Are spren visible on Roshar because Cultivation is present?
Cultivation has a lot to do with the spren but the spren-- would-- it's hard to separate them, but some spren did exist before Cultivation arrived.
Was there any specific reason why you chose to not have men not be able to read in [Roshar]?
Yes, it relates back to the origin of where the safehand comes from and things like this.
How did Hoid and whoever he's sending the letters to deliver the letters?
RAFO.
Are there lifeforms that are native to the Spiritual Realm like the spren are native to the Cognitive Realm?
Yes, but they're not what you're thinking.
Are there factions in the Spiritual Realm? Like there are different stories about the Tranquiline Halls and the Iridescent Tomes.
Yes... there are actual factions but they're not what you're thinking of.
Are the Unmade actually spren as Taravangian thinks they are?
As far as anyone knows. I'm not going to answer other than that.
Given that Investiture is Investiture, would there be potential Investiture of like, kandra to Parshendi using Hemalurgic spikes?
Hemalurgic spikes can be used on any planet.
Would it be potential for Parshendi to develop a form using the spikes?
Wow, that would be a really weird hack of the magic system that would be theoretically possible. But that's a really weird one. I had never even considered that one. Parshendi adopting other Investiture could happen, the spikes is not one I've considered.
If after speaking the Third Ideal, Kaladin were to betray his oaths, would Syl turn into a Shardblade?
Yes.
Is there any significance to Adolin's mother's chain being missing?
Only to him.
Dalinar, the Blackthorn, are we going to figure out why he's called that?
You will eventually see flashbacks from Dalinar in a later book, which will add some information to that.
How do safepouches work?
Imagine an envelope that you can button closed.
What's with the black stone that the king gives Szeth?
It holds a secret that will be revealed in future books. I'd tell ya but they're recording me right here, so I can't tell you otherwise it gets out on the internet!
Szeth in the prologue of book one says he can't heal from a Shardblade wound, but Kaladin can. What is the distinction there?
You should be looking to see if you can find other distinctions between what Szeth says and what happens to Kaladin, because there's three or four big inconsistencies.
*inaudible*
You can usually- in some cases- use the magic of one world to power the magic of another world.
How many orders have we seen so far? I know there're the four identified at the end.
You've seen Jasnah's, so that's the fifth one. You've seen Lift which gets you to six. You've seen Ym.
Do we have another worldhopper potentially, with the epilogue?
There is some interesting things happening there. Good question!
In Shallan, in the beginning and middle of the book it's 10 heartbeats, and in the end of the book it's none...?
The 10 heartbeats is required to revive a dead Shardblade.
But he wasn't dead the whole time.
He wasn't. But perception-- all magic systems in the Cosmere are based on perception-what you think you can do. For instance, Kaladin can't get healed because he sees himself as having a wounded forehead with the scars and that can't vanish because his perception is in the way.
So... that's "[Aon] Ire"...
Yes, it is.
...and that's the symbol for Ire in Secret History.
Yes.
I was wondering if-- Is this just an in-world depiction of an out-world symbol, or does this actually have some kind of metalurgic value?
Isaac?
Yes.
<I may> refer to Sir Isaac.
Alright, thank you very much.
So the question is...
Okay.
So this is the symbol for "[Aon] Ire".
Mhm.
And this is the symbol in Secret History for the part called "Ire". And what I'm wondering is... Is this just an in-world representation of an off-world symbol, or is there some kind of metalurgic... in-world meaning to the symbol outside of it. They're just too close to be coincidence.
There is a... Obviously there's a relation between the two. I would say that, as far as we know, there is no <metalurgic> connection.
So as far as we know there is no metalurgic connection, but that could change in a future book. Potentially. Or not. That's all you got for me?
Um... I'm trying to figure out what I should say <about it>. And I think... The first thing is obviously they aren't on the planet that they ought to be on.
Obviously. I mean, not even in the Realm that they ought to be in.
