Chapter 14

As I approached the first crossroads, I met a family seeking a new life.

—From The Way of Kings , fourth parable

D alinar was not asleep.

He stood on his balcony, gazing out at the night, feeling alone. He was never truly alone these days, not with the Stormfather increasingly present in the back of his mind. Still, the sensation persisted. Dalinar. Alone. Against a god.

He had eight days to find a way to defeat Odium. When younger, Gavilar had stood like this, surveying a battlefield, planning—while Dalinar had just blundered from fight to fight, stomping on toes and breaking down fences. How much better would all of this have gone if Dalinar had died in his brother’s place that fateful night? Perhaps this war would already have been won.

But Gavilar was dead. So Dalinar surveyed the cold highlands, trying to see better than he had in the past. Finally, he shook his head and walked into his chambers. At least this place was starting to feel like home. Navani knew he detested clutter, and had begun expertly arranging the room to match both her desire for decoration and his preference for austerity. The result was homey, bedecked with items like his grandfather’s takama, which hung on the wall between two banners, cloth belt wrapped around it. Twice.

He felt as tense as a bowstring. A subconscious portion of his mind could tell when a battle was shifting out of his control: when a line was close to breaking, or a formation about to be flanked. He felt it today, like a straining leather strap on the verge of snapping.

So when the knock came at his door—frantic, fast, urgent—he knew. The storm was here.

He reached the door as Pabolon, one of the door guards, was checking it. A Windrunner squire stood outside, eyes wide, Stormlight streaming from her.

“What has happened?” he said.

Jasnah was not asleep.

Partly it was this stupid bed. Wit adored plushness. He wanted a mattress that would swallow a person, and had found hers to be unsuitably stiff.

Jasnah liked trying new things; this relationship itself was, in a way, such an experiment. She had enjoyed it for many reasons—the scheming together, the sharing of incredible plans, the chance to connect with someone so intellectually stimulating. Relationships were about compromise, she had read, and so she’d procured a new bed.

And she hated it. She swam in stuffing, irritationspren—like pink motes almost invisible in the night—bobbing around her as she listened to Wit breathing. He didn’t snore, but he did occasionally whistle .

She turned to the other side, which—since they both tended to sink toward the center of this awful mattress—should have jostled him. He just lay on his back, whistling softly as he exhaled. Was he actually asleep? He’d hinted that he visited other places at night. Other worlds. Engaging in political machinations at which she could still only guess.

Yes, there had been wonderful things about the relationship. So many others, however, were like this bed.

“You lie to me sometimes,” she whispered, facing him in the darkness. “You realize that means it can’t be a true relationship? I can trust someone who has secrets, but not someone who lies.”

If he was aware, he didn’t say anything, though Design—on the wall behind him—pulsed and rotated. So far Jasnah had caught him in only the most minor of lies. He’d engage in wordplay with her, or toy with puns, and she’d ask him to stop. He’d promise, and would appear to have followed through. But then she’d notice that the games hadn’t ceased, they’d merely grown more subtle—Wit taking the wordplay to a more esoteric layer, difficult to spot.

He seemed to think it would engage her, push her. Instead it signaled something else: Wit would do what he thought was best for a person, not what they wanted.

Despite her efforts, she knew she wasn’t connecting to him physically as he’d like. Even during sex, she felt distant. Perhaps the most distant she ever felt. That made him anxious, as if he were doing something wrong; he thought if he tried harder, he’d do something mind-blowing and change how she felt.

In turn, he wasn’t connecting with her on an emotional level, as she wanted. If only he’d be up-front with her …

She turned over again. A stiff pillow did little to counteract the strange stuffing, which was made of baby chicken feathers. Or perhaps the smallest feathers of adult chickens? She hadn’t been able to parse Wit’s description, but either way, a good lavis-husk mattress was far superior. Shredded, to remove the awkward lumps.

She had ordered another new mattress to put in the next room. She valued the experiment of trying it his way, but she would not continue in discomfort simply to please him. A relationship required sacrifice by all parties, but it should not be built on a foundation of sacrifice. And …

And storms. This was why it was best to avoid such entanglements. Eight days until Dalinar confronted Odium, and she was worrying about a relationship.

Perhaps it was a way to distract her. Because despite all of her training, all of her learning, all of her preparation … the final decision was going to come down to someone else. Dalinar would face Odium’s champion himself.

