Susebron
The God King of Hallandren, a tongueless Returned holding the Treasure of Peacegiver — fifty thousand Breaths. Held captive by Bluefingers's Pahn Kahl insurgents in the dungeon and brought to be killed, he was healed by Lightsong's dying bestowal in the next cell and spoke aloud for the first time in his life. He arrived at Siri's altar at the head of a churning mass of Awakened palace cloth and stopped Bluefingers with two words. STD:WB:Ch 57
The God King of Hallandren, promised by the treaty to the eldest Idrian princess on her twenty-second birthday. Behind the prismatic halo he is mute and illiterate by his priests' design — tongue cut out so he cannot speak Awakening Commands, letters never taught — kept as a figurehead through whom the priesthood rules. Earnest, gentle, and largely innocent of the world beyond the palace. STD:WB:Ch 20 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 57
The God King of Hallandren, promised the eldest Idrian princess on her twenty-second birthday by the treaty. Said to be erratic where his predecessors were not; said by King Dedelin, who has never met him, to be a creature whose child will be born stillborn and Return as the next god to rule the lowlands. STD:WB:Ch 1 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 20
Known facts
- stillborn-returnedAccording to the doctrine Bluefingers recites to Siri in the bath, the God King was stillborn and Returned at birth — already above the earth, which is too base for him — making him the only known Returned who can engender children, all of whom are also stillborn until one Returns.STD:WB:Ch 6
- did-not-retaliateWatched silently from his chair as Siri sat up naked and demanded he get on with it, then rose and left the room at his usual hour without summoning guards, priests, or any retaliation at all.STD:WB:Ch 11
- tenth-heighteningHolds the Light of Peace — tens of thousands of Breaths — and is, Bluefingers tells Siri, the only living person to have reached the Tenth Heightening: the level that fractures pure white into a prismatic halo around him, lets him Awaken with the sound of his voice alone, and lets him break the Commands binding another's Lifeless.STD:WB:Ch 15
- flinches-from-siriWhen Siri crosses the bedchamber and approaches him for the first time, Susebron visibly tenses at the eyes and mouth — frightened, she thinks, of her, though the idea is incongruous for a God King.STD:WB:Ch 18
- tonguelessHas no tongue. In the dim hearth-light Siri sees the scar where it was cut out — purposefully, she realises, since Awakening requires crisply spoken Commands and a God King with the breath he holds could otherwise Awaken anything within earshot. He is silenced by design.STD:WB:Ch 20
- illiterateCannot read. The priests never taught him his letters. He brings Siri a book of children's stories in the bedchamber, opens it on the bedspread, and pleads with her silently to teach him. The fact, paired with the missing tongue, is the secret that frightens Bluefingers: the God King is the priests' figurehead, kept mute and unlettered so he cannot communicate around them.STD:WB:Ch 20
- learns-to-writePicks up reading and writing astonishingly fast: he had memorised the shapes of all the letters in his children's book years before Siri arrived — only the rules of spelling and sound had to be explained — and now writes back to her on a board with smuggled charcoal, his spelling still rough. He keeps the book of children's stories close at all times; it is the only real possession he has, kept since his mother read the stories to him as a child.STD:WB:Ch 24
- mother-taken-awayWas raised by his mother long enough to memorise the children's stories she read him, then she was taken away. Most of what he believes about morality — obedience, honesty, kindness — comes out of those stories; the rest came from the priests training him to be a figurehead.STD:WB:Ch 24
- ignorant-of-procreationHas never been taught how children are made. His understanding of the matter comes from a children's-story line about a man and a woman spending the night together; he has been sitting in the bedchamber every night believing that is the whole of it and quietly puzzled that nothing has resulted. No prior consorts, no mistresses, no concubines — the priests evidently intend never to risk an heir against his will.STD:WB:Ch 24
- collects-multiple-breaths-per-weekSiri presses him and he admits the priesthood gives him two Breaths a week — often three or four — while a Returned needs only one a week to live. The surplus has been building inside him for the whole of his reign.STD:WB:Ch 29
- sees-only-colorHe carries so many Breaths that he no longer perceives people the way ordinary men do — every face dissolves into colour, sparkle of eye, blush of cheek, distinct pattern of blemish, and one human is no more beautiful than another. The moral lessons his mother read him from his book are how he reconstructs the human meaning of the rest.STD:WB:Ch 29