Right. And so... It's more symbolic of "this is not in the Realm that it ought to be, but it's taking on attributes of the Realm that it's in."
So the Realm that it's in is Shadesmar. But it's more near the Scadrial...
It's the Scadrial edge of Shadesmar.
And so it's taking on attributes of that area that it's not supposed to be in but it is in.
Right.
Okay.
There may or may not be intersignificance *inaudible*.
I will pay attention to that.
Pay attention. We may-- we may do something with that. It may just be a fun little thing.
A fun little thing just there, right. So for now it's at least an interesting in-world representation of an off-world thing, but it might at some day be *inaudible*. Cool!
Would you consider yourself a Worldsinger?
Potentially, yes.
Does Nightblood act as an Honorblade?
RAFO.
Do you have an adviser for the science?
I usually run things by my editor who's very big into science, but mostly we go find an expert and have him read. The thing about it is, I have to hand wave a lot of things. Like the laws of thermodynamics, I can't, you know.. There are quantum physics in here. I'm trying to handwave as little as possible but we are breaking fundamental laws of physics, but even in terms of things like the laws of conservation. Energy is being conserved, but there's a supernatural source.
What Bluefingers Knows
Siri meets with Bluefingers, who surprises her in the bath yet again. In this little exchange, Bluefingers is being very careful, as he doesn't want to let on how much he knows. As well as Siri is learning to deal with court, she has nothing on Bluefingers, who has spent his entire life there—and who was trained by a Pahn Kahl steward before him. He has been planning his coup for a long time and was actually very frustrated when Vahr started his little rebellion—drawing eyes toward the Pahn Kahl. It was partially due to Bluefingers's manipulations and information leaks to the Returned that Vahr was captured in the first place.
Here, he lets Siri think he doesn't know that the God King is mute (he does know, and has known for most of his life) and that he is worried about the replacement of the Pahn Kahl servants. (That would be a setback, but not really the main problem.) What he wants most to do is drive a spike between Siri and the priests, and he's succeeding gloriously. He almost leaped for joy when Siri offered her little "You get the God King and me out of the palace" offer. It makes his job a lot easier if/when he decides to assassinate the God King himself.
Siri Is Confronted by Blushweaver
This is one of those little scenes you put into a book that isn't foreshadowing anything specific. I don't mind if people home in on this confrontation and worry that Blushweaver will take action against Siri, but I don't go there with the book. Blushweaver here is just jealous. She knows enough to recognize that in herself, however, and won't let it push her much farther than her little warning here.
I like what this shows about Blushweaver's character, and I like that it illustrates how she sees Lightsong. Yes, she's in love with him. Quite deeply, in fact. She brought him into her plots and schemes here partially because she trusts him, and partially because she wanted to show off for him—and perhaps finally convince him to accept her as a lover.
Siri Watches the Priests
I took a bit of a risk here, having a little scene where Siri admits that all of the troubles and problems in Hallandren excite her. I hope this doesn't seem out of character; I think I foreshadowed well that she'd react this way. Back in Idris, she was always making trouble, partially (even though she wouldn't admit it) because she found it exciting. I think that's common for those who end up in trouble a lot of the time.
Here, what she feels is that same sense—only a more mature version. She's excited by politics, by being in the middle of things, by having a chance to change the future of the city. I think this is a valuable attribute for one in her position, as long as it isn't taken too far. By having Vivenna constantly frustrated by her situation and Siri thrilled by hers, I wanted to show a contrast and have the reader come to the same conclusion Siri does in this scene: that Vivenna wouldn't have made a very good queen to the God King. She'd have made the expected queen, and would have done what everyone anticipated her doing. But she would have let herself be a martyr the entire time, which would have been a self-centered way of approaching her duty.
