Warbreaker (94 page)

So the more wounded a Lifeless becomes, the less well its Breath can keep it going. Eventually you’ll need to stick a second Breath into it, then a third, all the way up until that Lifeless is nothing more than a bunch of bones you’ve Awakened. At that point, you might as well be using sticks or cloth.

Vivenna Admits the Real Reason She Came to Hallandren

I’ve been pushing toward this for a long time in the narrative. Vivenna didn’t come to Hallandren to save her sister—that’s a front. That’s what she told herself. But the real reasons are more deep, more personal, and less noble. She had to come because of how much of her life had been focused on the city. Beyond that, she came because of her hatred of Hallandren. She wanted to find ways to hurt it for what it had done to her.

It was partially her pride.
She
was the one who was supposed to deal with Hallandren. Her pride wouldn’t let her stay away, wouldn’t let Siri do the job that Vivenna was certain she could do better.

She has kept her hatred in check quite well, but it’s always been there, driving her. I hope my readers always thought that coming to save Siri was a flimsy reason for Vivenna to come to T’Telir. The term
love/hate relationship
has become a cliché, but I honestly think there is some real psychology to it, and I feel that I explained one aspect of it here, for Vivenna.

Vivenna Agrees to Learn Awakening

This has been a long time coming. Sorry to make you wait; in some of my books, I like to use a lot of magic from the start. In others, I like to build out the setting first, letting the characters learn and explore more slowly.

I’ve long wanted to call a magic system “Awakening,” by the way. I tried it out originally in
Way of Kings
as the name for the transformation-based magic system in that book. But it never worked. You didn’t really “Awaken” things. I was just using the term because it sounded good.

So I put it back in the file to be recycled someday. As I began to plan this book, I developed a magic system that
could
be called Awakening. Bringing objects to life seems to fit that just perfectly. So yes, the word came first—though I’m not sure how much I grew the magic system around that one word, or if I was feeling I wanted to do a “bring objects to life” magic system and realized I could use that great name I’d come up with earlier.

Vasher Takes Vivenna Captive

Now things are finally starting to move! My books, I know, can be kind of slow sometimes. That comes from the fact that I, myself, like to read books that are kind of slow. These two chapters were very important ones. Vivenna admitted something very important about herself, then kind of took the wrong sort of responsibility for life. Siri realized something about herself, then took the right sort of responsibility for her life. A little bit of reversal going on, as the two sisters live their parallel—yet so different—lives in T’Telir.

But it was certainly time for a shake-up. The next Vivenna chapters turn a lot of things on their heads.

Back to Chapter Thirty-Three

Annotations for Chapter Thirty-Four

Lightsong and Blushweaver Watch the Priests in the Arena

I’m not sure why, honestly, but this discussion of Blushweaver trying to prove that God exists through the use of her breasts is one of my favorite in the book. Perhaps that’s because it exemplifies the way that she and Lightsong look at the word.

Anyway, as I’ve said before, I wasn’t intending this to be a book to parallel the state of the United States and the war with Iraq. It just kind of came out as it has, and I think the main reason is one of pulling a reversal upon myself. You see,
Mistborn
was a book about a bloody revolution instigated by the protagonists. We don’t see a lot of the death it caused, and fortunately much of the bloodshed was averted by a timely speech given by a certain young nobleman, but the fact remains that I wrote about overthrowing a government.

That seems to be a popular topic for novels. And anytime I notice that something is popular in the genre, I start wondering if I could write a book about the opposite. In this case, I began thinking of a book where the protagonists were trying to stop a war instead of start one. Where they wanted to stabilize the government instead of destabilize it. The opposite story of
Mistborn
, in some ways.

I had the name of the book,
Warbreaker
, long before I even knew who the
Warbreaker
would be or what the rest of the book would be about. I’m glad we were able to keep it, though my editor complained just a tad that he thought it didn’t indicate the right sense of epic fantasy for the book.

Siri Watches the Priests

I took a bit of a risk here, having a little scene where Siri admits that all of the troubles and problems in Hallandren excite her. I hope this doesn’t seem out of character; I think I foreshadowed well that she’d react this way. Back in Idris, she was always making trouble, partially (even though she wouldn’t admit it) because she found it exciting. I think that’s common for those who end up in trouble a lot of the time.

Here, what she feels is that same sense—only a more mature version. She’s excited by politics, by being in the middle of things, by having a chance to change the future of the city. I think this is a valuable attribute for one in her position, as long as it isn’t taken too far. By having Vivenna constantly frustrated by her situation and Siri thrilled by hers, I wanted to show a contrast and have the reader come to the same conclusion Siri does in this scene: That Vivenna wouldn’t have made a very good queen to the God King. She’d have made the
expected
queen, and would have done what everyone anticipated her doing. But she would have let herself be a martyr the entire time, which would have been a self-centered way of approaching her duty.

Siri Is Confronted by Blushweaver

This is one of those little scenes you put into a book that isn’t foreshadowing anything specific. I don’t mind if people home in on this confrontation and worry that Blushweaver will take action against Siri, but I don’t go there with the book. Blushweaver here is just jealous. She knows enough to recognize that in herself, however, and won’t let it push her much farther than her little warning here.

I like what this shows about Blushweaver’s character, and I like that it illustrates how she sees Lightsong. Yes, she’s in love with him. Quite deeply, in fact. She brought him into her plots and schemes here partially because she trusts him, and partially because she wanted to show off for him—and perhaps convince him to finally accept her as a lover.

