Warbreaker (Warbreaker #1)(212)

“Of course I am,” he said.

“Where did you get the Breath?” she asked. “The one a week you need to survive?”

“I carried them with me, on top of the one that makes me Returned. In a lot of ways, Returned aren’t quite what people think they are. They don’t automatically have hundreds or thousands of Breath.”

“But—”

“They’re of the Fifth Heightening,” Vasher said, interrupting her. “But they don’t get there by the number of Breaths, but by the quality. Returned have a single, powerful Breath. One that takes them all the way to the Fifth Heightening. It’s a divine Breath, you might say. But their body feeds on Breath, like . . .”

“The sword.”

Vasher nodded. “Nightblood only needs it when he’s drawn. Returned feed off their Breath once a week. So if you don’t give them one, they essentially eat themselves—devouring their one, single Breath. Killing them. However, if you give them extra Breath, on top of their single divine one, they’ll feed off those each week.”

“So the Hallandren gods could be fed more than one,” Vivenna said. “They could have a stock of Breaths, a buffer to keep them alive if one couldn’t be provided.”

Vasher nodded. “Wouldn’t make them as dependent on their religion to care for them, though.”

“That’s a cynical way of looking at it.”

He shrugged.

“So you’re going to burn up a Breath every week,” she said. “Reducing our stock?”

He nodded. “I used to have thousands of Breath. I ate all of those.”

“Thousands? But it would take you years and years to . . .” She trailed off. He’d been alive for over three hundred years. If he absorbed fifty Breaths a year, that was thousands of Breaths. “You’re an expensive guy to keep around,” she noted. “How do you keep yourself from looking like a Returned? And why don’t you die when you give away your Breaths?”

“Those are my secrets,” he said, not looking at her. “Though you should have figured out that Returned can change their forms.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve got Returned blood in you,” he said. “The royal line. Where do you think that ability to change your hair color comes from?”

“Does that mean I can change more than just my hair?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Takes time to learn. Go stroll around the Hallandren Court of Gods sometime, though. You’ll find that the gods look exactly as they think they should. The old ones look old, the heroic ones become strong, the ones who think a beautiful goddess should be well endowed become unnaturally voluptuous. It’s all about how they perceive themselves.”

And this is how you perceive yourself, Vasher? she thought, curious. As the scraggly man, rough and unkempt?

She said nothing of that; she just walked on, her life sense letting her feel the jungle around them. They’d recovered Vasher’s cloak, shirt, and trousers—the ones that Denth had originally taken from him. There had been enough Breath in those to split between the two of them and get them each to the Second Heightening. It wasn’t as much as she was used to, but it was a fair bit better than nothing.

“So where are we going, anyway?”

“Ever heard of Kuth and Huth?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “They were your main rivals in the Manywar.”

“Somebody’s trying to restore them,” he said. “A tyrant of some kind. He’s apparently recruited an old friend of mine.”

“Another one?” she asked.

He shrugged. “There were five of us. Me, Denth, Shashara, Arsteel, and Yesteel. It looks like Yesteel has resurfaced, finally.”

“He’s related to Arsteel?” Vivenna guessed.

“Brothers.”

“Great.”

“I know. He’s the one who originally figured out how to make ichor-alcohol. I hear rumors that he’s got a new form of it. More potent.”

“Even better.”

They walked in silence for a time longer.

I’m bored, Nightblood said. Pay attention to me. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk to me?

“Because you’re annoying,” Vasher snapped.

The sword huffed.

“What’s your real name?” Vivenna finally asked.

“My real name?” Vasher asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone calls you things. Peacegiver. Kalad. Vasher. Talaxin. Is that last one your real name, the name of the scholar?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t remember the time before I Returned.”

“Oh,” she said.

“When I came back, however, I did get a name,” he finally said. “The Cult of Returned—those who eventually founded the Hallandren Iridescent Tones—found me and kept me alive with Breaths. They gave me a name. I didn’t like it much. Didn’t seem to fit me.”

“Well?” she asked. “What was it?”

“Warbreaker the Peaceful,” he finally admitted.

She raised an eyebrow.

“What I can’t figure out,” he said, “is whether that was truly prophetic, or if I’m just trying to live up to it.”