Anyway, as I've said before, I wasn't intending this to be a book to parallel the state of the United States and the war in Iraq. It just kind of came out as it has, and I think the main reason is one of pulling a reversal upon myself. You see, Mistborn was a book about a bloody revolution instigated by the protagonists. We don't see a lot of the death it caused, and fortunately much of the bloodshed was averted by a timely speech given by a certain young nobleman, but the fact remains that I wrote about overthrowing a government.
That seems to be a popular topic for novels. And anytime I notice that something is popular in the genre, I start wondering if I could write a book about the opposite. In this case, I began thinking of a book where the protagonists were trying to stop a war instead of start one. Where they wanted to stabilize the government instead of destabilize it. The opposite story of Mistborn, in some ways.
I had the name of the book, Warbreaker, long before I even knew who the Warbreaker would be or what the rest of the book would be about. I'm glad we were able to keep it, though my editor complained just a tad that he thought it didn't indicate the right sense of epic fantasy for the book.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Lightsong and Blushweaver Watch the Priests in the Arena
I'm not sure why, honestly, but this discussion of Blushweaver trying to prove that God exists through the use of her breasts is one of my favorite in the book. Perhaps that's because it exemplifies the way that she and Lightsong look at the word.
Vasher Takes Vivenna Captive
Now things are finally starting to move! My books, I know, can be kind of slow sometimes. That comes from the fact that I, myself, like to read books that are kind of slow. These two chapters were very important ones. Vivenna admitted something very important about herself, then in a way took the wrong sort of responsibility for her life. Siri realized something about herself, then took the right sort of responsibility for her life. A little bit of reversal going on, as the two sisters live their parallel—yet so different—lives in T'Telir.
But it was certainly time for a shake-up. The next Vivenna chapters turn a lot of things on their heads.
Vivenna Agrees to Learn Awakening
This has been a long time coming. Sorry to make you wait; in some of my books, I like to use a lot of magic from the start. In others, I like to build out the setting first, letting the characters learn and explore more slowly.
I've long wanted to call a magic system "Awakening," by the way. I tried it out originally in The Way of Kings as the name for the transformation-based magic system in that book. But it never worked. You didn't really "awaken" things. I was just using the term because it sounded good.
So I put it back in the file to be recycled someday. As I began to plan this book, I developed a magic system that could be called Awakening. Bringing objects to life seems to fit that just perfectly. So yes, the word came first—though I'm not sure how much I grew the magic system around that one word, or if I was feeling I wanted to do a "bring objects to life" magic system and realized I could use that great name I'd come up with earlier.
Vivenna Admits the Real Reason She Came to Hallandren
I've been pushing toward this for a long time in the narrative. Vivenna didn't come to Hallandren to save her sister—that's a front. That's what she told herself. But the real reasons are more deep, more personal, and less noble. She had to come because of how much of her life had been focused on the city. Beyond that, she came because of her hatred of Hallandren. She wanted to find ways to hurt it for what it had done to her.
It was partially her pride. She was the one who was supposed to deal with Hallandren. Her pride wouldn't let her stay away, wouldn't let Siri do the job that Vivenna was certain she could do better.
She has kept her hatred in check quite well, but it's always been there, driving her. I hope my readers always thought that coming to save Siri was a flimsy reason for Vivenna to come to T'Telir. The term love/hate relationship has become a cliché, but I honestly think there is some real psychology to it, and I feel that I explained one aspect of it here, for Vivenna.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vivenna and the Mercenaries Wait in the Safe House after the Lifeless Attack on the Slumlords
Why does Jewels bother sewing up Clod? Why fix Lifeless at all? Denth's answer is a fairly good one, but it could use some more explanation.
You see, when one makes a Lifeless, the reason the Breath stays and won't come back is because the body of a recently deceased person is too "sticky" for Breaths. One Breath attaches to it, and because the body so clearly remembers being alive, it can use that Breath to power it. (Assuming you have the right Commands and can picture them correctly in your head when you make the Lifeless.)
