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Venli hummed to the Lost. “I think we should offer to bring the surgeon and his family—including their son, the Windrunner—out with us. Help them escape the tower, take them to their own people at the Shattered Plains.”
She watched them, expecting fear, perhaps condemnation. This would jeopardize their safety.
Instead, as a group, they hummed to Consideration.
“Having a Windrunner on our side could be useful,” Mazish said. “He could certainly help us get to the Shattered Plains quicker.”
“Yes!” said Shumin, the new recruit—still a little too eager for Venli’s taste. “This is a great idea!”
“Would he help us though?” Dul asked.
“He treated Rlain well,” Mazish said. “Even when he thought Rlain was only another parshman. I don’t like what the humans did, but if we put this one in our debt, my gut says he won’t betray us.”
Venli scanned the other faces. Singers with a variety of skin patterns, now humming a variety of rhythms. None of them hummed to Betrayal, and they gave her encouraging nods.
“Very well,” Venli said, “wait for me until the storm has passed. If I’ve not returned by then, take the next Oathgate transfer to Kholinar. I’ll find you there.”
They hummed at her words, so Venli started toward the atrium, hoping she’d be quick enough to stop Rlain from trying his desperate plan. She didn’t know for certain if he’d take her offer. But this was the direction she should be moving.
* * *
Navani knelt on the floor of her office. It still smelled of smoke from the explosion the day before.
Despite Raboniel saying she wanted to scrape the chamber for broken pieces of the dagger, no one arrived to do that. They hadn’t taken her to her rooms above. They hadn’t brought her meals. They’d simply left her alone.
To contemplate her utter failure.
She felt numb. After her previous failure—when she’d exposed the node to her enemies—she’d picked herself up and moved on. This time she felt stuck. Worn. Like an old banner left too long exposed to the elements. Ripped by storms. Bleached by the sun. Now hanging in tatters, waiting to slip off the pole.
We can kill Radiant spren.
In the end, all Raboniel’s talk of working together had been a lie. Of course it had. Navani had known it would be. She’d planned for it, and tried to hide what she knew. But had she really expected that to work? She’d repeatedly confirmed to herself that she couldn’t outthink the Fused. They were ancient, capable beyond mortal understanding, beings outside of time and … And …
And she kept staring at the place where Raboniel’s daughter had died. Where Raboniel had wept, holding the corpse of her child. Such a human moment.
Navani curled up on her pallet, though sleep had eluded her all night. She had spent the hours listening to the Fused in the hallway playing notes on metal plates and demanding new ones—until one final sound had echoed against the stone hallways. A chilling, awful sound that was wrong in all the right ways. Raboniel had found the tone.
The tone that could kill spren.
Should Navani feel pride? Even in that time of near madness, her research had been so meticulous and well annotated that Raboniel was able to follow it. What had taken Navani days, the Fused replicated in hours, breaking open a mystery that had stood for thousands of years. Evidence that Navani was a true scholar after all?
No, she thought, staring at the ceiling. No, don’t you dare take that distinction for yourself. If she’d been a scholar, she’d have understood the implications of her work.
She was a child playing dress-up again. A farmer could stumble across a new plant in the wilderness. Did that make him a botanist?
She eventually forced herself up to do the only thing she was certain she couldn’t ruin. She found ink and paper in the wreckage of the room, then knelt and began to paint prayers. It was partially for the comfort of familiarity. But storm her, she still believed. Perhaps that was as foolish as thinking herself a scholar. Who did she think was listening? Was she only praying because she was afraid?
Yes, she thought, continuing to paint. I’m afraid. And I have to hope that someone, somewhere, is listening. That someone has a plan. That it all matters somehow.
Jasnah took comfort in the idea that there was no plan, that everything was random. She said that a chaotic universe meant the only actions of actual importance were the ones they decided were important. That gave people autonomy.
Navani loved her daughter, but couldn’t see it the same way. Organization and order existed in the very way the world worked. From the patterns on leaves to the system of compounds and chemical reactions. It all whispered to her.
Someone had known anti-Voidlight was possible.
Someone had known Navani would create it first.
Someone had seen all this, planned for it, and put her here. She had to believe that. She had to believe, therefore, that there was a way out.
Please, she prayed, painting the glyph for divine direction. Please. I’m trying so hard to do what is right. Please guide me. What do I do?
A voice sounded outside the room, and in her sleep-deprived state, she first mistook it for a voice speaking to her in answer. And then … then she heard what it was saying.
“The best way to distract the Bondsmith is to kill his wife,” the voice said. Rough, cold. “I am therefore here to perform the act that you have so far refused to do.”
Navani stood and walked to the door. Her femalen guard was someone new, but she didn’t forbid Navani from peering down the hall toward Raboniel’s workstation beside the Sibling’s shield.
A man in a black uniform stood before Raboniel. Neat, close-cropped black hair, a narrow hawkish face with a prominent nose and sunken cheeks. Moash. The murderer.
“I continue to have use for the queen,” Raboniel said.
“My orders are from Odium himself,” Moash said. If a Fused’s voice was overly ornamented with rhythms and meaning, his voice was the opposite. Dead. A voice like slate.
“He ordered you to come to me, Vyre,” Raboniel said. “And I requested for you to be sent. So today, I need you to deal with my problems first. There is a worm in the tower. Eating his way through walls. He is increasingly an issue.”
“I warned you about Stormblessed,” Moash said. “I warned all of you. And you did not listen.”
“You will kill him,” Raboniel said.
“No enemy can kill Kaladin Stormblessed,” Moash said.
“You promised that—”
“No enemy can kill Stormblessed,” Moash said. “He is a force like the storms, and you cannot kill the storms, Fused.”
Raboniel handed Moash something. A small dagger. “You speak foolishness. A man is merely a man, no matter how skilled. That dagger can destroy his spren. Spread that sand, and it will turn faintly white when an invisible spren flies overhead. Use it to locate his honorspren, then strike at it, depriving him of power.”
“I can’t kill him,” Moash repeated a third time, tucking the dagger away. “But I promise something better. We make this a covenant, Fused: I ruin Stormblessed, leave him unable to interfere, and you deliver me the queen. Accepted?”
Navani felt herself grow cold. Raboniel didn’t even glance in her direction. “Accepted,” Raboniel said. “But do another thing for me. The Pursuer has been sent to destroy the final node, but I think he is delaying to encourage Stormblessed to show up and fight him for it. Break the node for me.”
