The leg bled blood as red as that of any mortal. Suddenly, Lightsong knew pain. Pain literally greater than any he’d known in his short life.

He screamed.

He saw, through tears, Llarimar heroically trying to tackle a guard from behind, but the attack was almost as poorly executed as Lightsong’s own. The soldiers stepped away, several guarding the tunnel, another holding his bloodied blade toward Lightsong’s throat.

Funny, Lightsong thought, gritting his teeth against the pain. That was not at all how I imagined this going.

53

Vivenna waited up for Vasher. He did not return.

She paced in the small, one-room hideout—the sixth in a series. They never spent more than a few days in each location. Unadorned, it held only their bedrolls, Vasher’s pack, and a single flickering candle.

Vasher would have chastised her for wasting the candle. For a man who held a king’s fortune in Breaths, he was surprisingly frugal.

She continued pacing. She knew that she should probably just go to sleep. Vasher could take care of himself. It seemed that the only one in the city who couldn’t do that was Vivenna.

And yet he’d told her he was only going on a quick scouting mission. Though he was a solitary person himself, he apparently understood her desire to be a part of things, so he usually let her know where he was going and when to expect him back.

She’d never waited up for Denth to come back from a night mission, and she’d been working with Vasher for a fraction of the time she’d spent with the mercenaries. Why did she worry so much now?

Though she had felt like she was Denth’s friend, she hadn’t really cared about him. He’d been amusing and charming, but distant. Vasher was . . . well, who he was. There was no guile in him. He wore no false mask. She’d only met one other person like that: her sister, the one who would bear the God King’s child.

Lord of Colors! Vivenna thought, still pacing. How did things turn into such a mess?
* * *

SIRI AWOKE WITH A START. There was shouting coming from outside her room. She roused herself quickly, moving over to the door and putting her ear to it. She could hear fighting. If she were going to run, perhaps now would be the time. She rattled the door, hoping for some reason that it was unlocked. It wasn’t.

She cursed. She’d heard fighting earlier—screaming, and men dying. And now again. Someone trying to rescue me, perhaps? she thought hopefully. But who?

The door shook suddenly, and she jumped back as it opened. Treledees, high priest of the God King, stood in the doorway. “Quickly, child,” he said, waving to her. “You must come with me.”

Siri looked desperately for a way to run. She backed away from the priest, and he cursed quietly, waving for a couple of soldiers in city guard uniforms to rush in and grab her. She screamed for help.

“Quiet, you fool!” Treledees said. “We’re trying to help you.”

His lies rang hollow in her ears, and she struggled as the soldiers pulled her from the room. Outside, bodies were lying on the ground, some in guard uniforms, others in nondescript armor, still others with grey skin.

She heard fighting down the hallway, and she screamed toward it as the soldiers roughly pulled her away.
* * *

OLD CHAPPS, THEY CALLED HIM. Those who called him anything, that is.

He sat in his little boat, moving slowly across the dark water of the bay. Night fishing. During the day, one had to pay a fee to fish in T’Telir waters. Well, technically, during the night you were supposed to pay too.

But the thing about night was, nobody could see you. Old Chapps chuckled to himself, lowering his net over the side of the boat. The waters made their characteristic lap, lap, lap against the side of the boat. Dark. He liked it dark. Lap, lap, lap.

Occasionally, he was given better work. Taking bodies from one of the city’s slumlords, weighting them down with rocks tied in a sack to the foot, then tossing them into the bay. There were probably hundreds of them down there, floating in the current with their feet weighed to the floor. A party of skeletons, having a dance. Dance, dance, dance.

No bodies tonight, though. Too bad. That meant fish. Free fish, he didn’t have to pay tariffs on. And free fish were good fish.

No . . . a voice said to him. A little bit more to your right.

The sea talked to him sometimes. Coaxed him this way or that. He happily made his way in the direction indicated. He was out on the waters almost every night. They should know him pretty well by now.

Good. Drop the net.

He did so. It wasn’t too deep in this part of the bay. He could drag the net behind his boat, pulling the weighted edges along the bottom, catching the smaller fish that came up into the shallows to feed. Not the best fish, but the sky was looking too dangerous to be out far from the shore. A storm brewing?

His net struck something. He grumbled, yanking it. Sometimes it got caught on debris or coral. It was heavy. Too heavy. He pulled the net back up over the side, then opened the shield on his lantern, risking a bit of light.

Tangled in the net, a sword lay in the bottom of his boat. Silvery, with a black handle.

Lap, lap, lap.

Ah, very nice, the voice said, much clearer now. I hate the water. So wet and icky down there.

Transfixed, Old Chapps reached out, picking up the weapon. It felt heavy in his hand.

I don’t suppose you’d want to go destroy some evil, would you? the voice said. I’m not really sure what that means, to be honest. I’ll just trust you to decide.

Old Chapps smiled.

Oh, all right, the sword said. You can admire me a little bit longer, if you must. After that, though, we really need to get back to shore.
* * *

VASHER AWOKE GROGGILY.

