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Venli hikes through a barren highland valley by the azure light of Honor's Moon, one of five hundred stormform singers escorting Raboniel on a long approach to Urithiru. Her strike team was set down weeks ago by Heavenly Ones and left to cover the rest on foot — Windrunner patrols make the tower unsafe to approach by air, but a small ground force moving by night or under storms can reach its lower tunnels unseen. The valley is rugged: storm-snarled trees, rockbuds on the leeward slopes, blasted scars where the Everstorm has lashed the heights. Raboniel has traded her stately robes for travel leathers and sets a punishing pace, eager. They are only days out.

What Venli cannot stop watching is the new brand of Fused she has fallen in alongside: the makay-im, *Those Ones of the Depths*. Long-limbed and sinuous, their patterned skin on display through open-fronted robes, they move like sticks in a current — feet sunk past the ankles into solid stone, gliding while standing perfectly still, eyes a darker red than other Fused. She compares their glide to the shetel-im — Flowing Ones who slide as though every surface were slick — and decides this is something different and, to her, fascinating.

Raboniel notices the staring and falls in beside her. Venli attunes Anxiety; Timbre thrums worry. The ancient scholar is amused rather than angry: curiosity is a worthy Passion in a singer, she says, and praises Leshwi for naming a *child of traitors* her Voice. Then she lets slip that she has worked out Venli is also Leshwi's spy, and is pleased by the choice. Venli does not know how much further Raboniel has reasoned, and dares not ask.

The conversation turns into a lecture. There are not ten Surges, Raboniel tells her: there are nine. Adhesion is a tenth wrongly claimed by Honor alone. The true Surges draw from both Honor and Cultivation — Cultivation for life, Honor to make the Surge into natural law — and there is one brand of Fused per Surge. The makay-im wield Cohesion, the Surge of Axial Connection, the one that binds the smallest pieces of all things to one another; they intermingle their essence with the essences of other things, melding into rock that is mostly emptiness anyway. A Radiant divides attention between two Surges, Raboniel says; a Fused masters one. Humans leak Light like water through fingers; a Fused can contain Light and bask in it indefinitely. Even she — as a Regal — carries a small amount of Voidlight in her gemheart, too little to use actively but enough to inflame her emotions. Most Regals never know.

Venli thinks of the way Timbre has promised she will be able to move stone, shape it. She is not sure she agrees with Raboniel's preference, but she does feel envy at the way the Deepest Ones flow. She risks one more question: if the Surges are of Honor and Cultivation, why serve Odium? *A dangerous question,* Raboniel says to Derision — *you truly are the daughter of traitors* — and then answers it. Which would she rather worship: a god of plants who hides frightened in these mountains, a god of laws who knows only how to make a rock fall, or a god of *Passion* who understands her, feels as she feels, and rewards the worthy? Serve well, Raboniel promises, and the blessings of true knowledge and true life become available.

Venli hums Craving on the outside; her internal rhythm is the Lost. Raboniel is unlike any Fused she has met — none of the standard kinds of unhinged — and that careful, insightful patience frightens her more than ordinary cruelty would.

Raboniel moves on and Rothan takes her place. He is head of Leshwi's soldiers, a powerful stormform whose figure crackles with energy and red sparks — analogous in authority to Venli on the staff, and one of the troops Leshwi has given over to Raboniel for this incursion. The strike force pairs Leshwi's disciplined troops with the soldiers of the Pursuer — fearsome, proud, uniformed, harsh to the humans of Kholinar. Other Regals put Venli on edge, holding Voidspren in their gemhearts as she once did. Rothan warns her, to Derision, against bothering the Fused — most are not as lenient as Leshwi — and tells her flatly that because Leshwi values her, the rest of them do too. Then he walks off, expecting to be understood.

Venli thinks he would be a good ally and immediately rejects the thought as too dangerous. Recruitment is a problem for another time. For now she only has to stay alive. Within the week the column will reach Urithiru — and the real test will begin.