Susebron didn’t write a response, but instead wrapped his arm around her again, pulling her close. It felt good to be held against him. Very good.

After a few minutes, he pulled his arm away and wrote again, awkwardly erasing first. I was wrong, you know.

“About what?”

About one of the things I said earlier. I wrote that my mother was the only person to ever show me love and kindness. That’s not true. There’s been another.

He stopped writing and looked at her. Then he glanced at the board again. You didn’t have to show me kindness, he wrote. You could have hated me for taking you from your family and your homeland. Instead, you taught me to read, befriended me. Loved me.

He stared at her. She stared at him. Then, hesitant, he leaned down and kissed her.

Oh, dear . . . Siri thought, a dozen objections popping into her head. She found it difficult to move, to resist, or to do anything.

Anything other than kiss him back.

She felt hot. She knew that they needed to stop, lest the priesthood get exactly what they were waiting for. She understood all of these things. Yet those objections began to seem less and less rational as she kissed him, as her breathing grew more hurried.

He paused, obviously uncertain what to do next. Siri looked up at him, breathing heavily, then pulled him down to kiss him again, feeling her hair bleed to a deep, passionate red.

At that point, she stopped caring about anything else. Susebron didn’t know what to do. But she did. I really am too hasty, she thought as she pulled off her shift. I need to get better at controlling my impulses.

Some other time.

45

That night, Lightsong dreamed of T’Telir burning. Of the God King dead and of soldiers in the streets. Of Lifeless killing people in colorful clothing.

And of a black sword.

46

Vivenna choked down her meal. The dried meat tasted strongly of fish, but she had learned that by breathing through her mouth, she could ignore much of the flavor. She ate every bite, then washed the taste away with a few mouthfuls of warm boiled water.

She was alone in the room. It was a small chamber built onto the side of a building near the slums. Vasher had paid a few coins for a day in it, though he wasn’t there at the moment. He’d rushed off to deal with something.

She leaned back, food consumed, closing her eyes. She’d reached the point where she was so exhausted that she actually found it difficult to sleep. The fact that the room was so small didn’t help. She couldn’t even stretch out all the way.

Vasher hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that their work would be rigorous. Stop after stop, she spoke with the Idrians, consoling them, begging them not to push Hallandren to war. There were no restaurants as there had been with Denth. No dinners with men in fine clothing and guards. Just group after group of tired, working-class men and women. Many of them weren’t rebellious and a large number of them didn’t even live in the slums. But they were part of the Idrian community in T’Telir, and they could influence how their friends and family felt.

She liked them. Empathized with them. She felt far better about her new efforts than she had about her work with Denth, and so far as she could tell, Vasher was being honest with her. She had decided to trust those instincts. That was her decision, and that decision meant helping Vasher, for now.

Vasher didn’t ask her if she wanted to continue. He simply led her from location to location, expecting her to keep up. And so she did, meeting with the people and begging their forgiveness, despite how emotionally draining it was. She wasn’t certain if she could repair what she had done, but she was willing to try. This determination seemed to gain her some respect from Vasher. It was much more reluctantly given than Denth’s respect had been.

Denth was fooling me the entire time. It was still hard to remember that fact. Part of her didn’t want to. She leaned forward, staring at the bland wall in front of her in the boxlike room. She shivered. It was a good thing that she’d been working herself so hard lately. It kept her from thinking about things.

Discomforting things.

Who was she? How did she define herself now that everything she’d been, and everything she’d tried, had collapsed around her? She couldn’t be Vivenna the confident princess anymore. That person was dead, left behind in that cellar with Parlin’s bloody corpse. Her confidence had come from naïveté.

Now she knew how easily she had been played. She knew the cost of ignorance, and she had glimpsed the grim truths of real poverty.

Yet, she also couldn’t be that woman—the waif of the streets, the thief, the beaten-down wretch. That wasn’t her. She felt as if those weeks had been a dream, brought on by the stress of isolation and trauma of her betrayal, fueled by becoming a Drab and being suffocated by disease. To pretend that was the real her would be to parody those who truly lived on the streets. The people she’d hidden among and tried to imitate.

Where did that leave her? Was she the penitent, quiet princess who knelt with bowed head, pleading with the peasants? This, too, was partially an act. She really did feel sorry. However, she was using her stripped pride as a tool. That wasn’t her.

Who was she?

She stood up, feeling cramped in the tiny room, and pushed open the door. The neighborhood outside wasn’t quite a slum, but it wasn’t rich either. It was simply a place where people lived. There were enough colors along to street to be welcoming, but the buildings were small and held a number of families each.

She walked along the street, careful not to stray too far from the room Vasher had rented. She passed trees, admiring their blooms.

