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“This is true, Ancient One,” Navani said. “But if you want my cooperation and goodwill, perhaps you shouldn’t flaunt in front of me the Blade taken from the corpse of my son.”
Raboniel stiffened. She glanced at the warform with the weapon. “I did not know.”
Didn’t she? Or was this another game?
Raboniel turned, nodding for Navani to follow as they walked away from the shield.
“If I might ask, Ancient One,” Navani said, “why do you give the Blades you capture to common soldiers, and not keep them yourselves?”
Raboniel hummed to one of her rhythms, but Navani could never tell them apart. Singers seemed to be able to distinguish one rhythm from another after hearing a short word or a couple of seconds of humming.
“Some Fused do keep the Blades we capture,” Raboniel said. “The ones who enjoy the pain. Now, I fear I must make some changes in how you and your scholars operate. You are distracted, naturally, by preventing them from giving me too much information. I have unconsciously put you in a position where your obvious talents are wasted by foolish politicking.
“These are the new arrangements: You will work by yourself at my desk in a separate room from the other scholars. Twice a day, you may give them written directions, which I will personally vet. That should give you more time for worthwhile pursuits, and less for deceit.”
Navani drew her lips to a line. “I think that is unwise, Ancient One,” she said. “I am accustomed to working directly with my scholars. They are far more efficient when I am personally directing their efforts.”
“I find it difficult to imagine them being less efficient than they are currently, Navani,” Raboniel said. “We will work this way from now on. It is not a matter I care to debate.”
Raboniel had a long stride, and used it purposely to force Navani to hurry to match her. Upon reaching the scholars’ chambers, Raboniel turned left instead of right—entering the room Navani’s scholars had been using as a library.
Raboniel’s desk in this chamber had once belonged to Navani. The Fused gestured, and Navani sat as instructed. This was going to be inconvenient—but that was Raboniel’s intent.
The Fused went down on one knee, then picked through a box on the floor here. She set something on the desk. A glass globe? Yes, like the one that had been near the first node Navani had activated.
“When we discovered the node operating the field, this was connected to it,” Raboniel said. “Look closely. What do you see?”
Navani hesitantly picked up the globe, which was heavier than it appeared. Though it was made of solid glass, she spotted an unusual construction inside. Something she hadn’t noticed, or understood, the first time she’d seen one of these. The globe had a pillar rising through the center.…
“It’s a reproduction of the crystal pillar room,” Navani said, her eyes widening. “You don’t suppose…”
“That’s how the field is created,” Raboniel said, tapping the globe with an orange carapace fingernail. “It’s a type of Soulcasting. The fabrial is persuading the air in a sphere around the pillar to think it is solid glass. That’s why cutting off a piece accomplishes nothing.”
“That’s incredible,” Navani said. “An application of the Surge I never anticipated. It’s not a full transformation, but a half state somehow. Kept in perpetual stasis, using this globe as a model to mimic…”
“There must be similar globes at the other nodes.”
“Clearly,” Navani said. “After this one was detached, did it make the shield seem weaker than before?”
“Not that we can tell,” Raboniel said. “One node must be enough to perpetuate the transformation.”
“Fascinating…”
Don’t get taken in, Navani. She wants you to think like a scholar, not like a queen. She wants you working for her, not against her.
That focus was even more difficult to maintain as Raboniel set something else on the table. A small diamond the size of Navani’s thumb, full of Stormlight. But … was the hue faintly off? Navani held it up, frowning, turning it over in her fingers. She couldn’t tell without a Stormlight sphere to compare it to, but it did seem this color was faintly teal.
“It’s not Stormlight, is it?” she asked. “Nor Voidlight?”
Raboniel hummed a rhythm. Then, realizing Navani wouldn’t understand, said, “No.”
“The third Light. I knew it. The moment I learned about Voidlight, I wondered. Three gods. Three types of Light.”
“Ah,” Raboniel said, “but this isn’t the third Light. We call that Lifelight. Cultivation’s power, distilled. This is something different. Something unique. It is the reason I came to this tower. It is a mixing of two. Stormlight and Lifelight. Like…”
“Like the Sibling is a child of both Honor and Cultivation,” Navani said.
Storms. That was what the Sibling had meant by their Light no longer working. They hadn’t been able to make the tower function any longer because something had happened to the tower’s Light.
“It came out in barely a trickle,” Raboniel said. “Something is wrong with the tower, preventing it from flowing.” Her rhythm grew more energetic. “But this is proof. I have long suspected that there must be a way to mix and change the various forms of Light. These three energies are the means by which all Surges work, and yet we know so little about them.
“What could we do with this power if we truly understood it? This Towerlight is proof that Stormlight and Lifelight can mix and create something new. Can the same be done with Stormlight and Voidlight? Or will that prove impossible, since the two are opposites?”
“Are they, though?” Navani asked.
“Yes. Like night and day or oil and water. But perhaps we can find a way to put them together. If so, it could be a … model, perhaps, of our peoples. A way toward unity instead of strife. Proof that we, although opposites, can coexist.”
Navani stared at the Towerlight sphere, and she felt compelled to correct one thing. “Oil and water aren’t opposites.”
“Of course they are,” Raboniel said. “This is a central tenet of philosophy. They cannot mix, but must remain ever separated.”
“Just because something doesn’t mix doesn’t make them opposites,” Navani said. “Sand and water don’t mix either, and you wouldn’t call them opposites. That’s beside the point. Oil and water can mix, if you have an emulsifier.”
“I do not know this word.”
“It’s a kind of binding agent, Ancient One,” Navani said, standing. If her things were still in here … yes, over at the side of the room, she found a crate holding simple materials for experiments.
She made up a vial with some oil and water, adding some stumpweight sap extract as a simple emulsifier. She shook the resulting solution and handed it to Raboniel. The Fused took it and held it up, waiting for the oil and water to separate. But of course they didn’t.
“Oil and water mix in nature all the time,” Navani said. “Sow’s milk has fat suspended in it, for example.”
“I … have accepted ancient philosophy as fact for too long, I see,” Raboniel said. “I call myself a scholar, but today I feel a fool.”
