After each meal, he returned to the center of the floor, emptied himself, and entered the vaniate. If he could do nothing else, he could continue his training. After moving in and out of the trance scores of times, he changed position, lowering himself into a flat plank, toes and palms on the floor, body rigid, then reached for the emptiness once more. It eluded him, but he held the pose, held it until his shoulders shook and the muscles of his stomach rebelled, dumping him onto his face. He lay still for a few exhausted breaths, then, without moving, took hold of the trance. When he found it, he let it go, then raised himself into the plank once more. Tried, as his body trembled, to find that space beyond the body.

Each time the slot in the door opened, he spoke to the person beyond, always to no avail. Somewhere beyond the Dead Heart the great wheels of the world turned, seas sloshed in their basins, green shoots pushed up through the earth, men and women struggled, laughed, and died, and yet Kaden’s cell might have been the throne room of the Blank God, a shrine to emptiness, blackness, and silence.

Then Tan came.

A rattle in the lock preceded the monk, then a lamp, the dim light so bright to Kaden’s atrophied sight that it seemed someone had bored a hole in the nothingness. Bored a hole, or set it ablaze. When he could see, finally, he found his umial standing before him, Shin robe gone, exchanged for the boiled leather and sealskin of the Ishien.

“How long?” Kaden asked, voice rusted.

“Long enough,” Tan replied. “I could not come sooner.”

“What is happening?”

The monk shook his head. “Idiocy. Idiocy and fanaticism.”

Kaden glanced at the closed door. “Are you here alone?”

“There are three guards in the corridor beyond. I persuaded them to stay behind. I said you would be more tractable if I came in alone.”

“Tractable,” Kaden said, the word bitter in his mouth.

“Matol wants to use you against Triste,” he said. “He wants you to go to her alone. To see what she will reveal to you.”

“Where is she now? Is she all right?”

“She is alive,” Tan replied, as though that were the same thing. “After the last interrogation, the Ishien moved her here, to give her time to recuperate before they start again. That was five days ago.”

Kaden shook his head helplessly. “She won’t tell me anything more than she’s told them.”

The monk nodded tersely. “I agree. I am not here to do Matol’s work.”

“So,” Kaden replied, studying the monk carefully, “why are you here?”

Tan glanced over his shoulder, then beckoned Kaden farther into the small cell. When his spoke, his voice was low as the scuff of leather over stone.