Sja-anat had been named Taker of Secrets long ago by a scholar no one remembered. She liked the name. It implied action. She didn’t simply hear secrets; she took them. She made them hers.

And she kept them.

From the other Unmade.

From the Fused.

From Odium himself.

She flowed through the Kholinar palace, existing between the Physical and Cognitive Realms. Like many of the Unmade, she belonged to neither one fully. Odium trapped them in a halfway existence. Some would manifest in various forms if they resided too long in one place, or if they were pulled through by strong emotions.

Not her.

Sometimes Fused, or even common singers, would notice her. They’d grow stiff, look over their shoulders. They’d glimpse a shadow, a brief darkness, quickly missed. Actually seeing her required reflected light.

It was similar in Shadesmar. She experienced that realm at the same time as she experienced the Physical Realm, though both were shadowy to her. She dreamed that somewhere a place existed that was completely right for her and her children.

For now, she would live here.

She flowed up steps in one realm, but barely moved in the other. Space was not entirely equal between the realms—it wasn’t that she had a foot in each realm; more, she was like two entities that shared a mind. In Shadesmar, she floated above the ocean of beads, her essence rippling. In the Physical Realm, she passed among singers who worked in the palace.

Sja-anat did not consider herself the most clever of the Unmade. Certainly she was one of the more intelligent, but that was not the same. Some of the Unmade—such as Nergaoul, sometimes called the Thrill—were practically mindless, more like emotion spren. Others—such as Ba-Ado-Mishram, who had granted forms to the singers during the False Desolation—were crafty and conniving.

Sja-anat was a little like both. During the long millennia before this Return, she’d mostly slumbered. Without her bond to Odium she had trouble thinking. The Everstorm appearing in Shadesmar—long before it had emerged into the Physical Realm—had revitalized her. Had let her begin planning again. But she knew she was not as smart as Odium was. She could keep only a few secrets from him, and she had to choose carefully, clouding them behind other secrets that she gave away.

You sacrificed some of your children so others could live. It was a law of nature. Humans didn’t understand it. But she did. She …

He was coming.

God of passion.

God of hatred.

God of all adopted spren.

Sja-anat flowed into the hallway of the palace and met with two of her children, touched windspren. Humans called them “corrupted,” but she hated this term. She did not corrupt. She Enlightened them, showing them that a different path was possible. Did not the humans revere Transformation—the ability of all beings to become someone new, someone better—as a core ideal of their religion? Yet they grew angry when she let spren change?

Her children darted away to do her bidding, then one of her greater children manifested. A glowing and shimmering light, constantly changing. One of her most precious creations.

I will go, Mother, he said. To the tower, to this man Mraize, as you have promised.

Odium will see you, she replied. Odium will try to unmake you.

I know. But Odium must be distracted from you, as we discussed. I must find my own way, my own bond.

Go then, she said. But do not bond this human because of what I said. I merely promised to send a child to investigate options. There are other possibilities there. Choose for yourself, not because I desire it.

Thank you, Mother, he said. Thank you for my eyes.

He left, following the others. Sja-anat regretted that the smaller two—the Enlightened windspren—were essentially distractions. Odium would see them for certain.

Protect some children.

Sacrifice others.

A choice only a god could make.

A god like Sja-anat.

She rose up, taking the form of a woman of streaming black smoke with pure white eyes. Shadows and mist, Odium’s pure essence. If he were to know the deepest secret parts of her soul, he would not be surprised. For she had come from him. Unmade by his hand.

But as with all children, she had become more.

His presence came upon her like the sun piercing the clouds. Powerful, vibrant, smothering. Some Fused in the hallway noticed it and looked around, though the common singers weren’t attuned enough to hear Odium’s song—like a rhythm but more resonant. One of the three pure tones of Roshar.

She didn’t fully understand the laws that bound him. They were ancient, and related to compacts between the Shards, the high gods of the cosmere. Odium wasn’t simply the mind that controlled the power: the Vessel. Nor was he merely that power alone: the Shard. He was both, and at times it seemed the power had desires that were counter to the purposes of the Vessel.

Sja-anat, a voice—infused with the tone of Odium—said to her. What are these spren you have sent away?

“Those that do your bidding,” she whispered, prostrating herself by pooling down onto the floor. “Those that watch. Those that hear.”

Have you been speaking to the humans again? To … corrupt them with lies?

That was the fabrication she and Odium played at currently. She pretended that she had contacted the Radiant Shallan, and a few others, working on his behalf—anticipating his desires. He pretended he didn’t know she had done it against his will.

Both knew she wanted more freedom than he would allow. Both knew that she wanted to be a god unto herself. But he didn’t know for certain she was taking actions to undermine him, like when she’d saved Shallan and her companions from death in Kholinar a year ago. She had played that off as accidental, and he couldn’t prove otherwise.

If Odium caught her in a verifiable lie, he would unmake her again. Steal her memory. Rip her to pieces. But in so doing, he would lose a useful tool.

Hence the game.

Where have you sent them? he asked.

“To the tower, Lord. To watch the humans, as we’ve discussed. We must prepare for the Bondsmith’s next move.”

I will prepare, he said. You focus too much on the tower.

“I am eager for the invasion,” she said. “I will very much like to see my cousin again. Perhaps they can be awakened? Persuaded?”

Odium had likely planned to send her on this mission, but her eagerness now gave him pause. He would follow her children and see that they were indeed going to the tower; that would reinforce his decision. The one she hoped he would make right now …

You will not go to the tower, Odium said. He hated how she referred to the Sibling—the slumbering child of Honor and Cultivation—as her cousin. But we are about to make a ploy with the betrayal of the man Taravangian. You will watch him.

“I would be of much more use in the tower,” she said. “Better that I—”

You question? Do not question.

“I will not question.” However, she felt a surging to the power that moved within him. The mind did not like being questioned, but the power … It liked questions. It liked arguments. It was passion.

There was a weakness here. In the division between the Vessel and the Shard.

“I will go wherever you demand,” she said, “my god.”

Very well. He moved on to speak with the Nine. And Sja-anat planned her next steps. She had to pretend to sulk. Had to try to find a way out of going to Emul. She had to hope that she wasn’t successful.

Odium suspected that she’d helped the Radiant Shallan. He was watching to see that she didn’t contact other Radiants. So she wouldn’t. Once he’d found her windspren, and unmade them to lose their minds and memories, he would hopefully be content—and not see the other child she’d sent.

And Sja-anat herself? She would go with Taravangian and watch him as asked. And she would stay close.

For Taravangian was a weapon.