Warbreaker (90 page)

Now, I don’t expect any readers to be shocked by what he did. The tone of the book presents Awakening as being far less inherently evil than Vivenna sees it. I’m afraid this is a bias I can’t stamp out, since I do myself see the power as being something other than evil. Neutral, as are most of my magic systems.

But I do think it’s important to hold to your own personal code. Vivenna is rightly shocked about what her father did. But, then, perhaps this is a sign that she wouldn’t have made as good a queen as she and her father assume she would have. While she’s perfectly willing to sacrifice herself for Idris, she doesn’t seem willing to live for Idris—meaning to stay behind and lead her people. She ran off. Beyond that, she would never have been able to make the decision her father did, buying Lemex Breaths.

Back to Chapter Seventeen

Annotations for Chapter Eighteen

Siri Decides to Spite the Priests, Then Reverses That Decision

This chapter involves a bit of a backslide for both Siri and Lightsong. It was important to establish that they, as characters, are still the same people that you started reading the book about—even if both of them are being forced to change the way they react to things. (Well, at least Siri is being forced to change. Lightsong is more just mulling over what he wants to do. Or not do, as the case may be.)

Siri’s decision here is intended to show just how far she has come during her short time in Hallandren. Siri had all the potential to blossom like this before; she just never had a good reason. With Vivenna there dominating and drawing everyone’s attention, Siri was like a plant growing beneath the shade of an enormous tree—she couldn’t get enough sunlight to grow herself. Freed from that shadow, she’s ready to go.

Her first impulse is very characteristic—it’s the sort of behavior that she’s ingrained in herself for many years. But she decides against it, which should be a big tip-off that she’s capable of much greater things.

Siri Does Her Show for the First Time

This little sequence is far more discomforting to me than the actual nudity, to be honest. Being somewhat of a prude as I am, I hesitated to put this into the book. I realize that to most readers, it’s not even very risqué. But I’m the one writing the book, and I’m the one who decides what I include. I have to be willing to take responsibility for what’s in my stories.

Why did I put this in if it discomforts me? Well, to be honest, there was no other way. It was what the story demanded. I couldn’t see the priests not at least listening. (And, as I think will be mentioned later in the story, they did have some people watching the first nights—no matter what Bluefingers says in this chapter. He’s not lying, he’s just wrong. The priests would never let a potential assassin near their God King without taking precautions. There was even a soldier hiding under the bed that first night, and another watching from a secret chamber beside the hearth. It was still a risk to let Siri into the room, of course, but they were fairly certain—after taking her clothing and instructing the serving girls to watch carefully during the bathing—that Siri had no weapons on her.)

Regardless, it was ridiculous for me not to think of the priests listening in, knowing what they do of the God King. That meant Siri had to either sleep with him for real, or find a way to distract them. This was a very clever move on her part, and I like it when my characters can be appropriately clever. And so the scene stays. If I hadn’t allowed her to do this, then I would have—as an author—been holding her back artificially.

Lightsong Refuses to Get Out of Bed

As I’ve already mentioned, this is a chapter where—after a climactic focal point in the book—the characters backslide a tad in order to enforce that there are still struggles going on. Did I consciously decide this? No, honestly. I sat down to write this chapter, and I felt that I needed to spend a little more time focusing on the conflicts of the characters. So that was intentional. But the placement in the book? That was just by gut instinct.

Llarimar has been holding this little tidbit—the knowledge that he knew Lightsong before the Return—back for just the right moment. He knows his god well, and understands that information like this can be very powerful as a motivator. He’s been waiting for years to use this hint at a time when Lightsong was morose. (And yes, that happens to Lightsong fairly often.) This seemed an important moment to keep the god motivated, so Llarimar doled out the tidbit. Talking about the past of one’s god is unorthodox, and maybe even a little sacrilegious. Fortunately, one of the nice things about being high priest is that, on occasion, you get to subtly redefine what is orthodox and what isn’t.

He did make sure to send the servants away first, though.

Back to Chapter Eighteen

Annotations for Chapter Nineteen

Clod Arrives with Jewels

Early on in the development process, I knew that I wanted to have a Lifeless as a side character. They’re such an interesting part of the world—in fact, they’re a big part of the foundation of the setting, or at least what made me want to write it.

That meant having a Lifeless on Denth’s team, and Clod as a character fit into place quite easily. I had worried about how to make Jewels distinctive in the team, after having Denth and Tonk Fah establish themselves for some twenty chapters before Jewels even makes an appearance. Working with that, I realized that by making her the Lifeless handler, I could add something unique to her—and to the team.

Denth knew that Vivenna wouldn’t react well to there being a Lifeless on the team. That’s part of why he kept Jewels away for so long. (In fact, when Jewels says, “Who’s that woman?” in regards to Vivenna, it should have been slightly suspicious to you. She knew they had a new employer, and she should have made the connection. Indeed, she did. Denth had specifically ordered her to stay away until this moment, as he didn’t want to scare Vivenna off.)

Denth Tells Vivenna to Use Her Breaths

Don’t forget that Vivenna has a huge wealth of Breath. To most people, anything over one or two Breaths is a huge wealth—and Vivenna has enough to reach the Third Heightening. She’s fully capable of Awakening objects, and while she’s not as powerful as Vasher in Breath right now, she could learn quite quickly. (The more Breath you hold, the easier it is for you to learn how to use it.)

Hidden Stuff
[Contains Spoilers]

When I was posting chapters online as I wrote them, I remember one person in my forums noting (upon reading this chapter) that Denth’s plans were a terrible way to help Idris. By attacking supply caravans and creating a crisis in the city, chances are very good that the war factions would be
more
likely to get the others to strike. Desperate times generally give more power to those who are willing to act, even if those actions might lead to even more problems.

