“You have three choices.” The general’s manacles clinked as he twisted his hands in them. “First, you can choose the sword. Now, that might be a clean death. A good beheading rarely hurts. Unfortunately, it won’t be a headsman who gets the chance with you. We’ll give the sword to the women you abused. Each gets a hack, one after another. How long it goes on will depend on them.”
“This is outrageous!” Sheler said. “I’m a lighteyes of the fifth dahn! I’m cousin to the highlord himself, and—”
“Second option,” the general said, “is the hammer. We break your legs and arms, then hang you from the cliff by the ocean. You might last until the storm that way, but it will be miserable.”
Sheler struggled to no avail. Captured by Herdazians. Their general wasn’t even a lighteyes!
The general twisted his hands, then pulled them apart. The manacles clinked to the ground. Nearby, several of his officers grinned, while others groaned. A scribe had tapped off the time, and gave an accounting of the seconds the escape had taken.
The general accepted the applause of several men, then thumped another—a loser in the betting—on his back. Sheler almost seemed forgotten for a moment. Finally, the general turned back to him. “I wouldn’t take the hammer, if I were you. But there’s a third option: the hog.”
“I demand the right of ransom!” Sheler said. “You must contact my highprince and accept payment based on my rank!”
“Ransom is for men caught in battle,” the general said. “Not bastards caught robbing and murdering civilians.”
“My homeland is under invasion!” Sheler shouted. “I was gathering resources so we might mount a resistance!”
“A resistance is not what we caught you mounting.” The general kicked at the manacles by his feet. “Choose one of the three options. I don’t have all day.”
Sheler licked his lips. How had he ended up in this situation? His homeland gone crazy, the parshmen rampaging, his men scattered by flying monsters? Now this? The dirty Herdazians obviously weren’t going to listen to reason. They …
Wait.
“Did you say hog?” Sheler asked.
“It lives down by the shore,” the Herdazian general said. “That’s your third option. We grease you, and you wrestle the hog. It’s fun for the men to watch. They need sport now and then.”
“And if I do this, you won’t kill me?”
“No, but this isn’t as easy as you think. I’ve tried it myself, so I can speak with authority.”
Crazy Herdazians. “I choose the hog.”
“As you wish.” The general picked up the manacles and handed them to his officer.
“Thought you’d fail these ones for sure,” the officer said. “The merchant claimed they’re from the best Thaylen locksmiths.”
“Doesn’t matter how good the lock is, Jerono,” the general said with a grin, “if the cuffs are loose.” What a ridiculous little man—too-wide smile, a flat nose, a missing tooth. Why, Highlord Amaram would have—
Sheler was jerked to his feet by the chains, then pulled through the camp of Herdazian soldiers on the Alethi border. There were more refugees here than actual fighting men! Give Sheler a single company, and he could rout this entire force.
His insufferable captors led him down an incline, past the cliffs and toward the shore. Soldiers and refugees alike gathered above, jeering and calling. Obviously, the Herdazian general was too frightened to actually kill an Alethi officer. So they would humiliate him by making him wrestle a pig. They’d have a good laugh, then send him away smarting.
Idiots. He’d come back with an army.
One man locked Sheler’s chain to a metal loop on the stones. Another approached with a pitcher of oil. They poured it over Sheler’s head; he sputtered as the liquid ran down his face. “What is that stench?”
Above, someone blew a horn.
“I’d say ‘good luck,’ boss,” the Herdazian soldier told Sheler as his companion ran off, “but I’ve got three marks on you not lasting a full minute. Still, who knows. When the general was chained down here, he got out in less.”
The ocean started to churn.
“Of course,” the soldier said, “the general likes this kind of thing. He’s a little weird.”
The soldier dashed back up the bank, leaving Sheler locked in place, doused in pungent oil, and gaping as an enormous claw broke the surface of the ocean.
Perhaps “the hog” was more of a nickname.
I-11. Her Reward
Venli’s little spren—whom she’d named Timbre—peeked around the room, looking in each corner and shadowed place, like she did each time Venli let her out of the pouch.
Days had passed since Venli had first arrived at Kholinar. And, as Rine had warned, this was her true labor. Venli now gave her presentation a dozen times each day, speaking to groups of singers brought out of the city for the purpose. She wasn’t allowed into Kholinar herself. They kept her sequestered in this stormshelter outside, which they called the hermitage.
Venli hummed to Spite as she leaned against the window, annoyed by the incarceration. Even the window had only been installed—cut by a Shardblade and set with thick stormshutters—after her repeated requests. The city outside called to her. Majestic walls, beautiful buildings. It reminded her of Narak … which, actually, her people hadn’t built. In living there, the listeners had profited from the labors of ancient humans, as modern humans had profited from the enslaved singers.
Timbre floated over to her, then hovered by the window, as if to sneak out and look around outside.
“No,” Venli said.
Timbre pulsed to Resolve, then inched forward in the air.
“Stay inside,” Venli said to Command. “They’re watching for spren like you. Descriptions of your kind, and others, have been spread all through the city.”
The little spren backed away, pulsing to Annoyance, before settling in the air beside Venli.
Venli rested her head on her arms. “I feel like a relic,” she whispered. “Already I seem like a cast-off ruin from a nearly forgotten day. Are you the reason I feel like that, suddenly? I only get this way when I let you out.”
Timbre pulsed to Peace. Upon hearing that, something stirred deep within Venli: the Voidspren that occupied her gemheart. That spren couldn’t think, not like Ulim or the higher Voidspren. It was a thing of emotions and animal instincts, but the bond with it granted Venli her form of power.
She started to wonder. So many of the Fused were obviously unhinged; perhaps their inordinately long lives had taken a toll on their psyches. Wouldn’t Odium need new leaders for his people? If she proved herself, could she claim a place among them?
New Fused. New … gods?
Eshonai had always worried about Venli’s thirst for power, and had cautioned her to control her ambitions. Even Demid, at times, had been worried for her. And now … and now they were all dead.
Timbre pulsed to Peace, then to Pleading, then back to Peace.
“I can’t,” Venli said to Mourning. “I can’t.”
Pleading. More insistent. The Rhythm of the Lost, of Remembrance, and then Pleading.