She did not dispute his choice. He was a Bondsmith and a fierce warrior. He’d had dealings with Odium, and perhaps understood the creature better than any mortal. Jasnah had written out the reasons he was the best choice. Yet … could it have been her? What if, instead of hiding her powers, she’d told people what she could do and what she feared?

Her life and Dalinar’s seemed very different. He’d burned a city, and people forgave him. He’d proclaimed the Almighty to be dead, and half the ardents had joined him. Yet when Jasnah was honest about her atheism, her thoughts on government, or her displeasure with traditions like the safehand … well, condemnation and judgment had chased her like twin headsmen, each looking to get a whipping in before the execution.

When Jasnah Kholin spoke her mind, people hated her. Perhaps she’d learned the wrong lessons from that, but could she be blamed?

She curled up, listening to the quiet sounds of Urithiru. Water moving through pipes of its own accord. Air whispering as it was pumped through vents. Trembling there, she at last realized why she hated this mattress so much. It reminded her of the soft restraints they’d given her when she’d been young. When those who loved her had locked her away for a few terrible months that basically everyone else had forgotten about.

Everyone but Jasnah.

Who would never forget.

Wit suddenly sat up in bed. “Oh, hell, ” he whispered.

Jasnah came alert, forming Ivory as a Blade—a short, sturdy dagger—and warning her armor spren to be ready. She reached to the covered bowl of spheres beside the bed, but did not remove the black shroud or draw in Stormlight—Light rising from her skin would make her a target in the darkness.

Wit sat there, barely visible by the dim light that escaped the bowl through the shroud. He wore silken nightclothes, though his hair—as always—was immaculate, despite his having slept on it. How?

“What?” she hissed at him.

“Oh, bollocks, ” he whispered, and leaped from the bed, shockspren erupting all around, Design scurrying down the wall and across the floor toward him. “The darkest, hairiest, greasiest bollocks on the most unkempt nethers of the most wanton demon of the most obscure religion’s damnable hellscape.”

“Wit?” Jasnah said as he rushed to the counter. “Wit!”

He looked to her, wild eyed. Then he pulled the shroud off some spheres and washed the room in light. She blinked, dismissing her Blade. If Wit wasn’t worried about blinding them, then this wasn’t a physical danger. It might just be another of his strange rants.

Except for the way he looked at her, eyes like glowing spheres. Lips drawn, without even a hint of a smile. Jaw taut, hands clenched. Breathing quickly.

Genuine panic. “Wit,” she said. “Please. What’s wrong?”

“Give me a moment,” he mumbled, turning back to the counter covered in documents. “I need … I need a moment …” He extracted a notebook and began writing. She stood, and though the air was warm—thanks to her mother’s transformations—she felt cold in only her nightgown. She threw on a robe, then leaned over Wit’s shoulder.

The symbols he wrote were unfamiliar—one of the many languages he could speak from worlds beyond hers. It appeared that he was making a table though. And those notations at the left of each row—the dots and lines—numbers? They repeated far more often than the other symbols did.

He wrote furiously, his handwriting growing sloppy. And he’d pulled out some of the strange color-changing sand he used when experimenting. His expression grew more intense.

The doors began to shake. Jasnah had a sword in hand a second later, but then realized it was him. No one was on the other side. He was exerting some kind of pressure that made the doors vibrate. The rings in her jewelry box began to spill out onto the floor, while her shoes scooted away, pushed by their buckles. Every bit of metal in the room, save for her Shardblade, reacted to him—including her fabrial alarms, which went haywire, flashing rapidly.

Then the sand burst alight with a mother-of-pearl iridescence and hovered above the table. Wit’s silky nightclothes began to writhe and contort as if alive. His motions became increasingly frantic, fearspren bubbling up through the ground around them. Then in a flash—his body shape physically changing, molded like wax—he became another person. Shorter, with stark white hair and subtly different features.

This is the real him, she realized. A man not from their world who masqueraded as Wit. But … his change had been physical, not an illusion.

He turned to her, pencil snapping under the pressure from his fingers. “I’ve been tricked,” he said.

“H-how?” she asked.

The sand turned black and sprayed back down onto the counter. Wit’s shape reverted to his familiar self in seconds, and the room quieted—as if at an order from him—save for her fabrial alarms strobing the room white and red. He stood, again taller than she was, and held up what he’d written.

“I’m missing,” Wit said, “three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.”