This person on the forums is, of course, exactly right. I’m impressed that they caught it, since most everyone else seemed completely taken in by Denth. However, what Denth is doing here is using Vivenna to help continue plots he has long had in motion. He’s lying when he says that he doesn’t know what Lemex was involved in and has only seen pieces. In truth, Lemex was doing what Denth wanted him to—they were Denth’s plans all along.

However, Lemex was beginning to grow more reticent, and Denth was having more trouble manipulating him. Another good reason for the poisoning. (And it took a
lot
of poison to off someone with that much Breath.)

If you’re reading it through again, I hope that Tonk Fah’s line about being able to stow a lot of bodies in the storage space is a creepy line. It’s supposed to be.

Back to Chapter Nineteen

Annotations for Chapter Twenty

Bluefingers Warns Siri Outside the God King’s Chamber

I’ll admit that many of Siri’s thoughts here are complaints I myself have. She wonders why Bluefingers had to be so cryptic. It’s a weak literary device, in my opinion, always having people with knowledge tease with it but never give the full truth. I hate it when I read stories and characters withhold information just because it needs to be withheld in the book.

At the same time, the only way to have a mystery is for there to be things the characters don’t know. There can be legitimate reasons why someone doesn’t want to speak or share what they know. In my books, I want those reasons to be good ones—which is why in the
Alcatraz
books, I never have the adults refrain from giving Alcatraz information just because of his age.

In this case, Bluefingers has very, very good reasons for what he does. I hope that it doesn’t feel contrived for him not to speak further here.

The God King Approaches Siri in Bed

Siri wonders why the God King wears black, rather than white—which his BioChroma would distort. The answer is simple. To Awakeners, black is a symbol of power. It’s a fuel, a color that can be used for Awakening. White, however, is useless. So to wear white would be foolish, except in certain cases where the priests want to prove how powerful the God King is by letting him dynamically bend the light. So while he occasionally appears in white, his everyday attire is black.

His ability to bend light into the prismatic colors, by the way, was added about halfway through the first draft. I wanted a stronger visual indication of someone who had reached the top Heightenings, and I like the imagery associated with it.

The God King Gets Out His Book, and Proves He Has No Tongue

Okay, so here we have the first major reversal in the book. There are several reasons I wanted to write this story. The first was that I loved the concept of the woman being sent to the terrible emperor, only to discover that he was a puppet of someone else. This was a big part of the original
Mythwalker
plot for Siri, and was a big part of what intrigued me about that story. (As a side note,
Mythwalker
was also the first place where I tried out the words
koloss
and
skaa
for races. They were completely different then, however.)

After writing
Mistborn
, I became increasingly intrigued with the idea of a complete reversal book—a book that did things very differently from the way I’d done them before. I’d dealt with an all-powerful emperor, and so people would expect (unconsciously) for the God King here to be like the Lord Ruler. That gave me more opportunity to use their expectations against them and pull off a reversal of roles like the one in this chapter.

I hope it worked. By now, you were probably suspecting that something odd was up with the God King. However, I hope you weren’t expecting something as redefining as the lack of a tongue. In this society, with this magic system, that is an even greater symbol of powerlessness than it would be in our society.

Back to Chapter Twenty

Annotations for Chapter Twenty-One

Vasher Awakens His Clothing, Then Leaps off the Palace

One of the subtle, yet drastic, changes to Awakening that happened in this story came during the middle drafts. Originally, the Command was part of the process of Awakening—but wasn’t as important as I eventually made it. I had intended for very difficult things to be accomplished through the use of very long and intricate Commands. However, as I wrote the first draft, I felt this was bulky. What it meant that was if you wanted to use a powerful Awakening in battle, you’d have to stop and spout several paragraphs of instructions. It really cut down on the tension of the battle sequences. (And Awakening was already slower than I preferred, with the need for all of the steps—Breathing, finding color, then Commanding.)

So during revisions, I changed this. Instead of requiring a lengthy Command to create a powerful Awakening, the strength and skill of the Awakener is instead determined by their ability to visualize what they want the Command to do. The Command is a focus, the spoken words an important part of the process, but the real trick is getting the right mental picture.

This way, someone can practice a lot, and still use simple Commands—like Grab things—yet have them do very powerful things. It also allows me to have Commands be easier to learn and use, yet still require skill to master.

Vasher Pretends to Be Crazy, Approaches the Guards

This line about gods attracting the unhinged comes a little bit from personal experience. Many of you may know that in the LDS church, we often serve missions during the early part of our twenties or our late teens. I did this, moving to Korea for two years and doing service, teaching about the church, and generally having a blast living among and learning from another culture.

One thing I learned, however, is that when you’re associated with anything religions in a formal way like that, you tend to attract people of . . . interesting inclinations. I got to listen to a surprising number of people who weren’t all there tell me about things they’d seen or decided upon. (And note, this isn’t me trying to make fun of other religions or other beliefs—I, of course, got to speak with a lot of people who believed differently from myself. No, in this case, I’m referring to the mentally challenged people who—for whatever reason—liked to search out missionaries and talk to them.)

It was a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong. But it was also weird.

Anyway, I would assume these guards are accustomed to dealing with the unbalanced. Though it’s hard to get into the Court of Gods, it’s hardly impossible. With the lottery, and with the numbers of performers and artists coming into the place every day, you can sneak in without too much difficulty. At least, up until what happens this night, after which things become a lot more strict.