17

Lopen zipped straight toward the giant sea monster. It looked vaguely like an enormous grub with a wicked beak of a face. It had spindly arms running all the way along its body, and had reared up so it was mostly vertical, using its pointed limbs like spears to try to skewer the sailors beneath.

Huio was literally inside the thing’s mouth, holding its mandibles apart with a spear, barely preventing himself from being crushed. So Lopen was able to soar up and grab Huio by the arm, then tow him out of the way. The thing snapped its mouth closed behind them, breaking the spear with an awful crack.

Sailors huddled in the skulls on the beach, using the carapace as cover, clutching spears and cowering before the monster. It was as tall as a building, swarming with arrowhead luckspren. Lopen pulled to a stop in the air, holding Huio. The cousins met one another’s eyes.

Then Huio groaned. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

“Ha!” Lopen said. “You were going to get eaten! You were going to be swallowed by a giant monster that looks like something you’d step on during worming season!”

“Can we focus on the fight?”

“Hey, have you heard about the time I saved Huio from being swallowed? Oh yes. He was going to get eaten. By a monster uglier than the women he courts. And I flew into the thing’s mouth to save him. Off the tongue. Then I was very humble about having done such a heroic deed.”

“Leave that last part off,” Huio said. “It will make them easily discern that you are lying.” He breathed in, borrowing Stormlight from Lopen’s spheres. “Watch out. There are some cremlings around here that steal Stormlight.”

“Is it the one the boss-lady had?”

“No, smaller,” Huio said, Lashing himself so he hovered in the air. “And of a different breed. I didn’t get a good look, but I think they flew around in a little swarm.”

Huio swooped down and snatched a new spear off the ground. Lopen raised his, glancing at Rua, who had changed shape to mimic that of the monster. He bounced around growling. The monster turned toward them and swiped with a spearlike limb, causing a rush of wind as Lopen ducked it.

“You know,” Lopen said to Rua, “now would be an excellent time for you to decide that you’d like to be a Shardblade.”

Rua wagged a crustacean finger at him. An annoyed gesture that conveyed, “You know you have to earn that.”

“I will protect even those I hate,” Lopen said. “See? I can say it.” He dodged again. “It’s easy.”

Rua-monster wagged another limb.

“But I don’t hate anyone!” Lopen complained. “And nobody hates me. I’m The Lopen. How could they? These rules, sure, aren’t fair!”

Rua-monster shrugged.

“You used to be on my side on this one, naco,” Lopen grumbled. “This is Phendorana’s fault, isn’t it? You shouldn’t listen to her lectures.”

This probably wasn’t the time for such a conversation. They had a monster to defeat. Spear in hand, Lopen swooped in to distract it as it tried to go after some of the sailors.

Rysn arranged herself meticulously. She pulled over the bench she’d been sitting on earlier and placed it in front of her. It was a little too high and thin to be a Thaylen merchant’s deal table, but it was a reasonable approximation.

If you wanted to deal in the traditional way, you sat on mats on the floor, opposite the table from one another. She managed to get her legs crossed, her back to the wall with the mural to help prop herself up.

She put her hands palm down on the table in the formal dealing posture and tried to remember her lessons.

The creatures came in along the walls and ceiling. They swarmed in that same nauseating way: heaps of cremlings snapping together into something that imitated a human, but with distressing lumps shifting under the “skin.”

Soon Nikli stood in front of her.

Rysn controlled her trembling as best she could, ignoring the fearspren, then turned her hands palm upward. “This,” she said, “is the traditional sign inviting the initiation of a trade deal between two Thaylen merchants. I’m not sure how much of our culture you picked up during your time imitating a human.”

“I picked up enough,” Nikli said, stepping forward. Two other figures remained behind. One might have been imitating a male, the other a female, though it was hard to tell. Nikli picked up a robe draped across a few spears in the pile of armor, then pulled it on. “I’m young among my people, but I have lived quite a long time. I sailed with Longbrow, you know. I liked him, for all his boasting.”

Storms. Longbrow was four hundred years dead. Rysn steeled herself. Oh, storms. She was swimming in water far over her head. And there was still that strange heat in the back of her mind. The pressure. The Command.

She gestured toward the other side of the table. “Sit. Let us negotiate.”

“There is nothing to negotiate, Rysn,” Nikli said. “I’m sorry. But I have a duty to the entire cosmere.”

“Everyone wants something,” Rysn said, sweat trickling down the sides of her face. “Everyone has needs. It is my job to connect the needs to the people.”

“And what is it you assume I need?” Nikli asked.

She met the thing’s gaze. “You need someone to keep your secrets.”