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The small swarm of ardents and scholars fussed around Navani, settling the spanreed into its board and preparing standard violet ink. They’d carried it out and set it up in a guard post near the perimeter of the tower. Kalami stood next to Navani, her arms folded. Hair streaked with grey, the scribe had an increasingly worrisome leanness to her these days.
“I’m not sure about this, Brightness,” she said as the engineer and his assistants set up their instruments. “I worry that whoever is on the other side of that spanreed, they’ll learn more about us than we do about them.”
Falilar wiped his shaved head with a handkerchief, then gestured for Navani to sit at the table.
“Noted,” Navani said to Kalami, settling down. “We ready?”
“Yes, Brightness,” Falilar said. “Judging by the weight of your pen once the conversation is engaged, we should be able to tell how far away the other pen is.”
Spanreeds had a certain decay to them. The farther apart they were, the heavier the pens became after activation. In most cases, this was a slight—almost imperceptible—difference. Today, the spanreed board, with pen attached, had been placed on Falilar’s most precise scale. The pen was hooked by strings to other instruments as well. Navani carefully turned the ruby, indicating she was ready to communicate with her phantom correspondent. The six scholars and ardents, Kalami included, seemed to hold their collective breath.
The pen started writing. Why have you ignored my instructions?
Falilar gestured animatedly to the others, who began taking measurements—adding tiny weights to the balance and reading the tension in the pull of the string.
She left them to their measurements, instead focusing on the conversation. I’m not sure what exactly you expected of me, she wrote. Please, explain further.
You must stop your experiments with fabrials, the reed wrote. I made it explicitly clear that you needed to stop. You have not. You have only increased your heresies. What is this you do, putting fabrials in a pit and connecting them to the blowing of the storms? Do you make a weapon of the spren you have trapped? Do you kill? Humans always kill.
“Heresies?” Kalami noted as the engineers worked. “Whoever it is seems to have a theological opposition to our actions.”
“She references humans as a singer might,” Navani said, tapping the paper. “Either she’s one of them, or she wants us to think she is.”
“Brightness,” Falilar said, “this can’t be correct. The decay is almost nonexistent.”
“So they’re near to us,” Navani said.
“Extremely near,” Falilar said. “Inside the tower. If we could figure out a way to make more precise scales … Regardless, a second measurement would help me with possible triangulation.”
Navani nodded. Why do you call this a heresy? Navani wrote. The church sees no moral problem with fabrials. No more than they have a problem with hitching a chull to a cart.
A chull hitched to a cart is not confined to a tiny space, the reply came, the pen moving furiously, animatedly. Spren are meant to be free. By capturing them, you trap nature itself. Can a storm survive if placed in a prison? Can a flower bloom with no sunlight? This is what you do. Your religion is incomplete.
Let me think on this, Navani wrote. I will need a few minutes to speak with my theological advisor.
Each moment you wait is a moment of pain brought to the spren you dominate, the pen wrote. I will not suffer it for much longer.
Please wait, Navani wrote. I will use another spanreed for a moment, to talk to my theological advisor, but then will respond to you soon.
No response came, but the pen continued to hover—the phantom was waiting.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get the second measurement.”
The engineers moved with a flurry of activity, disjoining the spanreed so the link between the two pens was temporarily broken. They gathered the equipment and started running.
Navani and Kalami hurried into the palanquin waiting for them outside the room. A group of six men hefted it and charged after the engineers and scribes as the entire group rushed through the tower. They eventually burst out onto the plateau in front of Urithiru. You couldn’t tell the direction of a second spanreed, not directly, even from the decay.
However, because you could measure the decay—and therefore judge distance—you could triangulate from multiple measurements and get a rough idea of location. The team set up out here, on the plateau, among the coldspren.
By the time she climbed free of the palanquin, Falilar and his team had the spanreed ready on the stone ground. Navani knelt and reengaged the device.
They waited, Falilar dabbing at his head with his handkerchief, Kalami kneeling beside the paper and whispering, “Come on.” Falilar’s little apprentice—Isabi, daughter to one of the Windrunners—seemed ready to burst as she held her breath.
The pen engaged, then wrote, Why did you move? What are you doing?
I have spoken to my ardents, Navani wrote as the engineers again began taking measurements. They agree that our knowledge must be flawed. Can you explain how you know that this is evil? How is it you know what our ardents do not?
“How does she know we moved?” Kalami asked.
“She has a spy watching us,” Navani said. “Probably the same person who hid the spanreed ruby for me to find.”
The person on the other end didn’t reply.
I have many duties, Navani wrote. You interrupted me on my way to an important meeting. I have a few more minutes now to talk. Please. Tell us how you know what we don’t.
The truth is evident to me, the pen wrote.
It is not obvious to us, Navani wrote.
Because you are human, it replied. Humans cannot be trusted. You do not know how to keep promises, and promises are what make the world function. We make the world function. You must release your captive spren. You must you must.
“Ash’s mask…” Kalami said. “It’s a spren, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Navani said.
“I have measurements,” Falilar said. “It is coming from the tower. I should be able to pin it down to a specific region. I must say, Brightness, you don’t seem surprised by any of this.”
“I had my suspicions,” Navani said. “We found one ancient spren hiding in the tower. Is it such a stretch to assume a second has done the same?”
“Another of the Unmade?” Kalami asked.
Navani tapped her finger against the spanreed paper, thinking. “I doubt it,” she said. “A spren who wishes to free its kind? A liberationspren? Has anyone heard of such a thing?”
The scholars collectively shook their heads. Navani reached to write further to the phantom, but the spanreed shut off, dropping to the paper, no longer actively conjoined.
“So … what do we do?” Kalami asked. “Another of those things could be watching us from the darkness. Planning more murders.”
“It’s not the same,” Navani said. “There’s something here.…” We make the world function.
As they gathered up their things, a plan began budding in Navani’s mind. A touch reckless, particularly since she didn’t want to explain it to the others where the spren might be able to hear.
She went ahead with the idea anyway. As they were walking to the tower proper, Navani stumbled and—trying to make it appear as accidental as possible—dropped the spanreed while walking. She cried out as she clumsily kicked it across the stone plateau—right over the edge. She rushed over, but it had already vanished, tumbling to the rocks thousands of feet below.