“I’m not following,” she said. “Forgive me, Wit. I’m trying to parse this, but … Storms, what is happening?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, slumping into the seat beside her stone counter—a natural feature of the room that jutted from the wall. “I have lived a very long time, Jasnah. Longer than a mortal mind can track, so I store memories in something called Breath, an easily accessible—if costly—form of Investiture a person can adopt and, with training, use to expand their soul. I periodically review my memories, deciding what can be jettisoned. In my review just now, I found something unexpected, something terrifying.”

“Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds,” she whispered, interrogating the notes on his page. As if by force of will she could decipher them. “Missing. When?”

“A bit over a day ago,” he said.

“And … what were you doing at the time?”

He let out a long breath, then met her eyes. “I was having a chat with Odium.”

“A chat,” she said, her heart trembling, “with the most ancient enemy of humankind? The being that seeks to destroy us, to crush my family, to weaponize all of Roshar for his own ends? A chat ?”

“We have a history,” Wit explained. “As I believe I’ve told you.”

Jasnah turned off her alarms, then pulled a chair over and sank down, feeling sick to her stomach. “I asked you, Wit,” she whispered. “I asked you to involve me in any dealings you had with him.”

“I’m telling you now, Jasnah,” he said. “That is, technically, involving you.”

She held his eyes and knew. There would never be a place for her inside his deepest self, would there? She’d always be on the outside, maintained as part of his collection. Enjoyed, perhaps even loved, but never confided in.

She had to withdraw, for her own sake. Anxietyspren, like twisting black crosses, vanished as she tucked away feelings of betrayal. She had known what she was getting into with him. One did not court an immortal lightly.

“What were you saying to Odium?” she asked.

“I …” He shrugged. “I had to gloat a little. It was requisite, considering our history.” His eyes became distant. “I remember … feeling odd about the encounter. A sense of repetition. Something happened in those lost minutes. He got the better of me, then excised the memory from my mind, letting me believe I’d won the exchange. Now that I look, I can find the remnants. It was hurriedly done.”

“This is wrong, isn’t it?” she said.

“Fantastically wrong. Rayse is a megalomaniac, Jasnah. For all his craftiness, it would hurt him to let me walk away thinking I’d bested him. Yet this time he encouraged it.” Wit leaned forward and took her hand. “He’s grown. After ten thousand years, Rayse has actually learned something. That terrifies me. Because if I can’t anticipate what he will do …”

“Then what?”

“We have to reread the agreement between him and Dalinar,” Wit said. “ Now. ”

Jasnah had a copy. After Dalinar and Odium had agreed upon the terms, the Sibling had been able to quote for them the exact wording. They indicated that an agreement between gods wasn’t quite a contract, but it could be written out as one.

Wit started to scan it.

“Wit,” she said, feeling genuinely unnerved. “Odium said he would keep to the spirit of the agreement, not exploiting loopholes. You confirmed this was indeed how it would work?”

“So I thought,” Wit murmured, still reading. “I also thought I knew Rayse. Everything is uncertain …”

A pounding sounded at the entry to her rooms. She pressed her hand on the wall and asked the Sibling to turn on the lights, then passed out of the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the door. She rapped out a pattern, and heard the proper knock in return, then eased open the door to reveal Hendit of the Cobalt Guard. A man with discretion to match his general poise. She trusted him as much as she trusted any, so wasn’t bothered when he saw Wit leave the bedroom.

“What?” she said to Hendit.

“Radiant Shallan and Highprince Adolin have returned, Your Majesty,” he said in a low voice. “Armies are moving through Shadesmar toward Azimir, and they report the Oathgate will let them through. Your uncle has called for a meeting at first bell.”

“I’ll be there,” she said, then closed the door and looked back across the sitting room toward Wit.

An invasion force closing on Azimir. She and Dalinar had both anticipated there would be attacks right up until the deadline, but they’d expected border skirmishes. After all, what kind of major offensive could be mobilized and executed in just ten days?

“I knew the loss of Cultivation’s Perpendicularity was going to bite us,” Wit said. “We should have fought for it.”

“We didn’t have the resources to hold the seas of Shadesmar,” Jasnah said. “We can defend against this assault. Assuming …”

“Assuming there aren’t more such assaults coming,” Wit said. “Which seems a dangerous assumption. Something about this feels wrong, so very, very wrong … What else have I missed?”

“If you have missed something, will you perhaps miss it again as you study?”

“You’re right,” he said. He took a deep breath. “You’re … you’re right. We need an expert, beyond even my considerable knowledge.”

