Warbreaker

Chapter 51

I’m glad you came back for me, Nightblood said. It was very lonely in that closet.

Vasher didn’t reply as he walked across the top of the wall surrounding the Court of Gods. It was late, dark, and quiet, though a few of the palaces still shone with light. One of those belonged to Lightsong the Bold.

I don’t like the darkness, Nightblood said.

“You mean darkness like now?” Vasher asked.

No. In the closet.

“You can’t even see.”

A person knows when they’re in darkness, Nightblood said. Even when they can’t see.

Vasher didn’t know how to respond to that. He paused atop the wall, overlooking Lightsong’s palace. Red and gold. Bold colors indeed.

You shouldn’t ignore me, Nightblood said. I don’t like it.

Vasher knelt down, studying the palace. He’d never met the one called Lightsong, but he had heard rumors. The most scurrilous of the gods, the most condescending and mocking. And this was the person who held the fate of two kingdoms in his hands.

There was an easy way to influence that fate.

We’re going to kill him, aren’t we? Nightblood said, eagerness sharp in his voice.

Vasher just stared at the palace.

We should kill him, Nightblood continued. Come on. We should do it. We really should do it.

“Why do you care?” Vasher whispered. “You don’t know him.”

He’s evil, Nightblood said.

Vasher snorted. “You don’t even know what that is.”

For once, Nightblood was silent.

That was the great crux of the problem, the issue that had dominated most of Vasher’s life. A thousand Breaths. That was what it took to Awaken an object of steel and give it sentience. Even Shashara hadn’t fully understood the process, though she had first devised it.

It took a person who had reached the Ninth Heightening to Awaken stone or steel. Even then, this process shouldn’t have worked. It should have created an Awakened object with no more of a mind than the tassels on his cloak.

Nightblood should not be alive. And yet he was. Shashara had always been the most talented of them, far more capable than Vasher himself, who had used tricks—like encasing bones in steel or stone—to make his creations. Shashara had been spurred on by the knowledge that she’d been shown up by Yesteel and the development of ichor-alcohol. She had studied, experimented, practiced. And she’d done it. She’d learned to forge the Breath of a thousand people into a piece of steel, Awaken it to sentience, and give it a Command. That single Command took on im mense power, providing a foundation for the personality of the object Awakened.

With Nightblood, she and Vasher had spent much time in thought, then finally chosen a simple, yet elegant, Command. “Destroy evil.” It had seemed like such a perfect, logical choice. There was only one problem, something neither of them had foreseen.

How was an object of steel—an object that was so removed from life that it would find the experience of living strange and alien—supposed to understand what “evil” was?

I’m figuring it out, Nightblood said. I’ve had a lot of practice.

The sword wasn’t really to blame. It was a terrible, destructive thing—but it had been created to destroy. It still didn’t understand life or what that life meant. It only knew its Command, and it tried so very hard to fulfill it.