However, the more the Lifeless is damaged, the less like the shape of a living person it is, and the more difficult it is for the Breath to keep that body going. Powering a body with only one Breath is hard—it requires the body to work mostly on its own. When you power a cloak or something like that, the Breaths need to provide a lot of energy, since there's no real muscles to use or skeletal structure to rely on.
So the more wounded a Lifeless becomes, the less well its Breath can keep it going. Eventually you'll need to stick a second Breath into it, then a third, all the way up until that Lifeless is nothing more than a bunch of bones you've Awakened. At that point, you might as well be using sticks or cloth.
I wasn't sure if I wanted a map of the world in the front of this book or not. The problem is, if I give a world map, I risk doing it wrong. It takes a very specific set of geographic requirements for a rain forest to work, and what I wanted here was a kind of rain forest valley, irregular and out of place in the world. In the abstract, that can work—but the more details I pin down in the map, the less likely it is to be believable.
Hoid the Storyteller Tells Us the History of Hallandren
This whole scene came about because I wanted an interesting way to delve into the history. Siri needed to hear it, and I felt that many readers would want to know it. However, that threatened to put me into the realm of the dreaded infodump.
And so, I brought in the big guns. This cameo is so obvious (or, at least, someday it will be) that I almost didn't use the name Hoid for the character, as I felt it would be too obvious. The first draft had him using another of his favorite pseudonyms. However, in the end, I decided that too many people would be confused (or at least even more confused) if I didn't use the same name. So here it is. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about . . . well, let's just say that there's a lot more to this random appearance than you might think.
Anyway, I love this storytelling method, and I worry that Hoid here steals the show. However, he's very good at what he does, and I think it makes for a very engaging scene that gets us the information we need without boring us out of our skulls.
Is everything he says here true? No. There are some approximations and some guesses. However, all things considered, it's pretty accurate. All of the large bits are true.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Siri Lies in Bed and Decides to Take Charge
Reading through this scene again, I feel like it needs a bit of a trim. Ah well. There are always going to be sections like that that make it through.
I felt that there needed to be a scene where Siri finally stopped looking toward the past and berating herself for not being more like Vivenna. For her to step forward and become the woman she must be, she needed to do it of her own choice, with her own motivations. She needed this chance.
Sometimes in writing classes or in books on telling stories, they'll mention a moment somewhere in act two where the character decides to take charge. I always dislike explanations like that, since I think it's too easy for newer writers to look at such explanations as an item on a checklist that you have to do. I never use things like that. I don't think, "This is act two, so the characters need to do X." The tendency to follow a formula like that is part of what bothers me about the screenwriting profession. It seems like if you always follow the rules, there's never any spontaneity in a book.
Still, those guidelines and suggestions are used by a lot of people who tell good stories, so I guess you use what works for you.
The City Guard Attacks
Some of you may be wondering whose plot led to this attack by the city guard on the meeting.
Well, it's complicated. The city watch—worried about the upswing in crime and the political tension lately—has grown more aggressive. They know that someone snuck into the palace of Mercystar herself, threatening one of their goddesses. The watch captain is making a play for a promotion and favor, and is looking to score a major victory to look very good in front of the Returned. He got a tip that three of the most important slumlords—whom he's been afraid to attack up until now, fearing to commit his guards to action—will be meeting together. He doesn't even know about Vivenna.
But he did authorize his Lifeless (the city guard has a stock of about fifty that can be used at their discretion) to use deadly force. The Commands weren't quite specific enough, unfortunately.
Beyond that, Bluefingers has managed—by sneaking through the tunnels that Vasher discovered—to get his forces to Command Break some of the Lifeless in the compound, then insert hidden Commands into them alongside their existing ones. In this case, he wanted the Idrians to see the Lifeless and the city watch cause a slaughter among their people. So he seeded some of the Lifeless with Commands to attack and kill if they were shown aggression by Idrians.
