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He nodded, still humming to Determination, and they split up at the next intersection. Venli found her way to a particular quiet section of hallway, lit only by her held sphere. Most humans stayed away from this area; the Pursuer’s troops were housed nearby. Raboniel’s occasional orders for peace to be maintained in the tower were barely enough to restrain those soldiers.
She attuned Peace—sometimes used by listeners for measuring time. Beyond this wall was the cell. As the fourth movement of the rhythm approached, Venli pressed her hand against the stone and drew in Voidlight, requisitioned just earlier to replace what she’d used. Storms, she hoped news of her taking so much didn’t reach Raboniel.
Timbre pulsed reassuringly. This stone, like the one earlier today, responded to Venli’s touch. It shivered and rippled, as if it were getting a good back-scratching.
The stone whispered to her. Move to the side. It guided her to the correct spot to breach the cell. Timbre’s rhythms pulsed through the rock, making it vibrate with the Rhythm of Hope. The fourth movement of Peace arrived—the moment when Rlain would signal Dabbid to go in to the guards, bringing food for their lunch. Merely another servant doing his job. Nothing unusual, even if lunch came early today.
Timbre exulted in the Rhythm of Hope as Venli pushed her hand into the stone. It felt good, warm and enveloping. Unlike what happened with the Deepest Ones, Venli displaced the rock. It became as crem in her fingers, soft to the touch.
She wasn’t expert enough to get it to move on its own into the shapes she wanted. It usually did what it wanted in those cases, such as forming the tiny statues on the floor above. So for now, she simply pushed her hand forward until it hit air on the other side. Then she pressed with her other hand and pulled the two apart, forming an opening straight through the stone—the normally hard rock curling and bunching up before her touch.
A surprised set of human eyes appeared at the other end of the foot-long hole, looking through at her.
“I’m going to get you out,” Venli whispered to the Rhythm of Pleading, “but you have to promise you won’t tell anyone what I’ve done. You won’t tell them about the powers I’m using. Not even other Radiants. They think I’m cutting you out with a Shardblade.”
“What are you?” the human whispered in Alethi.
“Promise me.”
“Fine, promised. Done. Hurry. The guards are eating, and they didn’t even share none of it.”
Venli continued shoving aside the stone. It took a ton of Light, and Timbre pulsed to Consolation—apparently she thought Venli’s efforts crude, lacking finesse and skill.
Well, it did the job. She managed to form a hole big enough for the human girl. When Venli let go of the stone, it hardened instantly—she had to shake a few chips of it free of her fingers. The girl poked it, then hopped through.
Hopefully the guards would assume a human Stoneward had survived and saved the girl. Venli gestured for the Edgedancer to follow her—but the girl wavered. She seemed as if she was going to bolt away in another direction.
“Please,” Venli said. “We need you. To save a life. If you run now, he’ll die.”
“Who?”
“Stormblessed,” Venli said. “Please, hurry with me.”
“You’re one of them,” the girl said. “How’d you get Radiant powers?”
“I … am not Radiant,” Venli said. “I have powers from the Fused that are like Radiant powers. I’m a friend of Rlain. The listener who was a bridgeman? Please. I wouldn’t free you only to put you in danger, but we need to go, now!”
The girl cocked her head, then nodded for Venli to go first. The Edgedancer followed on silent feet, sticking to the shadows.
Eshonai used to walk like that, Venli thought. Quietly in the wilderness, to not disturb the wildlife. This girl didn’t have that same air about her though.
Timbre was pulsing contentedly to Hope. Venli couldn’t feel the same yet, not until she was certain Rlain and Dabbid hadn’t been caught. She led the little Radiant girl to a room nearby to wait.
“You’re a traitor to them, then?” the girl asked her.
“I don’t know what I am,” Venli said. “Other than someone who didn’t want to see a child kept in a cage.”
Venli jumped almost to the ceiling when Rlain finally strode in with Dabbid. The quiet bridgeman ran over and hugged the human girl, who grinned.
“Eh, moolie,” she said. “Strange friends ya got these days. You seen a chicken around here? Big red one? I lost ’im when I was running away.”
Dabbid shook his head, then knelt before the girl. “Healing. It works?”
“Eh!” she said. “You can talk!”
He nodded.
“Say ‘buttress,’” she told him. “It’s my favorite word.”
“Healing?” he asked.
“Yeah, I can still heal,” she said. “I think. I should be able to help him.”
He took her hand, insistent.
“I’ll go with you,” Rlain said. He glanced at Venli and she hummed to Skepticism, indicating she wouldn’t go. She had to attend Raboniel.
“I won’t stay away too long,” Rlain promised her. “I don’t want to draw suspicion.” The other two left, but he lingered, then hummed to Appreciation. “I’m sorry about what I said when you first saw me in the cell. You’re not selfish, Venli.”
“I am,” she said. “A lot of things are confusing to me these days—but of that fact I’m certain.”
“No,” he said. “Today you’re a hero. I know you’ve been through rough times, but today…” He grinned and hummed to Appreciation again, then ducked out after the others.
If only he knew the whole story. Still, she felt upbeat as she headed toward the scholar rooms below.
“Can I say the words now?” she asked Timbre.
The pulse indicated the negative. Not yet.
“When?” Venli asked.
A simple, straightforward pulse was her answer.
You’ll know.
Midius once told me … told me we could use Investiture … to enhance our minds, our memories, so we wouldn’t forget so much.
Raboniel made good on her promise to leave Navani to her own designs. The Fused studied the shield that protected the Sibling—but without Navani to accidentally act as a spy, Raboniel’s progress wasn’t nearly as rapid as before. Occasionally—when pacing so she could glance out past the guard—Navani would catch Raboniel sitting on the floor beside the blue shield, holding up the sphere full of Warlight and staring at it.
Navani found herself in a curious situation. Forbidden to take part in the administration of the tower, forbidden direct contact with her scholars, she had only her research to occupy her. In a way, she had been given the gift she’d always wished for: a chance to truly see if she could become a scholar.
Something had always prevented her from full dedication. After Gavilar’s death, she’d been too busy guiding Elhokar and then Aesudan. Perhaps Navani could have focused on scholarship when she’d first come to the Shattered Plains—but there had been a Blackthorn to seduce and then a new kingdom to forge. For all she complained about politics and the distractions of administering a kingdom, she certainly did find her way into the middle of both with frightful regularity.