Spoilers

Siri meets with Bluefingers, who surprises her in the bath yet again. In this little exchange, Bluefingers is being very careful, as he doesn’t want to let on how much he knows. As well as Siri is learning to deal with court, she has
nothing
on Bluefingers, who has spent his entire life there—and who was trained by a Pahn Kahl steward before him. He has been planning his coup for a long time and was actually very frustrated when Vahr started his little rebellion—drawing eyes toward Pahn Kahl. It was partially due to Bluefingers’s manipulations and information leaks to the Returned that Vahr was captured in the first place.

Here, he lets Siri think he doesn’t know that the God King is mute (he does know, and has known for most of his life) and that he is worried about the replacement of the Pahn Kahl servants. (That would be a setback, but not really the main problem.) What he wants most to do is drive a spike between Siri and the priests, and he’s succeeding gloriously. He almost leaped for joy when Siri offered her little “You get the God King and me out of the palace” offer. It makes his job a lot easier if/when he decides to assassinate the God King himself.

Back to Chapter Thirty-Four

Annotations for Chapter Thirty-Five

Vivenna Awakes, Bound by Vasher

This chapter—the things that happen later—is the most dangerous in the book. Dangerous to me as an author, I mean. I love good plot twists, but I worry about leaving them without proper foreshadowing. I’ve never done something as drastic as I have in this book, having a group of sympathetic characters turn out to be working for the wrong side. I hope it works, but I know that if it doesn’t, readers will be very mad. Nothing is sloppier than a book with unearned changes in character motivation.

But we’re not there quite yet. Before that we have the first real interaction between Vivenna and Vasher. He gives her what he likes to think of as the Nightblood test. One nice thing about having a sword that “cannot tempt the hearts of those who are pure” is that when someone like Vivenna touches it, she gets sick. I didn’t want Nightblood to come off as a “one ring” knockoff. He doesn’t turn people’s hearts or corrupt them. However, in order to be able to do his job and fulfill his Command, he needed the ability to determine who is good and who is evil.

This, of course, isn’t an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don’t think it’s a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, the Breaths infused in him did their best to interpret their Command. What they decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn’t want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly.

Nightblood himself, unfortunately, doesn’t quite understand what good and evil are. (This is mentioned later in the text.) However, he knows that his master can determine who is good and who is evil—using the sword’s power to make people sick, or through other means. So, he pretty much just lets whoever is holding him decide what is evil. And if the one holding the sword determines—deep within their heart—that they are evil themselves, then they will end up killing themselves with the sword.

Vivenna passes the test, which surprises Vasher. He thought that she’d be the type who would use Nightblood to kill and destroy. (He doesn’t have a high opinion of her, obviously. Of course, that’s partially because he’s let his temper dictate what he thinks.)

Vivenna Escapes

One of my big worries about the Vivenna sections is that she’ll come off as too weak as a character. That’s a particular danger once we reach these late middle sections, where it’s revealed how much she’s been manipulated. Remember that when you’re reading the Vivenna sections, if she comes off weak compared to Siri, consider their relative circumstances.

Vivenna is put through a
lot
more in this book than Siri is. Why? Well, I felt that as a character, she had a lot more room to grow. In order to do that, however, she needed to have everything knocked out from underneath her. That happens primarily in this chapter and the next few.

But she is not helpless. Even while she’s numbed by the capture and betrayals, she manages to effect not one, but two escapes. She handles herself very well, finally overcoming her problems with Awakening and managing to get her Breath to work for her. (And remember that the more Breath one has, the easier it is to learn to get Commands to work right. That will be important later in the book. . . .)

Vivenna Wanders the Slums, Then Finds the Safe House

I made one small revision here in this chapter. I added the statue as a reference point. Before, Vivenna just happened to run across the safe house while wandering.

Why the change? It’s just the same thing, right? She happens to wander by the statue, then manages to remember the directions. It’s still a big coincidence when you think about it.

However, it doesn’t
read
like as big a coincidence. Adding in her seeing the statue, then having to work to find her way to the safe house was a way of making it seem, to readers, that it wasn’t just a coincidence. Because there was effort involved, I feel it will read more smoothly and less oddly to most readers. Part of this is because a statue in a city square is easier to notice than a given house on the side of the street, and partially because the discovery can be more gradual this way.

This is part of the smoke and mirrors that a writer uses. Sometimes I worry that explaining these things will ruin the book for readers—but I guess if you were the type it would ruin the magic for, you probably wouldn’t be reading behind-the-scenes annotations in the first place.

Vivenna Realizes That the Mercenaries Are Traitors

And finally, here we are. The biggest gamble in the book. I went into the novel knowing I was going to do this, and I wrote all along with the intention that Denth and his crew were working against Vivenna’s interests. As I mentioned in a spoiler section earlier, Tonk Fah is a sociopath, and much of the time when he makes his jokes about hurting people, he’s serious. (The vanishing pets are a subtle clue to this.) He finds the concept of hurting people funny. We laugh because of Denth, who’s running interference and making it seem like they’re just exaggerating to get a laugh.

The death of Lemex is another clue—he was, indeed, immune to disease. (Though not poison, if enough was used.) Anyone with that many Breaths is immune. Another clue is what the mercenaries are doing, riling up the Hallandren to war rather than working to prevent it. Not that Vivenna wanted them to, but through Denth’s manipulations, Siri has all but been forgotten in the face of the work against Hallandren. Of course, Vivenna herself was willing to forget Siri. Not by intent, but because she has always been more focused on Hallandren, and Siri was partially just an excuse.

The fact that Vivenna’s father’s agents are never seen looking for her, the fact that the mercenaries don’t seem to care about money, the way Jewels was frequently gone at the beginning (partially so she could tail Vivenna), and much of what they said and did were supposed to be reinforcement of this moment of betrayal.