He didn't know when the slaughter would happen; he doesn't have enough control over events in order to do that. His little Lifeless bombs just happened to go off here, when the Idrians started to resist. Since the regular soldiers—and even the Lifeless not under Bluefingers's Commands—overreacted once blood began to be shed, everything went crazy from there.
Denth wasn't in on this plan, and Bluefingers never told him that he was behind it. In the end, the whole battle turned into a major embarrassment for the city guard, though they did capture one of the slumlords. He was held until after the events of the book, then eventually released.
Anyway, that's a tangent. Meeting with these men was a mistake, something that Vivenna realizes partway through the meeting. There is little she can gain from them—and that which she could gain she's not prepared to ask for. She should have come with more of a plan. Instead, she did what she's done for most of the book—that is, pretend that she is in charge and in control, while in fact she's just floating along with whatever comes at her.
I think this is the big thing Vivenna has to realize in the book. She has never had a good plan of how to deal with things in T'Telir. Unfortunately, I don't think she can learn until she falls a bit.
Vivenna Meets with the Slumlords
When I write a scene like this, I am never quite certain how much time I want to spend distinguishing the side characters who make an appearance. (Another scene like this is the one where Lightsong plays the game with the three other gods.) Here, we're introduced to three different slumlords. They all have distinct personalities and different ways of looking at how Vivenna can help them. However, how much time do I spend explaining them and making them have an impact? It's a tough line to walk. I don't want to bog the scene down and spend a lot of time on characters you'll never see again, but I also don't want the scene to feel ambiguous or lacking precision because you can't imagine the slumlords.
I suspect that most readers won't care about telling the difference between the three, so I don't dwell on it—but I try to give hints that will help those who want to visualize the scene exactly.
Chapter Thirty-One
Vivenna Visits the Idrian Slums
Vivenna probably should have expected what she would find here. She knows that the slumlords, who are Idrians, run whorehouses and illegal fighting leagues. However, she deluded herself into assuming that they employ Hallandren whores or that the fights aren't all that bad.
I think this would be a hard thing to come to grips with. It's happened repeatedly throughout history—a poorer segment travels to a new country and becomes part of the lower, working class. In Korea, they were always complaining about people from Burma coming in and stealing their jobs. I remember hearing the Japanese saying the same thing about Koreans. I've heard Americans complain about all three. Things like this have far less to do with culture or race and far more to do with relative economic standing and fluency with the language/culture.
Knowing it happens, however, wouldn't make it any easier to find your own people in such a state, I think.
Notice that the Idrians here often wear dark clothing. This is partially to hold to their old ways of avoiding colors, but they tend to wear clothes that are black and dark instead of light. (Though there are some who follow the more traditional way.) However, by wearing these dark colors, they completely defeat the original stated purpose of dull clothing—that of removing color to keep Awakeners from using their art.
Some of Blushweaver's sparring here should give you a hint that she's far from the shallow egotist she pretends to be. In a lot of ways, she and Lightsong are perfectly matched, and I imagine this being the reason they ended up spending so much time together. They both have an extreme persona that is almost a parody of the other gods, and for both of them, that persona is but a sliver of who they really are. Blushweaver is more conniving, Lightsong more noble, when you strip everything else away. But they understand each other in a way that I think few people do.
Lightsong and Blushweaver Visit Hopefinder
I wanted to show some Returned of different ages; I think it's important for people to realize that you can be any age when you Return. There are children, babies, grandmothers, and people in their middle years who Return.
Hopefinder is the youngest person at court currently, though there are a couple of other gods who Returned when they were in their teens. It's hard to tell them from the other gods now, however. (And often, when a god Returns in their middle years, their body transforms to be much more youthful. Not always; it depends on the god.)
Chapter Thirty
Lightsong Tries Pottery
It's been a while since one of the gods tried something like this. Lightsong isn't the first, of course, to wonder at his old life and realize that some of his skills and abilities came with him to his new one. But he's the first of this generation of gods who has taken any interest in it.
