POV: siri
Summary
Bluefingers leads Siri — held by Lifeless — up to the top floor of the palace, into a richly decorated room with a black-stone altar at its front. Lifeless file in behind them carrying the bodies of the slaughtered priests, Treledees among them, and arrange them on the floor. She tells him her people will retreat through the passes, that they will not fight the Hallandren for her. He tells her they will fight; he will make sure of it.
In the dungeon cell below, another Returned is tossed into the cage next to Lightsong's — the God King, he notes dully through his despair. He has failed Blushweaver. The Lifeless armies are already marching on Idris. The Pahn Kahl will have their revenge three centuries late. He cannot make himself care.
Standing in a black hallway opened to the sky by the walls the sword cut through, Vasher takes up the dueling blade Denth has dropped to him. *I'll let you die easily*, Denth tells him. *Just tell me the truth. You never beat Arsteel in a duel, did you?* Vasher does not reply. Denth attacks. Vasher fights well for how tired he is and how much he is bleeding, but Denth is plainly the better of them, and he drives his blade through Vasher's left shoulder — his favourite first strike, the one that lets the fight go on for him to enjoy.
In the altar room Siri tries to talk Bluefingers out of it. *You're not even of their religion. Why this?* He has the answer ready. A group of Idrian mercenaries will be let into the palace and *find* her freshly killed by twisted priests on a profane altar — the kind of story her own people have whispered about the court her whole life. The city will riot; the Hallandren will slaughter the Idrian minority to maintain order; survivors will carry the story back to the highlands. *I truly am sorry,* he tells her.
In the cell Lightsong is crying. So, oddly, is the God King beside him — pounding the bars, moaning but not speaking. *I wonder why that is.* He hears Llarimar's words again — *you are a god. To me at least* — and the cell falls away.
He is on the slick deck of the *Red Panther* in a night storm, the pole lantern flickering, his face pressed against a painted red panther on the cabin wall. He is not himself but a smaller, pudgier man — a scribe accustomed to long ledgers and coin, hired to find money others had lost or been cheated of, a detective just not the sort he had imagined. Llarimar, a few years younger, is at the prow yelling for help. The borrowed boat is foundering. A young woman runs from the cabin to lend a hand at the ropes. *Tatara!* a woman screams from inside. He knows the girl — his niece. The next wave takes her into the ocean. He stands on the rail watching her gold hair twist in the black, and without thinking leaps after her with the rope still looped in his hand. He throws it round her ankle, ties it tight despite the waves, and is dragged into the deep. Down. Into the void.
He blinks. He is back on the cell stones. The void had taken him; something had sent him back. He had *Returned*. Because he had stood on the other side of a brilliant wave of colour, looked down at a war greater even than the Manywar, and a calm comforting voice had offered him the chance to come back. *By the Colors,* he thinks. *I am a god.* He stands and walks to the bars of his cage. The Pahn Kahl are forcing the God King to his knees. One raises a sword. The God King's arm stretches out his hand toward him through the bars. He takes the hand, smiles up at the Pahn Kahl who turns to him in alarm, and speaks the words of every Returned's one given gift. *My life to yours. My Breath become yours.*
In the black hallway Denth wounds Vasher in the leg, drops him, kicks him into a wall and pins his hand under a boot with a sword raised. *You think I should just go back to the way I was before?* he spits. *The happy, friendly man everyone loved? That man saw and did terrible things. I've tried. The darkness — it's inside. I can't escape it.* Vasher whispers that he knows the Commands; he can take all of it from him if he wishes. Denth stands a long moment, lowered sword, and then shakes his head. *No. I don't deserve that. Neither of us do. Goodbye, Vasher.*
He raises his blade. And Vasher reaches up, touches his leg, and gives him fifty Breaths — *my life to yours, my Breath become yours.* The unwelcome rush of pleasure convulses him, drops him to his knees — and in that second Vasher tears the dagger from a corpse beside him and slashes his throat. Denth's hair runs black, blond, angry red, and stops on white. Old and new Breath together vanish as he dies. *Nobody ever expects it,* Vasher whispers. *Breath is worth a fortune. To put it into someone, then kill them, is to lose more wealth than most men will ever know.* *You wanted to know how I killed Arsteel. Well, now you do.*
Bluefingers picks up his knife. *The least I can do is kill you myself, rather than let the Lifeless do it.* When she refuses to die tied to a rock he has the Lifeless hold her standing instead. *Please,* she whispers, numb. He raises the dagger — and the building begins to shake. The black stone of the floor turns white in a wave like sunlight breaking across the land, walls and ceiling all bleached after it. The priests step away from the stones; one hops onto a rug to keep from touching them. The whites of Bluefingers's eyes catch the light and refract it like a prism. The whole room bursts into colour. The doors explode inward and a churning tide of Awakened tapestries, carpets and silks pours through — *like the countless tentacles of an enraged sea leviathan* — slapping the Lifeless aside, snatching the false priests into the air, a violet ribbon snapping around Bluefingers's arm.
The God King walks in at the heart of it: black-haired, pale, youthful in appearance and yet of great age. He raises a hand and speaks aloud, in a clear deep voice, for the first time in his life. *You will stop.* Bluefingers freezes. The dagger slips from his stunned fingers as an Awakened carpet drags him away. The cloths lift him across the room beside her; a pair of small silken handkerchiefs slide around her wrists and untie the ropes with ease. She falls into his arms and weeps.