Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.

Chapter 28 (Heresies)
Icons: Chana and Pailiah, representing obedience and learning, are appropriate to the title--which presumably means we’ll be dealing with the ardentia this chapter.

Epigraph: “Other shards I cannot identify, and are hidden to me.” Does that mean that the foregoing portion of the letter is exhaustive of the list that Sazed has been able to contact? Or is he skipping some over? I’ll need to go back and count/list the ones that have been mentioned and those that have not. Autonomy sticks out as one he did not talk about and who is the prime suspect for “encroaching” on Scadrial, but I’m wondering if this indicates that there are multiple enemies.

“Standard violet ink.” I’m not sure if this is the first time it’s been mentioned, but I definitely missed it before this. I love that the alethi are basically all writing their letters with purple gel pens. I wonder how long violet has been the standard--presumably it has something to do with the available ingredients and known recipes for ink. So were all of Shallan’s historical studies in the Palaneum using texts in purple? Or did they use pink/red/green/blue in different periods and geographic regions? Presumably there were specific authors who wrote in individualized colors, which adds a whole extra layer to my mental image of their libraries, their calligraphy, and their art.

Measuring the difference in mass to a paired / inactive spanreed to calculate its partner’s distance? That’s very cool. This is a patented Mark Watney “science the rust out of this” moment.

I was about to make a guess from the “heresies” line that the conspiracy theorist on the other end of the line would be a devotee of Ishar, but the very next line talks about what humans do. I’m currently predicting that this is a Siah Aimian (not Axies) since we haven’t seen any of them yet, the Sleepless are hands off and appear organized, and the spren are too obvious--and wouldn’t be able to communicate by spanreed as easily.

But let’s make note of the other strange phrasing: “What is this you do, putting fabrials in a pit and connecting them to the blowing of the storms?” What pit is being referenced? OH! They are describing the wind turbine at the top of the elevator shaft. I was imagining something smaller scale, but this is fairly obvious. Never mind.

Everyone packing up and sprinting to the next spot, to triangulate locations in the tower. I’m grinning at the image.

Quote

“Promises make the world funciton. We make the world function.”

The likelihood of a spren doing the writing is slightly higher.  I’m not as committed to my Siah prediction at the moment. Anyway, this bit about promises makes me think of Syl’s comment back in book 1 about the laws of nature being agreements between friends, and the analogy I drew at the time to lesser spren as subcontractors that get hired by nahel spren using stormlight currency to perform surgebinding.

“Ash’s mask”--a new swear to add to the list. Appropriate for the herald of the lightweavers.

Oh, Navani thinks it’s Glys, doesn’t she. That’s why Pailiah is at the top of the chapter. I’m not sure how I feel about that--either the possibility itself, or the suspicion. The more I think about it, the more reasonable the guess seems, but I also rather hate how estranged Renarin is from his family even a year after that beautiful hug with Jasnah at the end of Oathbringer. Does Navani really need to do this cloak and dagger  facade? Couldn't she just go talk to Ren? You know, her son!? (Well, nephew/stepson, but this family is supposed to be close.)