His father was actually a potter, if you're interested in knowing. As for why he knows nautical terms and mathematics, I'm afraid you'll have to wait on that. They come up eventually.
The juggling, though . . . well, that'll just have to remain a mystery.
The Pahn Kahl Religion
In the Siri section, she mentions the Pahn Kahl religion, but she doesn't know what it is. This happens numerous times in the book, people getting confused about whether the Pahn Kahl are just Hallandren or being unable to describe their religion.
If you're curious, the Pahn Kahl are nature worshippers who focus on the storms of the Inner Sea as a manifestation of their unity of five gods. They believe that all Returned are men who deny the power of the gods and are forbidden entrance into heaven, yet are otherwise just men and not sinners worthy of hell—so they're given a chance to come back to have another try at life, to try to find belief this time.
Anyway, the purpose of having people so confused about the Pahn Kahl was to try to make readers vague about them in the same way. In this case, I want the reader to feel that the Pahn Kahl are unimportant, like the characters do, which is exactly the reason why the Pahn Kahl are so annoyed in the first place. If Hallandren didn't take them for granted so much, there's a good chance they wouldn't be so inclined to rebel.
Vivenna and Denth Visit the Corpses in the D'Denir Garden
That these deaths happened in this place is a coincidence. Yes, Vasher killed these men because he knew they were connected with Denth. However, he didn't do it in the garden because that was where Vivenna had been the day before. That just happened. (The garden is a popular meeting place after hours for clandestine operations. All Vasher had to do was throw in Nightblood and let him do what he does. To Vasher, that's often all the justification he needs. If the sword can make them kill each other, then they were guilty.)
It was important to have this scene here, however, to reinforce the tension between Denth and Vasher. I also wanted a good chance for Vasher to watch Vivenna. She notices him, but doesn't point him out to Denth—she's too afraid of Denth making a scene, and she just wants to get away from Vasher.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Siri and Susebron Discuss Mountains
One of the things I like about having wildly different plots and viewpoints put into one book is that I can use the viewpoints for different things. In the case of this section of the book, we've got death and tension in Vivenna's plot, and we have soul-searching and mystery in Lightsong's plot. Amid this I was able to sprinkle Siri scenes that are more relaxed, with her and the God King talking and falling in love. The scenes add a nice balance to the book.
I made Susebron get better at spelling quite quickly—this is only our second scene with him writing on his board, but already the spelling errors are gone. There is some small justification of this—he's able to use the artisan's script, and he's very clever; besides, the Hallandren alphabet is phonetic. But it still probably happens too quickly.
Having to slog through dialect is just too distracting for readers, however. I wanted to do it once to show his innocence, but I wanted to get past it quickly—as quickly as possible—so that it wouldn't distract from the story. I don't want Susebron to come off as too childlike; I think that would ruin the romance.
All in all, I think that these chapters are some of the most sensual ones I've ever written. I always think that hinting and reserving will always be better than over-the-top romance. The fact that the two of them are forbidden sex because of the danger of having a child, mixed with some of the conversations they have about beauty and their separate lives, makes a very nice tension that I'm pleased to have managed to work in.
Jewels and Parlin Chat and Laugh
Vivenna isn't in love with Parlin. She has affection for him, but it's the affection one might have for a younger brother. That's all she's ever felt for someone so far, however, as she's never given herself a chance for romance in her life. She's always stamped it out. She was going to marry the God King. No room for childish things like love for her. (That will bite her eventually, of course. In a later book, I'm afraid.)
Her affection for Parlin, however, makes her possessive of him. He's her best tie back to the life she left, and she's always kind of seen him as hers. So you can probably see why she might be annoyed to see him spend time with Jewels.
Denth is right. Jewels might be amused by Parlin, but she's not interested in him romantically. She has other ties, which I believe I discussed in a previous annotation.