- believes-he-cannot-give-his-breathSusebron believes — on the instruction of his priests — that what he carries is not ordinary Breath and that he cannot voluntarily give it away. The conviction underwrites his calm assurance to Siri that he will not be talked into surrendering it and dying.STD:WB:Ch 36
- only-education-is-childhood-storybookSusebron's entire frame of reference for human behaviour is the children's storybook his priests gave him in the palace — full of metaphor-laden tales of princes and seductresses and children eaten by trees — re-read so many times he cannot tell his adult interpretation of them from the one he formed as a child. He is acutely aware of how little this leaves him for real conversation.STD:WB:Ch 36
- was-spoon-fed-by-servants-as-a-childUntil he insisted otherwise, Susebron's servants held his spoon for him at meals. As God King he eats only a few bites from each plate before it is whisked away and replaced, never finishing a dish even when he likes it.STD:WB:Ch 36
- agrees-to-flee-to-idris-with-siri-if-provenPressed by Siri, Susebron promises that if she can prove his priests are trying to kill him *and* find someone to smuggle the two of them out of the palace, he will run with her back to Idris. He does not believe it will come to that; she privately resolves they will go regardless if it does.STD:WB:Ch 36
- confronted-priests-and-was-quietly-restrictedSusebron tells Siri that he used his artisans' script to ask the priests in person why his father died right after his birth, and was given vague reassurances both times he pressed. Since then his guards and Awakeners have stayed closer to him than usual, and he has been kept from a session of the assembly — the priests have begun, quietly, to fence him in.STD:WB:Ch 44
- mother-may-not-be-biologicalThe infant-swap theory carries one personal cost Susebron cannot quite hold steady: the woman who raised him in the palace, and whose kindness is the only kindness he can remember before Siri, may not have been his birth mother. Her death late in his childhood — and the fact that she was one of the few who could have told him the truth about his origin — now looks to him suspicious rather than tragic.STD:WB:Ch 44
- can-survive-on-his-breath-hoardDiscussing whether they could flee Hallandren, Susebron tells Siri he overheard his priests once explain that a Returned separated from his weekly Breath does not have to die — extra Breath in the Returned's possession is consumed at the same rate of one per week. With the hoard Peacegiver left in trust in his keeping, he could survive in hiding for a very long time, though it would also make him a target anyone would want to take.STD:WB:Ch 47
- decides-to-claim-throne-publiclySusebron tells Siri he has decided to seize his own throne from his priests rather than flee — to do so by using her voice in front of the court assembly and, when his priests try to silence her, by opening his own mouth to show the pantheon that he has no tongue. Hallandren law obligates god and priest alike to obey the God King; if the gods see, the war on Idris cannot proceed.STD:WB:Ch 47
- first-wordsSpeaks aloud for the first time in his life, in a clear, deep voice, halting Bluefingers's knife mid-strike with two words: *You will stop.* He arrives at the head of a churning mass of Awakened cloth that bursts the altar-room's doors, slaps the Lifeless aside, and lifts him bodily into the room — black-haired, pale, youthful but of great age — to free Siri from Bluefingers's dagger.STD:WB:Ch 57
Events
- STD:WB:Ch 7 Sits silent in a thronelike chair beside the bed, in black on black, watching Siri kneel naked through the night without ever knocking the bedpost to call her forward.
- STD:WB:Ch 11 Sits silent in his shadowed chair as Siri snaps at him, then watches her kneel facing him through the rest of the night before rising and leaving the room at his usual hour, having done nothing.
- STD:WB:Ch 15 Appears behind Siri in her box in white robes, then is lifted by Awakened ropes to his golden throne above.
- STD:WB:Ch 16 Sits silent on his throne above the arena throughout the war debate, present only as a halo of fractured light.
- STD:WB:Ch 18 Waits in his shadowed corner of the bedchamber while Siri disrobes only to her shift, crosses the room, and climbs the bed. Tenses visibly at her approach, watches in silent confusion through her faked moans, and lets her sleep undisturbed.
- STD:WB:Ch 20 Looms over the bed in the dark, startles Siri, then reveals his secret: pulls out a children's book from beneath his shirt, opens his mouth to show the scar where his tongue was taken, and pleads silently to be taught his letters.
