POV: eshonai
Summary
EIGHT YEARS AGO. Eshonai turns Venli's topaz over in her fingers in the council chamber of the Five and attunes Tension. The stone glows wrong — orange instead of brown, the colour she associates with a warning-painted cremling — and through it she can almost make out the painspren Venli has trapped inside. Venli claims she learned the technique from the humans; her newfound bearing is more striking still. The self-indulgent younger sister has become someone confident enough to sit among the elders and hum to Victory while they pass her gemstone hand to hand.
Klade hopes the same trick can be used on a lifespren to choose when to take mateform and insists that warform, not being one of the old forms of power, is theirs by right. Varnali warns that warform is dangerous. Gangnah, foremost of the Five, frames the more urgent question: the humans have returned to their rebuilt trading post — now a stone fort with soldiers and scribes — and their king has sent a message proposing to formalise relations with the people he calls Parshendi. Should the listener families present themselves as a nation? Husal scorns the idea of crowning a ruler in imitation of humans. Eshonai, just back from her latest expedition, has unwelcome news: she circled the post and tried to find the humans' homeland, and found only empty plains, wild chulls and a distant herd of Ryshadium. She offers to take her maps to the other families and show them how small the listener world is compared to what lies beyond it. Venli laughs at the notion in Amusement; Gangnah dismisses the question to Appreciation and Eshonai is sent back out into the sun.
She walks the base of the city's old cracked wall to settle her nerves, suffering the attention of listeners who want to hear about her travels. From a watchpost she sees more figures than usual moving about on the Plains — other families positioning themselves, perhaps preparing an assault on the city to claim what they assume are human gifts and trade goods. She knows her family would do the same in their place. She attunes Determination: she will go to the others, show them how much world there is, and argue against fighting over broken cities when they could be building new ones together.
The mood shatters as she spots Jaxlim wandering distractedly along the base of the wall in a loose brown robe. Eshonai runs to her. Her mother knows her — eventually — but does not know how she got here and admits, attuning the Rhythm of the Lost, that this is not simple tiredness. The riddens of her life may be on her; she must make certain Venli learns the songs before the keeper-of-songs role slips entirely out of her grasp. Eshonai walks her home as gently as she can, thinking the cruel arithmetic of time: the same years that have finally let her see the world are taking everything from her mother.
Venli returns to the house with her topaz still glowing. The Five have agreed to attempt the new form and are taking volunteers; she will provide the trapping stones. Jaxlim asks about the songs again, and Venli — for once — has an answer that surprises Eshonai. Each form preserves a different way of thinking, she explains, and some are more resilient to physical and mental decay than workform. If Jaxlim were to take warform, the change itself might help her hold onto her mind. Jaxlim attunes Consideration, then Determination, and declares she will be the first volunteer; she trusts the elders will listen to her precisely because speaking for them to hear is her role.
Then she gives Venli the title that, until that day, she had assumed her younger daughter would inherit from her: she had thought being keeper of songs would be Venli's highest calling, and had not considered that Venli might invent a calling with more honour still. Keeper of forms.
Eshonai listens to Venli hum to Joy, and finds the beat off — faster, more violent than the rhythm should be. She tells herself it is jealousy and warns herself not to let it ruin the family. She listens harder. The beat does not settle.