Vivenna and the Mercenaries Meet the Forgers in the D'Denir Garden
This particular plan, as Vivenna says, was her idea. Denth goes along with it, obtaining the forgeries that (falsely) prove that priests have been extorting Idris. However, he doesn't plan to let them get out.
He knew that turning down this idea from Vivenna would either annoy her or even make her suspicious. He has to let her feel that she's in control; that way he can remain in control himself and get her to the meetings he wants. Unfortunately for him, that means letting her do this, creating fake documents that could hurt the war effort.
After she vanishes, he cancels the project immediately, which is why the papers never end up materializing.
Oh, and if you're wondering, she got the letter from her father from Lemex's stash. Some people asked about this.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vivenna Drinks Juice at an Outdoor Restaurant and Plans the Meeting with the Idrian Leaders in the City
Here we have Vivenna showing off her end of the reversal quite well. This is one of the few places where I have a character point out the reversal taking place. Vivenna has learned to blend into Hallandren—she's learned not to judge quite so much. She's still not where she needs to be, but the transformation is happening.
The conversation she has with Denth, where he discusses every man seeing himself as a hero in his own story, is a kind of subtheme for this book. In this novel, everyone does think they're doing what's best. The only exception to that is, perhaps, Denth himself—which makes the conversation particularly poignant.
This is one of the very first conversations I imagined for this book, as I knew it would be very important to a later one, where Vivenna talks to Vasher. And that particular conversation might just have been the first I came up with.
The toughest thing to balance about Lightsong was how genuine to make his sense of indolence. His discussion with Siri here is probably the most candid he ever gets in the book in regard to the fact that, in part, he's just putting on a show with all of his humor and remarks. They're intended to distract, and are also a subtle commentary on what he thinks of the other gods and the way they're all treated.
The problem is, unless he really is somewhat like he pretends to be, it wouldn't work at all. His advice here to Siri is based on his perception of the world.
When he first Returned, his initial inclination was to act like this. (I believe he brings that out later in the book.) However, after meeting Calmseer and having a relationship with her (it wasn't love, not in the traditional sense; more of a sincere mutual respect that turned physical), he spent a lot of time trying to be the god who everyone expected him to be. He failed miserably, and his people were dissatisfied with him. He blames his failure mostly on the other gods, who mocked him for turning into a hypocrite.
So he returned to being Lightsong the indolent, and he sharpened his wit against the others and let loose with as much vengeance as he could muster. The others weren't offended, however—they just took it as natural that he act that way. We find him several years after that in this book, where he's just given up on being able to change things.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bluefingers Avoids Siri, So She Goes to Find Lightsong
I considered having the men performing the athletics competitions in the court be naked. After all, there's been so much female nudity in the book so far that it would only be fair to balance it out. . . .
I decided it would be gratuitous. Just because the Greeks competed in the nude doesn't mean that it would naturally happen everywhere else. Still, thinking of how much it would embarrass Siri almost made me put it in.
Lightsong Inspects the Murder Scene Again
The interesting thing about this scene is that it reveals almost nothing about what happened. At least, it doesn't reveal anything to the readers.
However, it reveals a whole lot about Lightsong as a character. I waited until he'd been established before starting to bring up questions like the ones in this chapter, where I begin to dig deeply into who he was before he died. In a way, he's not investigating the murder so much as he is investigating himself—and that's why the scene works, even though we know the information about the murders he reveals. (Though we don't know who that second person was. Unless you read the spoiler above, of course.)
Also, just so you know, the second person who snuck into the palace was Denth—tailing Vasher, trying to decide what he was up to. Bluefingers let Denth know that Vasher would try to enter, but warned him not to attack the man. Not while it could expose Denth and possibly Bluefingers.
Denth would have attacked anyway, if he'd decided he had a good opportunity. But he didn't, and he decided it was better to watch.
And yes, he'd hidden away his Breath so that Vasher couldn't sense him following.