- STD:WB:Ch 24 Sits in his chair at the bedside writing on a smuggled charcoal board, defends his priests as good men, confesses he had his tongue cut out because he held too much power, and lets Siri gently pry apart the rest of his world — the children's book, the mother who read it to him, his untouched ignorance of how heirs are actually made.
- STD:WB:Ch 29 Asks Siri about the mountains, hears about Austre for the first time, denies that the priesthood would harm him, and ends the night with an arm cautiously around her shoulders at the window.
- STD:WB:Ch 36 Sits beside Siri on the bed and on the floor through the evening, writing his side of the conversation on his tablet, learning the words *flirtatious* and *sarcasm*, summoning a feast for her, and ultimately committing — *if it is the only way* — to flee the palace with her.
- STD:WB:Ch 44 Eats a third dessert through their nightly picnic; confesses he confronted his priests in person about why God Kings die after fathering an heir; reasons through the infant-swap theory with Siri and grieves for the woman he had thought was his mother; initiates the first kiss.
- STD:WB:Ch 47 Wakes beside Siri in his bed and opens, as he has every morning since the change, by writing *I love you* on his board; then sets out his plan to claim the throne at the next court assembly rather than flee; reveals that his Peacegiver hoard would let him survive in hiding indefinitely.
- STD:WB:Ch 53 Held in a guarded room ahead of Siri; tries to come to her when she arrives, his arm gripped and tugged back by a soldier with no further pretence of divine respect.
- STD:WB:Ch 54 Held in the chamber with Siri and the surviving priests, hand on her shoulder, watching Treledees tell her the secrets he has had no way to tell her himself.
- STD:WB:Ch 54 Punches and kicks at Lifeless who have surrounded Siri and waves her to run; is dragged to the ground by a dozen of them, his inarticulate yells echoing down the stairwell as they haul him to the dungeons.
- STD:WB:Ch 55 Captured by Bluefingers's Lifeless and dragged off to the dungeon.
- STD:WB:Ch 55 Punches a Lifeless, kicks at another, waves Siri to flee, is borne down by a dozen of them, then is dragged down a stairwell to be held until the staging killing.
- STD:WB:Ch 57 Tossed into the cell next to Lightsong's — the new Returned he notes dully through his despair.
- STD:WB:Ch 57 Forced facedown on the cell stones with a sword raised above him, stretches his hand toward Lightsong's cell — and is taken by it.
- STD:WB:Ch 57 Walks into the altar room at the centre of a churning tide of Awakened palace cloth, raises his hand, and stops Bluefingers's knife with the first words of his life — *you will stop* — then has silk handkerchiefs untie her hands.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Walks Siri down to the dungeon surrounded by a hundred Awakened cloths, bleaching the palace stones white wherever his Breath passes, and explains that Lightsong gave his life to heal him because he knew of the missing tongue.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Stands on the palace roof with her looking out at the dust trail of the marching Lifeless, wants to ride out alone and tie them down with his cloths, and is talked out of it by her.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Drops to one knee before the man who reveals himself as Peacegiver, accepts the army of D'Denir and the Command phrase to activate them, and is charged to do better with them than he did.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 4
- factTreledees
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 6
- factBluefingers
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 7
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 8
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 15
- factLight of Peace
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 18
- factSisirinah
- factSusebron
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 20
- factSisirinah
- factBluefingers
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 24
- factThe God King
- factSisirinah
- factTreledees
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 25
- factJewels
- factSusebron the Fourth
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 29
- factReturned
- factVo
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 32
- factHallandren
- factThe God King
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 34
- factSisirinah
- factBluefingers
- factBluefingers
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 36
- factSusebron
- factSusebron
- factSusebron
- factSusebron
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 38
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 40
- factVasher
- factSisirinah
- factTreledees
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 44
- factReturned
- factThe God King
- factSisirinah
- factSusebron
- factSusebron
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 46
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 47
- factSusebron
- factSusebron
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 49
- factSisirinah
- factThe Pantheon of Returned
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 51
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 53
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 54
- factThe God King
- factTreledees
- factBluefingers
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 55
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 57
- factReturned
- factLightsong
- factLightsong
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 58
- factVasher
- factVasher
- factReturned
- factKalad's Phantoms
- factD'Denir Celabrin
- summarySTD:WB:Epilogue