Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,533

they were too closely watched, and someone would send to Raboniel for confirmation. But a few “random” humans? That might work.

She found Dul and the others inside the front doors. Venli gathered them around, away from prying ears, and quickly handed her writ to Mazish. “Take this,” Venli said. “If I don’t return, you should be able to use it to get away.”

“Without you?” Mazish said. “Venli…”

“I’ll almost certainly return,” Venli said. “But just in case, take the map too. You’ll need it to find your way to the other listeners in secret.”

“Where are you going?” Dul asked.

Venli hummed to the Lost. “I think we should offer to bring the surgeon and his family—including their son, the Windrunner—out with us. Help them escape the tower, take them to their own people at the Shattered Plains.”

She watched them, expecting fear, perhaps condemnation. This would jeopardize their safety.

Instead, as a group, they hummed to Consideration.

“Having a Windrunner on our side could be useful,” Mazish said. “He could certainly help us get to the Shattered Plains quicker.”

“Yes!” said Shumin, the new recruit—still a little too eager for Venli’s taste. “This is a great idea!”

“Would he help us though?” Dul asked.

“He treated Rlain well,” Mazish said. “Even when he thought Rlain was only another parshman. I don’t like what the humans did, but if we put this one in our debt, my gut says he won’t betray us.”

Venli scanned the other faces. Singers with a variety of skin patterns, now humming a variety of rhythms. None of them hummed to Betrayal, and they gave her encouraging nods.

“Very well,” Venli said, “wait for me until the storm has passed. If I’ve not returned by then, take the next Oathgate transfer to Kholinar. I’ll find you there.”

They hummed at her words, so Venli started toward the atrium, hoping she’d be quick enough to stop Rlain from trying his desperate plan. She didn’t know for certain if he’d take her offer. But this was the direction she should be moving.

* * *

Navani knelt on the floor of her office. It still smelled of smoke from the explosion the day before.

Despite Raboniel saying she wanted to scrape the chamber for broken pieces of the dagger, no one arrived to do that. They hadn’t taken her to her rooms above. They hadn’t brought her meals. They’d simply left her alone.

To contemplate her utter failure.

She felt numb. After her previous failure—when she’d exposed the node to her enemies—she’d picked herself up and moved on. This time she felt stuck. Worn. Like an old banner left too long exposed to the elements. Ripped by storms. Bleached by the sun. Now hanging in tatters, waiting to slip off the pole.

We can kill Radiant spren.

In the end, all Raboniel’s talk of working together had been a lie. Of course it had. Navani had known it would be. She’d planned for it, and tried to hide what she knew. But had she really expected that to work? She’d repeatedly confirmed to herself that she couldn’t outthink the Fused. They were ancient, capable beyond mortal understanding, beings outside of time and … And …

And she kept staring at the place where Raboniel’s daughter had died. Where Raboniel had wept, holding the corpse of her child. Such a human moment.

Navani curled up on her pallet, though sleep had eluded her all night. She had spent the hours listening to the Fused in the hallway playing notes on metal plates and demanding new ones—until one final sound had echoed against the stone hallways. A chilling, awful sound that was wrong in all the right ways. Raboniel had found the tone.

The tone that could kill spren.

Should Navani feel pride? Even in that time of near madness, her research had been so meticulous and well annotated that Raboniel was able to follow it. What had taken Navani days, the Fused replicated in hours, breaking open a mystery that had stood for thousands of years. Evidence that Navani was a true scholar after all?

No, she thought, staring at the ceiling. No, don’t you dare take that distinction for yourself. If she’d been a scholar, she’d have understood the implications of her work.

She was a child playing dress-up again. A farmer could stumble across a new plant in the wilderness. Did that make him a botanist?

She eventually forced herself up to do the only thing she was certain she couldn’t ruin. She found ink and paper in the wreckage of the room, then knelt and began to paint prayers. It was