She stood in a narrow alley like those she had walked down all day. She’d kept to the slums, figuring that Denth would expect her to run for the open city. He knew it better than she did. In her addled mind, staying in the cluttered, quiet slum seemed a much better idea.
A man sat on a small stack of boxes behind her, legs swinging over the sides. He was short, dark-haired, and wore typical slum clothing—a mixture of garments going through various stages of wear.
“You’ve been causing quite a stir,” the man said.
She stood quietly.
“Woman wandering the slums in a beautiful white dress, eyes dark, hair white and ragged. If everyone hadn’t been so paranoid following the raid the other day, you’d have been seen to hours ago.”
The man seemed faintly familiar. “You’re Idrian,” she whispered. “You were there, in the crowd, when I visited the slumlords.”
He shrugged.
“That means you know who I am,” she said.
“I don’t know anything,” he said. “Particularly not things that could get me into trouble.”
“Please,” she said. “You have to help me.” She took a step forward.
He hopped off his boxes, a knife flashing in his hand. “Help you?” he asked. “I saw that look in your eyes when you came to the meeting. You look down on us. Just like the Hallandren.”
She shied back.
“A lot of people have seen you wandering about like a wraith,” he said. “But nobody seems to know exactly where to find you. There’s quite a search going in some parts.”
Denth, she thought. It’s a miracle I’ve stayed free so long. I need to do something. Stop wandering. Find a place to hide.
“I figure that someone will find you eventually,” the man said. “So I’m going to act first.”
“Please,” she whispered.
He raised the knife. “I won’t turn you in. You deserve at least that much. Besides, I don’t want to draw attention to myself. That dress, though. That will sell for a lot, even damaged like it is. I could feed my family for weeks on that cloth.”
She hesitated.
“Scream and I’ll cut you,” he said quietly. “It’s not a threat. It’s just an inevitability. The dress, Princess. You’ll be better without it. It’s what is making everyone take notice of you.”
She considered using her Breath. But what if it didn’t work? She couldn’t concentrate, and had a feeling that she wouldn’t be able to get the Commands to work. She wavered, but the looming knife convinced her. So, staring straight ahead and feeling like she was someone else, she reached up and began undoing the buttons.
“Don’t drop it to the ground,” the man said. “It’s dirty enough already.”
She pulled it off, then shivered, standing only in her underleggings and her shift. He took the dress, then opened her pocket pouch. He frowned as he tossed aside the rope inside of it. “No money?”
She shook her head dully.
“The leggings. They’re silk, right?”
Her shift came down to her midthighs. She stooped down, pulling off the leggings, then handed them over. He took them, and she saw a glint of greed—or perhaps something else—in his eyes.
“The shift,” he said, waving his knife.
“No,” she said quietly.
He took a step forward.
Something snapped inside of her.
“No!” she yelled. “No, no, NO! You take your city, your colors and clothing, and go! Leave me!” She fell to her knees, crying, and grabbed handfuls of refuse and mud, rubbing it on the shift. “There!” she screamed. “You want it! Take it from me! Sell it like this!”
Contrary to his threat, the man wavered. He looked around, then clutched the valuable cloth to his chest and dashed away.
Vivenna knelt. Where had she found more tears? She curled up, heedless of the trash and mud, and wept.
* * *
IT STARTED RAINING sometime while she was curled in the mud. It was one of the soft, hazy Hallandren rainfalls. The wet drops kissed her cheek; little streams ran down the sides of the alleyway walls.
She was hungry and exhausted. But with the falling rain came a shred of lucidity.
She needed to move. The thief had been right—the dress had been a hindrance. She felt nak*d in the shift, particularly now that it was wet, but she had seen women in the slums wearing just as little. She needed to go on, become just another waif in the dirt and grime.
She crawled over to a refuse pile, noticing a bit of a cloth sticking from it. She pulled free a muddy, stinking shawl. Or maybe it had been a rug. Either way, she wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling it tight across her chest to offer some measure of modesty. She tried to make her hair black, but it refused.
She sat down, too apathetic to be frustrated. Instead, she simply rubbed mud and dirt into her hair, changing the pale white into a sickly brown.
It’s still too long, she thought. I’ll need to do something about that. It stands out. No beggar would keep hair that long—it would be difficult to care for.
She began to make her way out of the alleyway, then paused. The shawl had become brighter, now that she was wearing it. Breath. I’ll be immediately visible to anyone with the First Heightening. I can’t hide in the slums!
She still felt the loss of the Breath she’d sent into the rope and then the larger amount she’d wasted on Tonk’s cloak. Yet she had the greater portion left. She huddled down by the side of the wall, nearly losing control again as she considered the situation.
And then she realized something.
Tonk Fah snuck up on me down in that cellar. I couldn’t feel his Breath. Just like I couldn’t feel Vasher’s when he ambushed me in my rooms.
