Make no mistake. I also sleep, said the Gatekeeper. In fact, it could be that you and all these dead, and even the Earthfather himself, are part of my dream.

The voice laughed then, and the world shook.

Go now—return to the land of the living, if you can. You will not receive such a gift a second time.

And then the great hall of madness, of sleep and earth and the deep song of the globe itself, was gone. The Gatekeeper was gone. Nothing remained in all the cosmos but Ferras Vansen, it seemed, standing in sudden alarm on an achingly narrow arc that stretched above a massive nothingness, a white stripe over an abyss. He could not see an end to the slender bridge in either direction, and the span was scarcely as wide as his own shoulders. There was nowhere to go but forward into the unknown or backward into quiet, undemanding death. His father’s shade was gone, left behind in the sunset city to face its own fate, and the living could mean nothing to Pedar Vansen anymore. His son had not been able either to save the old man or forgive him, but something had changed and his heart was lighter than it had been.

“I am Ferras Vansen,��� he called as loudly as he could. There was no reply, not even an echo, but that did not matter: he was not speaking to anyone except himself. “I am a soldier. I love Briony Eddon, although she can never love me. I’m tired of being lost and I’m tired of dying, so I’m going to try something different this time.”

He began to walk.

40

Offered to Nushash

Crooked labored long for Moisture’s children, shaping their kingdom in all its greatest glory, making things of great craft for those who had destroyed his family—palaces and towers, Thunder’s irresistible hammer, Harvest’s basket that was always full, the deadly spear of Black Earth, and more.

But in his heart he had become as crooked as his name, his song not just somber but sour. He plotted and he dreamed, but could see no way he could equal the power of the brothers, whose songs were at their mightiest. Then one day he thought of his grandmother Void, the only creature whose emptiness was like his own, and he went to her and learned all her craft. He learned to walk her roads, which no one else could see but which stretched anywhere and everywhere. He learned many other things, too, but for long he kept them hidden, waiting for his moment.

—from One Hundred Considerations,
out of the Qar’s Book of Regret

THE STRANGER WHO HAD CAPTURED HER was working very hard to open the rusted lock, his bland face intent as he probed the slot in the gate with the strip of metal he had produced from the sleeve of his shirt. A little sweat had beaded on his lip. Qinnitan turned away as casually as she could, trying not to look directly at the troop of guards moving rubble at the base of the wall a hundred yards away. She and Pigeon and the stranger were crouched in the shadows of an aqueduct near the base of Citadel Hill.