He was tied by his wrists to a hook in the ceiling of a stone room. The rope that had been used to tie him, he noticed, was the same one he’d used to tie up the maid. It had been completely drained of color.

In fact, everything around him was a uniform grey. He had been stripped save for his short, white underbreeches. He groaned, his arms feeling numb from the awkward angle of being hung by his wrists.

He wasn’t gagged, but he had no Breath left—he’d used the last of it in the fight, to Awaken the cloak of the fallen man. He groaned.

A lantern burned in the corner. A figure stood next to it. “And so we both return,” Denth said quietly.

Vasher didn’t reply.

“I still owe you for Arsteel’s death, too,” Denth said quietly. “I want to know how you killed him.”

“In a duel,” Vasher said in a croaking voice.

“You didn’t beat him in a duel, Vasher,” Denth said, stepping forward. “I know it.”

“Then maybe I snuck up and stabbed him from behind,” Vasher said. “It’s what he deserved.”

Denth backhanded him across the face, causing him to swing from the hook. “Arsteel was a good man!”

“Once,” Vasher said, tasting blood. “Once, we were all good men, Denth. Once.”

Denth was quiet. “You think your little quest here will undo what you’ve done?”

“Better than becoming a mercenary,” Vasher said. “Working for whomever will pay.”

“I am what you made me,” Denth said quietly.

“That girl trusted you. Vivenna.”

Denth turned, eyes darkened, the lanternlight not quite reaching his face. “She was supposed to.”

“She liked you. Then you killed her friend.”

“Things got a little out of hand.”

“They always do, with you,” Vasher said.

Denth raised an eyebrow, his face growing amused in the wan light. “I get out of hand, Vasher? Me? When’s the last time I started a war? Slaughtered tens of thousands? You’re the one who betrayed his closest friend and killed the woman who loved him.”

Vasher didn’t respond. What argument could he offer? That Shashara had needed to die? It had been bad enough when she’d revealed the Commands to make Lifeless from a single breath. What if the way of making Awakened steel, like Nightblood, had entered the Manywar? Undead monsters slaughtering people with Awakened swords thirsting for blood?

None of that mattered to a man who’d seen his sister murdered by Vasher’s hand. Besides, Vasher knew he had little credibility to stand on. He’d created his own monsters to fight in that war. Not Awakened steel like Nightblood, but deadly enough in their own right.

“I was going to let Tonk Fah have you,” Denth said, turning away again. “He likes hurting things. It’s a weakness he has. We all have weaknesses. With my direction, he’s been able to restrict it to animals.”

Denth turned to him, holding up a knife. “I’ve always wondered what he finds so enjoyable about causing pain.”
* * *

DAWN WAS APPROACHING. Vivenna threw off her blanket, unable to sleep. She dressed, frustrated, but not sure why. Vasher was probably just fine. He was likely out carousing somewhere.

Of course, she thought wryly, carousing. That sounds just like him.

He’d never stayed out an entire night before. Something had gone wrong. She slowed as she pulled on her belt, glancing over at Vasher’s pack and the change of clothing he had inside of it. Every single thing I’ve tried since I left Idris has failed miserably, she thought, continuing to dress. I failed as a revolutionary, I failed as a beggar, and I failed as a sister. What am I supposed to do? Find him? I don’t even know where to start.

She looked away from the pack. Failure. It wasn’t something she’d been accustomed to, back in Idris. Everything she’d done there had turned out well.

Maybe that’s what this is all about, she thought, sitting. My hatred of Hallandren. My insistence on saving Siri, on taking her place. When their father had chosen Siri over her, it had been the first time in her life she’d felt that she wasn’t good enough. So she’d come to T’Telir, determined to prove the problem wasn’t with her. It’d been with someone else. Anyone else. As long as Vivenna wasn’t flawed.

But Hallandren had repeatedly proved that she was flawed. And now that she’d tried and failed so often, she found it hard to act. By choosing to act, she might fail—and that was so daunting that doing nothing seemed preferable.

It was the crowning arrogance in Vivenna’s life. She bowed her head. One last bit of feathered hypocrisy to adorn her royal hair.

You want to be competent? she thought. You want to learn to be in control of what goes on around you, rather than just being pushed around? Then you’ll have to learn to deal with failure.

It was frightening, but she knew it was true. She stood up and walked over to Vasher’s pack. She pulled out a wrinkled overshirt and a pair of leggings. Both had tassels hanging from the cuffs.

Vivenna put them on. Vasher’s spare cloak followed. It smelled like him, and was cut—like his other one—into the vague shape of a man. She understood, at least, one of the reasons his clothing looked so tattered.

She pulled out a couple of colorful handkerchiefs. “Protect me,” she Commanded the cloak, imagining it grabbing people who tried to attack her. She placed a hand on the sleeve of the shirt.

“Upon call,” she Commanded, “become my fingers and grip that which I must.” She’d only heard Vasher give the Command a couple of times, and she still wasn’t quite sure how to visualize what she wanted the shirt to do. She imagined the tassels closing around her hands as she had seen them do for Vasher.