POV: vivenna
Summary
Vivenna hangs outside the window of the torture room high in the palace, sweating, weighing what she is about to do. Denth is inside with a bloodied knife. Tonk Fah dozes in the corner. Vasher hangs from a ceiling hook in the middle of the room, beaten, holding no Breath but still alive. She has two rope-pieces in her pocket and her sword. She decides that her recent life — betrayal, hunger, the streets, the loss of Parlin — has stripped her of anything more they can do to her, and pulls herself in through the window.
Two Awakened ropes fly. Denth cuts his out of the air with a flick of his dagger. The other lands on Tonk Fah's neck and wraps it as he wakes. Vivenna swings — not for Denth but for the rope holding Vasher — and cuts him down. Denth drives his dueling blade through her shoulder. As she falls beside the dropped body she gasps her own Breath across into Vasher — *my life to yours, my Breath become yours* — and goes Drab.
Vasher picks up her sword, wraps the rope he was hanging from around his waist for a belt, and meets Denth in the middle of the room. Denth is plainly the better swordsman, perhaps simply by skill, perhaps because of Vasher's wounds, perhaps because of the anger working at his calm — and he is driving him back. From the floor Vivenna sees that the cloak still hanging from Tonk Fah's shoulder is the one she failed to Awaken cleanly when she fled him. She reaches up, hand to its hem. *Your Breath to mine.* It surrenders. *Attack and grab Denth.* The cloak yanks Tonk Fah sideways and crashes him into Denth from behind. Both stumble into Vasher. Vasher is shoved backward out the third-storey window.
For a moment all is silent in the room. Denth cuts the cloak free, sends Tonk Fah to fetch a squad of Lifeless to slow Vasher when he lands, and tells Vivenna she is more trouble than she is worth.
Vasher falls toward the stone blocks below, Vivenna's Breath lively in him, furious that he was *almost* there. He pulls the rope from his waist, Commands it to grab, and it lashes around a stone outcropping, swinging him sideways along the wall. He slides down to the first stepped block, then Awakens the rope as a leg — *become as my leg and give it strength* — and bounds the last four hops to the ground, the rope taking the shock of each landing. He scoops a fallen sword and barrels into the men at the front gates, cutting them down with old, practiced economy. They are too many. He drains a fallen soldier's undershirt and Awakens the empty shirt-and-trousers — *fight for me, as if you were me* — and a moment later does it again, and fights as a trio with two empty sets of his own clothing.
A troop of fifty Lifeless rounds the corner. A line of black smoke is trailing out from under the closed front doors of the palace. *Aren't you going to thank me?* the voice in his head asks. *I came to save you.* He drains his Awakened clothing back into himself, charges through the gates, slams them open, finds the sword sprouting from a guard's body inside, and pulls it free of the sheath.
The blade sprays black liquid that dissolves before it touches walls or floor. *Destroy! The evil must be destroyed!* He spins among the Lifeless in the entryway. A single scratch and each body flashes to black smoke, evaporating like paper in an invisible fire. Black veinlike tendrils climb the hilt and clamp on to his forearm, drinking his Breath. He destroys all fifty in a few minutes. Half of Vivenna's gift is already gone. The guards outside run.
He rams the blade through a wall and the next floor up — they dissolve as easily as the Lifeless did, the stone evaporating in a circle ten feet wide — Awakens his rope to haul himself up, and climbs two floors that way. He slashes through more walls, bellowing back toward the room where he was tortured. It is empty. The pain in his arm is incredible. His Breath is draining at an alarming rate. Once it is gone the sword will kill him. He throws the blade aside; it gouges the floor in a puff of smoke and skids to a wall with a *pling*. The black veins on his skin slowly fade. He is left with barely enough Breath for the First Heightening. Another few seconds and the sword would have taken the rest.
A dueling blade clatters to the tile in front of him. He looks up. *Stand up,* Denth says. *We're going to finish what we started.*