of becoming famous by denying the church. Her arrogance stains the reputation of the entire family.” Navani stepped forward and let her voice grow as cold as his. “You realize that girl still loves you, Gavilar. They all do. Elhokar, Dalinar, the boys … they worship you. Are you sure you want to reveal to them what you truly are? They are your legacy. Treat them with care. They will define how you are remembered.” “Greatness will define me, Navani. No mediocre effort by someone like Dalinar or my son could undermine that—and I personally doubt Elhokar could rise to even mediocre.” “And what about me?” she said. “I could write your history. Your life. Whatever you think you’ve done, whatever you think you’ve accomplished … that’s ephemeral, Gavilar. Words on the page define men to future generations. You spurn me, but I have a grip on what you cherish most. Push me too far, and I will start squeezing.” He didn’t respond with shouts or rage, but the cold void in
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his eyes could have consumed kingdoms and left only blackness. He raised his hand to her chin and gently cupped it, a mockery of a once-passionate gesture. It was more painful than a slap. “You know why I don’t involve you, Navani?” he said softly. “Do you think you can take the truth?” “Try for once. It would be refreshing.” “You aren’t worthy, Navani. You claim to be a scholar, but where are your discoveries? You study light, but you are its opposite. A thing that destroys light. You spend your time wallowing in the muck of the kitchens and obsessing about whether or not some insignificant lighteyes recognizes the right lines on a map. “These are not the actions of greatness. You are no scholar. You merely like being near them. You are no artifabrian. You are merely a woman who likes trinkets. You have no fame, accomplishment, or capacity of your own. Everything distinctive about you came from someone else. You have no power—you merely like to marry men who have it.” “How dare you—” “Deny it, Navani,” he snapped. “Deny that you loved one brother, but married the other. You pretended to adore a man you detested—all because you knew he would be king.” She recoiled from him, pulling out of his grip and turning her head to the side. She closed her eyes and felt tears on her cheeks. It was more complicated than he implied, as she had loved both of them—and Dalinar’s intensity had frightened her, so Gavilar had seemed the safer choice. But there was a truth to Gavilar’s accusation. She could lie to herself and say she’d seriously considered Dalinar, but they’d all known she’d eventually choose Gavilar. And she had. He was the more influential of the two. “You went where the money and power would be greatest,” Gavilar said. “Like any common whore. Write whatever you want about me. Say it, shout it, proclaim it. I will outlive your accusations, and my legacy will persist. I have discovered the entrance to the realm of gods and legends, and once I join them, my kingdom will never end. I will never end.” He left then, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. Even in an argument he controlled the situation. Trembling, Navani fumbled her way to a seat by the desk, which boiled over with angerspren. And shamespren, which fluttered around her like white and red petals. Fury made her shake. Fury at him. At herself for not fighting back. At the world, because she knew what he said was at least partially true. No. Don’t let his lies become your truth. Fight it. Teeth gritted, she opened her eyes and began rummaging in her desk for some oil paint and paper. She began painting, taking care with each calligraphic line. Pride—as if proof to him—compelled her to be meticulous and perfect. The act usually soothed her. The way that neat, orderly lines became words, the way that paint and paper transformed into meaning. In the end, she had one of
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the finest glyphwards she’d ever created. It read, simply, Death. Gift. Death. She’d drawn each glyph in the shapes of Gavilar’s tower or sword heraldry. The prayer burned eagerly in the lamp flame, flaring bright—and as it did, her catharsis turned to shame. What was she doing? Praying for her husband’s death? The shamespren returned in a burst. How had it come to this? Their arguments grew worse and worse. She knew he was not this man, the one he showed her lately. He wasn’t like this when he spoke to Dalinar, or to Sadeas, or even—usually—to Jasnah. Gavilar was better than this. She suspected he knew it too. Tomorrow she would receive flowers. No apology to accompany them, but a gift, usually a bracelet. Yes, he knew he should be something more. But … somehow she brought out the monster in him. And he somehow brought out the weakness in her. She slammed her safehand palm against the table, rubbing her forehead with her other hand. Storms. It seemed not so long ago that they’d sat conspiring together about the kingdom they would forge. Now they barely spoke without reaching for their sharpest knives—stabbing them right into the most painful spots with an accuracy gained only through longtime familiarity. She composed herself with effort, redoing her makeup, touching up her hair. She might be the things he said, but he was no more than a backwater thug with too much luck and a knack for fooling good men into following him. If a man like that could pretend to be a king, she could pretend to be a queen. At any rate, they had a kingdom. At least one of them should try to run it. * * * Navani didn’t hear of the assassination until it had been accomplished. At the feast, they’d been the model of perfect royalty, cordial to one another, leading their respective meals. Then Gavilar had left, fleeing as soon as he could find an excuse. At least he’d waited until the dining was finished. Navani had gone down to bid farewell to the guests. She had implied that Gavilar wasn’t deliberately snubbing anyone. He was merely exhausted from his extensive touring. Yes, she was certain he’d be holding audience soon. They’d love to visit once the next storm passed.… On and on she went, until each smile made her face feel as if it would crack. She was relieved when a messenger girl came running for her. She stepped away from the departing guests, expecting to hear that an expensive vase had shattered, or that Dalinar was snoring at his table. Instead, the messenger girl brought Navani over to the palace steward, his face a mask of grief. Eyes reddened, hands shaking, the aged man reached out for her and took her arm—as if for stability. Tears ran down his face, getting caught in his wispy beard. Seeing his emotion, she realized she rarely thought of the man by his name, rarely thought of him as a person. She’d often treated him like a fixture
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of the palace, much as one might the statues out front. Much as Gavilar treated her. “Gereh,” she said, taking his hand, embarrassed. “What happened? Are you well? Have we been working you too hard without—” “The king,” the elderly man choked out. “Oh, Brightness, they’ve taken our king! Those parshmen. Those barbarians. Those … those monsters.” Her immediate suspicion was that Gavilar had found some way to escape the palace, and everyone thought he’d been kidnapped. That man … she thought, imagining him out in the city with his uncommon visitors, discussing secrets in a dark room. Gereh held to her tighter. “Brightness, they’ve killed him. King Gavilar is dead.” “Impossible,” she said. “He’s the most powerful man in the land, perhaps the world. Surrounded by Shardbearers. You are mistaken, Gereh. He’s…” He’s as enduring as the storms. But of course that wasn’t true—it was merely what he wished people to think. I will never end.… When he said things like that, it was hard to disbelieve him. She had to see the body before the truth started to seep in at last, chilling her like a winter rain. Gavilar, broken and bloody, lay on a table in the larder—with guards forcibly turning aside the frightened house staff when they asked for explanations. Navani stood over him. Even with the blood in his beard, the shattered Shardplate, his lack of breath and the gaping wounds in his flesh … even then she wondered if it was a trick. What lay before her was an impossibility. Gavilar Kholin couldn’t simply die like other men. She had them show her the fallen balcony, where Gavilar had been found lifeless after dropping from above. Jasnah had witnessed it, they said. The normally unflappable girl sat in the corner, her fisted safehand to her mouth as she cried. Only then did the shockspren begin to appear around Navani, like triangles of breaking light. Only then did she believe. Gavilar Kholin was dead. Sadeas pulled Navani aside and, with genuine sorrow, explained his role in the events. She listened in a numb sense of disconnect. She had been so busy, she hadn’t realized that most of the Parshendi had left the palace in secret—fleeing into the darkness moments before their minion attacked. Their leaders had stayed behind to cover up the withdrawal. In a trance, Navani walked back to the larder and the cold husk of Gavilar Kholin. His discarded shell. From the looks of the attending servants and surgeons, they anticipated grief from her. Wailing perhaps. Certainly there were painspren appearing in droves in the room, even a few rare anguishspren, like teeth growing from the walls. She felt something akin to those emotions. Sorrow? No, not exactly. Regret. If he truly was dead, then … that was it. Their last real conversation had been another argument. There was no going back. Always before, she’d been able to tell herself that they’d reconcile. That they’d hunt through the thorns and find a path to return to what they’d been. If not loving, then at least
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aligned. Now that would never be. It was over. He was dead, she was a widow, and … storms, she’d prayed for this. That knowledge stabbed her straight through. She had to hope the Almighty hadn’t listened to her foolish pleas written in a moment of fury. Although a part of her had grown to hate Gavilar, she didn’t truly want him dead. Did she? No. No, this was not how it should have ended. And so she felt another emotion. Pity. Lying there, blood pooling on the tabletop around him, Gavilar Kholin’s corpse seemed the ultimate insult to his grand plans. He thought he was eternal, did he? He thought to reach for some grand vision, too important to share with her? Well, the Father of Storms and the Mother of the World ignored the desires of men, no matter how grand. What she didn’t feel was grief. His death was meaningful, but it didn’t mean anything to her. Other than perhaps a way for her children to never have to learn what he’d become. I will be the better person, Gavilar, she thought, closing his eyes. For what you once were, I’ll let the world pretend. I’ll give you your legacy. Then she paused. His Shardplate—well, the Plate he was wearing—had broken near the waist. She reached her fingers into his pocket and brushed hogshide leather. She eased out the pouch of spheres he’d been showing off earlier, but found it empty. Storms. Where had he put them? Someone in the room coughed, and she became suddenly cognizant of how it looked for her to be rifling through his pockets. Navani took the spheres from her hair, put them into the pouch, then folded it into his hand before resting her forehead on his broken chest. That would appear as if she were returning gifts to him, symbolizing her light becoming his as he died. Then, with his blood on her face, she stood up and made a show of composing herself. Over the next hours, organizing the chaos of a city turned upside down, she worried she’d get a reputation for callousness. Instead, people seemed to find her sturdiness comforting. The king was gone, but the kingdom lived on. Gavilar had left this life as he’d lived it: with grand drama that afterward required Navani to pick up the pieces. With every project, there are many hands working behind the scenes. I want to thank everyone involved. Thanks go out to Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, on whose prompting I wrote the novella. My agent Joshua Bilmes gave early feedback. Isaac St€wart is responsible for the look of the finished product. The Ineffable Peter Ahlstrom did his usual marvelous editing job. Miranda Meeks provided the awesome cover art. Emily Sanderson supported me as always. Community proofreaders for this volume include Alice Arneson, Aaron Biggs, Jakob Remick, Corby Campbell, Kelly Neumann, Megan Kanne, Maren Menke, Bob Kluttz, Lyndsey Luther, Kalyani Poluri, Rahul Pantula, Aaron Ford, Ruchita Dhawan, Gary Singer, and Bart Butler. Thank you for all of your
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input! Brandon Sanderson Firstborn Defending Elysium The Emperor’s Soul Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell Sixth of the Dusk Perfect State Elantris Warbreaker The Rithmatist The Way of Kings Words of Radiance Steelheart Mitosis: A Reckoners Story Firefight Mistborn: The Final Empire The Well of Ascension The Hero of Ages The Alloy of Law Legion Legion: Skin Deep Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens Infinity Blade: Awakening Infinity Blade: Redemption The Gathering Storm Towers of Midnight A Memory of Light This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FORESTS OF HELL Copyright © 2013 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC All rights reserved. First appeared in Dangerous Women edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (2013) Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Miranda Meeks Cover design and art direction by Isaac Stewart Electronic book design by Peter Ahlstrom A Dragonsteel Entertainment Book Published by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC American Fork, UT BrandonSanderson.com ISBN 978-1-938570-08-7 First electronic edition: March 2015 Smashwords Edition, License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. When George R. R. Martin approached me to ask if I’d be willing to contribute a story to Dangerous Women, I was ecstatic. George is known best for his Westeros books, but he is also an excellent editor, having put together many anthologies. His recent themed anthologies with Gardner Dozois have become something of a “Who’s Who” in the fantasy and science fiction world. It was a real honor to be invited. After he told me the theme was “dangerous women,” I at first thought of Perfect State, another novella of mine. I had a very rough draft of that done, but hadn’t yet submitted it anywhere for publication. I sent that to George and Gardner, and they felt it wasn’t on theme enough, and asked if I had anything else. I didn’t, not yet, but something had happened recently that had planted a seed in my mind. I had been involved in some genealogy work, and had run across the name of a Puritan woman named Silence. That intrigued me. Who would name their daughter Silence, and for what reason? Charity I can get. Faith totally makes sense. But Silence? Perhaps she was late in the birth order, and her parents were really hoping to sleep through the nights this time. Either way, the name stuck with me. I’d had the idea for Threnody, the Cosmere world where
