“So,” she asked as they walked along the jungle road, “I can’t figure it out. Which one are you? Kalad, who started the war, or Peacegiver, who ended it?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “It’s odd,” he finally said, “what history does to a man. I guess people couldn’t understand why I suddenly changed. Why I stopped fighting, and why I brought the Phantoms back to seize control of my own kingdom. So they decided I must have been two people. A man can get confused about his identity when things like that happen.”

She grunted in assent. “You’re still Returned, though.”

“Of course I am,” he said.

“Where did you get the Breath?” she asked. “The one a week you need to survive?”

“I carried them with me, on top of the one that makes me Returned. In a lot of ways, Returned aren’t quite what people think they are. They don’t automatically have hundreds or thousands of Breath.”

“But—”

“They’re of the Fifth Heightening,” Vasher said, interrupting her. “But they don’t get there by the number of Breaths, but by the quality. Returned have a single, powerful Breath. One that takes them all the way to the Fifth Heightening. It’s a divine Breath, you might say. But their body feeds on Breath, like . . .”