“Do you know any?”

“On your world?” he asked. “Only one, but she and I aren’t on speaking terms. I will instead see if I can contact an old friend …”

Navani was not asleep.

She climbed through the bowels of Urithiru, exploring an ancient tunnel that—until her bonding of the Sibling—had been inaccessible. Lifespren bounced around her, small glowing green motes. Each one that arrived at the tower, called by the sudden transformation, first found Navani and spun around her for a few hours before making its way to the fields.

She’d tried sleeping. It hadn’t worked, so she’d succumbed to her longing to explore. This tunnel ultimately led to a large chamber with a wall of fabrials: hundreds of glowing gemstones in wire housings, emerging from the stone like rockbuds.

She’d been led here, as she could feel the workings of the tower. A thousand different fabrials pulsed in her mind, up and down the structure. Attractors drawing water to pumps deep below, delivering it to thousands of different faucets across the enormous building. Heating fabrials to warm the air. And these on the wall … they drew in air and pushed it through Urithiru, ventilating the entire city. How much could she learn from this? What marvels could she build with such knowledge?

She closed her eyes, sensing the fabrials in the wall more acutely now that she was near. Their air was like the breath in her lungs, the water the pulse of her veins. Anytime she paused, she felt it—and a host of other interactions. Lights glowing from within stone. The lifts in near-constant motion. The powerful strength of Towerlight, infusing all Radiants who entered.

With that, she hoped her home—now an extension of her very self —would be safe from any further attacks by the enemy.

It should be, the Sibling said in her mind. They rarely dared infiltrate me before. My Light not only knocks Fused unconscious, it makes the Radiants here virtually invincible.

We need to learn how to send that Light with them, Navani thought back, trailing through the room, resting her fingers on each fabrial she could reach. Spren of a half dozen varieties followed like a cloak made of light.

It cannot be done, the Sibling said. Humans cannot hold my Light; they are too full of holes.

In talking to Dalinar earlier, she’d learned that a Radiant leaving would lose Towerlight almost immediately. If a person carried it in a gemstone, the Light escaped faster than Stormlight did. Towerlight was a gift, but solely in Urithiru.

But while they were here, it was omnipresent. Like the rhythms she now felt through her bond. She closed her eyes, letting herself experience it all. Pulses from the planet. The mechanics of the tower. The spren singing to the Sibling.

She found such incredible awareness impossible to ignore. So no, she didn’t sleep. She hadn’t in two days, and didn’t feel tired or draw a single exhaustionspren.

Would you like me to quiet the noise? the Sibling asked.

Perhaps, Navani replied. I will need sleep eventually.

No, the Sibling said. You’re part of me, and I am part of you. The tower doesn’t need sleep. You will not either.

No sleep …

She should have asked, but there was so much to learn. She’d discovered only yesterday that she couldn’t leave the tower for any extended period of time, or it would weaken the bond. A few weeks at most was all she could risk.

She tried not to feel inhibited by that. She had great gifts, and the trade-off was a reasonable one. Plus, how much could she get done with the extra hours not spent asleep? She opened her eyes and tipped her head back, looking up some thirty feet at the wall dappled with gemstones and filigree. It was all so wonderfully overwhelming. Not just the bond to the tower, but her emotional journey. Acknowledging her self-worth. Becoming a Radiant, when she’d been certain it would not be her lot.

A solitary keenspren, like a marvelous three-dimensional gradient of color, appeared above her. She gasped—it was the first she’d ever seen.

They are afraid, the Sibling said. Of being captured. So they do not often come to humans.

One thing still divided Navani and the Sibling, who disapproved of modern fabrials. The spren worried Navani would take what she learned and create more abominations. Modern fabrials required trapping spren against their wishes. The archaic versions, like the ones that ran the tower, used willing spren—but were inefficient in so many ways …

And storms. There was so much to learn. So much to do. She barely knew where to start. Perhaps she could discuss it with Dalinar? Hopefully he was asleep by now.

He’s opening the door to your rooms, the Sibling said. Would you like to listen to what he’s saying?

We need to talk about you spying on everyone in the tower, Navani replied.

Why?

It’s not right. People need privacy.

They’re inside me, Navani. They can’t expect privacy when they crawl inside someone. I don’t hear it all anyway. Only what I pay attention to.

Still, Navani replied, it seems—

Navani. NAVANI.

She froze in place, hand on a fabrial, lifespren swirling around her as they sensed her mood. What?

