Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,188

him get it out for us to inspect. I intend to have him see if perhaps the rock was somehow intended to slide open to the sides there. If so, it would be a remarkable mechanism.”

Navani made a mental note to have one of the Windrunners fly out to do a close inspection of the mountains that Urithiru was built into. Perhaps windows like this one would reveal other hidden rooms, with equally mysterious contents.

“I’ll do a thorough inspection of this model,” Falilar said. “It might yield secrets.”

“Thank you. I, unfortunately, have some sanitation reports to read.”

“If you get a chance, stop by the library and talk to my nephew,” Falilar said. “He’s made some improvements on his device.”

Navani nodded and started back toward her palanquin, trusting Falilar to send her whatever he discovered. As she was climbing into the palanquin, she saw Isabi—one of her younger scholars—rush into the room, holding a blinking red light.

The mysterious spanreed. The one she’d received weeks ago from the unknown person who was so angry about fabrials. It was the first time they had tried to contact her since that day.

Sanitation reports would wait.

Other Shards I cannot identify, and are hidden to me. I fear that their influence encroaches upon my world, yet I am locked into a strange inability because of the opposed powers I hold.

“Hold it steady!” Falilar said. It had been years since Navani had seen the old white-bearded engineer this animated. “Put it here on the table. Isabi, you have the scale, yes? Hurry, hurry. Set it up like we practiced!”

The small swarm of ardents and scholars fussed around Navani, settling the spanreed into its board and preparing standard violet ink. They’d carried it out and set it up in a guard post near the perimeter of the tower. Kalami stood next to Navani, her arms folded. Hair streaked with grey, the scribe had an increasingly worrisome leanness to her these days.

“I’m not sure about this, Brightness,” she said as the engineer and his assistants set up their instruments. “I worry that whoever is on the other side of that spanreed, they’ll learn more about us than we do about them.”

Falilar wiped his shaved head with a handkerchief, then gestured for Navani to sit at the table.

“Noted,” Navani said to Kalami, settling down. “We ready?”

“Yes, Brightness,” Falilar said. “Judging by the weight of your pen once the conversation is engaged, we should be able to tell how far away the other pen is.”

Spanreeds had a certain decay to them. The farther apart they were, the heavier the pens became after activation. In most cases, this was a slight—almost imperceptible—difference. Today, the spanreed board, with pen attached, had been placed on Falilar’s most precise scale. The pen was hooked by strings to other instruments as well. Navani carefully turned the ruby, indicating she was ready to communicate with her phantom correspondent. The six scholars and ardents, Kalami included, seemed to hold their collective breath.

The pen started writing. Why have you ignored my instructions?

Falilar gestured animatedly to the others, who began taking measurements—adding tiny weights to the balance and reading the tension in the pull of the string.

She left them to their measurements, instead focusing on the conversation. I’m not sure what exactly you expected of me, she wrote. Please, explain further.

You must stop your experiments with fabrials, the reed wrote. I made it explicitly clear that you needed to stop. You have not. You have only increased your heresies. What is this you do, putting fabrials in a pit and connecting them to the blowing of the storms? Do you make a weapon of the spren you have trapped? Do you kill? Humans always kill.

“Heresies?” Kalami noted as the engineers worked. “Whoever it is seems to have a theological opposition to our actions.”

“She references humans as a singer might,” Navani said, tapping the paper. “Either she’s one of them, or she wants us to think she is.”

“Brightness,” Falilar said, “this can’t be correct. The decay is almost nonexistent.”

“So they’re near to us,” Navani said.

“Extremely near,” Falilar said. “Inside the tower. If we could figure out a way to make more precise scales … Regardless, a second measurement would help me with possible triangulation.”

Navani nodded. Why do you call this a heresy? Navani wrote. The church sees no moral problem with fabrials. No more than they have a problem with hitching a chull to a cart.

A chull hitched to a cart is not confined to a tiny space, the reply came,