I-11. New Rhythms

Eshonai, now in the powerful stormform, moves to transform all of Narak's population into this new form before the coming highstorms. She bypasses the Five's cautious objections by publicly announcing her plan and using displays of power to sway the populace, then systematically gathers everyone in the city to determine who will voluntarily transform and who will refuse.

Eshonai has held stormform for fifteen days and feels its transformative power, though she struggles with hearing new rhythms and voices within them. She calls a meeting of the Five to propose that all listeners—not just the two hundred already transformed—should take stormform before the coming highstorms. The Five resist her aggression and the pace of her plan, with Zuln explicitly opposing it. When they leave to deliberate, Eshonai makes a public announcement from the spire, declaring stormform a right and summoning a miniature storm to demonstrate her power, effectively usurping the Five's authority. She then gathers all seventeen thousand soldiers and announces they will transform, discovering only a handful refuse. She orders her forces to conduct a city-wide accounting, gathering those willing to transform in the center and those unwilling on the practice grounds. The dissenters—including Abronai and Zuln from the Five, plus about a thousand others—are separated under guard. Thude, a trusted former soldier, expresses concern about these actions, nearly convinced by Eshonai's justifications but ultimately troubled. Eshonai considers that she will likely need to execute the dissenters once all her soldiers have transformed. She discovers her own mother among the unwilling. She places Thude in charge of guarding the dissenters, believing this will keep her hands clean of their deaths. As she prepares to address the gathered population with prepared speeches, she learns that the dissenters—including Thude—have escaped by cutting bridges and descending into the chasms. Venli questions why this doesn't surprise Eshonai. Eshonai dismisses the news, claiming the escapees will die in the coming storm anyway, though Venli suspects Eshonai has orchestrated their escape to maintain Thude's loyalty while appearing blameless.