Warbreaker (88 page)

Reading through the book again, I still feel that Parlin just isn’t enough of a character. With the mercenaries there to dominate the scene, Parlin gets lost. I feel that if I had the time, I’d probably chop him out again and replace him with yet another character, one who talks more, so that he can be more a part of things. Ah well.

Back to Chapter Nine

Annotations for Chapter Ten

Vivenna Meets the Mercenaries in the Restaurant

Denth was planned as an important figure in this book from the early going. I was looking for a type of character I’d never written, someone who could be interesting, but not steal the show too much from Vivenna. But I also wanted someone who would provide some good verbal sparring (a theme of this book) without simply replicating the way that Lightsong makes word plays.

Denth and Tonk Fah’s personalities grew out of this. I wanted them to offer a more lowbrow sort of humor, conversations that dealt with more base types of joking. They aren’t supposed to be laugh-out-loud funny, but hopefully they’re amusing and colorful as characters.

Vivenna Visits Lemex

In the very early planning of this book, I intended Lemex to live. He was going to become a mentor figure for Vivenna, and have the very personality that she described him as having in her imagination. Spry, quick-witted, intelligent.

So I decided to kill him off.

Why? Well, it’s complicated. On one hand, I felt that he was too much of a standard character from one of my books. The witty mentor is not only a stereotype of fantasy, but something I rely upon a lot in my writing. (Though, granted, many of those haven’t been published—however, Grandpa Smedry from the
Alcatraz
books is a great example of this kind of character.)

I also felt that Lemex could too easily be a crutch for Vivenna in the same way that Mab could have been for Siri. The idea was to keep these sisters consistently out of their elements, to force them to stretch and grow.

Instead, I upped the competence of the mercenaries and decided to have them play a bigger part.

Denth The Traitor
[Contains Spoilers]

Denth was always going to betray Vivenna. In fact, this is one of the very early concepts for the book—the idea that I wanted a bad guy who was not only likable, but funny. Too often, villains are portrayed as simply despicable people. If they laugh, it’s evil laughter.

But people just aren’t like that, not most of them. They’re real, they have goals and motivations, but they also laugh, cry, and feel. Denth is a mercenary. More than that, he’s a man who has caused a lot of pain and death in his long lifetime, and he copes with it by letting himself be hired to do important tasks. So that he doesn’t have to feel as responsible.

In a lot of ways, I imagined Denth as the anti-Kelsier. Glib, smart, and hired to do impossible tasks. Only in this book he works for the wrong team. In this scene in particular, he was doing his best to nudge Vivenna to give him the Breaths. His job was only to hold her, to keep her captive and in reserve just in case the plots with Siri failed. That way, there would be a second princess to use in the plots. He was assigned to work for Lemex originally just to give him an in with the Idrians in the city, so that he could rile them up to incite the war further. But when he found that Vivenna was coming, he realized that she would be a much better pawn, and so he poisoned Lemex and took her instead. His employers were very happy to have a backup princess.

So, anyway, Lemex’s Breaths were secondary. Denth wanted them, but he knew that the most important thing to do here was get Vivenna to trust him. So he tried to subtly manipulate her into giving them to him. (He intentionally acted reluctant to take them in order to goad her.)

In some ways, even though he doesn’t have a viewpoint, a big theme of this book is the tragedy of the man Denth. He could have been more. At one time, he was a much better man than most who have lived.

Tonk Fah is a waste of flesh, though. Even if he is funny sometimes.

Back to Chapter Ten

Annotations for Chapter Eleven

Siri Visits the God King’s Chamber Again

To be honest, in a perfect world, I’d probably slow this down just a tad. I’d insert another chapter from Siri’s viewpoint with her going to the chambers, the God King watching her, and her being subservient. I wouldn’t do this chapter, where she explodes at him, until the third scene of them together.

But that would only happen in a book where I don’t have quite so much going on with other viewpoints. My books are already a tad on the long side, as far as the booksellers are concerned. They’d like it if our epic fantasy novels shrank down to about 120,000 words (instead of my average of 240,000).

If I’d
really
thought it mattered, I’d have put the extra scene in. The real problem is that since Siri is only one of four major viewpoints, I needed to be careful. If this book were only about her, I could have filled her chapters with more political intrigue and added a lot of subplots. That would have made slower pacing with the God King work. However, I decided not to go that direction with the book, so I needed instead to make sure the pacing was quicker on the main plot she’s involved in.

Origin of Bluefingers as a Character
[Contains Spoilers]

Bluefingers originated, like most ideas for my books, as a character unconnected to any story or world. I wanted to tell a story about a scribe in a palace who was looked down on by the nobility for his simple birth, but who became the hero of the story. I felt that a scribe would make a nice, different kind of viewpoint character.

And maybe I someday will tell a story like that, but the character evolved to be the one who entered this story. He’s much changed from those origins, as you can see, but he’s largely the same person in my mind. And I love the name Bluefingers for a scribe character.

Yes, Bluefingers was also planned as a traitor from the beginning. The whole reversals idea required me to build my shadowy villains quite carefully and deliberately.

Just above, I spoke of the original Bluefingers as a hero. Well, the thing is, that’s how he still sees himself. The heroic Pahn Kahl figure with his fingers in events, ignored by the nobility (or, in this case, the priests) because of his race and position, he was able to manipulate quite a bit of what was going on in the kingdom.

He was the hero trying to free his people. He just took it too far.

Anyway, in this chapter, he’s trying to give Siri a seed of worry and doubt. He’s hoping that if she feels she’s in danger, she’ll trust him more and that will let him do what he needs to. At this point, he’s not sure that he will kill her. It’s more that he’s hoping he’ll be able to manipulate her to manipulate the Idrians in the city. So he wants to make sure Siri sees the Hallandren as her enemies. He can tell that she’s beginning to think her life in the city isn’t all that bad, and he’s worried about that. Idris and Hallandren won’t go to war, in his opinion, if Siri is too content.

