Warbreaker (Warbreaker #1)(112)

“I don’t have to believe in you to understand you,” she said. “I’d say that those people who worship you are the ones who don’t understand. They can’t get close to you, see who you really are. They’re too focused on the aura and the divinity.”

He didn’t respond.

“And,” she said, “I’m not different just because I don’t believe in you. There are a lot of people in the palace who don’t believe. Bluefingers, some of the serving girls who wear brown, other scribes. They serve you just as reverently as the priests. I’m just . . . well, I’m an irreverent type. I didn’t really listen to my father or the monks back home, either. Maybe that’s what you need. Someone who would be willing to look beyond your godhood and just get to know you.”

He nodded slowly. That is comforting, he wrote. Though, it is very strange to be a god whose wife does not believe in him.

Wife, she thought. Sometimes that was tough to remember. “Well,” she said, “I should think it would do every man good to have a wife who isn’t as in awe of him as everyone else is. Somebody has to keep you humble.”

Humility is, I believe, somewhat opposite to godhood.

“Like sweetness?” she asked.

He chuckled. Yes, just like that. He put the board down. Then, hesitantly—a little frightened—he put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer as they looked out the window at the lights of a city that remained colorful, even at night.
* * *

BODIES. FOUR OF THEM. They all lay dead on the ground, blood an oddly dark color against the grass.

It was the day after Vivenna’s visit to the D’Denir garden to meet with the forgers. She was back again. Sunlight streamed down, hot upon her head and neck as she stood with the rest of the gawking crowd. The silent D’Denir waited in rows behind her, soldiers of stone who would never march. Only they had seen the four men die.

People chattered with hushed voices, waiting for the city guard to finish their inspection. Denth had brought Vivenna quickly, before the bodies could be cleared. He had done so at her request. Now she wished she’d never asked.

To her enhanced eyes, the colors of the blood on grass were powerfully distinct. Red and green. It made almost a violet in combination. She stared at the corpses, feeling an odd sense of disconnection. Color. So strange to see the colors of skin paled. She could tell the difference—the intrinsic difference—between skin that was alive and skin that was dead.

Dead skin was ten shades whiter than live skin. It was caused by blood seeping down and out of the veins. Almost like . . . like the blood was the color, drained out of its casks. The paint of a human life which had been carelessly spilled, leaving the canvas blank.

She looked away.

“You see it?” Denth said, at her side.

She nodded silently.

“You asked about him. Well, here’s what he does. This is why we’re so worried. Look at those wounds.”

She turned back. In the growing morning light, she could see something she’d missed before. The skin directly around the sword wounds had been completely drained of color. The wounds themselves had a dark black tinge to them. As if they had been infected with some terrible disease.

She turned back to Denth.

“Let’s go,” Denth said, leading her away from the crowd as the city Guards finally began to order people back, annoyed by the number of gawkers.

“Who were they?” she asked quietly.

Denth stared straight ahead. “A gang of thieves. Ones we’d worked with.”

“You think he might come for us?”

“I’m not sure,” Denth said. “He could probably find us if he wanted. I don’t know.”

Tonk Fah approached across the green as they passed through the D’Denir statues. “Jewels and Clod are on alert,” Tonk Fah said. “None of us see him anywhere.”

“What happened to the skin of those men?” Vivenna asked.

“It’s that sword of his,” Denth growled. “We have to find a way to deal with it, Tonks. We’re going to end up crossing him, eventually. I can feel it.”

“But what is the sword?” Vivenna asked. “And how did it drain the color from their skin?”

“We’ll have to steal the thing, Denth,” Tonk Fah said, rubbing his chin as Jewels and Clod filled in around them, making a protective pattern as they moved out into the human river of the street.

“Steal the sword?” Denth asked. “I’m not touching the thing! No, we have to make him use it. Draw it. He won’t be able to keep it out for long. After that, we’ll be able to take him easily. I’ll kill him myself.”

“He beat Arsteel,” Jewels said quietly.

Denth froze. “He did not beat Arsteel! Not in a duel, at least.”

“Vasher didn’t use the sword,” Jewels said. “There was no blackness to Arsteel’s wounds.”

“Then Vasher used a trick!” Denth said. “Ambush. Accomplices. Something. Vasher is no duelist.”

Vivenna let herself get pulled along, thinking of those bodies. Denth and the others had spoken of the deaths this Vasher was causing. She’d wanted to see them. Well, now she had. And it left her feeling disturbed. Unsettled. And . . .

She frowned, itching slightly.