POV: vasher
Summary
Vasher watches the sunset from the roof of the God King's palace with Nightblood in his hand. The sword cannot see, but it can feel him seeing — crimson, like blood in the air — and remarks on the dramatic light. Vasher thinks of the sword as a thing made to protect, and of how thin the line between protection and destruction has always been. Protect a man, live with the destruction he creates.
Kneeling, he calls up the Breath seeded in his clothes. *Strengthen me*; the trousers stiffen into a second skeleton, tassels at his cuffs wrap around his ankles and the soles of his feet. *Upon call, become my fingers and grip*; five tassels at his shoulder coil up into a second hand. The Commands eat most of his thin remaining hoard — he is barely at the Second Heightening — but he is loath to work without the finger-tassels. He drops down the pyramid blocks of the palace in long Awakening-cushioned leaps, leaving a grey scar of drained marble behind him, and lands on the lawn within the court wall.
He moves through the dark grounds avoiding the lit palaces. His contact — *not a priest*, he tells the sword — warned him off Blushweaver and Stillmark, whose homes are too important; off lesser deities like Giftbeacon and Peaceyearning, whose homes are too unimportant. Instead his target is Mercystar's palace: a Returned involved in court politics, but not so heavily that his break-in will provoke a general response. Two yellow-and-gold servants stand at the side door, unarmed, sleepy in their job. One of them offers him kindness — *let's get you to a shelter, friend* — and Vasher hesitates a moment for the guilt of it, then snaps his shirt-tassels around the man's neck while ramming Nightblood's sheathed hilt into the other's stomach. He chokes them out, not into corpses. *Corpses cause more trouble than men who get knocked out.* The sword is hurt that he was given no part in it.
Inside, the building is the usual Hallandren open layout — a colonnade of bright-curtained rooms — and he stays in the unadorned servants' hallway around the outside. As he moves toward the northeast he uncoils a rope from his waist. Four servants round the corner ahead of him. He gives up most of his remaining Breath to it — *hold things* — and snags one by the arm, dropping the rope's Command. The other three break. He tosses the sword skidding across the floor between the runners; one of them stops dead, transfixed, drops to a knee, picks it up, unsnaps the clasp. A dark fluidlike smoke begins to weep from the partially drawn blade, blackening the colour off his arm before Vasher kicks him down and slams the sheath shut. He knocks the man's head against the wall, ties off the first servant, and pulls his Breath back out of the rope — *your Breath to mine* — leaving the man bound. Two have run shouting for help. The recovered rope's Awakening, he notices irritably, has drained his boots and cloak to grey: he is wearing his trade now whether he likes it or not.
He needs a distraction. From a belt pouch he pulls out a dead squirrel, kneels, and Awakens it with a permanent Breath. *Awaken to my Breath, serve my needs, live at my Command and my word. Fallen Rope.* The Breath is gone forever; the carcass bleeds to a uniform grey he chose deliberately for matching the rodent's original colour. *Fallen Rope. Make noise. Run around. Bite people who are not me. Fallen Rope.* The second use of the security phrase seals the creature's orders. The fresh Lifeless scampers off after the fleeing servants. Cries and clangs follow.
Vasher runs the last distance and crouches at the place his informant marked: a splintered board in the wall along a section of unadorned hallway. He finds the latch on the floor and lifts a trapdoor. Returned palaces, by the priesthood's own rules, are only ever one storey. He drops through, trusting his Awakened clothing to take the fall. The priests of the Iridescent Tones, it seems, are hiding things — from the kingdom, and from the gods in whose name they rule.