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a group of pilgrimesque people fled the Old World because it was overrun by a terrible evil long ago. It was actually a very early Cosmere world, developed somewhere around 1999 or 2000. (Though the name didn’t get assigned to it until Isaac gave a suggestion upon reading this novella.) Having an intriguing Puritan name and a world that took inspiration from early American history seemed a ready-made match, but then I had to ask myself, how was Silence going to be dangerous? I was worried that the anthology was going to be stuffed full of women either in the “femme fatal” vein or the “I wear black leather and kick demon butt” vein. I’ve often felt that we, in fantasy, sometimes do a poor job of representing people (both male and female) who are powerful and capable in ways other than their ability to stand in a fight. Yes, giving a woman a sword is one way to make her dangerous, but I resist making every powerful woman into one who has become so by forcing her way into a traditionally male-dominated realm of face-to-face combat. The world was mostly formed in my head, though over the years I’d added the idea of the shades for various reasons. One was to show off a few hints regarding the Cosmere afterlife, and another came during my initial research for the Stormlight Archive, where I read a lot about classical Hebrew life and philosophy. The original idea for Threnody was to make a system of magical rules with their roots in the Law of Moses and Jewish tradition. (Not mixing meat with milk, not kindling flames after nightfall on the Sabbath, etc.) Many of those rules transformed over the years, leaving their roots behind in the same way that the Stormlight magic system left behind its roots in the fundamental forces of physics. But you can see those hints still having an influence on the tone and setting of this story. The intersection of these ideas developed into this story, one that soon became one of my favorite Cosmere tales. I hope you enjoy it! (And no, for those searching, Hoid does not make an appearance. Unfortunately, he needed to be somewhere else in the timeline at this point.) Brandon Sanderson Silence Montane closed the door to the common room, then turned and pressed her back against it. She tried to still her racing heart by breathing in and out. Had she made any obvious signs? Did they know she’d recognized them? William Ann passed by, wiping her hands on a cloth. “Mother?” the young woman asked, pausing. “Mother, are you—” “Fetch the book. Quickly, child!” William Ann’s face went pale, then she hurried into the back pantry. Silence clutched her apron to still her nerves, then joined William Ann as the girl came out of the pantry with a thick, leather satchel. White flour dusted its cover and spine from the hiding place. Silence took the satchel and opened it on the high kitchen counter, revealing a collection of loose-leaf papers. Most
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had faces drawn on them. As Silence rifled through the pages, William Ann moved to the peephole for spying into the common room. For a few moments, the only sound to accompany Silence’s thumping heart was that of hastily turned pages. “It’s the man with the long neck, isn’t it?” William Ann asked. “I remember his face from one of the bounties.” “That’s just Lamentation Winebare, a petty horse thief. He’s barely worth two measures of silver.” “Who, then? The man in the back, with the hat?” Silence shook her head, finding a sequence of pages at the bottom of her pile. She inspected the drawings. God Beyond, she thought. I can’t decide if I want it to be them or not. At least her hands had stopped shaking. William Ann scurried back and craned her neck over Silence’s shoulder. At fourteen, the girl was already taller than her mother. A fine thing to suffer, a child taller than you. Though William Ann grumbled about being awkward and lanky, her slender build foreshadowed a beauty to come. She took after her father. “Oh, God Beyond,” William Ann said, raising a hand to her mouth. “You mean—” “Chesterton Divide,” Silence said. The shape of the chin, the look in the eyes . . . they were the same. “He walked right into our hands, with four of his men.” The bounty on those five would be enough to pay her supply needs for a year. Maybe two. Her eyes flickered to the words below the pictures, printed in harsh, bold letters. Extremely dangerous. Wanted for murder, rape, extortion. And, of course, there was the big one at the end: And assassination. Silence had always wondered if Chesterton and his men had intended to kill the governor of the most powerful fort city on this continent, or if it had been an accident. A simple robbery gone wrong. Either way, Chesterton understood what he’d done. Before the incident, he had been a common—if accomplished—highway bandit. Now he was something greater, something far more dangerous. Chesterton knew that if he were captured, there would be no mercy, no quarter. Lastport had painted Chesterton as an anarchist, a menace, and a psychopath. Chesterton had no reason to hold back. So he didn’t. Oh, God Beyond, Silence thought, looking at the continuing list of his crimes on the next page. Beside her, William Ann whispered the words to herself. “He’s out there?” she asked. “But where?” “The merchants,” Silence said. “What?” William Ann rushed back to the peephole. The wood there—indeed, all around the kitchen—had been scrubbed so hard that it had been bleached white. Sebruki had been cleaning again. “I can’t see it,” William Ann said. “Look closer.” Silence hadn’t seen it at first either, even though she spent each night with the book, memorizing its faces. A few moments later William Ann gasped, raising her hand to her mouth. “That seems so foolish of him. Why is he going about perfectly visible like this? Even in disguise.” “Everyone will remember just another band of fool
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merchants from the fort who thought they could brave the Forests. It’s a clever ruse. When they vanish from the paths in a few days, it will be assumed—if anyone cares to wonder—that the shades got them. Besides, this way Chesterton can travel quickly and in the open, visiting waystops and listening for information.” Was this how Chesterton discovered good targets to hit? Had they come through her waystop before? The thought made her stomach turn. She had fed criminals many times; some were regulars. Every man was probably a criminal out in the Forests, if only for ignoring taxes imposed by the fortfolk. Chesterton and his men were different. She didn’t need the list of crimes to know what they were capable of doing. “Where’s Sebruki?” Silence said. William Ann shook herself, as if coming out of a stupor. “She’s feeding the pigs. Shadows! You don’t think they’d recognize her, do you?” “No,” Silence said. “I’m worried she’ll recognize them.” Sebruki might only be eight, but she could be shockingly—disturbingly—observant. Silence closed the book of bounties. She rested her fingers on the satchel’s leather. “We’re going to kill them, aren’t we?” William Ann asked. “Yes.” “How much are they worth?” “Sometimes, child, it’s not about what a man is worth.” Silence heard the faint lie in her voice. Times were increasingly tight, with the price of silver from both Bastion Hill and Lastport on the rise. Sometimes it wasn’t about what a man was worth. But this wasn’t one of those times. “I’ll get the poison.” William Ann left the peephole and crossed the room. “Something light, child,” Silence cautioned. “These are dangerous men. They’ll notice if things are out of the ordinary.” “I’m not a fool, Mother,” William Ann said dryly. “I’ll use fenweed. They won’t taste it in the beer.” “Half dose. I don’t want them collapsing at the table.” William Ann nodded, entering the old storage room, where she closed the door and began prying up floorboards to get to the poisons. Fenweed would leave the men cloudy-headed and dizzy, but wouldn’t kill them. Silence didn’t dare risk something more deadly. If suspicion ever came back to her waystop, her career—and likely her life—would end. She needed to remain, in the minds of travelers, the crotchety but fair innkeeper who didn’t ask too many questions. Her waystop was a place of perceived safety, even for the roughest of criminals. She bedded down each night with a heart full of fear that someone would realize a suspicious number of the White Fox’s bounties stayed at Silence’s waystop in the days preceding their demise. She went into the pantry to put away the bounty book. Here, too, the walls had been scrubbed clean, the shelves freshly sanded and dusted. That child. Who had heard of a child who would rather clean than play? Of course, given what Sebruki had been through . . . Silence could not help reaching onto the top shelf and feeling the crossbow she kept there. Silver boltheads. She kept it for shades, and hadn’t yet
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turned it against a man. Drawing blood was too dangerous in the Forests. It still comforted her to know that in case of a true emergency, she had the weapon at hand. Bounty book stowed, she went to check on Sebruki. The child was indeed caring for the pigs. Silence liked to keep a healthy stock, though of course not for eating. Pigs were said to ward away shades. She used any tool she could to make the waystop seem more safe. Sebruki knelt inside the pig shack. The short girl had dark skin and long, black hair. Nobody would have taken her for Silence’s daughter, even if they hadn’t heard of Sebruki’s unfortunate history. The child hummed to herself, scrubbing at the wall of the enclosure. “Child?” Silence asked. Sebruki turned to her and smiled. What a difference one year could make. Once, Silence would have sworn that this child would never smile again. Sebruki had spent her first three months at the waystop staring at walls. No matter where Silence had put her, the child had moved to the nearest wall, sat down, and stared at it all day. Never speaking a word. Eyes dead as those of a shade . . . “Aunt Silence?” Sebruki asked. “Are you well?” “I’m fine, child. Just plagued by memories. You’re . . . cleaning the pig shack now?” “The walls need a good scrubbing,” Sebruki said. “The pigs do so like it to be clean. Well, Jarom and Ezekiel prefer it that way. The others don’t seem to care.” “You don’t need to clean so hard, child.” “I like doing it,” Sebruki said. “It feels good. It’s something I can do. To help.” Well, it was better to clean the walls than stare blankly at them all day. Today, Silence was happy for anything that kept the child busy. Anything, so long as she didn’t enter the common room. “I think the pigs will like it,” Silence said. “Why don’t you keep at it in here for a while?” Sebruki eyed her. “What’s wrong?” Shadows. She was so observant. “There are some men with rough tongues in the common room,” Silence said. “I won’t have you picking up their cussing.” “I’m not a child, Aunt Silence.” “Yes you are,” Silence said firmly. “And you’ll obey. Don’t think I won’t take a switch to your backside.” Sebruki rolled her eyes, but went back to work and began humming to herself. Silence let a little of her grandmother’s ways out when she spoke with Sebruki. The child responded well to sternness. She seemed to crave it, perhaps as a symbol that someone was in control. Silence wished she actually were in control. But she was a Forescout—the surname taken by her grandparents and the others who had left Homeland first and explored this continent. Yes, she was a Forescout, and she’d be damned before she’d let anyone know how absolutely powerless she felt much of the time. Silence crossed the backyard of the large inn, noting William Ann inside the kitchen mixing a paste
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to dissolve in the beer. Silence passed her by and looked in on the stable. Unsurprisingly, Chesterton had said they’d be leaving after their meal. While a lot of folk sought the relative safety of a waystop at night, Chesterton and his men would be accustomed to sleeping in the Forests. Even with the shades about, they would feel more comfortable in a camp of their own devising than they would in a waystop bed. Inside the stable, Dob—the old stable hand—had just finished brushing down the horses. He wouldn’t have watered them. Silence had a standing order to not do that until last. “This is well done, Dob,” Silence said. “Why don’t you take your break now?” He nodded to her with a mumbled, “Thank’ya, mam.” He’d find the front porch and his pipe, as always. Dob hadn’t two wits to rub together, and he hadn’t a clue about what she really did at the waystop, but he’d been with her since before William’s death. He was as loyal a man as she’d ever found. Silence shut the door after him, then fetched some pouches from the locked cabinet at the rear of the stable. She checked each one in the dim light, then set them on the grooming table and heaved the first saddle onto its owner’s back. She was near finished with the saddling when the door eased open. She froze, immediately thinking of the pouches on the table. Why hadn’t she stuffed them in her apron? Sloppy! “Silence Forescout,” a smooth voice said from the doorway. Silence stifled a groan and turned to confront her visitor. “Theopolis,” she said. “It’s not polite to sneak about on a woman’s property. I should have you thrown out for trespassing.” “Now, now. That would be rather like . . . the horse kicking at the man who feeds him, hmmm?” Theopolis leaned his gangly frame against the doorway, folding his arms. He wore simple clothing, no markings of his station. A fort tax collector often didn’t want random passers to know of his profession. Clean-shaven, his face always had that same patronizing smile on it. His clothing was too clean, too new to be that of one who lived out in the Forests. Not that he was a dandy, nor was he a fool. Theopolis was dangerous, just a different kind of dangerous from most. “Why are you here, Theopolis?” she said, hefting the last saddle onto the back of a snorting roan gelding. “Why do I always come to you, Silence? It’s not because of your cheerful countenance, hmmm?” “I’m paid up on taxes.” “That’s because you’re mostly exempt from taxes,” Theopolis said. “But you haven’t paid me for last month’s shipment of silver.” “Things have been a little dry lately. It’s coming.” “And the bolts for your crossbow?” Theopolis asked. “One wonders if you’re trying to forget about the price of those silver boltheads, hmmm? And the shipment of replacement sections for your protection rings?” His whining accent made her wince as she buckled the saddle on. Theopolis. Shadows,
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what a day! “Oh my,” Theopolis said, walking over to the grooming table. He picked up one of the pouches. “What are these, now? That looks like wetleek sap. I’ve heard that it glows at night if you shine the right kind of light upon it. Is this one of the White Fox’s mysterious secrets?” She snatched the pouch away. “Don’t say that name,” she hissed. He grinned. “You have a bounty! Delightful. I have always wondered how you tracked them. Poke a pinhole in that, attach it to the underside of the saddle, then follow the dripping trail it leaves? Hmmm? You could probably track them a long way, kill them far from here. Keep suspicion off the little waystop?” Yes, Theopolis was dangerous, but she needed someone to turn in her bounties for her. Theopolis was a rat, and like all rats he knew the best holes, troughs, and crannies. He had connections in Lastport, and had managed to get her the money in the name of the White Fox without revealing her. “I’ve been tempted to turn you in lately, you know,” Theopolis said. “Many a group keeps a betting pool on the identity of the infamous Fox. I could be a rich man with this knowledge, hmmm?” “You’re already a rich man,” she snapped. “And though you’re many things, you are not an idiot. This has worked just fine for a decade. Don’t tell me you’d trade wealth for a little notoriety?” He smiled, but did not contradict her. He kept half of what she earned from each bounty. It was a fine arrangement for Theopolis. No danger to him, which was how she knew he liked it. He was a civil servant, not a bounty hunter. The only time she’d seen him kill, the man he’d murdered couldn’t fight back. “You know me too well, Silence,” Theopolis said with a laugh. “Too well indeed. My, my. A bounty! I wonder who it is. I’ll have to go look in the common room.” “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Shadows! You think the face of a tax collector won’t spook them? Don’t you go walking in and spoiling things.” “Peace, Silence,” he said, still grinning. “I obey your rules. I am careful not to show myself around here often, and I don’t bring suspicion to you. I couldn’t stay today anyway; I merely came to give you an offer. Only now you probably won’t need it! Ah, such a pity. After all the trouble I went to in your name, hmmm?” She felt cold. “What help could you possibly give me?” He took a sheet of paper from his satchel, then carefully unfolded it with too-long fingers. He moved to hold it up, but she snatched it from him. “What is this?” “A way to relieve you of your debt, Silence! A way to prevent you from ever having to worry again.” The paper was a writ of seizure, an authorization for Silence’s creditors—Theopolis—to claim her property as payment. The forts claimed jurisdiction over the roadways and the
