Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Venli settled down on the back of the cart, and a femalen singer brought her a cup of water, which she took gladly. Proclaiming yourself as the savior of an entire people was thirsty work.

The singer woman lingered. She wore an Alethi dress, with the left hand covered up. “Is your story really true?”

“Of course it is,” Venli said to Conceit. “You doubt?”

“No, of course not! It’s just … it’s hard to imagine. Parshmen fighting.”

“Call yourselves singers, not parshmen.”

“Yes. Um, of course.” The femalen held her hand to her face, as if embarrassed.

“Speak to the rhythms to express apology,” Venli said. “Use Appreciation to thank someone for correction, or Anxiety to highlight your frustration. Consolation if you are truly contrite.”

“Yes, Brightness.”

Oh, Eshonai. They have so far to go.

The woman scampered away. That lopsided dress looked ridiculous. There was no reason to distinguish between the genders except in mateform. Humming to Ridicule, Venli hopped down, then walked through the town, head high. The singers wore mostly workform or nimbleform, though a few—like the femalen who had brought the water—wore scholarform, with long hairstrands and angular features.

She hummed to Fury. Her people had spent generations struggling to discover new forms, and here these people were given a dozen different options? How could they value that gift without knowing the struggle? They gave Venli deference, bowing like humans, as she approached the town’s mansion. She had to admit there was something very satisfying about that.

“What are you so smug about?” Rine demanded to Destruction when Venli stepped inside. The tall Fused waited by the window, hovering—as always—a few feet off the ground, his cloak hanging down and resting on the floor.

Venli’s sense of authority evaporated. “I can’t help but feel as if I’m among babes, here.”

“If they are babes, you are a toddler.”

A second Fused sat on the floor amid the chairs. That one never spoke. Venli didn’t know the femalen’s name, and found her constant grin and unblinking eyes … upsetting.

Venli joined Rine by the window, looking out at the singers who populated the village. Working the land. Farming. Their lives might not have changed much, but they had their songs back. That meant everything.

“We should bring them human slaves, Ancient One,” Venli said to Subservience. “I fear that there is too much land here. If you really want these villages to supply your armies, they’ll need more workers.”

Rine glanced at her. She’d found that if she spoke to him respectfully—and if she spoke in the ancient tongue—her words were less likely to be dismissed.

“There are those among us who agree with you, child,” Rine said.

“You do not?”

“No. We will need to watch the humans constantly. At any moment, any of them could manifest powers from the enemy. We killed him, and yet he fights on through his Surgebinders.”

Surgebinders. Foolishly, the old songs spoke highly of them. “How can they bind spren, Ancient One?” she asked to Subservience. “Humans don’t … you know…”

“So timid,” he said to Ridicule. “Why is mentioning gemhearts so difficult?”

“They are sacred and personal.” Listener gemhearts were not gaudy or ostentatious, like those of greatshells. Clouded white, almost the color of bone, they were beautiful, intimate things.

“They’re a part of you,” Rine said. “The dead bodies taboo, the refusal to talk of gemhearts—you’re as bad as those out there, walking around with one hand covered.”

What? That was unfair. She attuned Fury.

“It … shocked us when it first happened,” Rine eventually said. “Humans don’t have gemhearts. How could they bond spren? It was unnatural. Yet somehow, their bond was more powerful than ours. I always said the same thing, and believe it even more strongly now: We must exterminate them. Our people will never be safe on this world as long as the humans exist.”

Venli felt her mouth grow dry. Distantly, she heard a rhythm. The Rhythm of the Lost? An inferior one. It was gone in a moment.

Rine hummed to Conceit, then turned and barked a command to the crazy Fused. She scrambled to her feet and loped after him as he floated out the door. He was probably going to confer with the town’s spren. He’d give orders and warnings, which he usually only did right before they left one town for another. Despite having unpacked her things, working under the assumption she’d be here for the night, now Venli suspected they would soon be moving on.

She went to her room on the second floor of the mansion. As usual, the luxury of these buildings astounded her. Soft beds you felt you would sink into. Fine woodworking. Blown-glass vases and crystal sconces on the walls for holding spheres. She’d always hated the Alethi, who had acted like they were benevolent parents encountering wild children to be educated. They had pointedly ignored the culture and advancements of Venli’s people, eyeing only the hunting grounds of the greatshells that they—because of translation errors—decided must be the listeners’ gods.

Venli felt at the beautiful swirls in the glass of a wall sconce. How had they colored some of it white, but not all of it? Whenever she encountered things like this, she had to remind herself forcefully that the Alethi being technologically superior did not make them culturally superior. They’d simply had access to more resources. Now that the singers had access to artform, they would be able to create works like this too.

But still … it was so beautiful. Could they really exterminate the people who had created such beautiful and delicate swirls in the glass? The decorations reminded her of her own pattern of marbling.

The pouch at her waist started vibrating. She wore a listener’s leather skirt below a tight shirt, topped with a looser overshirt. Part of Venli’s place was to show the singers that someone like them—not some distant, fearsome creature from the past—had brought the storms and freed the singers.

Her eyes lingered on the sconce, and then she dumped out her pouch on the room’s stumpweight desk. Spheres bounced free, along with a larger number of uncut gemstones, which her people had used instead.

The little spren rose from where it had been hiding among the light. It looked like a comet when it moved, though sitting still—as it did now—it only glowed like a spark.

“Are you one of them?” she asked softly. “The spren that move in the sky some nights?”

It pulsed, sending off a ring of light that dissipated like glowing smoke. Then it began zipping through the room, looking at things.

“The room isn’t any different from the last one you looked at,” she said to Amusement.

The spren zipped to the wall sconce, where it let off a pulse in awe, then moved to the identical one on the opposite side of the door.

Venli moved to gather her clothing and writings from the drawers in the dresser. “I don’t know why you stay with me. It can’t be comfortable in that bag.”

The spren zipped past her, looking in the drawer that she’d opened.

“It’s a drawer,” she said.

The spren peeked out, then pulsed in a quick blinking succession.