Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

Then don’t serve him, Ulim said. Deal with him. You have something he needs—you can approach him from a place of power. Your ancestors were lowly things; that was why they wanted to leave. If they’d been at the top, like your people will be, they’d have never wanted such a thing.

Venli nodded. But she was more persuaded by other arguments. War was coming with the humans. She could feel it in the way their soldiers eyed her people’s weapons. They had enslaved those parshmen. They’d do the same to Venli’s people.

The ancient songs had become irrelevant the moment Eshonai had led the humans to the Shattered Plains. The listeners could no longer hide. Conflict would find them. It was no longer a choice between their gods or freedom. It was a choice between their gods and human slaving brands.

How do we proceed? Ulim asked.

Venli closed her eyes, listening to her mother’s words. Her ancestors had been desperate. “We will need to be equally desperate,” Venli whispered. “My people need to see what I have seen: that we can no longer remain as we have been.”

The humans will destroy them.

“Yes. Help me prove it.”

I am your servant in this, Ulim said to Subservience. What do you propose?

Venli listened. Jaxlim’s voice cracked and she trailed off. Jaxlim had forgotten the song again. The older femalen turned away and cried softly.

It broke Venli’s heart.

“You have agents among the humans, Ulim?” Venli whispered.

We do.

“Can you communicate with them?”

I have ways of doing so.

“Have your agents influence those at the palace,” Venli said. “Get the Alethi to invite us to visit. Their king spoke of it before he left; he’s considering it already. We must bring our people there, then show them how powerful the humans are. We must overwhelm my people with our own insignificance.”

She stood up, then went to comfort her mother.

We must make them afraid, Ulim, Venli thought. We must make them sing to the Terrors long into the night. Only then will they listen to our promises.

It shall be done, he replied.

Words.

I used to be good with words.

I used to be good at a lot of things.

Venli tried to attune the Rhythm of Conceit as she walked the halls of Urithiru. She kept finding the Rhythm of Anxiety instead. It was difficult to attune an emotion she didn’t feel; doing so felt like a worse kind of lie than she normally told. Not a lie to others, or to herself. A lie to Roshar.

Timbre pulsed comfortingly. These were dangerous times, requiring dangerous choices.

“That sounds an awful lot like the things Ulim told me,” Venli whispered.

Timbre pulsed again. The little spren was of the opinion that Venli couldn’t be blamed for what she’d done, that the Voidspren had manipulated her mind, her emotions, her goals.

Timbre, for all her wisdom, was wrong in this. Ulim had heightened Venli’s ambitions, her arrogance, but she’d given him the tools to work with. A part of her continued to feel some of those things. Worse, Ulim had occasionally left her gemheart during those days, and she’d still gone through with those plans, without his influence.

She might not bear full blame for what had happened. But she’d been a willing part of it. Now she had to do her best to make up for it. So she kept her head high, walking as if she owned the tower, trailed by Rlain, who carried the large crate as if on her orders. Everyone needed to see her treating him as a servant; hopefully that would quash some of the rumors about the two of them.

He hurried closer as they entered a less populated section of the tower. “The tower does feel darker now, Venli,” he said to the Rhythm of Anxiety—which didn’t help her own mood. “Ever since…”

“Hush,” she said. She knew what he’d been about to say: Ever since the fight in the market.

The whole tower knew by now that Kaladin Stormblessed, Windrunner and champion, fought. That his powers still functioned. The Fused had worked hard to spread a different narrative—that he’d been faking Radiant powers with fabrials, that he’d been killed during a cruel attack on innocent singer civilians in the market.

Venli found that story far-fetched, and she knew Stormblessed only by reputation. She doubted the propaganda would fool many humans. If Raboniel had been behind it, the message would have been more subtle. Unfortunately, the Lady of Wishes spent most of her time with her research, and instead let the Pursuer lead.

His personal troops dominated the tower. Already there had been a half dozen instances of singers beating humans near to death. This place was a simmering cauldron, waiting for the added bit of fuel that would bring it to a boil. Venli needed to be ready to get her people out when that happened. Hopefully the crate Rlain carried would help with that.

Head high. Hum to Conceit. Walk slowly but deliberately.

By the time they reached the Radiant infirmary, Venli’s nerves were so tight she could have played a rhythm on them. She shut the door after Rlain—they’d recently had it installed by some human workers—and finally attuned Joy.

Inside the infirmary, the human surgeon and his wife cared for the comatose Radiants. They did a far better job of it than Venli’s staff; the surgeon knew how to minimize the formation of sores on the humans’ bodies and how to spot signs of dehydration.

When Venli and Rlain entered, the surgeon’s wife—Hesina—hurried over. “Is this them?” she asked Rlain, helping him with the crate.

“Nah, it’s my laundry,” he said to Amusement. “Figured Venli here is so mighty and important, she might be able to get someone to wash it for me.”

Joking? Now? How could he act so indifferent? If they were discovered, it would mean their executions—or worse.

The human woman laughed. They carried the box to the back of the room, away from the door. Hesina’s son put down the shoestrings he’d been playing with and toddled over. Rlain ruffled his hair, then opened the crate. He moved the decoy papers on top, revealing a group of map cases.

Hesina breathed out in a human approximation of the Rhythm of Awe.

“After Kal and I parted,” Rlain explained, “and the queen surrendered, I realized I could go anywhere in the tower. A little black ash mixed with water covered my tattoo, blending it into my pattern. Humans were confined to quarters, and so long as I looked like I was doing something important, the singers ignored me.

“So I thought to myself, ‘What can I do to best undermine the occupation?’ I figured I had a day at most before the singers got organized and people started asking who I was. I thought about sabotaging the wells, but realized that would hurt too many innocents. I settled on this.”

He waved his hand over the round tubes filling the crate. Hesina took one out and unrolled the map inside. It depicted the thirty-seventh floor of the tower, meticulously mapped.

“So far as I know,” Rlain said, “guard posts and master-servant quarters just contain maps of the lower floors. The upper-level maps were kept in two places: the queen’s information vault and the map room. I stopped by the map room and found it burned out, likely at the queen’s order. The vault was on the ground floor, far from where her troops could have reached. I figured it might still be intact.”

Rlain shrugged a human shrug. “It was shockingly easy to get in,” he continued to Resolve. “The human guards had been killed or removed, but the singers didn’t know the value of the place yet. I walked right through a checkpoint, stuffed everything I could into a sack, and wandered out. I said I was on a search detail sent to collect any form of human writing.”