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land to either side of them. They did send soldiers out to patrol them. Occasionally. “I take it back, Theopolis,” she spat. “You most certainly are a fool. You’d give up everything we have for a greedy land snatch?” “Of course not, Silence. This wouldn’t be giving up anything at all! Why, I do so feel bad seeing you constantly in my debt. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if I took over the finances of the waystop? You would remain working here, and hunting bounties, as you always have. Only, you would no longer have to worry about your debts, hmmm?” She crumpled the paper in her hand. “You’d turn me and mine into slaves, Theopolis.” “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Those in Lastport have begun to worry that such an important waypoint as this is owned by an unknown element. You are drawing attention, Silence. I should think that is the last thing you want.” Silence crumpled the paper further in her hand, fist tight. Horses shuffled in their stalls. Theopolis grinned. “Well,” he said. “Perhaps it won’t be needed. Perhaps this bounty of yours is a big one, hmmm? Any clues to give me, so I don’t sit wondering all day?” “Get out,” she whispered. “Dear Silence,” he said. “Forescout blood, stubborn to the last breath. They say your grandparents were the first of the first. The first people to come scout this continent, the first to homestead the Forests . . . the first to stake a claim on hell itself.” “Don’t call the Forests that. This is my home.” “But it is how men saw this land, before the Evil. Doesn’t that make you curious? Hell, land of the damned, where the shadows of the dead made their home. I keep wondering: Is there really a shade of your departed husband guarding this place, or is it just another story you tell people? To make them feel safe, hmmm? You spend a fortune in silver. That offers the real protection, and I never have been able to find a record of your marriage. Of course, if there wasn’t one, that would make dear William Ann a—” “Go.” He grinned, but tipped his hat to her and stepped out. She heard him climb into the saddle, then ride off. Night would soon fall; it was probably too much to hope that the shades would take Theopolis. She’d long suspected that he had a hiding hole somewhere near, probably a cavern he kept lined with silver. She breathed in and out, trying to calm herself. Theopolis was frustrating, but he didn’t know everything. She forced her attention back to the horses and got out a bucket of water. She dumped the contents of the pouches into it, then gave a hearty dose to the horses, who each drank thirstily. Pouches that dripped sap in the way Theopolis indicated would be too easy to spot. What would happen when her bounties removed their saddles at night and found the pouches? They’d know someone was coming for them. No, she needed something
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less obvious. “How am I going to manage this?” she whispered as a horse drank from her bucket. “Shadows. They’re reaching for me on all sides.” Kill Theopolis. That was probably what Grandmother would have done. She considered it. No, she thought. I won’t become that. I won’t become her. Theopolis was a thug and a scoundrel, but he had not broken any laws, nor had he done anyone direct harm that she knew. There had to be rules, even out here. There had to be lines. Perhaps in that respect, she wasn’t so different from the fortfolk. She’d find another way. Theopolis only had a writ of debt; he had been required to show it to her. That meant she had a day or two to come up with his money. All neat and orderly. In the fort cities, they claimed to have civilization. Those rules gave her a chance. She left the stable. A glance through the window into the common room showed her William Ann delivering drinks to the “merchants” of Chesterton’s gang. Silence stopped to watch. Behind her, the Forests shivered in the wind. Silence listened, then turned to face them. You could tell fortfolk by the way they refused to face the Forests. They averted their eyes, never looking into the depths. Those solemn trees covered almost every inch of this continent, those leaves shading the ground. Still. Silent. Animals lived out there, but fort surveyors declared that there were no predators. The shades had gotten those long ago, drawn by the shedding of blood. Staring into the Forests seemed to make them . . . retreat. The darkness of their depths withdrew, the stillness gave way to the sound of rodents picking through fallen leaves. A Forescout knew to look the Forests straight on. A Forescout knew that the surveyors were wrong. There was a predator out there. The Forest itself was one. Silence turned and walked to the door into the kitchen. Keeping the waystop had to be her first goal, so she was committed to collecting Chesterton’s bounty now. If she couldn’t pay Theopolis, she had little faith that everything would stay the same. He’d have a hand around her throat, as she couldn’t leave the waystop. She had no fort citizenship, and times were too tight for the local homesteaders to take her in. No, she’d have to stay and work the waystop for Theopolis, and he would squeeze her dry, taking larger and larger percentages of the bounties. She pushed open the door to the kitchen. It— Sebruki sat at the kitchen table holding the crossbow in her lap. “God Beyond!” Silence gasped, pulling the door closed as she stepped inside. “Child, what are you—” Sebruki looked up at her. Those haunted eyes were back, eyes void of life and emotion. Eyes like a shade’s. “We have visitors, Aunt Silence,” Sebruki said in a cold, monotone voice. The crossbow’s winding crank sat next to her. She had managed to load the thing and cock it, all on her own. “I coated the
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bolt’s tip with blackblood. I did that right, didn’t I? That way, the poison will kill him for sure.” “Child . . .” Silence stepped forward. Sebruki turned the crossbow in her lap, holding it at an angle to support it, one small hand on the trigger. The point turned toward Silence. Sebruki stared ahead, eyes blank. “This won’t work, Sebruki,” Silence said, stern. “Even if you were able to lift that thing into the common room, you wouldn’t hit him—and even if you did, his men would kill us all in retribution!” “I wouldn’t mind,” Sebruki said softly. “So long as I got to kill him. So long as I pulled the trigger.” “You care nothing for us?” Silence snapped. “I take you in, give you a home, and this is your payment? You steal a weapon? You threaten me?” Sebruki blinked. “What is wrong with you?” Silence said. “You’d shed blood in this place of sanctuary? Bring the shades down upon us, beating at our protections? If they got through, they’d kill everyone under my roof! People I’ve promised safety. How dare you!” Sebruki shook, as if coming awake. Her mask broke and she dropped the crossbow. Silence heard a snap, and the catch released. She felt the bolt pass within an inch of her cheek, then break the window behind. Shadows! Had the bolt grazed Silence? Had Sebruki drawn blood? Silence reached up with a shaking hand, but blessedly felt no blood. The bolt hadn’t hit her. A moment later Sebruki was in her arms, sobbing. Silence knelt down, holding the child close. “Hush, dear one. It’s all right. It’s all right.” “I heard it all,” Sebruki whispered. “Mother never cried out. She knew I was there. She was strong, Aunt Silence. That was why I could be strong, even when the blood came down. Soaking my hair. I heard it. I heard it all.” Silence closed her eyes, holding Sebruki tight. She herself had been the only one willing to investigate the smoking homestead. Sebruki’s father had stayed at the waystop on occasion. A good man. As good a man as was left after the Evil took Homeland, that was. In the smoldering remains of the homestead, Silence had found the corpses of a dozen people. Each family member had been slaughtered by Chesterton and his men, right down to the children. The only one left had been Sebruki, the youngest, who had been shoved into the crawl space under the floorboards in the bedroom. She’d lain there, soaked in her mother’s blood, soundless even as Silence found her. She’d only discovered the girl because Chesterton had been careful, lining the room with silver dust to protect against shades as he prepared to kill. Silence had tried to recover some of the dust that had trickled between the floorboards, and had run across eyes staring up at her through the slits. Chesterton had burned thirteen different homesteads over the last year. Over fifty people murdered. Sebruki was the only one who had escaped him. The girl trembled as
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she heaved with sobs. “Why . . . Why?” “There is no reason. I’m sorry.” What else could she do? Offer some foolish platitude or comfort about the God Beyond? These were the Forests. You didn’t survive on platitudes. Silence did hold the girl until her crying began to subside. William Ann entered, then stilled beside the kitchen table, holding a tray of empty mugs. Her eyes flickered toward the fallen crossbow, then at the broken window. “You’ll kill him?” Sebruki whispered. “You’ll bring him to justice?” “Justice died in Homeland,” Silence said. “But yes, I’ll kill him. I promise it to you, child.” Stepping timidly, William Ann picked up the crossbow, then turned it, displaying its now broken bow. Silence breathed out. She should never have left the thing where Sebruki could get to it. “Care for the patrons, William Ann,” Silence said. “I’ll take Sebruki upstairs.” William Ann nodded, glancing at the broken window. “No blood was shed,” Silence said. “We will be fine. Though if you get a moment, see if you can find the bolt. The head is silver.” This was hardly a time when they could afford to waste money. William Ann stowed the crossbow in the pantry as Silence carefully set Sebruki on a kitchen stool. The girl clung to her, refusing to let go, so Silence relented and held her for a time longer. William Ann took a few deep breaths, as if to calm herself, then pushed back out into the common room to distribute drinks. Eventually, Sebruki let go long enough for Silence to mix a draught. She carried the girl up the stairs to the loft above the common room, where the three of them made their beds. Dob slept in the stable and the guests in the nicer rooms on the second floor. “You’re going to make me sleep,” Sebruki said, regarding the cup with reddened eyes. “The world will seem a brighter place in the morning,” Silence said. And I can’t risk you sneaking out after me tonight. The girl reluctantly took the draught, then drank it down. “I’m sorry. About the crossbow.” “We will find a way for you to work off the cost of fixing it.” That seemed to comfort Sebruki. She was a homesteader, Forests born. “You used to sing to me at night,” Sebruki said softly, closing her eyes, lying back. “When you first brought me here. After . . . After . . .” She swallowed. “I wasn’t certain you noticed.” Silence hadn’t been certain Sebruki noticed anything, during those times. “I did.” Silence sat down on the stool beside Sebruki’s cot. She didn’t feel like singing, so she began humming. It was the lullaby she’d sung to William Ann during the hard times right after her birth. Before long, the words came out, unbidden: “Hush now, my dear one . . . be not afraid. Night comes upon us, but sunlight will break. Sleep now, my dear one . . . let your tears fade. Darkness surrounds us, but someday we’ll wake. . .
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.” She held Sebruki’s hand until the child fell asleep. The window by the bed overlooked the courtyard, so Silence could see as Dob brought out Chesterton’s horses. The five men in their fancy merchant clothing stomped down off the porch and climbed into their saddles. They rode in a file out onto the roadway; then the Forests enveloped them. One hour after nightfall, Silence packed her rucksack by the light of the hearth. Her grandmother had kindled that hearth’s flame, and it had been burning ever since. She’d nearly lost her life lighting the fire, but she hadn’t been willing to pay any of the fire merchants for a start. Silence shook her head. Grandmother always had bucked convention. But then, was Silence any better? Don’t kindle flame, don’t shed the blood of another, don’t run at night. These things draw shades. The Simple Rules, by which every homesteader lived. She’d broken all three on more than one occasion. It was a wonder she hadn’t been withered away into a shade by now. The fire’s warmth seemed a distant thing as she prepared to kill. Silence glanced at the old shrine, really just a closet, that she kept locked. The flames reminded her of her grandmother. At times, she thought of the fire as her grandmother. Defiant of both the shades and the forts, right until the end. She’d purged the waystop of other reminders of Grandmother, all save the shrine to the God Beyond. That was set behind a locked door beside the pantry, and next to the door had once hung her grandmother’s silver dagger, symbol of the old religion. That dagger was etched with the symbols of divinity as a warding. Silence now carried it in a sheath at her side, not for its wardings, but because it was silver. One could never have too much silver in the Forests. She packed the sack carefully, first putting in her medicine kit and then a good-sized pouch of silver dust to heal withering. She followed that with ten empty sacks of thick burlap, tarred on the inside to prevent their contents from leaking. Finally, she added an oil lamp. She wouldn’t want to use it, as she didn’t trust fire. Fire could draw shades. However, she’d found it useful to have on prior outings, so she brought it. She’d only light it if she ran across someone who already had a fire started. Once done, she hesitated, then went to the old storage room. She removed the floorboards and took out the small, dry-packed keg that lay beside the poisons. Gunpowder. “Mother?” William Ann asked, causing her to jump. She hadn’t heard the girl enter the kitchen. Silence nearly dropped the keg in her startlement, and that nearly stopped her heart. She cursed herself for a fool, tucking the keg under her arm. It couldn’t explode without fire. She knew that much. “Mother!” William Ann said, looking at the keg. “I probably won’t need it.” “But—” “I know. Hush.” She walked over and placed the keg into her sack.
