POV: venli
Summary
Venli stands with Raboniel in the hallway outside the crystal-pillar chamber on the basement floor of Urithiru. Her Kholinar-trained staff of singers — assembled and shipped through the Oathgate at first light — pick through stacks of boxes that the captive human queen keeps reshuffling under cover of *not enough space.* Raboniel reads the chaos accurately: she is stalling, planting Alethi scribes within earshot, and very probably knows more of the Fused tongue than she lets on. Raboniel needles Venli for letting only the femalens among her staff learn to read, has them put into scholarform for the work, and asks pointedly why Venli still serves so eagerly after what Odium did to her people. Venli has her answer ready — that only the worthy among the listeners would have earned his favor — and Timbre, hidden inside her gemheart, pulses in worry.
Raboniel dismisses her to gather reports from the upper-floor sweeps and from the Pursuer's hunt for Radiants — but first leaves Venli with a small, deliberate warning: that after the first generation, Odium has never elevated another mortal to join the Fused. Timbre pulses Amusement at the implication. Venli quietly answers her own spren that the person she used to be would once have hungered for exactly that immortality.
On the wide cylindrical stairwell that climbs out of the basement she is joined by Dul, wearing mediationform today, his pattern a deep red with submerged flecks of black. He has been her chief lieutenant in the inner circle of singers she has been quietly recruiting through the long Kholinar occupation — those she has promised to lead out from under the Fused and into hiding. Far enough up the stairs to be unwatched in Shadesmar and the corridor both, they speak plainly. Alavah and Ron are quietly building grab-and-go packs from the Kholinar supply dumps. The escape will need a distraction — a human revolt, an Alethi strike, or the captive queen turning her fabrials against their captors — and a ploy convincing enough that no one bothers to come hunting for them. Venli has memorized the mountain route she was led in on; she means to use the valleys' tree cover to slip past the Heavenly Ones and find some unwatched corner of the wilds where a few dozen people might lose themselves.
Dul hums to Hope, almost in tears at the thought of an actual way out. He reports also that the new recruit Shumin has been hinting too loudly to others about a rebellion. Venli orders Shumin isolated on a menial task, kept out of trouble until they can decide what to do with her. They speak briefly of the desperate stand the humans almost made on these very stairs against Fused and Regals without Radiants — and Dul asks, hopefully, whether the Alethi might be the ones to help them. Venli turns the question back on him; once enslaved as a parshman, he has the better instincts. He attracts an angerspren as he remembers the single word with which he asked his old master for permission to marry Mazish, and the master's rage at being addressed at all. Before they part at the top of the stairs, Venli tells him to slip a few of their people onto the crews caring for the unconscious Knights Radiant — they should be ready to act if an opportunity comes.
Walking the corridors alone, Venli sinks into worry. She does not know whether she can deliver what she has promised; she is, after all, the listener who made a storm of every chance ever placed in her hands. Timbre pulses consoling things; for the first time, she asks to be told *why* Venli keeps insisting she is unworthy. Venli concedes that her spren is owed the answer, and begins to tell — quietly, in the corridor — about the day her trouble truly began: the day the humans visited the listeners a second time.