“You truly kept these for thousands of years?” he asked.

“No,” she admitted. “We found them. Not my parents. Their parents’ parents. In the ruins.”

“Ruins, you say?” he looked up sharply. “What ruins? Those cities the other guide mentioned?”

Eshonai cursed Klade softly for having mentioned the ten cities. Deciding not to clarify that she meant the ruins at the center of the Plains, she attuned Anxiety. The way he inspected her made her feel like she was a map that had been drawn wrong. “My people built cities,” she said. “Old parents of my people.”

“You don’t say…” he said. “Very curious. You remember those days then? You have records of them?”

“We have songs,” she said. “Many songs. Important songs. They talk of the forms we bore. The wars we fought. How we left the … I don’t know the word … the ones of old. Who ruled us. When the Neshua Kadal were fighting, with spren as companions, and had … had things … they could do…”

“Radiants?” he said, his voice growing softer. “Your people have stories about the Knights Radiant?”

“Yes, maybe?” she said. “I can’t words, yet. Of this.”

“Curious, curious.”

As she’d expected, the humans decided to return to the forest soon after their meal. They were frightened—all but the king. He spent the entire trip asking about the songs. She had plainly been mistaken when she’d assumed he didn’t care much about the listeners.

For from that moment on, he seemed very, very interested. He had his scholars interrogate them about songs, lore, and whether they knew of any other ruins. When the humans finally left for their lands several days later, King Gavilar gave Eshonai’s people a gift: several crates of modern weapons, made of fine steel. They were no replacement for the ancient weapons, but not all of her people had those. No family had enough to outfit all their warriors.

All Gavilar wanted in exchange was a promise: that when he returned in the near future, he wanted to find Eshonai’s people housed in one of the cities at the edge of the Plains. At that time, he said, he hoped to be able to hear from the keepers of songs in person.

In my fevered state, I worry I’m unable to focus on what is important.

—From Rhythm of War, page 3

Navani set to work organizing her scholars under the careful supervision of a large number of singer guards.

The situation left Navani with a delicate problem. She didn’t want to give away more than was absolutely necessary. But if she failed to make progress, Raboniel would eventually notice and take action.

For now, Navani set the scholars to doing some busywork. The singers kept her people enclosed in a single one of the two library rooms, so Navani had the wards and younger ardents begin cleaning the room. They gathered up old projects and boxes of notes, then carried them out to stack in the hallway. They needed to make space.

She assigned the more experienced scholars to do revision work: going back over projects and either checking calculations or drawing new sketches. Ardents brought out fresh ledgers to go over figures, while Rushu unrolled large schematics and set several younger women to measuring each and every line. This would take up several days, perhaps longer—and it was also quite a natural thing to do. Navani frequently ordered recalculations after an interruption. It restored the scholars to a proper mindset, and they sometimes found legitimate errors.

Soon enough, she had an orderly room full of calming sounds. Papers shuffling, pens writing, people quietly discussing. No creationspren or logicspren, as often attended exciting work. Hopefully the singers in the room wouldn’t realize that was odd.

Those singers were always underfoot, lingering close enough to overhear what Navani told her people. She’d grown accustomed to a clean workspace—giving her people enough freedom to innovate, but also enough careful corralling to keep them innovating in the proper direction. All of these guards undermined that effort, and Navani often caught her scholars glancing up and staring at some armed brute standing nearby.

At least most were merely common soldiers. Only one Fused—other than Raboniel—stayed near the scholars, and she wasn’t one of those unnerving ones who could meld with the rock. No, this was a Fused of Raboniel’s same type, a tall Fused with a topknot and a long face marbled white and red. The femalen sat on the floor, watching them, her eyes glazed over.

Navani kept covert watch over this Fused during the morning work. She had been told that many Fused were unhinged, and this one seemed to fit that description. She often stared off into nothingness, then giggled to herself. She would let her head flop from one side to the other. Why would Raboniel put this one here to watch them? Were there possibly so few sane Fused left that there was no other choice?

Navani leaned against the wall, touching her palms to the stone—where a vein of garnet ran almost imperceptibly along one line of strata—and pretended to watch as several young women carried boxes of papers out into the hallway.

You didn’t talk to me last night, the Sibling said.

“I was being watched,” Navani said under her breath. “They didn’t let me stay in my own rooms, but took me to a smaller one. We’ll need to talk here. You can hear me if I speak very softly like this?”

Yes.

“Can you see what Raboniel is doing?”

She had some workers set up a desk near the shield, where she is doing tests upon it to see if she can get through.

“Can she?”

I don’t know. This is the first time it has been deployed. But she doesn’t seem to realize you were the one who activated it. She explained to several others that she must have triggered some unknown fail-safe left by the ancient Radiants. She thinks that I must be dead after all this time, since the tower doesn’t work.

“Curious,” Navani said. “Why would she think that?”

The Midnight Mother told her. That Unmade who infected me for so many years, the one your Radiants frightened away? I remained hidden from her all that time, never fighting back, and so she thinks I died.

“All that time?” Navani asked. “How long?”

Centuries.

“Wasn’t that hard?”

No. Why? Centuries mean nothing to me. I do not age.

“Other spren act like time has meaning.”

Radiant spren, yes. Radiant spren put on a show, pretending as if they are male or female, malen or femalen, when they are neither. They think like humans because they want to be like humans.

I do not pretend. I am not human. I do not need to care about time. I do not need to look like you. I do not need to beg for your attention.

Navani cocked an eyebrow at that, considering that the Sibling had needed to beg for her help. She held her tongue. How to best use this advantage? What was the path to freedom? Navani liked to think that she could see patterns, that she could make order from chaos. There was a way out of this mess. She had to believe that.

Treat it like any other problem, Navani thought to herself. Approach it systematically, breaking it down into manageable pieces.

Last night, she’d decided on a few general courses of action. First, she had to maintain the ground she’d already obtained. That meant making certain the Sibling’s shield remained in place.