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Attached to the side of the keg, with cloth stuffed between the metal arms, was her grandmother’s firestarter. Igniting gunpowder counted as kindling flames, at least in the eyes of the shades. It drew them almost as quickly as blood did, day or night. The early refugees from Homeland had discovered that in short order. In some ways, blood was easier to avoid. A simple nosebleed or issue of blood wouldn’t draw the shades; they wouldn’t even notice. It had to be the blood of another, shed by your hands—and they would go for the one who shed the blood first. Of course, after that person was dead, they often didn’t care who they killed next. Once enraged, shades were dangerous to all nearby. Only after Silence had the gunpowder packed did she notice that William Ann was dressed for traveling in trousers and boots. She carried a sack like Silence’s. “What do you think you’re about, William Ann?” Silence asked. “You intend to kill five men who had only half a dose of fenweed by yourself, Mother?” “I’ve done similar before. I’ve learned to work on my own.” “Only because you didn’t have anyone else to help.” William Ann slung her sack onto her shoulder. “That’s no longer the case.” “You’re too young. Go back to bed; watch the waystop until I return.” William Ann showed no signs of budging. “Child, I told you—” “Mother,” William Ann said, taking her arm firmly, “you aren’t a youth anymore! You think I don’t see your limp getting worse? You can’t do everything by yourself! You’re going to have to start letting me help you sometime, dammit!” Silence regarded her daughter. Where had that fierceness come from? It was hard to remember that William Ann, too, was Forescout stock. Grandmother would have been disgusted by her, and that made Silence proud. William Ann had actually had a childhood. She wasn’t weak, she was just . . . normal. A woman could be strong without having the emotions of a brick. “Don’t you cuss at your mother,” Silence finally told the girl. William Ann raised an eyebrow. “You may come,” Silence said, prying her arm out of her daughter’s grip. “But you will do as you are told.” William Ann let out a deep breath, then nodded eagerly. “I’ll warn Dob we’re going.” She walked out, adopting the natural slow step of a homesteader as she entered the darkness. Even though she was within the protection of the waystop’s silver rings, she knew to follow the Simple Rules. Ignoring them when you were safe led to lapses when you weren’t. Silence got out two bowls, then mixed two different types of glowpaste. When finished, she poured them into separate jars, which she packed into her sack. She stepped outside into the night. The air was crisp, chill. The Forests had gone silent. The shades were out, of course. A few of them moved across the grassy ground, visible by their own soft glow. Ethereal, translucent, the ones nearby right now were old shades; they barely
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had human forms any longer. The heads rippled, faces shifting like smoke rings. They trailed waves of whiteness about an arm’s length behind them. Silence had always imagined that as the tattered remains of their clothing. No woman, not even a Forescout, looked upon shades without feeling a coldness inside of her. The shades were about during the day, of course; you just couldn’t see them. Kindle fire, draw blood, and they’d come for you even then. At night, though, they were different. Quicker to respond to infractions. At night they also responded to rapid motions, which they never did during the day. Silence took out one of the glowpaste jars, bathing the area around her in a pale green light. The light was dim, but was even and steady, unlike torchlight. Torches were unreliable, since you couldn’t relight them if they went out. William Ann waited at the front with the lantern poles. “We will need to move quietly,” Silence told her while affixing the jars to the poles. “You may speak, but do so in a whisper. I said you will obey me. You will, in all things, immediately. These men we’re after . . . they will kill you, or worse, without giving the deed a passing thought.” William Ann nodded. “You’re not scared enough,” Silence said, slipping a black covering around the jar with the brighter glowpaste. That plunged them into darkness, but the Starbelt was high in the sky today. Some of that light would filter down through the leaves, particularly if they stayed near the road. “I—” William Ann began. “You remember when Harold’s hound went mad last spring?” Silence asked. “Do you remember that look in the hound’s eyes? No recognition? Eyes that lusted for the kill? Well, that’s what these men are, William Ann. Rabid. They need to be put down, same as that hound. They won’t see you as a person. They’ll see you as meat. Do you understand?” William Ann nodded. Silence could see that she was still more excited than afraid, but there was no helping that. Silence handed William Ann the pole with the darker glowpaste. It had a faint blue light to it but didn’t illuminate much. Silence put the other pole to her right shoulder, sack over her left, then nodded toward the roadway. Nearby, a shade drifted toward the boundary of the waystop. When it touched the thin barrier of silver on the ground, the silver crackled like sparks and drove the thing backward with a sudden jerk. The shade floated the other way. Each touch like that cost Silence money. The touch of a shade ruined silver. That was what her patrons paid for: a waystop whose boundary had not been broken in over a hundred years, with a long-standing tradition that no unwanted shades were trapped within. Peace, of a sort. The best the Forests offered. William Ann stepped across the boundary, which was marked by the curve of the large silver hoops jutting from the ground. They were anchored below by concrete so you
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couldn’t just pull one up. Replacing an overlapping section from one of the rings—she had three concentric ones surrounding her waystop—required digging down and unchaining the section. It was a lot of work, which Silence knew intimately. A week didn’t pass that they didn’t rotate or replace one section or another. The shade nearby drifted away. It didn’t acknowledge them. Silence didn’t know if regular people were invisible to them unless the rules were broken, or if the people just weren’t worthy of attention until then. She and William Ann moved out onto the dark roadway, which was somewhat overgrown. No road in the Forests was well maintained. Perhaps if the forts ever made good on their promises, that would change. Still, there was travel. Homesteaders traveling to one fort or another to trade food. The grains grown out in Forest clearings were richer, tastier than what could be produced up in the mountains. Rabbits and turkeys caught in snares or raised in hutches could be sold for good silver. Not hogs. Only someone in one of the forts would be so crass as to eat a pig. Anyway, there was trade, and that kept the roadway worn, even if the trees around did have a tendency to reach down their boughs—like grasping arms—to try to cover up the pathway. Reclaim it. The Forests did not like that people had infested them. The two women walked carefully and deliberately. No quick motions. Walking so, it seemed an eternity before something appeared on the road in front of them. “There!” William Ann whispered. Silence released her tension in a breath. Something glowing blue marked the roadway in the light of the glowpaste. Theopolis’s guess at how she tracked her quarries had been a good one, but incomplete. Yes, the light of the paste also known as Abraham’s Fire did make drops of wetleek sap glow. By coincidence, wetleek sap also caused a horse’s bladder to loosen. Silence inspected the line of glowing sap and urine on the ground. She’d been worried that Chesterton and his men would set off into the Forests soon after leaving the waystop. That hadn’t been likely, but still she’d worried. Now she was sure she had the trail. If Chesterton cut into the Forests, he’d do it a few hours after leaving the waystop, to be more certain their cover was safe. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, then found herself offering a prayer of thanks by rote. She hesitated. Where had that come from? It had been a long time. She shook her head, rising and continuing down the road. By drugging all five horses, she got a steady sequence of markings to follow. The Forests felt . . . dark this night. The light of the Starbelt above didn’t seem to filter through the branches as well as it should. And there seemed to be more shades than normal, prowling between the trunks of trees, glowing just faintly. William Ann clung to her lantern pole. The child had been out in the
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night before, of course. No homesteader looked forward to doing so, but none shied away from it either. You couldn’t spend your life trapped inside, frozen by fear of the darkness. Live like that, and . . . well, you were no better off than the people in the forts. Life in the Forests was hard, often deadly. But it was also free. “Mother,” William Ann whispered as they walked. “Why don’t you believe in God anymore?” “Is this really the time, girl?” William Ann looked down as they passed another line of urine, glowing blue on the roadway. “You always say something like that.” “And I’m usually trying to avoid the question when you ask it,” Silence said. “But I’m also not usually walking the Forests at night.” “It just seems important to me now. You’re wrong about me not being afraid enough. I can hardly breathe, but I do know how much trouble the waystop is in. You’re always so angry after Master Theopolis visits. You don’t change our border silver as often as you used to. One out of two days, you don’t eat anything but bread.” “And you think this has to do with God . . . why?” William Ann kept looking down. Oh, shadows, Silence thought. She thinks we’re being punished. Fool girl. Foolish as her father. They passed the Old Bridge, walking its rickety wooden planks. When the light was better, you could still pick out timbers from the New Bridge down in the chasm below, representing the promises of the forts and their gifts, which always looked pretty but frayed before long. Sebruki’s father had been one of those who had come put the Old Bridge back up. “I believe in the God Beyond,” Silence said, after they reached the other side. “But—” “I don’t worship,” Silence said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe. The old books, they called this land the home of the damned. I doubt that worshiping does any good if you’re already damned. That’s all.” William Ann didn’t reply. They walked another good two hours. Silence considered taking a shortcut through the woods, but the risk of losing the trail and having to double back felt too dangerous. Besides. Those markings, glowing a soft blue-white in the unseen light of the glowpaste . . . those were something real. A lifeline of light in the shadows all around. Those lines represented safety for her and her children. With both of them counting the moments between urine markings, they didn’t miss the turnoff by much. A few minutes walking without seeing a mark, and they turned back without a word, searching the sides of the path. Silence had worried this would be the most difficult part of the hunt, but they easily found where the men had turned into the Forests. A glowing hoofprint formed the sign; one of the horses had stepped in another’s urine on the roadway, then tracked it into the Forests. Silence set down her pack and opened it to retrieve her garrote, then held a
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finger to her lips and motioned for William Ann to wait by the road. The girl nodded. Silence couldn’t make out much of her features in the darkness, but she did hear the girl’s breathing grow more rapid. Being a homesteader and accustomed to going out at night was one thing. Being alone in the Forests . . . Silence took the blue glowpaste jar and covered it with her handkerchief. Then she took off her shoes and stockings and crept out into the night. Each time she did this, she felt like a child again, going into the Forests with her grandfather. Toes in the dirt, testing for crackling leaves or twigs that would snap and give her away. She could almost hear his voice giving instructions, telling her how to judge the wind and use the sound of rustling leaves to mask her as she crossed noisy patches. He’d loved the Forests until the day they’d claimed him. Never call this land hell, he had said. Respect the land as you would a dangerous beast, but do not hate it. Shades slid through the trees nearby, almost invisible with nothing to illuminate them. She kept her distance, but even so, she occasionally turned to see one of the things drifting past her. Stumbling into a shade could kill you, but that kind of accident was uncommon. Unless enraged, shades moved away from people who got too close, as if blown by a soft breeze. So long as you were moving slowly—and you should be—you would be all right. She kept the handkerchief around the jar except when she wanted to check specifically for any markings. Glowpaste illuminated shades, and shades that glowed too brightly might give warning of her approach. A groan sounded nearby. Silence froze, heart practically bursting from her chest. Shades made no sound; that had been a man. Tense, silent, she searched until she caught sight of him, well hidden in the hollow of a tree. He moved, massaging his temples. The headaches from William Ann’s poison were upon him. Silence considered, then crept around the back of the tree. She crouched down, then waited a painful five minutes for him to move. He reached up again, rustling the leaves. Silence snapped forward and looped her garrote around his neck, then pulled tight. Strangling wasn’t the best way to kill a man in the Forests. It was so slow. The guard started to thrash, clawing at his throat. Shades nearby halted. Silence pulled tighter. The guard, weakened by the poison, tried to kick at her with his legs. She shuffled backward, still holding tightly, watching those shades. They looked around like animals sniffing the air. A few of them started to dim, their own faint natural luminescence fading, their forms bleeding from white to black. Not a good sign. Silence felt her heartbeat like thunder inside. Die, damn you! The man finally stopped jerking, motions growing more lethargic. After he trembled one final time and fell still, Silence waited there for a painful eternity, holding her breath.
