in front of him.
Amaram started, freezing in place, as he saw something in the Herald’s fingers. A small dart, the tip dripping with some clear liquid.
Amaram glanced at the opening, which spilled sunlight into the room. A small figure there made a puffing sound, a blowgun held to lips beneath a half mask that covered the upper face.
The Herald’s other hand shot out, quick as an eyeblink, and snatched the dart from the air mere inches from Amaram’s face. The Ghostbloods. They weren’t trying to kill the Herald.
They were trying to kill Amaram.
He cried out, reaching his hand to the side, summoning his Blade. Too slow. The figure looked from him to the Herald, then scuttled away with a soft curse. Amaram chased after, leaping the rubble of the wall and breaking out into light, but the figure was moving too quickly.
Heart thumping in his chest, he looked back toward Talenelat, worried for the Herald’s safety. Amaram started as he found the Herald standing tall, straight-backed, head up. Dark brown eyes, startlingly lucid, reflected the light of the opening. Talenelat raised one dart before himself and inspected it.
Then he dropped both darts and sat back down on his bed. His strange, unchanging mantra started over again, muttered. Amaram felt a chill run down his spine, but when he returned to the Herald, he could not get the man to respond.
With effort, he made the Herald rise again and ushered him to the coach.
* * *
Szeth opened his eyes.
He immediately squeezed them closed again. “No. I died. I died!”
He felt rock beneath him. Blasphemy. He heard water dripping and felt the sun on his face. “Why am I not dead?” he whispered. “The Shardblade pierced me. I fell. Why didn’t I die?”
“You did die.”
Szeth opened his eyes again. He lay on an empty rock expanse, his clothing a wet mess. The Frostlands? He felt cold, despite the heat of the sun.
A man stood before him, wearing a crisp black and silver uniform. He had dark brown skin like a man from the Makabaki region, but had a pale mark on his right cheek in the shape of a small hooked crescent. He held one hand behind his back, while his other hand tucked something away into his coat pocket. A fabrial of some sort? Glowing brightly?
“I recognize you,” Szeth realized. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
“You have.”
Szeth struggled to rise. He managed to make it to his knees, then knelt back on them. “How?” he asked.
“I waited until you crashed to the ground,” the man said, “until you were broken and mangled, your soul cut through, dead for certain. Then, I restored you.”
“Impossible.”
“Not if it is done before the brain dies. Like a drowned man restored to life with the proper ministrations, you could be restored with the right fabrial. If I had waited seconds longer, of course, it would have been too late.”
He spoke the words calmly, without emotion.
“Who are you?” Szeth asked.
“You spend this long obeying the precepts of your people and religion, yet you fail to recognize one of your gods?”
“My gods are the spirits of the stones,” Szeth whispered. “The sun and the stars. Not men.”
“Nonsense. Your people revere the spren of stone, but you do not worship them.”
That crescent . . . He recognized it, didn’t he?
“You, Szeth,” the man said, “worship order, do you not? You follow the laws of your society to perfection. This attracted me, though I worry that emotion has clouded your ability to discern. Your ability to . . . judge.”
Judgment.
“Nin,” he whispered. “The one they call Nalan, or Nale, here. Herald of Justice.”
Nin nodded.
“Why save me?” Szeth said. “Is my torment not enough?”
“Those words are foolishness,” Nin said. “Unbecoming of one who would study beneath me.”
“I don’t want to study,” Szeth said, curling up on the stone. “I want to be dead.”
“Is that it? Truly, that is what you wish most? I will give it to you, if it is your honest desire.”
Szeth squeezed his eyes shut. The screams awaited him in that darkness. The screams of those he’d killed.
I was not wrong, he thought. I was never Truthless.
“No,” Szeth whispered. “The Voidbringers have returned. I was right, and my people . . . they were wrong.”
“You were banished by petty men with no vision. I will teach you the path of one uncorrupted by sentiment. You will bring this back to your people, and you will carry with you justice for the leaders of the Shin.”
Szeth opened his eyes and