You really need to hear what this Windrunner is saying.

Queen Fen was not asleep.

She blamed the prince consort. Here, they’d come to the royal yacht because he longed for the “sound of the deck creaking to serenade the swaying beat of waves on the hull.” They sometimes came down to the ship, even docked as it was, for a few nights. A getaway that didn’t involve much getting away, as she had business to be about.

But they weren’t in the yacht’s royal suite. They were belowdecks, in the midshipmen’s quarters, stuffed into a hammock. She didn’t complain; she was the one who had married a sailor. Plus, this was cozy and warm. But still.

“Aren’t we,” she said, swaying in the dark room, “a little old for this, gemheart?”

“I’ll take it up with the council, love,” he replied, his whiskers sharp on her skin. “The queen would like advice from her most brilliant of advisors: Is she too old for quality time with her husband? Perhaps she is too distinguished for an occasional tumble in the surf?”

“I wasn’t talking about that, ” she replied. “Just the part where we snuck away from the guards and found a hammock. You’re almost seventy, you know.”

“Which makes you …”

“Almost seventy.”

“Pretty young,” he said, “by some accountings.”

“By what kind of accounting is seventy young ?”

“ Almost seventy.”

“And?”

“And the average age of your merchant council must be somewhere in the eighties,” Kmakl replied. “So by that comparison, we’re basically a new schooner. Now stop distracting me from distracting you.”

She sighed, but relaxed into the swaying hammock, the rough canvas rubbing her bare skin. Waves rocked the ship, and her cares fled before warm perfection. Until a brilliant white light lit the cabin. Damnation.

She sat up, as did Kmakl on the other side of the hammock. Both of them glared at the young lieutenant standing on the ladder up, holding a diamond sphere lantern. His eyes locked on Fen—bare in the hammock—and he dropped the lantern in shock. It broke open, spilling diamonds in a cascade of glittering light.

“Bother,” Kmakl said. “I thought they knew not to look for us. I specifically left hints …”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the lieutenant said, scrambling down the ladder, shamespren all around as he started snatching up the diamonds. “Sorry! I didn’t see! I mean, I’m sorry I saw, Your Majesty! Ah!”

“It’s fine,” she said, leaning back. “You know, the queens of history were sometimes painted with one breast bare?”

“Never did understand that,” Kmakl said.

“Some nonsense about suckling a nation,” Fen replied. “As if these old things would offer more than sawdust.”

The lieutenant continued to scramble for diamonds—though if he’d had half a brain, he would have simply left.

“It truly is our fault for sneaking off,” Kmakl said. “Can’t believe you let me talk you into it, Fen. I thought you were more responsible.”

She rolled her eyes, then pulled a glove onto her safehand. “Look,” she said, wiggling the fingers. “There. Does that help, Lieutenant?”

“No!” the young man said in a shrill voice. “It really, really doesn’t!”

She grinned at Kmakl, feeling a wicked delight at the young officer’s discomfort. Served him right. Though they pretended to be sneaky, the entire ship knew to turn a blind eye, letting them imagine they were being scandalous.

“Oh, let the lad off, Fen,” Kmakl said.

“Get on with you, boy,” Fen said. “We’ll deal with the spilled spheres. You pretend you weren’t here, and so will we. Out. Shoo.”

The youth stood up, his white eyebrows stiffened in the naval fashion. He squeezed his eyes closed and saluted. “Your Majesty! Prince Consort! I’ve been sent to locate you! News from Urithiru: enemy armies are poised to invade Azir!”

“What?” Fen said, coming alert. She reached for her clothing on the floor, nearly dumping the two of them out on their bare backsides. “Why didn’t you say something!”

“Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry!” He saluted again, eyes still closed.

“I thought they already invaded Azir,” Kmakl said.

“That was Emul,” she replied. “It’s impossible they’d reach Azir by the deadline; we have the bulk of our armies in the way.”

“They’re coming through Shadesmar!” the lieutenant said.

“Does the Thaylen Council know, lad?” Kmakl asked.

“They’re being roused. I—” He cut off and stumbled back as someone else slid down the ladder.

It was a storming admiral. Fladrn to be precise—a man with grey hair like stormclouds and spiked eyebrows. He took in her state of undress and didn’t miss a beat. “Your Majesty, this is urgent.”

“This news about Shadesmar is that bad?” Fen said, dressing rapidly. If Fladrn had come in person …

“No, not that,” Fladrn said. “This is something new.”