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Finally the shades nearby faded back to white, then drifted off in their meandering directions. She unwound the garrote, breathing out in relief. After a moment to get her bearings, she left the corpse and crept back to William Ann. The girl did her proud; she’d hidden herself so well that Silence didn’t see her until she whispered, “Mother?” “Yes,” Silence said. “Thank the God Beyond,” William Ann said, crawling out of the hollow where she’d covered herself in leaves. She took Silence by the arm, trembling. “You found them?” “Killed the man on watch,” Silence said with a nod. “The other four should be sleeping. This is where I’ll need you.” “I’m ready.” “Follow.” They moved back along the path Silence had taken. They passed the heap of the lookout’s corpse, and William Ann inspected it, showing no pity. “It’s one of them,” she whispered. “I recognize him.” “Of course it’s one of them.” “I just wanted to be sure. Since we’re . . . you know.” Not far beyond the guard post, they found the camp. Four men in bedrolls slept amid the shades as only true Forestborn would ever try. They had set a small jar of glowpaste at the center of the camp, inside a pit so it wouldn’t glow too brightly and give them away, but it was enough light to show the horses tethered a few feet away on the other side of the camp. The green light also showed William Ann’s face, and Silence was shocked to see not fear but intense anger in the girl’s expression. She had taken quickly to being a protective older sister to Sebruki. She was ready to kill after all. Silence gestured toward the rightmost man, and William Ann nodded. This was the dangerous part. On only a half dose, any of these men could still wake to the noise of their partners dying. Silence took one of the burlap sacks from her pack and handed it to William Ann, then removed her hammer. It wasn’t some war weapon, like her grandfather had spoken of. Just a simple tool for pounding nails. Or other things. Silence stooped over the first man. Seeing his sleeping face sent a shiver through her. A primal piece of her waited, tense, for those eyes to snap open. She held up three fingers to William Ann, then lowered them one at a time. When the third finger went down, William Ann shoved the sack over the man’s head. As he jerked, Silence pounded him hard on the side of the temple with the hammer. The skull cracked and the head sank in a little. The man thrashed once, then grew limp. Silence looked up, tense, watching the other men as William Ann pulled the sack tight. The shades nearby paused, but this didn’t draw their attention as much as the strangling had. So long as the sack’s lining of tar kept the blood from leaking out, they should be safe. Silence hit the man’s head twice more, then checked for a pulse. There was
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none. They carefully did the next man in the row. It was brutal work, like slaughtering animals. It helped to think of these men as rabid, as she’d told William Ann earlier. It did not help to think of what the men had done to Sebruki. That would make her angry, and she couldn’t afford to be angry. She needed to be cold, quiet, and efficient. The second man took a few more knocks to the head to kill, but he woke more slowly than his friend. Fenweed made men groggy. It was an excellent drug for her purposes. She just needed them sleepy, a little disoriented. And— The next man sat up in his bedroll. “What . . . ?” he asked in a slurred voice. Silence leaped for him, grabbing him by the shoulders and slamming him to the ground. Nearby shades spun about as if at a loud noise. Silence pulled her garrote out as the man heaved at her, trying to push her aside, and William Ann gasped in shock. Silence rolled around, wrapping the man’s neck. She pulled tight, straining while the man thrashed, agitating the shades. She almost had him dead when the last man leaped from his bedroll. In his dazed alarm, he chose to dash away. Shadows! That last one was Chesterton himself. If he drew the shades . . . Silence left the third man gasping and threw caution aside, racing after Chesterton. If the shades withered him to dust, she’d have nothing. No corpse to turn in meant no bounty. The shades around the campsite faded from view as Silence reached Chesterton, catching him at the perimeter of the camp by the horses. She desperately tackled him by the legs, throwing the groggy man to the ground. “You bitch,” he said in a slurred voice, kicking at her. “You’re the innkeeper. You poisoned me, you bitch!” In the forest, the shades had gone completely black. Green eyes burst alight as they opened their earthsight. The eyes trailed a misty light. Silence battered aside Chesterton’s hands as he struggled. “I’ll pay you,” he said, clawing at her. “I’ll pay you—” Silence slammed her hammer into his arm, causing him to scream. Then she brought it down on his face with a crunch. She ripped off her sweater as he groaned and thrashed, somehow wrapping it around his head and the hammer. “William Ann!” she screamed. “I need a bag. A bag, girl! Give me—” William Ann knelt beside her, pulling a sack over Chesterton’s head as the blood soaked through the sweater. Silence reached to the side with a frantic hand and grabbed a stone, then smashed it into the sack-covered head. The sweater muffled Chesterton’s screams, but also muffled the rock. She had to beat again and again. He finally fell still. William Ann held the sack against his neck to keep the blood from flowing out, her breath coming in quick gasps. “Oh, God Beyond. Oh, God . . .” Silence dared look up. Dozens of green eyes hung in the
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forest, glowing like little fires in the blackness. William Ann squeezed her eyes shut and whispered a prayer, tears leaking down her cheeks. Silence reached slowly to her side and took out her silver dagger. She remembered another night, another sea of glowing green eyes. Her grandmother’s last night. Run, girl! RUN! That night, running had been an option. They’d been close to safety. Even then, Grandmother hadn’t made it. She might have, but she hadn’t. That night horrified Silence. What Grandmother had done. What Silence had done . . . Well, tonight she had only one hope. Running would not save them. Safety was too far away. Slowly, blessedly, the eyes started to fade away. Silence sat back and let the silver knife slip out of her fingers to the ground. William Ann opened her eyes. “Oh, God Beyond!” she said as the shades faded back into view. “A miracle!” “Not a miracle,” Silence said. “Just luck. We killed him in time. Another second, and they’d have enraged.” William Ann wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh, shadows. Oh, shadows. I thought we were dead. Oh, shadows.” Suddenly, Silence remembered something. The third man. She hadn’t finished strangling him before Chesterton ran. She stumbled to her feet, turning. He lay there, immobile. “I finished him off,” William Ann said. “Had to strangle him with my hands. My hands . . .” Silence glanced back at her. “You did well, girl. You probably saved our lives. If you hadn’t been here, I’d never have killed Chesterton without enraging the shades.” The girl still stared out into the woods, watching the placid shades. “What would it take?” she asked. “For you to see a miracle instead of a coincidence?” “It would take a miracle, obviously,” Silence said, picking up her knife. “Instead of just a coincidence. Come on. Let’s put a second sack on these fellows.” William Ann joined her, lethargic as she helped put sacks on the heads of the bandits. Two sacks each, just in case. Blood was the most dangerous. Running drew shades, but slowly. Fire enraged them immediately, but it also blinded and confused them. Blood, though . . . blood shed in anger, exposed to the open air . . . a single drop could make the shades slaughter you, and then everything else within their sight. Silence checked each man for a heartbeat, just in case, and found none. They saddled the horses and heaved the corpses, including the lookout, into the saddles and tied them in place. They took the bedrolls and other equipment too. Hopefully the men would have some silver on them. Bounty laws let Silence keep what she found unless there was specific mention of something stolen. In this case, the forts just wanted Chesterton dead. Pretty much everyone did. Silence pulled a rope tight, then paused. “Mother!” William Ann said, noticing the same thing. Leaves rustling out in the Forests. They’d uncovered their jar of green glowpaste to join that of the bandits, so the small campsite was well illuminated as a gang
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of eight men and women on horseback rode in through the Forests. They were from the forts. The nice clothing, the way they kept looking into the Forests at the shades . . . Fortfolk for certain. Silence stepped forward, wishing she had her hammer to look at least a little threatening. That was still tied in the sack around Chesterton’s head. It would have blood on it, so she couldn’t get it out until that dried or she was in someplace very, very safe. “Now, look at this,” said the man at the front of the newcomers. “I couldn’t believe what Tobias told me when he came back from scouting, but it appears to be true. All five men in Chesterton’s gang, killed by a couple of Forest homesteaders?” “Who are you?” Silence asked. “Red Young,” the man said with a tip of the hat. “I’ve been tracking this lot for the last four months. I can’t thank you enough for taking care of them for me.” He waved to a few of his people, who dismounted. “Mother!” William Ann hissed. Silence studied Red’s eyes. He was armed with a cudgel, and one of the women behind him had one of those new crossbows with the blunt tips. They cranked fast and hit hard, but didn’t draw blood. “Step away from the horses, child,” Silence said. “But—” “Step away.” Silence dropped the rope of the horse she was leading. Three fort city people gathered up the ropes, one of the men leering at William Ann. “You’re a smart one,” Red said, leaning down and studying Silence. One of his women walked past, towing Chesterton’s horse with the man’s corpse slumped over the saddle. Silence stepped up, resting a hand on Chesterton’s saddle. The woman towing it paused, then looked at her boss. Silence slipped her knife from its sheath. “You’ll give us something,” Silence said to Red, knife hand hidden. “After what we did. One quarter, and I don’t say a word.” “Sure,” he said, tipping his hat to her. He had a fake kind of grin, like one in a painting. “One quarter it is.” Silence nodded. She slipped the knife against one of the thin ropes that held Chesterton in the saddle. That gave her a good cut on it as the woman pulled the horse away. Silence stepped back, resting her hand on William Ann’s shoulder while covertly moving the knife back into its sheath. Red tipped his hat to her again. In moments, the bounty hunters had retreated back through the trees toward the roadway. “One quarter?” William Ann hissed. “You think he’ll pay it?” “Hardly,” Silence said, picking up her pack. “We’re lucky he didn’t just kill us. Come on.” She moved out into the Forests. William Ann walked with her, both moving with the careful steps the Forests demanded. “It might be time for you to return to the waystop, William Ann.” “And what are you going to do?” “Get our bounty back.” She was a Forescout, dammit. No prim fort man was going to
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steal from her. “You mean to cut them off at the white span, I assume. But what will you do? We can’t fight so many, Mother.” “I’ll find a way.” That corpse meant freedom—life—for her daughters. She would not let it slip away like smoke between the fingers. They entered the darkness, passing shades that had, just a short time before, been almost ready to wither them. Now the shades drifted away, completely indifferent toward their flesh. Think, Silence. Something is very wrong here. How had those men found the camp? The light? Had they overheard her and William Ann talking? They’d claimed to have been chasing Chesterton for months. Shouldn’t she have caught wind of them before now? These men and women looked too crisp to have been out in the Forests for months trailing killers. It led to a conclusion she did not want to admit. One man had known she was hunting a bounty today and had seen how she was planning to track that bounty. One man had cause to see that bounty stolen from her. Theopolis, I hope I’m wrong, she thought. Because if you’re behind this . . . Silence and William Ann trudged through the guts of the Forest, a place where the gluttonous canopy above drank in all of the light, leaving the ground below barren. Shades patrolled these wooden halls like blind sentries. Red and his bounty hunters were of the forts. They would keep to the roadways, and that was her advantage. The Forests were no friend to a homesteader, no more than a familiar chasm was any less dangerous a drop. But Silence was a sailor on this abyss. She could ride its winds better than any fortdweller. Perhaps it was time to make a storm. What homesteaders called the “white span” was a section of roadway lined by mushroom fields. It took about an hour through the Forests to reach the span, and Silence was feeling the price of a night without sleep by the time she arrived. She ignored the fatigue, tromping through the field of mushrooms, holding her jar of green light and giving an ill cast to trees and furrows in the land. The roadway bent around through the Forests, then came back this way. If the men were heading toward Lastport or any of the other nearby forts, they would come this direction. “You continue on,” Silence said to William Ann. “It’s only another hour’s hike back to the waystop. Check on things there.” “I’m not leaving you, Mother.” “You promised to obey. Would you break your word?” “And you promised to let me help you. Would you break yours?” “I don’t need you for this,” Silence said. “And it will be dangerous.” “What are you going to do?” Silence stopped beside the roadway, then knelt, fishing in her pack. She came out with the small keg of gunpowder. William Ann went as white as the mushrooms. “Mother!” Silence untied her grandmother’s firestarter. She didn’t know for certain if it still worked. She’d never dared compress
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the two metal arms, which looked like tongs. Squeezing them together would grind the ends against one another, making sparks, and a spring at the joint would make them come back apart. Silence looked up at her daughter, then held the firestarter up beside her head. William Ann stepped back, then glanced to the sides, toward nearby shades. “Are things really that bad?” the girl whispered. “For us, I mean?” Silence nodded. “All right then.” Fool girl. Well, Silence wouldn’t send her away. The truth was, she probably would need help. She intended to get that corpse. Bodies were heavy, and there wasn’t any way she’d be able to cut off just the head. Not out in the Forests, with shades about. She dug into her pack, pulling out her medical supplies. They were tied between two small boards, intended to be used as splints. It was not difficult to tie the two boards to either side of the firestarter. With her hand trowel, she dug a small hole in the roadway’s soft earth, about the size of the powder keg. She then opened the plug to the keg and set it into the hole. She soaked her handkerchief in the lamp oil, stuck one end in the keg, then positioned the firestarter boards on the road with the end of the kerchief next to the spark-making heads. After covering the contraption with some leaves, she had a rudimentary trap. If someone stepped on the top board, that would press it down and grind out sparks to light the kerchief. Hopefully. She couldn’t afford to light the fire herself. The shades would come first for the one who made the fire. “What happens if they don’t step on it?” William Ann asked. “Then we move it to another place on the road and try again,” Silence said. “That could shed blood, you realize.” Silence didn’t reply. If the trap was triggered by a footfall, the shades wouldn’t see Silence as the one causing it. They’d come first for the one who triggered the trap. But if blood was drawn, they would enrage. Soon after, it wouldn’t matter who had caused it. All would be in danger. “We have hours of darkness left,” Silence said. “Cover your glowpaste.” William Ann nodded, hastily putting the cover on her jar. Silence inspected her trap again, then took William Ann by the shoulder and pulled her to the side of the roadway. The underbrush was thicker there, as the road tended to wind through breaks in the canopy. People sought out places in the Forests where they could see the sky. The bounty hunters came along eventually. Silent, illuminated by a jar of glowpaste each. Fortfolk didn’t talk at night. They passed the trap, which Silence had placed on the narrowest section of roadway. She held her breath, watching the horses pass, step after step missing the lump that marked the board. William Ann covered her ears, hunkering down. A hoof hit the trap. Nothing happened. Silence released an annoyed breath. What would she do if
