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“… looking for a way to get it into the city.”

Rusts. He looked to the side table, and the envelopes. Then, finally, he slipped the first earring out—the one Harmony had sent him. It had been six years. He’dgrown increasingly reticent to have anything to do with Harmony. He no longer hated God, but still…

He looked to Steris, who nodded. So he put the earring in.

And was suddenly in another place.

Floating, seeing the entire world before him, and the dark vastness beyond. He spent a moment disoriented, though his feet felt like they were on solid ground. It was unnerving.

This didn’t normally happen when he used an earring. But hehadbeen here once before. On that frozen mountaintop.

Harmony stood in the distance. A serene figure in traditional Terris robes. Kindly eyes. Hesitant at first, Wax walked across the invisible floor toward Harmony. If he let his eyes unfocus, Harmony seemed as vast as the cosmere—two sweeping wings. One white, one black. Spinning together in the middle, the edges extending to infinity.

At the heart of it was that figure. Terris. Head shaved smooth. Rounded features, with an elongated face. The face of a legend, standing with hands clasped behind his back. Looking worried.

“Last time I was here,” Wax noted, “I was dead.”

“Dying,” Harmony said. “On the very cusp of death. Sometimes I think that’s where I reside. Always there, like a coin balanced on edge… a gulf on either side…”

“Where is the redness I saw last time?” Wax asked, nodding to the planet. Six years ago a red haze had been coming over the planet, as if to swallow it. “Did you drive it off?”

“No,” Harmony said softly. “It Invested the planet. Invested… me. What you saw was a shroud, Waxillium. I responded too slowly. It is… a failing that grows more dangerous in me. By the time I realized what was happening, that shroud had come over me. It doesn’t hurt, it merely dampens my ability to see.”

“You mean…”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Harmony said softly, staring down at the planet. “What is Trell doing? What are they planning? They put that hazeup as a kind of smoke screen. When I attacked it, the haze infected my ability to see the future. Temporarily. I will be rid of it in a few years. That’s nothing on the timescale of gods. And yet…”

“And yet, the danger is right now.”

“Yes,” Harmony said. “Like a nearsighted person, I can see the danger now that it has come very close.” He hesitated, then looked to Wax. “I can see you, hear you. We are Connected. And so, I know what you’ve discovered. I thought I had more time. I realize only now that I have been moving too slowly. Yet again, too slowly…”

Wax considered that, gave it due weight. These weren’t matters or concepts one took lightly. God blinded. All of them years behind the enemy. A bomb being developed and a search for a way into the heart of his city.

One question rose to the surface. An old lawman’s adage. If you wanted to stop a man, you needed to know what he wanted. Who hewas.

“Harmony,” he said, “who is Trell?”

“Trell is the god Autonomy,” Harmony replied. “What we call a Shard of Adonalsium. Autonomy carries power like my own, a dangerous force for manipulating the very nature of reality and existence. Though Autonomy is held by a woman named Bavadin, her many different faces—or avatars—act with independence. Trell, a male god from the ancient records, can be considered one of these.”

Wax blinked.

“You were not expecting so straightforward an answer?” Harmony asked.

“I’ve not always gotten them in the past.”

“I’m trying to do better.”

That was… somehow as unnerving as hearing that Harmony had been blinded. God should nothaveto get better.

“You rarely get to speak to Autonomy herself,” Harmony continued. “As I’ve come to find, she speaks through avatars. Sometimes pieces of herself that she’s allowed to gain a semblance of self-awareness, sometimes through chosen people she has given a portion of her power.

“Autonomy decided to destroy our world, as it is a dangerous threat to her. But I believe she has been persuaded to let it persist, so long as it can be… controlled. Autonomy offered me an ultimatum last year, as my blinding was taking effect and when she assumed I would be the most desperate. She demanded I give this world to her, then move to another.

“I rejected the demand—and one of the last things I saw was the person Autonomy has chosen. The same one who persuaded her that this world had value, and who presented a plan for its domination.”

“My sister?”

Harmony nodded. “The leader of the Set. Invested by Autonomy. Avatar of a god on this world.”