Fen froze. A pit forming in the depths of her stomach, anticipationspren rising through the floorboards in the shape of streamers. Perhaps it was a lifetime of always expecting the worst, but she somehow knew what he was going to say.

“A second offensive,” she guessed.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said. “Our blockade of Jah Keved has been breached. We just got word.”

“The Veden blockade?” Kmakl said. “We were supposed to have that well secured, barring …”

“Barring heavy air support,” Fen said, closing her eyes. “Heavenly Ones?”

“No, Your Majesty,” the admiral said. “Skybreakers. The entire force of them—hundreds. They drove back the Windrunners posted to protect our ships, then sank half the fleet. The other half of our armada scattered, but now an assault force is heading straight for Thaylen City.”

She tried to contain her anxiety. They had assumed the enemy would squabble over borders, but it appeared he had planned something grander: a play for the hearts of the coalition’s capitals.

“Storms,” Kmakl whispered.

“Let’s get moving,” she said, opening her eyes and throwing his trousers to him. “Our city is in danger, and with the blockade broken, we can’t stop an assault. It’s time to see how much this coalition is willing to provide in support.”

Yanagawn the First, Prime Aqasix, Emperor of all Makabak, was sleeping.

He had to be sleeping. Because the schedule said he was to be asleep, and he kept to the schedule. It was basically the sole thing required of him. Follow the outline, provide a model of stability for an empire.

The emperor did not lie awake, staring at his ceiling. The emperor understood that by sheer force of will he could bring peace and harmony to his people. So by force of will, the emperor could obviously make himself fall asleep. So he was sleeping. Right then. He had to be.

Therefore, all the thoughts that crowded his mind—well, they were the thoughts of a man dreaming.

He did not toss or turn. That would be interpreted as nervousness by the ten blessed citizens who had been granted the privilege of maintaining his bedside vigil. A great honor, tonight bestowed upon women who had worked diligently to feed their armies fighting near Emul. It happened all night, every night. Every hour, ten new people would come bask in the imperial presence.

Not Yanagawn’s presence. It wasn’t a man who blessed this nation, but the office itself. Yanagawn was basically like the rack that held up his clothing, kept to his shape so those passing outside could see it and be inspired.

How he wished he could do more than stand and be seen.

It was good he was asleep, because those thoughts were unseemly. Yanagawn was specifically not a man like Dalinar Kholin, who made decisions, then acted. A man who had charged into battle with Plate and Blade, forging a nation. That kind of man was dangerous.

Except, while dreaming, Yanagawn wished he were dangerous.

On paper, he owned every Shard in the greater empire. In reality, many were owned by other kingdoms—and though they paid lip service to the imperial seat of Azir, they would never consider delivering up their artifacts. He’d be a fool to expose imperial impotence by making such a demand.

Azir also owned Shards, carried by distinguished soldiers with an imperial grant of rights—they could offer aid to the great merchants and houses of Azir in exchange for money, much of which went to the crown. Most of their work was civil: cutting new trenches and the like. Those who wielded them were loyal, and it was a respected position. Demanding they return their Shards would be a great dishonor to them. Plus, it would involve quite a bit of paperwork.

Even if they did return the Shards, Yanagawn couldn’t wield them. He was too important. He was needed. Not to administer the kingdom—that wasn’t his job, as tons of codes of law made explicit. His job was to lie in bed, sleeping while his mind ran on at length, watched over by praying citizens.

Yaezir, god above, in the Halls pristine, he thought, is this really all you want of me?

He would never want to return to his days as a thief with his uncle. He’d hated that life. Living each day for the next heist? Upending the order of the nation, a parasite feeding off those doing hard work? No, he didn’t want that. But the more he learned, the bigger he realized the world was. And how little lying in a bed staring at his own eyelids could accomplish.

So he was excited when someone broke protocol. Guards arrived at the door, whispering apologies to the honored guests who had fed armies. Bowing to them, as today they were among the greatest in the empire. Then deeper bows to him.

Yanagawn opened his eyes and sat up calmly. The cooks whispered, eyes wide. He took in the five guards, pleased to remember each of their names, though he’d never speak to them directly—to do so would make them uncomfortable. Instead he looked past them to where Noura knelt. Head vizier of his court. Scholar, strategist, teacher.

Whatever had happened was important indeed. Without a word, he slipped from his bed and held his hands to the sides so he could be dressed.

The emperor was awake.