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the firestarter was broken? Could she find another way to— The explosion struck her, the wave of force shaking her body. Shades vanished in a blink, green eyes snapping open. Horses reared and whinnied, men and women yelling. Silence shook off her stupefaction, grabbing William Ann by the shoulder and pulling her out of hiding. Her trap had worked better than she’d assumed; the burning rag had allowed the horse who had triggered the trap to take a few steps before the blast hit. No blood, just a lot of surprised horses and confused people. The little keg of gunpowder hadn’t done as much damage as she’d anticipated—the stories of what gunpowder could do were often as fanciful as stories of the Homeland—but the sound had been incredible. Silence’s ears rang as she fought through the confused fortfolk, finding what she’d hoped to see. Chesterton’s corpse lay on the ground, dumped from saddleback by a bucking horse and a frayed rope. She grabbed the corpse under the arms and William Ann took the legs. They moved sideways into the Forests. “Idiots!” Red bellowed from amid the confusion. “Stop her! It—” He cut off as shades swarmed the roadway, descending upon the men. Red had managed to keep his horse under control, but now he had to dance it back from the shades. Enraged, they had turned pure black, though the blast of light and fire had obviously left them dazed. They fluttered about, like moths at a flame. Green eyes. A small blessing. If those turned red . . . One bounty hunter, standing on the road and spinning about, was struck. His back arched, black-veined tendrils crisscrossing his skin. He dropped to his knees, screaming as the flesh of his face shrank around his skull. Silence turned away. William Ann watched the fallen man with a horrified expression. “Slowly, child,” Silence said in what she hoped was a comforting voice. She hardly felt comforting. “Carefully. We can move away from them. William Ann. Look at me.” The girl turned to look at her. “Hold my eyes. Move. That’s right. Remember, the shades will go to the source of the fire first. They are confused, stunned. They can’t smell fire like they do blood, and they’ll look from it to the nearest rapid motion. Slowly, easily. Let the scrambling fortfolk distract them.” The two of them eased into the Forests with excruciating deliberateness. In the face of so much chaos, so much danger, their pace felt like a crawl. Red organized a resistance. Fire-crazed shades could be fought, destroyed, with silver. More and more would come, but if the bounty hunters were clever and lucky, they’d be able to destroy those nearby and then move slowly away from the source of the fire. They could hide, survive. Maybe. Unless one of them accidentally drew blood. Silence and William Ann stepped through a field of mushrooms that glowed like the skulls of rats and broke silently beneath their feet. Luck was not completely with them, for as the shades shook off their disorientation
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from the explosion, a pair of them on the outskirts turned and struck out toward the fleeing women. William Ann gasped. Silence deliberately set down Chesterton’s shoulders, then took out her knife. “Keep going,” she whispered. “Pull him away. Slowly, girl. Slowly.” “I won’t leave you!” “I will catch up,” Silence said. “You aren’t ready for this.” She didn’t look to see if William Ann obeyed, for the shades—figures of jet black streaking across the white-knobbed ground—were upon her. Strength was meaningless against shades. They had no real substance. Only two things mattered: your speed and not letting yourself be frightened. Shades were dangerous, but so long as you had silver, you could fight. Many a man died because he ran, drawing even more shades, rather than standing his ground. Silence swung at the shades as they reached her. You want my daughter, hellbound? she thought with a snarl. You should have tried for the fortfolk instead. She swept her knife through the first shade, as Grandmother had taught. Never creep back and cower before shades. You’re Forescout blood. You claim the Forests. You are their creature as much as any other. As am I. . . . Her knife passed through the shade with a slight tugging feeling, creating a shower of bright white sparks that sprayed out of the shade. The shade pulled back, its black tendrils writhing about one another. Silence spun on the other. The pitch sky let her see only the thing’s eyes, a horrid green, as it reached for her. She lunged. Its spectral hands were upon her, the icy cold of its fingers gripping her arm below the elbow. She could feel it. Shade fingers had substance; they could grab you, hold you back. Only silver warded them away. Only with silver could you fight. She rammed her arm in farther. Sparks shot out its back, spraying like a bucket of washwater. Silence gasped at the horrid, icy pain. Her knife slipped from fingers she could no longer feel. She lurched forward, falling to her knees as the second shade fell backward, then began spinning about in a mad spiral. The first one flopped on the ground like a dying fish, trying to rise, its top half falling over. The cold of her arm was so bitter. She stared at the wounded arm, watching the flesh of her hand wither upon itself, pulling in toward the bone. She heard weeping. You stand there, Silence. Grandmother’s voice. Memories of the first time she’d killed a shade. You do as I say. No tears! Forescouts don’t cry. Forescouts DON’T CRY. She had learned to hate her that day. Ten years old, with her little knife, shivering and weeping in the night as her grandmother had enclosed her and a drifting shade in a ring of silver dust. Grandmother had run around the perimeter, enraging it with motion. While Silence was trapped in there. With death. The only way to learn is to do, Silence. And you’ll learn, one way or another! “Mother!” William Ann said. Silence blinked,
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coming out of the memory as her daughter dumped silver dust on the exposed arm. The withering stopped as William Ann, choking against her thick tears, dumped the entire pouch of emergency silver over the hand. The metal reversed the withering, and the skin turned pink again, the blackness melting away in sparks of white. Too much, Silence thought. William Ann had used all of the silver dust in her haste, far more than one wound needed. It was difficult to summon any anger, for feeling flooded back into her hand and the icy cold retreated. “Mother?” William Ann asked. “I left you, as you said. But he was so heavy, I didn’t get far. I came back for you. I’m sorry. I came back for you!” “Thank you,” Silence said, breathing in. “You did well.” She reached up and took her daughter by the shoulder, then used the once-withered hand to search in the grass for Grandmother’s knife. When she brought it up, the blade was blackened in several places, but still good. Back on the road, the fortfolk had made a circle and were holding off the shades with silver-tipped spears. The horses had all fled or been consumed. Silence fished on the ground, coming up with a small handful of silver dust. The rest had been expended in the healing. Too much. No use worrying about that now, she thought, stuffing the handful of dust in her pocket. “Come,” she said, hauling herself to her feet. “I’m sorry I never taught you to fight them.” “Yes you did,” William Ann said, wiping her tears. “You’ve told me all about it.” Told. Never shown. Shadows, Grandmother. I know I disappoint you, but I won’t do it to her. I can’t. But I am a good mother. I will protect them. The two left the mushrooms, taking up their grisly prize again and tromping through the Forests. They passed more darkened shades floating toward the fight. All of those sparks would draw them. The fortfolk were dead. Too much attention, too much struggle. They’d have a thousand shades upon them before the hour was out. Silence and William Ann moved slowly. Though the cold had mostly retreated from Silence’s hand, there was a lingering . . . something. A deep shiver. A limb touched by the shades wouldn’t feel right for months. That was far better than what could have happened. Without William Ann’s quick thinking, Silence could have become a cripple. Once the withering settled in—that took a little time, though it varied—it was irreversible. Something rustled in the woods. Silence froze, causing William Ann to stop and glance about. “Mother?” William Ann whispered. Silence frowned. The night was so black, and they’d been forced to leave their lights. Something’s out there, she thought, trying to pierce the darkness. What are you? God Beyond protect them if the fighting had drawn one of the Deepest Ones. The sound did not repeat. Reluctantly, Silence continued on. They walked for a good hour, and in the darkness Silence hadn’t realized they’d neared
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the roadway again until they stepped onto it. Silence heaved out a breath, setting down their burden and rolling her tired arms in their joints. Some light from the Starbelt filtered down upon them, illuminating something like a large jawbone to their left. The Old Bridge. They were almost home. The shades here weren’t even agitated; they moved with their lazy, almost butterfly, gaits. Her arms felt so sore. That body felt as if it were getting heavier every moment. People often didn’t realize how heavy a corpse was. Silence sat down. They’d rest for a time before continuing on. “William Ann, do you have any water left in your canteen?” William Ann whimpered. Silence started, then scrambled to her feet. Her daughter stood beside the bridge, and something dark stood behind her. A green glow suddenly illuminated the night as the figure took out a small vial of glowpaste. By that sickly light, Silence could see that the figure was Red. He held a dagger to William Ann’s neck. The fort man had not fared well in the fighting. One eye was now a milky white, half his face blackened, his lips pulled back from his teeth. A shade had gotten him across the face. He was lucky to be alive. “I figured you’d come back this way,” he said, the words slurred by his shriveled lips. Spittle dripped from his chin. “Silver. Give me your silver.” His knife . . . it was common steel. “Now!” he roared, pulling the knife closer to William Ann’s neck. If he so much as nicked her, the shades would be upon them in heartbeats. “I only have the knife,” Silence lied, taking it out and tossing it to the ground before him. “It’s too late for your face, Red. That withering has set in.” “I don’t care,” he hissed. “Now the body. Step away from it, woman. Away!” Silence stepped to the side. Could she get to him before he killed William Ann? He’d have to grab that knife. If she sprang just right . . . “You killed my crew,” Red growled. “They’re dead, all of them. God, if I hadn’t rolled into the hollow . . . I had to listen to it. Listen to them being slaughtered!” “You were the only smart one,” she said. “You couldn’t have saved them, Red.” “Bitch! You killed them.” “They killed themselves,” she whispered. “You come to my Forests, take what is mine? It was your crew or my children, Red.” “Well, if you want your child to live through this, you’ll stay very still. Girl, pick up that knife.” Whimpering, William Ann knelt. Red mimicked her, staying just behind her, watching Silence, holding the knife steady. William Ann picked up the knife in trembling hands. Red pulled the silver knife from William Ann, then held it in one hand, the common knife at her neck in the other. “Now, the girl is going to carry the corpse, and you’re going to wait right there. I don’t want you coming near.” “Of course,” Silence
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said, already planning. She couldn’t afford to strike right now. He was too careful. She would follow through the Forests, along the road, and wait for a moment of weakness. Then she’d strike. Red spat to the side. Then a padded crossbow bolt shot from the night and took him in the shoulder, jolting him. His blade slid across William Ann’s neck, and a dribble of blood ran down it. The girl’s eyes widened in horror, though it was little more than a nick. The danger to her throat wasn’t important. The blood was. Red tumbled back, gasping, hand to his shoulder. A few drops of blood glistened on his knife. The shades in the Forests around them went black. Glowing green eyes burst alight, then deepened to crimson. Red eyes in the night. Blood in the air. “Oh, hell!” Red screamed. “Oh, hell.” Red eyes swarmed around him. There was no hesitation here, no confusion. They went straight for the one who had drawn blood. Silence reached for William Ann as the shades descended. Red grabbed the girl and shoved her through a shade, trying to stop it. He spun and dashed the other direction. William Ann passed through the shade, her face withering, skin pulling in at the chin and around the eyes. She stumbled through the shade and into Silence’s arms. Silence felt an immediate, overwhelming panic. “No! Child, no. No. No . . .” William Ann worked her mouth, making a choking sound, her lips pulling back toward her teeth, her eyes open wide as her skin tightened and her eyelids shriveled. Silver. I need silver. I can save her. Silence snapped her head up, clutching William Ann. Red ran down the roadway, slashing the silver dagger all about, spraying light and sparks. Shades surrounded him. Hundreds, like ravens flocking to a roost. Not that way. The shades would finish with him soon and would look for flesh—any flesh. William Ann still had blood on her neck. They’d come for her next. Even without that, the girl was withering fast. The dagger wouldn’t be enough to save William Ann. Silence needed dust, silver dust, to force down her daughter’s throat. Silence fumbled in her pocket, coming out with the small bit of silver dust there. Too little. She knew that would be too little. Her grandmother’s training calmed her mind, and everything became immediately clear. The waystop was close. She had more silver there. “M . . . Mother . . .” Silence heaved William Ann into her arms. Too light, the flesh drying. Then she turned and ran with everything she had across the bridge. Her arms stung, weakened from having hauled the corpse so far. The corpse . . . she couldn’t lose it! No. She couldn’t think on that. The shades would have it, as warm enough flesh, soon after Red was gone. There would be no bounty. She had to focus on William Ann. Silence’s tears felt cold on her face as she ran, wind blowing her. Her daughter trembled and shook in her