However, Denth’s success with Vivenna out in the city (and yes, Bluefingers is the one employing Denth) will eventually convince Bluefingers that he doesn’t need Siri for that role. Unfortunately for her—and for him, in a way—he realizes that if she were seen as having been killed by the Hallandren priests, it would certainly spark a war.

Back to Chapter Eleven

Annotations for Chapter Twelve

Lightsong Hears Petitions

The concept of petitions—and the gods being able to heal someone one time—grew out of my desire to have something about them that
was
miraculous. Something obvious, something more than just an ability to make vague prophecies. Their Breath auras are amazing, true, but an Awakener with a lot of Breath can replicate that.

I took the idea of being able to die in order to heal from an idea discarded from
Elantris
. If you look at the deleted scenes, you can read about how there was originally a subplot to the story where the Seons (the floating balls of light) could expend the Aon at their middle and create a miraculous event one time. However, doing so would kill them. I eventually ended up not using this plot structure in the final draft, and so I cut all references to this ability from the book. I felt that it was too contrived in that novel.

I’ve always thought it was interesting conceptually, however, so I developed it into this book as an aspect of Returned that makes them different. They can create one miracle—and in this world, that one miracle
has
to be a healing. They can expend their divine Breath to heal someone.

This created another problem for readers, however. It became very difficult in the book to explain to them that a Returned could still Awaken things—but not by using the Breath granted to them by their Return. In other words, if a Returned gained a hundred extra Breaths, they could use them just like anyone else’s. But if they give away the Breath they start with, it kills them.

Every person starts with a Breath. Well, Returned start with one too—a divine Breath that can be given away to heal someone else’s Breath that is weakening and dying. That’s what these petitioners are asking for.

But regular Breaths, they can give those away. They just have to be tricky about it.

Siri Realizes That She Needs to Be Proactive

As I said in the other section, I think that Siri’s plot here is just a tad accelerated from what I’d like—but it’s needed. Nothing is worse in a book than a character who never does anything. She needed to get through her fear and her worry and decide to become proactive. It’s only then that interesting things can start to happen in her storyline.

So, I pushed through the moments of indecisiveness and inaction as fast as I could, getting to this moment where she decides to change. I feel that her character being what it is (impulsive and determined) justifies her quickly deciding to take responsibility for herself, now that she’s been placed into a situation of great stress.

Back to Chapter Twelve

Annotations for Chapter Thirteen

Timing of This Chapter

My editor threw me a little curveball in the last edit for this book by asking me if I could move the first Vivenna chapter (the previous one) up a few spots so that she was introduced earlier in the book.

This presented a problem, since I had her arriving, meeting the mercenaries, going to Lemex, then going to see Siri all in the same day. (Though across three chapters.) That meant that I had to move two chapters forward, then, since I didn’t want to break with the mercenaries telling her that they were there to kill her. I wanted to go on directly to the next scene with her.

It took a lot of juggling. One of the revisions I had to make was to move this third chapter a day later in the process. She had to arrive, fall asleep, then get up the next morning and have a conversation about giving the Breaths away. Then she had to go see Siri that same day.

I still worry that this jumble caused timing issues. I think I caught them all, but I worry that at one point Lightsong says, “The presentation of the queen is two days away,” then we have Vivenna arrive that same day, then fall asleep and go see Siri the next day. If that’s the case, then the explanation is—unfortunately—that the chapters aren’t happening quite in chronological order.

Usually, I try to make my chapters all chronological, even across different viewpoints. But once in a while, the story is better if they aren’t. Usually, the distinction is very hard to pick up. But I think it may happen here. (Note that a lot of authors, like Robert Jordan, don’t strive for chronology—they like it better if the chapters are out of order a little. In a Robert Jordan book, for instance, we’ll often have characters doing things in one chapter—then jump to other characters doing things a few weeks earlier. The chapters are always chronological by viewpoint, but the viewpoints can be off from one another. In fact, he plays with this concept a lot, setting book ten mostly back during the same time as book nine.)

Denth Chats with Her about Breath

Vivenna and Siri are beginning their role reversals here. Siri is learning to be more reserved—though it’s more that she’s learning to act like a queen. Taking responsibility, being active rather than inactive.

Vivenna is being forced, just a little bit, into inactivity. She thinks she’s doing things, but she’s mostly just reacting. Beyond that, she’s experiencing what it’s like to lose control of her emotions repeatedly.

A few notes here. When Tonk Fah says, “Unless you count pets,” in reference to their team only having three members, he’s not talking about the bird. He’s actually talking about Clod the Lifeless.

Denth’s Motivations Here
[Contains Spoilers]

If you’re reading through for the second time, pay close attention to the things Denth says here about Lemex. They’re having a conversation about how Lemex could be a patriot but still steal from the king. Well, Denth is kind of talking about himself here, and not Lemex. He’s hinting that he thinks (or would like to think) that a person can both do their job and be a good man at the same time.

These are things he’s struggling with. He tries to tell himself that he doesn’t care, but he does. He has kidnapped Vivenna here without her knowing it, and is very deftly manipulating her. (By the way, Jewels tails her to the assembly meeting, if you were wondering.) He does feel bad about this, just like he feels bad about killing Lemex. That doesn’t stop him from doing things like this, though.

He does plan to get Vivenna’s Breath. He knows, however, that in the end he can probably just torture her into giving it to him. In this scene, if you could see into his head, he’s trying to figure out how exactly he can get her to give it to him without having to hurt her.