Who was she really? What was left, when one stripped away the princess and the hatred of Hallandren? She was determined. That part of her, she liked. She’d forced herself to become the woman she needed to be in order to marry the God King. She’d worked hard, sacrificing, to reach her goal.

She was also a hypocrite. Now she knew what it was to be truly humble. Compared to that, her former life seemed more brash and arrogant than any colorful skirt or shirt.

She did believe in Austre. She loved the teachings of the Five Visions. Humility. Sacrifice. Seeing another’s problems before your own. Yet she was beginning to think that she—along with many others—had taken this belief too far, letting her desire to seem humble become a form of pride itself. She now saw that when her faith had become about clothing instead of people, it had taken a wrong turn.

She wanted to learn to Awaken. Why? What did that say about her? That she was willing to accept a tool her religion rejected, just because it would make her powerful?

No, that wasn’t it. At least, she hoped it wasn’t it.

Looking back on her recent life, she felt frustrated at her frequent helplessness. And that felt like part of whom she really was. The woman who would do anything to be sure she wasn’t helpless. That was why she’d studied so hard with the tutors in Idris. That was also why she wanted to learn how to Awaken. She wanted as much information as she could, and wanted to be prepared for the problems that might come at her.

She wanted to be capable. That might be arrogant, but it was the truth. She wanted to learn everything she could about how to survive in the world. The most humiliating aspect of her time in T’Telir was her ignorance. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

She nodded to herself.

Time to practice, then, she thought, returning to the room. Inside, she pulled out a piece of rope—the one that Vasher had used to tie her up, the first thing that she had Awakened. She’d since retrieved the Breath from it.

She went back outside, holding the rope between her fingers, twisting it, thinking. The Commands that Denth taught me were simple phrases. Hold things. Protect me. He’d implied that the intent was important. When she’d Awakened her bonds, she’d made them move as if part of her body. It was more than just the Command. The Command brought the life, but the intent—the instructions from her mind—brought focus and action.

She stopped beside a large tree with thin, blossom-laden branches that drooped toward the ground. She stood beside a branch, touched the bark of the tree’s trunk itself to use its color. She held out the rope to the branch. “Hold things,” she Commanded, reflexively letting out some of her Breath. She felt an instant of panic as her sense of the world dimmed.

The rope twitched. However, instead of drawing color from the tree, the Awakening pulled color from her tunic. The garment bled grey, and the rope moved, wrapping like a snake around the branch. Wood cracked slightly as the rope pulled tight. However, the other end of the rope twisted in an odd pattern, writhing.

Vivenna watched, frowning, until she figured out what was happening. The rope was twisting around her hand, trying to hold it as well.

“Stop,” Vivenna said.

Nothing happened. It continued to pull tight.

“Your Breath to mine,” she Commanded.

The rope stopped twisting and her Breath returned. She shook the rope free. All right, she thought. “Hold things” works, but it’s not very specific. It will wrap around my fingers as well as the thing I want it to tie up. What if I tried something else?

“Hold that branch,” she Commanded. Again, Breath left her. More of it this time. Her trousers drained of color, and the rope end twisted, wrapping around the branch. The rest of it remained still.

She smiled in satisfaction. So the more complicated the Command, the more Breath it requires.

She took back her Breath. As Vasher had explained, doing so didn’t shock her senses, for it was a mere restoration to a normal state for her. If she’d gone several days without that Breath, she’d have been overwhelmed by recovering its power. It was a little like taking a first bite of something very flavorful.

She eyed her clothes, which were now completely grey. Out of curiosity, she tried Awakening the rope again. Nothing happened. She picked up a stick, then Awakened the rope. It worked this time, the stick losing its color, though it took a lot more breath. Perhaps this was because the stick wasn’t very colorful. The tree trunk didn’t work for color, though. Presumably, one couldn’t draw color from something that was itself alive.

She discarded the branch and fetched a few of Vasher’s colored handkerchiefs from the room. She walked back to the tree. Now what? she thought. Could she put the Breath into the rope now, then command it to hold something later? How would she even phrase that?

“Hold things that I tell you to hold,” she Commanded.

Nothing happened.

“Hold that branch when I tell you.”

Again, nothing.

“Hold whatever I say.”

Nothing.

A voice came from behind. “Tell it to ‘Hold when thrown.’”

Vivenna jumped, spinning. Vasher stood behind her, Nightblood held before him, point down. He had his pack over his shoulder.

Vivenna flushed, glancing back at the rope. “Hold when thrown,” she said, using a handkerchief for color. Her Breath left her, but the rope remained limp. So she tossed it to the side, hitting one of the hanging tree branches.

The rope immediately twisted about, locking the branches together and holding them tightly.

“That’s useful,” Vivenna said.