POV: venli
Summary
Venli walks the halls of Urithiru reaching for the Rhythm of Conceit and finding the Rhythm of Anxiety instead — a lie to Roshar, attuning an emotion she does not feel. Timbre pulses comfortingly, of the opinion that Venli cannot be blamed for what Ulim made of her ambitions. Venli knows better. Ulim only heightened what was already there, and there were stretches when he left her gemheart and she carried out the plans anyway. She walks head high, Rlain trailing behind her as a servant carrying a large crate so that anyone watching will see her treating him as one.
The tower feels darker now, Rlain says quietly — *ever since…* — and Venli hushes him. Every singer in the tower knows by now that Stormblessed fought in the well. The Fused have spread a tidy counter-story: he was a fraud using fabrials, and was killed during a cruel attack on innocent singer civilians. The story is too clumsy for Raboniel — it has the Pursuer's hand on it. The Pursuer's personal troops dominate the tower; there have already been half a dozen incidents of singers beating humans nearly to death. The place is a simmering cauldron. Venli needs to be ready to get her people out when it boils.
In the Radiant infirmary, Lirin and Hesina are caring for the unconscious — far better than her own staff was, Venli admits. Rlain sets the crate down and reveals a stack of map cases under decoy papers. While the queen was surrendering, he realised he had a day at most before the singers became organised enough to question him, and used it. A little black ash and water blended his tattoo into his pattern; the human map room had been burned out, but the information vault on the ground floor was still intact. He had walked through a checkpoint, stuffed everything he could into a sack, claimed to be on a search detail collecting human writing, and walked out.
Lirin thinks it was brave but worries the maps will amount to a mild inconvenience for the occupation. Rlain argues it may help Kaladin stay hidden. Venli reaches for what she has been hoping for: a map of the tunnel complex under the tower. Rlain finds one. She takes it reverently — she came in through those tunnels herself with Raboniel guiding, and could never retrace the maze on her own. *Didn't the enemy collapse those tunnels?* Lirin asks. *Yes,* she says, *but I might have a way around that.* She is already thinking: with her powers, could she tunnel through the stone itself, bypass Raboniel's workstation and the shield, and intersect the caverns below? Perhaps. The harder problem remains keeping the Fused from chasing them down once they are out.
Hesina tells Rlain he did more than anyone could have expected. He laughs it off — he had been stopped once and made a mistake giving the name of a Fused who turned out to keep no staff. Lirin suggests he could have locked himself in a cell and waited for the singers to liberate him. Rlain points out that every human in the tower knows him already as the *tame Parshendi your son keeps*; the ruse would not have lasted.
Venli talks alone with Lirin while he tends to the unconscious. He admits he is undecided about the maps; he would prefer to turn them in for favour with the Fused. Venli tells him plainly that what protects him is not hiding but Lady Leshwi's favour — without it, the Pursuer would kill them, and other Fused too if it served his tradition. Lirin grunts that her government has its idiocies as well, kneels by a Radiant to check her eyes, and asks Venli to fetch him water. She is halfway to the water station before she realises she has done what he said — *the man uses commanding in-charge tones to reinforce his own subservience* — and registers her own irritation. Timbre thrums approvingly. She gives the folded tunnel map to Jial, one of her loyalists, just before a knock sounds at the door.
The six water bearers who arrive every day come in with their poles and start the long work of giving broth and water to the Radiants. Lirin spots something on one of them and yanks the hair back from his forehead: ink. *What is that?* Venli asks. *Nothing, Brightness — just a little reminder,* the man says, pulling free. A female water carrier wears the same marking. *It's a shash glyph,* Lirin says. As soon as Venli knows it is writing, her powers translate it for her: *Dangerous.* The brand on the forehead of Kaladin Stormblessed.
*He gives them hope,* Venli says. *That hope is going to get them killed,* Lirin answers, lowering his voice — his son may have died resisting, and the example will provoke a massacre when others follow. Venli lets him go. Timbre thrums to a rhythm Venli is certain she has never heard before. *Maybe,* she says, *they simply need something to keep them going. A symbol they can trust when they can't trust their own hearts.* Lirin turns away from the water carriers without answering, and goes back to his patients.