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Vasher crosses the wall around the Court of Gods late at night, Nightblood on his back and complaining of the closet he was shut in. Below him Lightsong's palace is still lit at this hour — red and gold, bold colours indeed for the most scurrilous of the gods. The sword pushes him to go down and kill the god whose verdict will start a war: that makes him *evil*, and *evil* is the only word Nightblood is sure of. Vasher argues back idly and turns the deeper trouble over in his head. The sword should not be alive. It took a thousand Breaths and the Ninth Heightening to forge it — a working only Shashara of the Five Scholars ever managed, and which by the rules of Awakening should have produced no more sentience than the tassels on his cloak. They had chosen *destroy evil* for its anchoring Command because it sounded elegant, and given it to a piece of metal that had no way at all of knowing what evil was. Nightblood is still working it out, by trial. The sword tries another tack: just toss him inside; if the god is truly evil, he will pick the sword up and kill himself with it. Vasher gives the suggestion a moment's serious thought — *Awakened objects do not change or grow, they simply are what they were* — and then turns away. *Maybe later.*

He goes for the God King's palace instead. The structure is older than any of the Returned palaces — once a stark black sea-watchtower from before T'Telir existed, since carved up internally into the small colourful chambers the Hallandren upper class prefer. He climbs the outside on an Awakened rope given a three-part Command in one breath — *climb things, then grab things, then pull me up* — that runs as a sequence, a chaining most Awakeners find very difficult and that for him is reflex. He drops in through a window two storeys up, draws his Breath back, and stalks. Nightblood keeps prying at his thoughts and picking up the surface ones: he is after Vivenna's sister, Vivenna is descended from a Returned (you can tell by the hair), the queen is somehow the key to all of this because the real push to war began the day she arrived in the city. Either way, Vasher thinks, the priests can hold her over Idris's head for as long as the war goes badly. That is reason enough to take her out of their hands. The sword notices, with what passes for the sword's amusement, that Vasher won't kill a god planning to march armies but will nearly choke a maid in an alcove. *I don't understand my morality either,* Vasher tells him. *I'd suggest you avoid confusing yourself.*

The maid he ambushes in that alcove he catches with his Awakened rope and gags with his tassel, Nightblood drawn just far enough out of the sheath that she immediately looks sick. He holds her like that, unhappy with himself, until she begins to vomit and gives him what he needs. *Where is the queen?* *Southern corner. This floor.* He ties her, gags her, takes back his rope's Breath, and goes.

What he finds at the door to the queen's rooms is wrong. The guard is not palace servants and not Lifeless — it is a heavy file of brutish, out-of-place men. *Something strange is going on here,* he thinks. *So they had already taken her captive. Was she even pregnant? Were the priests just securing their power?* There are too many men to take quietly. He has only one good move left: set them against each other. He tosses the sword in amongst them and waits to clean up whoever isn't taken by the lust.

He never gets the chance. An Awakened rope catches him from behind. He cuts it; another man tackles him; his own cloak catches one assailant by the face and another by the legs; he tears the cloak off a fallen mercenary, Awakens it on the spot — *grab things other than me* — kills another with his boot knife and kicks one back to open a lane to the sword. Three more come out of doorways he had not cleared. His Awakened cloak is torn off him before he can Command it to defend; his hand is pinned before he can pull enough Breath to use for an attack; and he is wrapped end to end in his own Awakened rope.

Denth steps out of the room he has been waiting in. He has hired a company of mercenaries — *no risk is too great, assuming the pay is right* — and held them inside the palace for two weeks for this single moment, knowing that eventually Princess Vivenna would send Vasher in to rescue her sister. Vasher was always to be his payment for Shashara. He kneels beside him in the palace hallway, gone bone-serious. *We've been waiting,* he says. *Hidden in the palace here for a good two weeks.* Vasher notes with the grim satisfaction of a man who fought well that he took at least a dozen of them down before they pinned him.

Tonk Fah returns from the queen's door with the bundle in a blanket. The lust is already showing in his eyes — the desire to draw the sword, to destroy evil, or really just to destroy. Denth snatches the bundle from him and smacks him on the back of the head — *I just saved your life* — and tells him to go check on the queen and clean up the mess in the hall. Tonk Fah grumbles about how Denth always gets nasty when Vasher is around, and waddles off. Denth wraps the sword up securely — too disciplined himself to be taken by it — and turns to his men. *Take away all his Awakened clothing,* he tells them. *Then hang him up in that room over there. He and I are going to have a long talk about what he did to my sister.*