“Stormspren, my sister says,” Eshonai replied as she leaned against the wall, arms folded.
The strands of Thude’s beard were tied with bits of raw gemstone that shook and twinkled as he rubbed his chin. He held the large cut gemstone up to Bila, who took it and tapped it with her finger.
They were a warpair of Eshonai’s own personal division. They dressed in simple garments that were tailored around the chitinous armor plates on their arms, legs, and chests. Thude also wore a long coat, but he wouldn’t take that to battle.
Eshonai, by contrast, wore her uniform—tight red cloth that stretched over her natural armor—and a cap on her skullplate. She never spoke of how that uniform imprisoned her, felt like manacles that tied her in place.
“A stormspren,” Bila said to the Rhythm of Skepticism as she turned the stone over in her fingers. “Will it help me kill humans? Otherwise, I don’t see why I should care.”
“This could change the world, Bila,” Eshonai said. “If Venli is right, and she can bond with this spren and come out with anything other than dullform… well, at the very least we will have an entirely new form to choose. At the greatest we will have power to control the storms and tap their energy.”
“So she will try this personally?” Thude asked to the Rhythm of Winds, the rhythm that they used to judge when a highstorm was near.
“If the Five give her permission.” They were to discuss it, and make their decision, today.
“That’s great,” Bila said, “but will it help me kill humans?”
Eshonai attuned Mourning. “If stormform is truly one of the ancient powers, Bila, then yes. It will help you kill humans. Many of them.”
“Good enough for me, then,” Bila said. “Why are you so worried?”
“The ancient powers are said to have come from our gods.”
“Who cares? If the gods would help us kill those armies out there, then I’d swear to them right now.”
“Don’t say that, Bila,” Eshonai said to Reprimand. “Never say anything like that.”
The woman quieted, tossing the stone onto the table. She hummed softly to Skepticism. That walked the line of insubordination. Eshonai met Bila’s eyes and found herself softly humming to Resolve.
Thude glanced from Bila to Eshonai. “Food?” he asked.
“Is that your answer to every disagreement?” Eshonai asked, breaking her song.
“It’s hard to argue with your mouth full,” Thude said.
“I’m sure I’ve seen you do just that,” Bila said. “Many times.”
“The arguments end happy, though,” Thude said. “Because everyone is full. So… food?”
“Fine,” Bila said, glancing at Eshonai.
The two withdrew. Eshonai sat down at the table, feeling drained. When had she started worrying if her friends were insubordinate? It was this horrid uniform.
She picked up the gemstone, staring into its depths. It was a large one, about a third the size of her fist, though gemstones didn’t have to be large to trap a spren inside.
She hated trapping them. The right way was to go into the highstorm with the proper attitude, singing the proper song to attract the proper spren. You bonded it in the fury of the raging storm and were reborn with a new body. People had been doing this from the arrival of the first winds.
The listeners had learned that capturing spren was possible from the humans, then had figured out the process on their own. A captive spren made the transformation much more reliable. Before, there had always been an element of chance. You could go into the storm wanting to become a soldier, and come out a mate instead.
This is progress, Eshonai thought, staring at the little smoky spren inside the stone. Progress is learning to control your world. Put up walls to stop the storms, choose when to become a mate. Progress was taking nature and putting a box around it.
Eshonai pocketed the gemstone, and checked the time. Her meeting with the rest of the Five wasn’t scheduled until the third movement of the Rhythm of Peace, and she had a good half a movement until then.
It was time to speak with her mother.
Eshonai stepped out into Narak and walked along the path, nodding to those who saluted. She passed mostly soldiers. So much of their population wore warform these days. Their small population. Once, there had been hundreds of thousands of listeners scattered across these plains. Now a fraction remained.
Even then, the listeners had been a united people. Oh, there had been divisions, conflicts, even wars among their factions. But they had been a single people—those who had rejected their gods and sought freedom in obscurity.
Bila no longer cared about their origins. There would be others like her, people who ignored the danger of the gods and focused only on the fight with the humans.
Eshonai passed dwellings—ramshackle things constructed of hardened crem over frames of shell, huddled in the leeward shadow of lumps of stone. Most of those were empty now. They’d lost thousands to war over the years.
We do have to do something, she thought, attuning the Rhythm of Peace in the back of her mind. She sought comfort in its calm, soothing beats, soft and blended. Like a caress.
Then she saw the dullforms.
They looked much like what the humans called “parshmen,” though they were a little taller and not nearly as stupid. Still, dullform was a limiting form, without the capacities and advantages of newer forms. There shouldn’t have been any here. Had these people bonded the wrong spren by mistake? It happened sometimes.
Eshonai strode up to the group of three, two femalen and one malen. They were hauling rockbuds harvested on one of the nearby plateaus, plants which had been encouraged to grow quickly by use of Stormlight-infused gems.
“What is this?” Eshonai asked. “Did you choose this form in error? Or are you new spies?”
They looked at her with insipid eyes. Eshonai attuned Anxiety. She had once tried dullform—she had wanted to know what their spies would suffer. Trying to force concepts through her brain had been like trying to think rationally while in a dream.
“Did someone ask you to adopt this form?” Eshonai said, speaking slowly and clearly.
“Nobody asked it,” the malen said to no rhythm at all. His voice sounded dead. “We did it.”
“Why?” Eshonai said. “Why would you do this?”
“Humans won’t kill us when they come,” the malen said, hefting his rockbud and continuing on his way. The others joined him without a word.
Eshonai gaped, the Rhythm of Anxiety strong in her mind. A few fearspren, like long purple worms, dove in and out of the rock nearby, collecting toward her until they crawled up out of the ground around her.
Forms could not be commanded; every person was free to choose for themselves. Transformations could be cajoled and requested, but they could not be forced. Their gods had not allowed this freedom, so the listeners would have it, no matter what. These people could choose dullform if they wished. Eshonai could do nothing about it. Not directly.
She hastened her pace. Her leg still ached from her wound, but was healing quickly. One of the benefits of warform. She could almost ignore the damage at this point.
A city full of empty buildings, and Eshonai’s mother chose a shack on the very edge of the city, almost fully exposed to the storms. Mother worked her shalebark rows outside, humming softly to herself to the Rhythm of Peace. She wore workform; she’d always preferred it. Even after nimbleform had been discovered, Mother had not changed. She had said she didn’t want to encourage people to see one form as more valuable than another, that such stratification could destroy them.