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arms, spasming as she died. She’d become a shade if she died like this. “I won’t lose you!” Silence said into the night. “Please. I won’t lose you. . . .” Behind her, Red screamed a long, wailing screech of agony that cut off at the end as the shades feasted. Near her, other shades stopped, eyes deepening to red. Blood in the air. Eyes of crimson. “I hate you,” Silence whispered into the air as she ran. Each step was agony. She was growing old. “I hate you! What you did to me. What you did to us.” She didn’t know if she was speaking to Grandmother or the God Beyond. So often, they were the same in her mind. Had she ever realized that before? Branches lashed at her as she pushed forward. Was that light ahead? The waystop? Hundreds upon hundreds of red eyes opened in front of her. She stumbled to the ground, spent, William Ann like a heavy bundle of branches in her arms. The girl trembled, her eyes rolled back in her head. Silence held out the small bit of silver dust she’d recovered earlier. She longed to pour it on William Ann, save her a little pain, but she knew with clarity that was a waste. She looked down, crying, then took the dust and made a small circle around the two of them. What else could she do? William Ann shook with a seizure as she rasped, drawing in breaths and clawing at Silence’s arms. The shades came by the dozens, huddling around the two of them, smelling the blood. The flesh. Silence pulled her daughter close. She should have gone for the knife after all; it wouldn’t heal William Ann, but she could have at least fought with it. Without that, without anything, she failed. Grandmother had been right all along. “Hush now, my dear one . . .” Silence whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. “Be not afraid.” Shades came at her frail barrier, throwing up sparks, making Silence open her eyes. They backed away, then others came, beating against the silver, their red eyes illuminating writhing black forms. “Night comes upon us . . .” Silence whispered, choking at the words, “. . . but sunlight will break.” William Ann arched her back, then fell still. “Sleep now . . . my . . . my dear one . . . let your tears fade. Darkness surrounds us, but someday . . . we’ll wake. . . .” So tired. I shouldn’t have let her come. If she hadn’t, Chesterton would have gotten away from her, and she’d have probably fallen to the shades then. William Ann and Sebruki would have become slaves to Theopolis, or worse. No choices. No way out. “Why did you send us here?” she screamed, looking up past hundreds of glowing red eyes. “What is the point?” There was no answer. There was never an answer. Yes, that was light ahead; she could see it through the low tree branches in front of her. She was only
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a few yards from the waystop. She would die, like Grandmother had, mere paces from her home. She blinked, cradling William Ann as the tiny silver barrier failed. That . . . that branch just in front of her. It had such a very odd shape. Long, thin, no leaves. Not like a branch at all. Instead, like . . . Like a crossbow bolt. It had lodged into the tree after being fired from the waystop earlier in the day. She remembered facing down that bolt earlier, staring at its reflective end. Silver. Silence Montane crashed through the back door of the waystop, hauling a desiccated body behind her. She stumbled into the kitchen, barely able to walk, and dropped the silver-tipped bolt from a withered hand. Her skin continued to pull tight, her body shriveling. She had not been able to avoid withering, not when fighting so many shades. The crossbow bolt had merely cleared a path, allowing her to push forward in a last, frantic charge. She could barely see. Tears streamed from her clouded eyes. Even with the tears, her eyes felt as dry as if she had been standing in the wind for an hour while holding them wide open. Her lids refused to blink, and she couldn’t move her lips. She had . . . powder. Didn’t she? Thought. Mind. What? She moved without thought. Jar on the windowsill. In case of broken circle. She unscrewed the lid with fingers like sticks. Seeing them horrified a distant part of her mind. Dying. I’m dying. She dunked the jar of silver powder in the water cistern and pulled it out, then stumbled to William Ann. She fell to her knees beside the girl, spilling much of the water. The rest she dumped on her daughter’s face with a shaking arm. Please. Please. Darkness. “We were sent here to be strong,” Grandmother said, standing on the cliff edge overlooking the waters. Her whited hair curled in the wind, writhing like the wisps of a shade. She turned back to Silence, and her weathered face was covered in droplets of water from the crashing surf below. “The God Beyond sent us. It’s part of the plan.” “It’s so easy for you to say that, isn’t it?” Silence spat. “You can fit anything into that nebulous plan. Even the destruction of the world itself.” “I won’t hear blasphemy from you, child.” A voice like boots stepping in gravel. She walked toward Silence. “You can rail against the God Beyond, but it will change nothing. William was a fool and an idiot. You are better off. We are Forescouts. We survive. We will be the ones to defeat the Evil, someday.” She passed Silence by. Silence had never seen a smile from Grandmother, not since her husband’s death. Smiling was wasted energy. And love . . . love was for the people back in Homeland. The people who’d perished from the Evil. “I’m with child,” Silence said. Grandmother stopped. “William?” “Who else?” Grandmother continued on. “No condemnations?” Silence asked, turning, folding
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her arms. “It’s done,” Grandmother said. “We are Forescouts. If this is how we must continue, so be it. I’m more worried about the waystop, and meeting our payments to those damn forts.” I have an idea for that, Silence thought, considering the lists of bounties she’d begun collecting. Something even you wouldn’t dare. Something dangerous. Something unthinkable. Grandmother reached the woods and looked at Silence, scowled, then pulled on her hat and stepped into the trees. “I will not have you interfering with my child,” Silence called after her. “I will raise my own as I will!” Grandmother vanished into the shadows. Please. Please. “I will!” I won’t lose you. I won’t . . . Silence gasped, coming awake and clawing at the floorboards, staring upward. Alive. She was alive! Dob the stableman knelt beside her, holding the jar of powdered silver. She coughed, lifting fingers—plump, the flesh restored—to her neck. It was hale, though ragged from the flakes of silver that had been forced down her throat. Her skin was dusted with black bits of ruined silver. “William Ann!” she said, turning. The child lay on the floor beside the door. William Ann’s left side, where she’d first touched the shade, was blackened. Her face wasn’t too bad, but her hand was a withered skeleton. They’d have to cut that off. Her leg looked bad too. Silence couldn’t tell how bad without tending the wounds. “Oh, child . . .” Silence knelt beside her. But the girl breathed in and out. That was enough, all things considered. “I tried,” Dob said. “But you’d already done what could be done.” “Thank you,” Silence said. She turned to the aged man, with his high forehead and dull eyes. “Did you get him?” Dob asked. “Who?” “The bounty.” “I . . . yes, I did. But I had to leave him.” “You’ll find another,” Dob said in his monotone, climbing to his feet. “The Fox always does.” “How long have you known?” “I’m an idiot, mam,” he said. “Not a fool.” He bowed his head to her, then walked away, slump-backed as always. Silence climbed to her feet, then groaned, picking up William Ann. She lifted her daughter to the rooms above and saw to her. The leg wasn’t as bad as Silence had feared. A few of the toes would be lost, but the foot itself was hale enough. The entire left side of William Ann’s body was blackened, as if burned. That would fade, with time, to grey. Everyone who saw her would know exactly what had happened. Many men would never touch her, fearing her taint. This might just doom her to a life alone. I know a little about such a life, Silence thought, dipping a cloth into the water bin and washing William Ann’s face. The youth would sleep through the day. She had come very close to death, to becoming a shade herself. The body did not recover quickly from that. Of course, Silence had been close to that too. She, however, had been there before. Another
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of Grandmother’s preparations. Oh, how she hated that woman. Silence owed who she was to how that training had toughened her. Could she be thankful for Grandmother and hateful, both at once? Silence finished washing William Ann, then dressed her in a soft nightgown and left her in her bunk. Sebruki still slept off the draught William Ann had given her. So she went downstairs to the kitchen to think difficult thoughts. She’d lost the bounty. The shades would have had at that body; the skin would be dust, the skull blackened and ruined. She had no way to prove that she’d taken Chesterton. She settled against the kitchen table and laced her hands before her. She wanted to have at the whiskey instead, to dull the horror of the night. She thought for hours. Could she pay Theopolis off some way? Borrow from someone else? Who? Maybe find another bounty. But so few people came through the waystop these days. Theopolis had already given her warning, with his writ. He wouldn’t wait more than a day or two for payment before claiming the waystop as his own. Had she really gone through so much, still to lose? Sunlight fell on her face and a breeze from the broken window tickled her cheek, waking her from her slumber at the table. Silence blinked, stretching, limbs complaining. Then she sighed, moving to the kitchen counter. She’d left out all of the materials from the preparations last night, her clay bowls thick with glowpaste that still shone faintly. The silver-tipped crossbow bolt lay by the back door where she’d dropped it. She’d need to clean up and get breakfast ready for her few guests. Then, think of some way to . . . The back door opened and someone stepped in. . . . to deal with Theopolis. She exhaled softly, looking at him in his clean clothing and condescending smile. He tracked mud onto her floor as he entered. “Silence Montane. Nice morning, hmmm?” Shadows, she thought. I don’t have the mental strength to deal with him right now. He moved to close the window shutters. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Hmmm? Haven’t you warned me before that you loathe that people might see us together? That they might get a hint that you are turning in bounties to me? I’m just trying to protect you. Has something happened? You look awful, hmmm?” “I know what you did.” “You do? But, see, I do many things. About what do you speak?” Oh, how she’d like to cut that grin from his lips and cut out his throat, stomp out that annoying Lastport accent. She couldn’t. He was just so blasted good at acting. She had guesses, probably good ones. But no proof. Grandmother would have killed him right then. Was she so desperate to prove him wrong that she’d lose everything? “You were in the Forests,” Silence said. “When Red surprised me at the bridge, I assumed that the thing I’d heard—rustling in the darkness—had been him. It wasn’t. He implied he’d
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been waiting for us at the bridge. That thing in the darkness, it was you. You shot him with the crossbow to jostle him, make him draw blood. Why, Theopolis?” “Blood?” Theopolis said. “In the night? And you survived? You’re quite fortunate, I should say. Remarkable. What else happened?” She said nothing. “I have come for payment of debt,” Theopolis said. “You have no bounty to turn in then, hmmm? Perhaps we will need my document after all. So kind of me to bring another copy. This really will be wonderful for us both. Do you not agree?” “Your feet are glowing.” Theopolis hesitated, then looked down. There, the mud he’d tracked in shone very faintly blue in the light of the glowpaste remnants. “You followed me,” she said. “You were there last night.” He looked up at her with a slow, unconcerned expression. “And?” He took a step forward. Silence backed away, her heel hitting the wall behind her. She reached around, taking out the key and unlocking the door behind her. Theopolis grabbed her arm, yanking her away as she pulled open the door. “Going for one of your hidden weapons?” he asked with a sneer. “The crossbow you keep on the pantry shelf? Yes, I know of that. I’m disappointed, Silence. Can’t we be civil?” “I will never sign your document, Theopolis,” she said, then spat at his feet. “I would sooner die, I would sooner be put out of house and home. You can take the waystop by force, but I will not serve you. You can be damned, for all I care, you bastard. You—” He slapped her across the face. A quick but unemotional gesture. “Oh, do shut up.” She stumbled back. “Such dramatics, Silence. I can’t be the only one to wish you lived up to your name, hmmm?” She licked her lip, feeling the pain of his slap. She lifted her hand to her face. A single drop of blood colored her fingertip when she pulled it away. “You expect me to be frightened?” Theopolis asked. “I know we’re safe in here.” “Fort city fool,” she whispered, then flipped the drop of blood at him. It hit him on the cheek. “Always follow the Simple Rules. Even when you think you don’t have to. And I wasn’t opening the pantry, as you thought.” Theopolis frowned, then glanced over at the door she had opened. The door into the small old shrine. Her grandmother’s shrine to the God Beyond. The bottom of the door was rimmed in silver. Red eyes opened in the air behind Theopolis, a jet-black form coalescing in the shadowed room. Theopolis hesitated, then turned. He didn’t get to scream as the shade took his head in its hands and drew his life away. It was a newer shade, its form still strong despite the writhing blackness of its clothing. A tall woman, hard of features, with curling hair. Theopolis opened his mouth, then his face withered away, eyes sinking into his head. “You should have run, Theopolis,” Silence said. His head
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began to crumble. His body collapsed to the floor. “Hide from the green eyes, run from the red,” Silence said, retrieving the silver-tipped crossbow bolt from where it lay by the back door. “Your rules, Grandmother.” The shade turned to her. Silence shivered, looking into those dead, glassy eyes of a matriarch she loathed and loved. “I hate you,” Silence said. “Thank you for making me hate you.” She held the crossbow bolt before her, but the shade did not strike. Silence edged around, forcing the shade back. It floated away from her, back into the shrine lined with silver at the bottom of its three walls, where Silence had trapped it years ago. Her heart pounding, Silence closed the door, completing the barrier, and locked it again. No matter what happened, that shade left Silence alone. Almost, she thought it remembered. And almost, Silence felt guilty for trapping that soul inside the small closet for all these years. Silence found Theopolis’s hidden cave after six hours of hunting. It was about where she’d expected it to be, in the hills not far from the Old Bridge. It included a silver barrier. She could harvest that. Good money there. Inside the small cavern, she found Chesterton’s corpse, which Theopolis had dragged to the cave while the shades killed Red and then hunted Silence. I’m so glad, for once, you were a greedy man, Theopolis. She would have to find someone else to start turning in bounties for her. That would be difficult, particularly on short notice. She dragged the corpse out and threw it over the back of Theopolis’s horse. A short hike took her back to the road, where she paused, then walked up and located Red’s fallen corpse, withered down to just bones and clothing. She fished out her grandmother’s dagger, scored and blackened from the fight. It fit back into the sheath at her side. She trudged, exhausted, back to the waystop and hid Chesterton’s corpse in the cold cellar out behind the stable, beside where she’d put Theopolis’s remains. She hiked back into the kitchen. Beside the shrine’s door where her grandmother’s dagger had once hung, she had placed the silver crossbow bolt that Sebruki had unknowingly sent her. What would the fort authorities say when she explained Theopolis’s death to them? Perhaps she could claim to have found him like that. . . . She paused, then smiled. “Looks like you’re lucky, friend,” Daggon said, sipping at his beer. “The White Fox won’t be looking for you anytime soon.” The spindly man, who still insisted his name was Earnest, hunkered down a little farther in his seat. “How is it you’re still here?” Daggon asked. “I traveled all the way to Lastport. I hardly expected to find you here on my path back.” “I hired on at a homestead nearby,” said the slender-necked man. “Good work, mind you. Solid work.” “And you pay each night to stay here?” “I like it. It feels peaceful. The homesteads don’t have good silver protection. They just . . . let
