Blushweaver the Beautiful
also known as goddess of honesty
A Returned goddess of the Court of Gods — fifteen years dead and back, which is old for the Returned — with glossy black hair, pale skin, and a habit of dressing in transparently little. She is called Blushweaver the Beautiful and is, in her own title, the goddess of honesty. Her priests are among those most loudly pushing for war on Idris; she comes to Lightsong's wedding-night fireworks ostensibly to seduce him and actually to recruit him. STD:WB:Ch 7
Known facts
- fifteen-years-since-returnBlushweaver has been Returned for fifteen years — old for one of the Returned — and is, Lightsong privately notes, correspondingly wise and crafty. Her priesthood is one of the loudest voices in the Court Assembly pushing for war on Idris.STD:WB:Ch 7
- wants-lightsong-lifelessReveals to Lightsong in their box that she needs his quarter-share of Hallandren's Lifeless Commands — ten thousand soldiers — to keep Idris from outmanoeuvring her, and that she has been seeding the Court Assembly debates with sympathetic priests.STD:WB:Ch 16
- goddess-of-honestyIs, formally, the court's goddess of honesty, communication, and interpersonal relationships — a portfolio with no Lifeless Commands attached, which she resents as obviously a dire error in the gods' judgement.STD:WB:Ch 23
- holds-two-divisions-of-lifelessBy the end of the Hopefinder lunch she holds Commands to two of Hallandren's four Lifeless divisions — Hopefinder's ten thousand, and Mercystar's, which she had quietly secured the day before by trading on Lightsong's investigation of the palace murder.STD:WB:Ch 30
- controls-three-quarters-of-armiesWith Hopefinder's and Mercystar's Commands rewritten to her name in addition to her own, Blushweaver holds three of the four sets of Lifeless Commands — roughly thirty thousand of Hallandren's forty thousand Lifeless — leaving only Allmother's ten thousand outside her control as the priests call for war.STD:WB:Ch 34
- confesses-love-and-frustration-for-lightsongWalking the arena before the war vote, Blushweaver tells Lightsong plainly that in this moment she does not know whether she loves him or is angrier at him. He kisses her hand and answers that he accepts both.STD:WB:Ch 49
- kidnapped-to-dungeon-beneath-courtBlushweaver is taken from her palace in the night and held — gagged, bleeding, bound to a chair in her nightgown — in the carved stone dungeon at the end of the catacombs, surrounded by men wearing the God King's priesthood's robes. The kidnappers have moved against her precisely because she holds the Command phrases for a quarter of the kingdom's Lifeless.STD:WB:Ch 51
- collaborated-with-the-false-priesthoodIn her cage, Blushweaver confesses to Lightsong that she had been working with the men in God King's priesthood robes from the beginning. The whole campaign to consolidate the four Lifeless Command phrases into her hands was theirs as much as hers. They turned on her, by their account, because she held back her end of the bargain.STD:WB:Ch 53
- killed-to-demonstrate-the-conspirators-seriousnessTo break Lightsong into giving up his Lifeless Command phrase, the conspirators take Blushweaver out of her cage and slit her throat in front of him. Her BioChroma fades, bonfire to candle, and goes out. She is the first Returned killed on-page in the present narrative — *gods do not die from a cut not even as wide as a palm,* he thinks afterward — but she does.STD:WB:Ch 53
Events
- STD:WB:Ch 7 Arrives at Lightsong's patio in green-and-silver silk with thirty servants and her own couch, trades flirtation, invites him to her bed and then to her faction, kisses him, and glides away with her servants when he refuses both.
- STD:WB:Ch 14 Lounges in her green-and-silver gown across the box's couch, stealing Lightsong's grapes and refusing yet to tell him why she has invited him to share the Court Assembly with her.
- STD:WB:Ch 15 Lounges on her cushion in her box and hisses Lightsong down beside her when he refuses to kneel for the God King.
- STD:WB:Ch 16 Lounges in her box eating cherries beside Lightsong, confirms she has seeded the day's debate with sympathetic priests, and asks him for his quarter-share of Hallandren's Lifeless.
- STD:WB:Ch 23 Meets Lightsong in her flower garden, hears he is finally joining her plans, then walks him to Mercystar's palace to recruit her Lifeless Commands by playing on her shaken sense of safety — and abandons the investigation in irritation when Lightsong turns serious.
- STD:WB:Ch 30 Arrives in time to watch Lightsong fling clay off a pottery wheel and pluck a tossed guava into a juggling pattern. Walks him toward Hopefinder's palace deflecting his questions about who she might have been before she Returned.
- STD:WB:Ch 30 Negotiates Hopefinder's Lifeless Commands out of him, accepting his demand for her permanent social-court vote without flinching once she sees he means it.
- STD:WB:Ch 34 Joins Lightsong in his box. Confirms she did not buy Nanrovah's sudden change of heart, that Hopefinder's and Mercystar's Lifeless are now hers, and that she needs Lightsong to handle the negotiation with Allmother because Allmother dislikes him less than she dislikes everyone else.
- STD:WB:Ch 34 Confronts Siri on the walkway, warns her off Lightsong — the last good man left in the court, by her account — and parts with an insult.
- STD:WB:Ch 38 Joins Lightsong at his pavilion, complains that Allmother now refuses to speak with her at all, listens through the priest-count demonstration and the broken Lifeless squirrel, and chides Lightsong for chasing tunnels with the war vote bearing down on them.
- STD:WB:Ch 49 Walks the arena ring beside Lightsong in a covering gown, asks him to share command-phrases, gets his usual refusals, finally tells him plainly that he is wonderful and that she cannot tell whether her love or her frustration for him is stronger.
- STD:WB:Ch 49 Reclines in her pavilion through the vote, her high priestess kneeling before her; finally sends the priestess out with a green flag and demands of Lightsong that he cast his own verdict; calls after him in vain as he leaves the arena.
- STD:WB:Ch 51 Bound and gagged in a chair in a delicate nightgown, lip split and dirtied, surrounded by men in God King's priesthood robes — she stares in shock as Lightsong crashes in with a stolen sword and tries, badly, to fight for her.
- STD:WB:Ch 53 In the cage opposite Lightsong, crying through her gag, confesses she had been with the priesthood from the start of the Command-phrase plan, fights the six men who drag her out, and has her throat cut. Her BioChroma dims like a blown-out bonfire and is gone.
- STD:WB:Ch 55 Her blood still drying on the stones outside Lightsong's cage.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Her body still on the floor where the Pahn Kahl left it, bloodied and red.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 7
- factVasher
- factReturned
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factCalmseer
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 12
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 14
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 15
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 16
- factLightsong
- factStillmark
- factNanrovah
- factInhanna
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 18
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 21
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 22
- factLightsong
- factTruthcall
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 23
- factLifeless
- factMercystar
- factAllmother
- factAllmother
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 30
- factHopefinder the Just
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 34
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factNanrovah
- factAllmother
- factCourt of Gods Tunnels
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 38
- factLightsong
- factLightsong
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 42
- factLightsong
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 46
- factLightsong
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 49
- factLightsong
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 51
- factLightsong
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 53
- factLightsong
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 54
- factBluefingers
- factBluefingers
- factBluefingers
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 55
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 57
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 58