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The dying man twitched on the ground. She barely felt where he’d cut her along the side of her head. Within her, Timbre thrummed the Rhythm of the Lost.
I didn’t mean to … Venli thought. I …
Sound suddenly returned to Venli. She started, looking around. In the heat of the moment, her own struggle had consumed all of her attention. Now, the intense fighting at the mouth of the cavern overwhelmed her. She cringed, trying to make sense of it all.
“The spanreed!” someone shouted to the Rhythm of Command. “Don’t let them—”
Raboniel suddenly dashed through the center of the frenetic scramble. The others were all limbs and shadows, but she was somehow haloed by the crimson light of the Everstorm behind. Raboniel stepped directly into a spear strike—though when the weapon rammed into her, it immediately transformed to dust.
She sidestepped the soldier and approached a human woman at the side of the cavern. The woman was fumbling with a glowing ruby. Raboniel’s thin blade—shorter than a sword, but narrow and pointed like a spike—rammed up through the human woman’s chin. Raboniel yanked her blade free, then turned back toward the soldier, who had pulled out his side knife. She breathed out toward him, and something black left her lips—something that sent the man stumbling away, clawing at his face.
Raboniel plucked the spanreed from the dead woman’s hands, then casually wiped her blade on a handkerchief. She saw Venli kneeling nearby. “Your first kill, child?” the Fused asked to Ridicule.
“Y … yes, Ancient One.”
“I thought your kind fought the humans for years on the Shattered Plains.”
“I was a scholar, Ancient One. I did not go into battle.”
“Do not let them bring you to the ground,” Raboniel said. “As a Regal—even in envoyform—you are stronger than most humans; use that. And carry a knife, for Ado’s sake.”
“I … Yes, Ancient One. I didn’t see him coming at me, I mean … I thought…”
That she could remain aloof, as she’d always done with the listeners. Even during the battle at Narak, where they’d lost so many, she hadn’t been directly involved in the fighting. She hadn’t lost her mind to the spren that inhabited her; she’d told herself it was because she was so strong. In truth, she had already been selfish and ambitious.
Timbre pulsed comfortingly, but Venli couldn’t accept the sentiment. She bore the humans no love—they had murdered thousands of her people. But Venli herself had doomed many listeners.
She didn’t want to kill anyone. Not anymore. She climbed to her feet, shaken. Nearby, the last few human soldiers were subdued and killed as the Everstorm crashed outside, pouring red light in through the mouth of the cavern. Venli turned away from the deaths, then felt embarrassed. What had she expected, in coming on this mission? What did she hope to accomplish here? Make contact with the Radiants while actively invading their base? Look for allies as a massacre occurred?
No. Neither. She was just trying to stay dry during the storm. Raboniel got out a Stormlight sphere as a group of their Deepest One scouts finally emerged from the rock, sliding up out of the floor like spirits.
“How?” Raboniel asked. “You said you’d cleared the guards at this entrance.”
“We did,” a scout said to Agony. “This was a patrol that came to check on them, it seems. We did not hear them on the stones until it was too late.”
“We assumed they were all up higher,” another said. “We are sorry.”
“Sorrow is meaningless,” Raboniel said. “And bad assumptions are the last failing of many dead. We will not have another chance at this. Ever. Make certain the rest of the way is clear.”
They hummed again to Agony, then melted into the rock floor of the cavern. The soldiers formed up, and Raboniel strode inward, not waiting to see if anyone followed.
The group left the rumbling sound of the storm behind and started upward. Though they’d begun midway up through the caverns at an entrance in a highland valley, it would take hours to reach the tower itself. Tense hours, hoping that there wouldn’t be any more mistakes or missed human patrols. Hoping that silence from the dead wouldn’t be noticed.
Venli walked, disquieted, uncertain which was worse: the feeling of primal terror that had stabbed her when she’d heard the human behind her, or the haunting feeling of watching the light fade from his eyes.
You have not felt what I have. You have not known what I have. You rejected that chance—and wisely, I think.
Accompanied by several of her scholars and an entire host of soldiers, Navani arrived at the scene of the explosion. It was less damaging than she’d feared when reading that initial spanreed report: only two dead, and the explosion had destroyed the contents of only a single room in the tower.
It was still deeply troubling. The two dead were Nem and Talnah, the lensmakers, astronomers, and gemstone experts. The destroyed room was their shared laboratory. Thousands of broams’ worth of equipment ruined. And one invaluable sphere.
Szeth’s sphere. The Voidlight one that Gavilar had considered most important out of all his strange spheres. As Navani stood in the hallway outside the destroyed room—smelling smoke, hearing the weeping of the cleaning woman who had first rushed to help at the sound of the detonation—she had a sinking feeling.
She had caused this somehow by asking those two women to study the sphere. Now she’d likely lost it and the lives of two expert scholars. Storms. What had happened?
The guards wanted a scholar to inspect the room for other possible dangers before letting Navani enter. She probably could have ordered them aside, but they were just doing their best to keep her safe. So she let Rushu go in first. Navani doubted that anything dangerous could have survived what seemed to be complete destruction—but then again, she’d never known a fabrial or sphere to explode.
Rushu slipped out a short time later and nodded for her to enter. Navani stepped in, her shoes grinding against broken glass as she surveyed the wreckage. Smoldering wood marked the remnants of tables. The bodies were under several bloody sheets. Not two sheets: five. For two corpses. Storms.
Navani picked through carefully, avoiding larger bits of broken glass. The smoke was nearly overpowering. Civilized people used spheres for light, and she rarely kept a hearth burning these days. Smoke was a dangerous scent.
If anything was salvageable in the mess, Navani didn’t spot it. And of course there was no sign of the strange sphere.
Rushu stepped up beside Navani. “I … had dinner scheduled with Talnah later this week…” she whispered. “We were … were going to talk about weather readings.…”
Navani steeled herself. “I need you to do something for me, Rushu,” she said. “Catalogue everything in this room. Don’t let the soldiers move a single bit of glass. Remove the bodies, see them properly cared for, but otherwise leave this room pristine. Then go through every inch of it. Save every scrap of paper. Every broken lens or cracked beaker.”
“If you wish, Brightness,” Rushu said. “But … if I might ask … why? What do you hope to find?”
“Have you ever known a fabrial accident to cause an explosion like this?” Navani asked.