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the shades move about. Even inside.” The man shuddered. Daggon shrugged, lifting his drink as Silence Montane limped by. Yes, she was a healthy-looking woman. He really should court her, one of these days. She scowled at his smile and dumped his plate in front of him. “I think I’m wearing her down,” Daggon said, mostly to himself, as she left. “You will have to work hard,” Earnest said. “Seven men have proposed to her during the last month.” “What!” “The reward!” the spindly man said. “The one for bringing in Chesterton. Lucky woman, Silence Montane, finding the White Fox’s lair like that.” Daggon dug into his meal. He didn’t much like how things had turned out. That dandy Theopolis had been the White Fox all along? Poor Silence. How had it been, stumbling upon his cave and finding him inside, all withered away? “They say that this Theopolis spent his last strength killing Chesterton,” Earnest said, “then dragging him into the hole. Theopolis withered before he could get to his silver powder. Very like the White Fox, always determined to get the bounty, no matter what. We won’t soon see a hunter like him again.” “I suppose not,” Daggon said, though he’d much rather that the man had kept his skin. Now who would Daggon tell his tales about? He didn’t fancy paying for his own beer. Nearby, a greasy-looking fellow rose from his meal and shuffled out of the front door, looking half-drunk already, though it was only noon. Some people. Daggon shook his head. “To the White Fox,” he said, raising his drink. Earnest clinked his mug to Daggon’s. “The White Fox, meanest bastard the Forests have ever known.” “May his soul know peace,” Daggon said, “and may the God Beyond be thanked that he never decided we were worth his time.” “Amen,” Earnest said. “Of course,” Daggon said, “there is still Bloody Kent. Now he’s a right nasty fellow. You’d better hope he doesn’t get your number, friend. And don’t you give me that innocent look. These are the Forests. Everybody here has done something, now and then, that you don’t want others to know about. . . .” “The one you have to watch for is the White Fox,” Daggon said, sipping his beer. “They say he shook hands with the Evil itself, that he visited the Fallen World and came back with strange powers. He can kindle fire on even the deepest of nights, and no shade will dare come for his soul. Yes, the White Fox. Meanest bastard in these parts for sure. Pray he doesn’t set his eyes on you, friend. If he does, you’re dead.” Daggon’s drinking companion had a neck like a slender wine bottle and a head like a potato stuck sideways on the top. He squeaked as he spoke, a Lastport accent, voice echoing in the eaves of the waystop’s common room. “Why . . . why would he set his eyes on me?” “That depends, friend,” Daggon said, looking about as a few overdressed merchants sauntered in. They wore
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black coats, ruffled lace poking out the front, and the tall-topped, wide-brimmed hats of fortfolk. They wouldn’t last two weeks out here in the Forests. “It depends?” Daggon’s dining companion prompted. “It depends on what?” “On a lot of things, friend. The White Fox is a bounty hunter, you know. What crimes have you committed? What have you done?” “Nothing.” That squeak was like a rusty wheel. “Nothing? Men don’t come out into the Forests to do ‘nothing,’ friend.” His companion glanced from side to side. He’d given his name as Earnest. But then, Daggon had given his name as Amity. Names didn’t mean a whole lot in the Forests. Or maybe they meant everything. The right ones, that was. Earnest leaned back, scrunching down that fishing-pole neck of his as if trying to disappear into his beer. He’d bite. People liked hearing about the White Fox, and Daggon considered himself an expert. At least, he was an expert at telling stories to get ratty men like Earnest to pay for his drinks. I’ll give him some time to stew, Daggon thought, smiling to himself. Let him worry. Earnest would ply him for more information in a bit. While he waited, Daggon leaned back, surveying the room. The merchants were making a nuisance of themselves, calling for food, saying they meant to be on their way in an hour. That proved them to be fools. Traveling at night in the Forests? Good homesteader stock would do it. Men like these, though . . . they’d probably take less than an hour to violate one of the Simple Rules and bring the shades upon them. Daggon put the idiots out of his mind. That fellow in the corner, though . . . dressed all in brown, still wearing his hat despite being indoors. That fellow looked truly dangerous. I wonder if it’s him, Daggon thought. So far as he knew, nobody had ever seen the White Fox and lived. Ten years, over a hundred bounties turned in. Surely someone knew his name. The authorities in the forts paid him the bounties, after all. The waystop’s owner, Madam Silence, passed by the table and deposited Daggon’s meal with an unceremonious thump. Scowling, she topped off his beer, spilling a sudsy dribble onto his hand, before limping off. She was a stout woman. Tough. Everyone in the Forests was tough. The ones that survived, at least. He’d learned that a scowl from Silence was just her way of saying hello. She’d given him an extra helping of venison; she often did that. He liked to think that she had a fondness for him. Maybe someday . . . Don’t be a fool, he thought to himself as he dug into the heavily gravied food and took a few gulps of his beer. Better to marry a stone than Silence Montane. A stone showed more affection. Likely she gave him the extra slice because she recognized the value of a repeat customer. Fewer and fewer people came this way lately. Too many shades. And then there
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was Chesterton. Nasty business, that. “So . . . he’s a bounty hunter, this Fox?” The man who called himself Earnest seemed to be sweating. Daggon smiled. Hooked right good, this one was. “He’s not just a bounty hunter. He’s the bounty hunter. Though the White Fox doesn’t go for the small-timers—and no offense, friend, but you seem pretty small-time.” His friend grew more nervous. What had he done? “But,” the man stammered, “he wouldn’t come for me—er, pretending I’d done something, of course—anyway, he wouldn’t come in here, would he? I mean, Madam Silence’s waystop, it’s protected. Everyone knows that. Shade of her dead husband lurks here. I had a cousin who saw it, I did.” “The White Fox doesn’t fear shades,” Daggon said, leaning in. “Now, mind you, I don’t think he’d risk coming in here—but not because of some shade. Everyone knows this is neutral ground. You’ve got to have some safe places, even in the Forests. But . . .” Daggon smiled at Silence as she passed him by, on the way to the kitchens again. This time she didn’t scowl at him. He was getting through to her for certain. “But?” Earnest squeaked. “Well . . .” Daggon said. “I could tell you a few things about how the White Fox takes men, but you see, my beer is nearly empty. A shame. I think you’d be very interested in how the White Fox caught Makepeace Hapshire. Great story, that.” Earnest squeaked for Silence to bring another beer, though she bustled into the kitchen and didn’t hear. Daggon frowned, but Earnest put a coin on the side of the table, indicating he’d like a refill when Silence or her daughter returned. That would do. Daggon smiled to himself and launched into the story. Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Tom Doherty Associates ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. FOR MOSHE FEDER Who took a chance on me ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has a somewhat storied past, as I wrote a third of it during the process of writing another book. (I was waiting for editorial notes to come back; I believe it was the final Wheel of Time book.) I had to drop work on this and dive into
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the other book. By the time I came back, my vision for a new trilogy about Wax, Wayne, and Marasi had transformed—so the first third took some serious work to whip into shape and make match the last two thirds, as I wrote them. I relied a lot on the excellent editorial vision of my editor, Moshe Feder, my agent, Joshua Bilmes, and my editorial assistant, the Instant Peter Ahlstrom. Special thanks as well to my editor in the UK, Simon Spanton. In addition, my writing group was—as always—invaluable. They include Emily Sanderson, Karen and Peter Ahlstrom, Darci and Eric James Stone, Alan Layton, Ben “please get my name right this time” Olsen, Danielle Olsen, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Kaylynn ZoBell, Ethan and Isaac Skarstedt, and Kara and Īsaac Stewart. We did a blitz of a beta read, and some vigilant people jumped in with excellent commentary. They were: Jory Phillips, Joel Phillips, Bob Kluttz, Alice Arneson, Trae Cooper, Gary Singer, Lyndsey Luther, Brian T. Hill, Jakob Remick, Eric James Stone, Bao Pham, Aubree Pham, Steve Godecke, Kristina Kugler, Ben Olsen, Samuel Lund, Megan Kanne, Nate Hatfield, Layne Garrett, Kim Garrett, Eric Lake, Karen Ahlstrom, Isaac Skarstedt, Darci Stone, Īsaac Stewart, Kalyani Poluri, Josh Walker, Donald Mustard III, Cory Aitchison, and Christi Jacobsen. Over the years, it’s been incredibly satisfying to see the artwork for my novels develop. I’ve always had this wild vision for including way more art than usual—basically all I can get away with. Three wonderful artists made this possible on this volume. Chris McGrath did the cover, and I love his depictions of the characters. My good friend and now full-time art director Īsaac Stewart did the maps and symbols, as well as the heavy design lifting on the broadsheet. Art on the broadsheet was done by the ever-excellent Ben McSweeney. At JABberwocky, my agency, thanks go to Eddie Schneider, Sam Morgan, Krystyna Lopez, and Christa Atkinson. In the UK, John Berlyne of the Zeno Agency deserves your applause. From Tor Books, many thanks to Tom Doherty, Linda Quinton, Marco Palmieri, Karl Gold, Diana Pho, Nathan Weaver, Edward Allen, and Rafal Gibek. Ingrid Powell was the proofreader. Copyediting was done by Terry McGarry, and the audiobook is by my personal favorite reader, Michael Kramer. Other audiobook pros who deserve thanks are Robert Allen, Samantha Edelson, and Mitali Dave. Adam Horne, my new executive assistant, gets his name in a book for the first time in this one. Well done, Adam! Finally, big thanks to my family, as always. A wonderful wife and three little boys who still get confused as to why the books Daddy writes have so few pictures. PROLOGUE Waxillium Ladrian, lawman for hire, swung off his horse and turned to face the saloon. “Aw,” the kid said, hopping down from his own horse. “You didn’t catch your spur on the stirrup and trip.” “That happened once,” Waxillium said. “Yeah, but it was super funny.” “Stay with the horses,” Waxillium said, tossing the kid his reins. “Don’t tie up Destroyer. I might need her.” “Sure.” “And don’t
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steal anything.” The kid—round-faced and seventeen, with barely a hint of stubble on his face despite weeks of trying—nodded with a solemn expression. “I promise I won’t swipe nothin’ of yours, Wax.” Waxillium sighed. “That’s not what I said.” “But…” “Just stay with the horses. And try not to talk to anyone.” Waxillium shook his head, pushing into the saloon, feeling a spring in his step. He was filling his metalmind a smidge, decreasing his weight by about ten percent. Common practice for him these days, ever since he’d run out of stored weight during one of his first bounty hunts a few months back. The saloon, of course, was dirty. Practically everything out here in the Roughs was dusty, worn, or broken. Five years out here, and he still wasn’t used to that. True, he’d spent most of those five years trying to make a living as a clerk, moving farther and farther from population centers in an effort to avoid getting recognized. But in the Roughs, even the larger population centers were dirtier than those back in Elendel. And here, on the fringes of populated lands, dirty didn’t even begin to describe life. The men he passed in the saloon sat slumped low to their tables, hardly looking up. That was another thing about the Roughs. Both plants and people were more prickly, and they grew lower to the ground. Even the fanlike acacias, which did stretch high at times, had this fortified, hardy sense about them. He scanned the room, hands on hips, hoping he’d draw attention. He didn’t, which nagged at him. Why wear a fine city suit, with a lavender cravat, if nobody was going to notice? At least they weren’t snickering, like those in the last saloon. Hand on his gun, Waxillium sauntered up to the bar. The barkeep was a tall man who looked to have some Terris blood in him, from that willowy build, though his refined cousins in the Basin would be horrified to see him chewing on a greasy chicken leg with one hand while serving a mug with the other. Waxillium tried not to be nauseated; the local notion of hygiene was another thing he wasn’t yet accustomed to. Out here, the fastidious ones were those who remembered to wipe their hands on their trousers between picking their nose and shaking your hand. Waxillium waited. Then waited some more. Then cleared his throat. Finally, the barkeep lumbered over to him. “Yeah?” “I’m looking for a man,” Waxillium said under his breath. “Goes by the name of Granite Joe.” “Don’t know him,” the barkeep said. “Don’t— He’s only the single most notorious outlaw in these parts.” “Don’t know him.” “But—” “It’s safer to not know men like Joe,” the barkeep said, then took a bite of his chicken leg. “But I have a friend.” “That’s surprising.” The barkeep glared at him. “Ahem,” Waxillium said. “Sorry. Continue.” “My friend might be willing to know people that others won’t. It will take a little time to get him. You’ll pay?” “I’m a lawman,” Waxillium
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said. “I do what I do in the name of justice.” The barkeep blinked. Slowly, deliberately, as if it required conscious effort. “So … you’ll pay?” “Yes, I’ll pay,” Waxillium said with a sigh, mentally counting what he’d already spent hunting Granite Joe. He couldn’t afford to go in the hole again. Destroyer needed a new saddle, and Waxillium went through suits frightfully quick out here. “Good,” the barkeep said, gesturing for Waxillium to follow. They wove through the room, around tables and past the pianoforte, which sat beside one of the pillars, between two tables. It didn’t look like it had been played in ages, and someone had set a row of dirty mugs on it. Next to the stairs, they entered a small room. It smelled dusty. “Wait,” the barkeep said, then shut the door and left. Waxillium folded his arms, eyeing the room’s lone chair. The white paint was flaking and peeling; he didn’t doubt that if he sat down, he’d end up with half of it stuck to his trousers. He was growing more comfortable with the people of the Roughs, if not their particular habits. These few months chasing bounties had shown him that there were good men and women out here, mixed among the rest. Yet they all had this stubborn fatalism about them. They didn’t trust authority, and often shunned lawmen, even if it meant letting a man like Granite Joe continue to ravage and plunder. Without the bounties set by the railroad and mining companies, nothing would ever— The window shook. Waxillium stopped, then grabbed the gun at his side and burned steel. The metal created a sharp warmth within him, like the feeling after drinking something too hot. Blue lines sprang up pointing from his chest toward nearby sources of metal, several of which were just outside the shuttered window. Others pointed downward. This saloon had a basement, which was unusual out in the Roughs. He could Push on those lines if he needed to, shoving on the metal they connected to. For now, he just watched as a small rod slipped between the window casements, then lifted, raising the latch that held them closed. The window rattled, then swung open. A young woman in dark trousers hopped in, rifle in one hand. Lean, with a squarish face, she carried an unlit cigar in her teeth and looked vaguely familiar to Waxillium. She stood up, apparently satisfied, then turned to close the window. As she did, she saw him for the first time. “Hell!” she said, scrambling backward, dropping her cigar, raising her rifle. Waxillium raised his own gun and prepared his Allomancy, wishing he’d found a way to protect himself from bullets. He could Push on metal, yes, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop gunfire, unless he Pushed on the gun before the trigger was pulled. “Hey,” the woman said, looking through the rifle sights. “Aren’t you that guy? The one who killed Peret the Black?” “Waxillium Ladrian,” he said. “Lawman for hire.” “You’re kidding. That’s how you introduce yourself?” “Sure.
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