Vivenna blinked. That wasn’t what she had been expecting.

“You’re more interested in Type Two and Type Three entities,” Vasher continued. “Type Two being Mindless Manifestations in a Deceased Host. They are cheap to make, even with awkward Commands. This is per the Law of BioChromatic Parallelism: the closer a host is to a living shape and form, the easier it is to Awaken. BioChroma is the power of life, and so it seeks patterns of life. That, however, leads us to another law—the Law of Comparability. It states that the amount of Breath required to Awaken something isn’t necessarily indicative of its power once Awakened. A piece of cloth cut into a square and a piece of cloth cut into the shape of a person will take very different amounts of Breath to Awaken, but will be essentially the same once they have been Invested.

“The explanation for this is simple. Some people think of Awakening as pouring water into a cup. You pour until the cup is filled, and then the object comes to life. This is a false analogy. Instead, think of Awakening as beating down a door. You pound and pound, and some doors are easier to open than others, but once they’re open, they do about the same thing.”

He glanced at her. “Understand?”

“Uh . . .” she said. She’d spent her youth training with the tutors, but this was beyond even their methods of teaching. “It’s a little dense.”

“Well, do you want to learn or not?”

You asked me if I understood, she thought. And I answered. However, she didn’t voice her objections. Better for him to keep talking.

“Type Two BioChromatic entities,” he said, “are what people in Hallandren call Lifeless. They are different from Type One entities in several ways. Lifeless can be created at will, and require only a few Breaths to Awaken—anywhere between one and hundreds, depending on the Commands used—and they feed off of their own color when being Invested. They don’t present an aura when Awakened, but the Breath sustains them, keeping them from needing to eat. They can die, and need a special alcohol solution to remain functional past a few years of Awakened status. Because of their organic host, their Breath clings to the body, and cannot be withdrawn once Invested.”

“I know a little about them,” Vivenna said, “Denth and his team have a Lifeless.”

Vasher fell silent. “Yes,” he finally said. “I know.”

Vivenna frowned, noticing a strange look in his eyes. They sat silently for a few moments. “You were talking about Lifeless and their Commands?” she prompted.

Vasher nodded. “They need a Command to Awaken them, just like anything else. Even your religion teaches about Commands—it says that Austre is the one who Commands the Returned to come back.”

She nodded.

“Understanding the theory of Commands is tough. Look at Lifeless, for instance. It’s taken us centuries to discover the most efficient ways to bring a body to a Lifeless state. Even now, we’re not sure if we understand how it works. I guess this is the first thing I’d like to get across to you—that BioChroma is complicated, and we really don’t understand most of it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Just what I said,” Vasher replied, shrugging. “We don’t really know what we’re doing.”

“But you sound so technical and precise in your descriptions.”

“We’ve figured out some things,” he said. “But Awakeners really haven’t been around that long. The more you learn about BioChroma, the more you’ll realize that there are more things that we don’t know than there are things we do. Why are the specific Commands so important, and why do they have to be spoken in your native language? What brings Type One entities—Returned—back to life in the first place? Why are Lifeless so dull-minded, while Returned fully sentient?”

Vivenna nodded.

“Creating Type Three BioChromatic entities is what we traditionally call ‘Awakening,’” Vasher continued. “That’s when you create a BioChromatic manifestation in an organic host that is far removed from having been alive. Cloth works the best, though sticks, reeds, and other plant matter can be used.”

“What about bones?” Vivenna asked.

“They’re strange,” Vasher said. “They take far more Breath to awaken than a body held together with flesh and aren’t as flexible as something like cloth. Still, Breath will stick to them fairly easily, since they were once alive and maintain the form of a living thing.”

“So Idrian stories that talk about skeletal armies aren’t just fabrications?”

He chuckled. “Oh, they are. If you wanted to Awaken a skeleton, you’d have to arrange all the bones together in their correct places. That’s a lot of work for something that will take upwards of fifty or a hundred Breaths to Awaken. Intact corpses make far more sense economically, even if the Breath sticks to them so well that it becomes impossible to recover. Still, I’ve seen some very interesting things done with skeletons which have been Awakened.

“Anyway, Type Three entities—regular Awakened objects—are different. BioChroma doesn’t stick to them very well at all. The result is that they require quite a bit of Investiture—often well over a hundred Breaths—to Awaken them. The benefit of this, of course, is that the Breath can be drawn back out again. This has allowed for quite a bit more experimentation, and that has resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of Awakening techniques.”

“You mean the Commands?” Vivenna asked.

“Right,” Vasher said. “As you’ve seen, most basic Commands work easily. If the Command is something the object could do, and you state it in a simple way, the Command will usually work.”

“I tried some simple Commands,” she said. “On the rope. They didn’t work.”

“Those may have sounded simple, but they weren’t. Simple Commands are only two words long. Grab something. Hold something. Move up. Move down. Twist around. Even some two-word Commands can be more complicated, and it takes practice visualizing—or, well, imagining. Well, using your mind to—”

“I understand that part,” she said. “Like flexing a muscle.”

He nodded. “The Command ‘Protect me,’ though only two words, is extremely complicated. So are others, like Fetch something. You have to give the right impulse to the object. This area is where you really begin to understand how little we know. There are probably thousands of Commands we don’t know. The more words you add, the more complicated the mental component becomes, which is why discovering a new Command can take years of study.”

“Like the discovery of a new Command to make Lifeless,” she said thoughtfully. “Three hundred years ago, those who had the one-Breath Command could make their Lifeless much more cheaply than those who didn’t. That disparity started the Manywar.”

“Yes,” Vasher said. “Or, at least, that was part of what caused the war. It’s not really important. The thing to understand is that we’re still children when it comes to Awakening. It doesn’t help that a lot of people who learn new, valuable Commands never share them, and probably die with the knowledge.”

Vivenna nodded, noticing how his lesson grew more relaxed and conversational as he got into the topic. His expertise surprised her.

He sits on the floor, she thought, eating a dry piece of squid, not having shaven in weeks and wearing clothing that looks like it’s about to fall off. Yet he talks like a scholar giving a lecture. He carries a sword that leaks black smoke and causes people to kill each other, yet he works so hard to stop a war. Who is this man?

She glanced to the side, to where Nightblood sat leaning against the wall. Perhaps it was the discussion of the technical aspects of BioChroma, or perhaps it was simply her growing suspicion. She was beginning to understand what wasn’t right about the sword.

“What is a Type Four BioChromatic entity?” Vivenna asked, glancing back at Vasher.