The answer felt so easy it was ridiculous. She couldn’t feel the Breath in the rope she’d made. She picked it up, tying it around her ankle. Then she took the shawl, holding it in front of her. It was such a pathetic thing, frayed at the edges, its original red color barely peeking through the grime.
“My life to yours,” she said, speaking the words Denth had tried to get her to say. “My Breath become yours.” They were the same words Lemex had spoken when he’d given her his Breath.
It worked on the shawl too. Her Breath drained from her body, all of it, invested into the shawl. It was no Command—the shawl wouldn’t be able do anything—but her Breath, hopefully, would be safe. She wouldn’t give off an aura.
None at all. She almost fell to the ground with the shock of losing it all. Where she had once been able to sense the city around her, now everything became still. It was as if it had been silenced. The entire city becoming dead.
Or maybe it was Vivenna who had become dead. A Drab. She stood slowly, shivering in the drizzling rain, and wiped the water from her eyes. Then she pulled the shawl—Breaths and all—close and shuffled away.
38
Lightsong sat on the edge of his bed, sweat thick on his brow as he stared down at the floor in front of him. He was breathing heavily.
Llarimar eyed a lesser scribe, who lowered his pen. Servants clustered around the edges of the bedchamber. They had, at his request, woken him up unusually early in the morning.
“Your Grace?” Llarimar asked.
It’s nothing, Lightsong thought. I dream of war because I’m thinking about it. Not because of prophecy. Not because I’m a god.
It felt so real. In the dream he had been a man, on the battlefield, with no weapon. Soldiers had died around him. Friend after friend. He had known them, each one close to him.
A war against Idris wouldn’t be like that, he thought. It would be fought by our Lifeless.
He didn’t want to acknowledge that his friends during the dream hadn’t been wearing bright colors. He hadn’t been seeing through the eyes of a Hallandren soldier, but an Idrian. Perhaps that was why it had been such a slaughter.
The Idrians are the ones threatening us. They’re the rebels who broke off, maintaining a second throne inside of Hallandren borders. They need to be quelled.
They deserve it.
“What did you see, Your Grace?” Llarimar asked again.
Lightsong closed his eyes. There were other images. The recurring ones.
The glowing red panther. The tempest. A young woman’s face, being absorbed by darkness. Eaten alive.
“I saw Blushweaver,” he said, speaking only of the very last part of the dreams. “Her face red and flushed. I saw you, and you were sleeping. And I saw the God King.”
“The God King?” Llarimar asked, sounding excited.
Lightsong nodded. “He was crying.”
The scribe wrote the images down. Llarimar, for once, didn’t prompt further. Lightsong stood, forcing the images out of his mind. Yet he couldn’t ignore that his body felt weak. It was his feast day, and he would have to take in a Breath or he would die.
“I’m going to need some urns,” Lightsong said. “Two dozen of them, one for each of the gods, painted after their colors.”
Llarimar gave the order without even asking why. “I’ll also need some pebbles,” Lightsong said as the servants dressed him. “Lots of them.”
Llarimar nodded. Once Lightsong was dressed, he turned to leave the room. Off once again to feed on the soul of a child.
* * *
LIGHTSONG THREW A PEBBLE into one of the urns in front of him. It made a slight ringing sound.
“Well done, Your Grace,” Llarimar complimented him, standing beside Lightsong’s chair.
“Nothing to it,” Lightsong said, tossing another pebble. It fell short of the intended urn, and a servant rushed forward, plucking it off the ground and depositing it in the proper container.
“I appear to be a natural,” Lightsong noted. “I get it in every time.” He felt much better, having been given fresh Breath.
“Indeed, Your Grace,” Llarimar said. “I believe that Her Grace the goddess Blushweaver is approaching.”
“Good,” Lightsong said, throwing another pebble. He hit the target this time. Of course, the urns were only a few feet from his seat. “I can show off my pebble-throwing skills.”
He sat on the green of the courtyard, a cool breeze blowing, his pavilion set up just inside the court’s gates. He could see the blocking wall, the one that kept him from looking out at the city proper. With the wall in the way, it was a rather depressing sight.
If they’re going to lock us in here, he thought, they could at least give us the courtesy of a decent view out.
“What in the name of the Iridescent Tones are you doing?”
Lightsong didn’t need to look to know that Blushweaver was standing with hands on h*ps beside him. He threw another pebble.
“You know,” he said, “it’s always struck me as strange. When we say oaths like that, we use the colors. Why not use our own names? We are, allegedly, gods.”
“Most gods don’t like their names being used as an oath,” Blushweaver said, sitting beside him.
“Then they are far too pompous for my taste,” Lightsong said, tossing a pebble. It missed, and a servant deposited it. “I, personally, should find it very flattering to have my name used as an oath. Lightsong the Brave! Or, by Lightsong the Bold! I suppose that’s a bit of a mouthful. Perhaps we could shorten it to simple Lightsong!”