“Only the femalens among your staff read?” Raboniel asked to Craving as they stood in the hallway outside the room with the crystal pillar. “I would have thought better of your instruction, Venli, considering how capable you are in other areas. Your staff shouldn’t follow foolish human customs.”

Venli’s staff of singers—the ones carefully recruited in Kholinar over the last year—had arrived in Urithiru via the Oathgate transfers early this morning. Raboniel had immediately put them to work. Nearby, the femalens were sorting through the boxes of notes and equipment the human queen had moved out into the hallway. Young human scribes were adding to that, repositioning boxes, making a general scene of chaos.

Venli’s staff, at Raboniel’s order, were doing their best to make sense of it—and to read through the pages and pages of notes to try to find important points to bring to Raboniel’s attention. They would soon take scholarform to help, but the task was still difficult. Venli had instructed them to do their best.

Today, Raboniel stood with her back to the blue shield, watching the confusion in the hallway and humming to herself.

Venli hummed to Indifference. “Ancient One,” she said, “my staff are good—but they are culturally Alethi. My own people, the listeners, would have happily taught them a better way—but the listeners were taken by Odium, in his wisdom.”

“Do you question Odium, Venli?” Raboniel said to Craving.

“I have been taught that Passion does a person credit, Ancient One,” Venli said. “And to wonder, to question, is a Passion.”

“Indeed. Yet there are many among the Fused who think such Passions should be denied to everyone but themselves. You might find Odium shockingly like one of us in this regard. Or perhaps instead we are like him.” She nodded toward the mess of human scribes and Venli’s staff, working in near-perpetual motion like a pile of cremlings feasting after the rain. “What do you think of this?”

“If I had to guess, the human queen seems to be trying to make a mess.”

“She’s creating ways to stall that won’t appear like purposeful interference,” Raboniel said to Ridicule, though she seemed more amused than angry. “She complains that she doesn’t have enough space, and constantly reshuffles these boxes to buy time. Also, I suspect she’s trying to establish a presence outside the room—even if just in this hallway—so that she has a better chance of putting her people where they can overhear what we’re saying. She seems to be getting more information than I expected; some of her people might be able to speak my language.”

“I find that difficult to believe, Lady of Wishes. From what I’ve been led to understand, it wasn’t but a year ago that they finally figured out how to read the Dawnchant.”

“Yes, curious,” Raboniel said, smiling and speaking to Craving. “Tell me, Venli. Why is it you serve so eagerly after knowing what Odium did to your people?”

Timbre pulsed in worry, but Venli had already prepared an answer. “I knew that only the very best among us would earn his favor and reward. Most were simply not worthy.”

Raboniel hummed softly, then nodded. She returned to her own work, studying the shield around the pillar. “I’m waiting on reports of the Pursuer’s sweep of the upper floors of the first tier. As well as news of his search for Radiants.”

“I will go immediately and ask, Ancient One,” Venli said, stepping away.

“Venli,” Raboniel said. “Many mortals in the past sought elevation to stand among the Fused. You should know that, after our initial elevation, he never again granted such a lofty gift to a mortal.”

“I … Thank you, Ancient One.” She hummed to Tribute and withdrew, picking her way through the increasingly cluttered hallway. Within her, Timbre pulsed to Amusement. She knew that Venli had no aspirations of becoming a Fused.

“Do not be so quick to laud me,” Venli whispered to the spren. “The person I was not so long ago would have been thrilled by the possibility of becoming immortal.”

Timbre’s pulses seemed skeptical. But she hadn’t known Venli during that time—and as well she hadn’t.

As Venli reached the end of the hallway, she was joined by Dul, the tall stormsetter who was in Venli’s inner group of singers. The ones she’d been promising, over the last year, that she would help escape the Fused.

Today Dul wore mediationform, with an open face and smooth, beautiful carapace. He had a mostly red skin pattern with tiny hints of black, like submerged rocks in a deep red sea. He fell into stride with Venli as they walked out into the chamber with the stairs. As far as she knew, this large open room—in the shape of a cylinder—was the sole way up from the basement. They marched up the stairs that wound around the outside, passing over a section of hastily rebuilt steps, until they were far enough from others that no one would be able to overhear them.

She quickly checked Shadesmar. That place was strange, with glowing light suffusing everything, but best she could tell, no Voidspren were watching them. Here, isolated on the steps, she felt reasonably safe chatting.

“Report,” she whispered.

“As you hoped,” he replied as they walked, “we have been able to arrange the supply dumps from Kholinar to our benefit. Alavah and Ron are covertly making packs of supplies that will be easy to grab and take if we need them.”

“Excellent,” Venli said.

“I don’t know how we’ll escape without being spotted,” Dul said. “Everyone is on edge in this place, and they have guards watching carefully outside for Alethi scouts.”

“Something is going to happen, Dul,” Venli said to Determination. “The humans will try to revolt, or an attack will come, or perhaps that captive queen will find a way to turn fabrials against the Fused.

“When that happens, whatever it is, we’re going to be ready to run. I was led here through the mountains, and I memorized the route. We can sneak through those valleys, hiding from the Heavenly Ones in the tree cover. There has to be some out-of-the-way location up here in these wilds where a few dozen people can lose themselves to the world.”

Dul paused on the steps, and hummed to Hope. He nearly seemed to have tears in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Venli asked, stopping beside him.

He hummed a little louder. “After all this time, I can taste it, Venli. An escape. A way out.”

“Be careful,” she said. “We will need some kind of ploy to convince everyone we died, so they don’t search for us. And we have to be very careful not to draw suspicion before that.”

“Understood,” he said, then hummed to Tension. “We’ve had a problem with Shumin, the new recruit.”

She hummed to Reprimand.

“She tried recruiting others,” Dul explained. “She’s been implying she knows someone planning to start a rebellion against the Fused.”

Venli hummed to Derision. She didn’t normally use Odium’s rhythms with her friends, but it fit the situation too well.

Dul sighed like a human. “It’s the same old problem, Venli. The people willing to listen to us are going to be a little unreliable—if they were fully capable or smart, they wouldn’t dare keep secrets from the Fused.”