Daughter of No Worlds

“I had made a critical miscalculation. I had naively thought that his twisted, confusing affection would help me escape. Instead, it would crush me, because Esmaris only possessed or destroyed, and if he couldn’t do one, he would do the other.”

When Esmaris whips Tisaanah for trying to buy her freedom, she realizes that he cannot let what he sees as his property go. This is the first appearance of the principle that guides the behavior of several other characters whose desire for power is so extreme that it always leaves destruction in its wake—The Urge to Possess or Destroy.

“Who has ruined you so badly that you can’t do anything but stand in the way of people who have actual important things to do? Why do you feel such a pervasive, petty need to shove your petulance in the Orders’ faces?”

Tisaanah is confronting Max about his uncooperative attitude. He refuses to train her principally because the Orders want him to do so. It doesn’t occur to him that Tisaanah is being harmed by his stubborn behavior. Of course, he has good reason to resist the influence of the Orders, but those facts don’t come to light until late in the novel.

“More than anything […] the Orders care about control. That was why they were founded to begin with, to make sure that Wielders weren’t going to accidentally wreak destruction simply because they didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”

Max is cautioning Tisaanah about putting too much faith in the Orders. Because, at this point, she is primarily motivated by The Desire for Power, she doesn’t look too closely at the source offering it to her. Ironically, she wants to free the enslaved people of Threll by using the power of an organization that desires control over its members and that will force her into servitude as Reshaye’s Host.

“There was a certain meditative quality about throwing myself against a stone wall again and again, chipping away at it. I could feel it cracking beneath my fingers, even as I felt it cracking me. At the end, one of us would be left standing. And I wasn’t about to let myself break.”

Tisaanah attacks the problems that confront her by hurling herself at them, hoping to succeed through brute force. In doing so, she also harms herself, but she is willing to take the risk because she believes that she can survive.

“I knew how tragedy like that, no matter the circumstances, could so easily become a core piece of your being. Mine had. I just set it on fire and let it fuel me. It just as easily could have eaten me alive.”

Tisaanah has just learned that Max’s entire family died during the Great Ryvenai War. She doesn’t yet know the particulars of the incident, but she recognizes the depth of his loss. Her words offer Max empathy and the wisdom that she has learned from her own experience of trauma: Pain can either motivate or destroy the survivor.

“I was too young to know the truth then. That victory meant another’s defeat, and sometimes our own defeat. That winning meant sacrifices, and sometimes ones that even our own people were not willing to make. That in war, someone always paid.”

Tisaanah compares Max’s experience in the Great Ryvenai War to the war that conquered her people. Her family was on the losing side of their war, while Max was on the winning side of his. However, neither of them escaped conflict unscathed, proving that warfare offers no real victories to anyone.

“I had been excellent at the role I played at Esmaris’s estate, and it wasn’t because I was the most beautiful girl or the most talented or the best dancer. It was because, every single time I turned my attention to a man, I asked, What does he want?”

Because Tisaanah is a Valtain, she possesses mind-reading abilities. Thus, she is adept at focusing on other people’s needs. This ability ensured her survival during her enslavement. She is now employing this same skill to understand the fraught political atmosphere in Ara. Knowing an opponent’s agenda is valuable in a world at war.

“Was he a man who truly didn’t care about his city? Or had his rage and grief twisted his judgement so thoroughly that he believed he was doing the right thing? It was amazing, the mental somersaults minds and hearts could do to justify their actions in the name of love.”

Tisaanah attributes Pathyr Savoi’s brutally irrational decision to sacrifice the entire population of Tairn rather than surrender to Queen Sesri to love. Many characters use love as an excuse for atrocities. For instance, both Esmaris and Reshaye attack Tisaanah because they feel that she has betrayed their love.

“‘The worst thing, though,’ I continued, slowly, ‘is to think that they are all buried somewhere in a hole […] But what I hate more is that there is no one left who remembers their lives.’ ‘And who the hell are we,’ he finally said, voice low and thick, ‘to carry something so precious?’”

Max and Tisaanah have both lost their families in horrific circumstances—Max’s family was slaughtered during the war, while Tisaanah’s family was enslaved, and she assumes that they are all dead now. However, while Max is haunted by his family, indicating how heavily he feels the burden of memory, Tisaanah thinks that holding on to the memories of her family’s lives is not traumatic but important and commemorative.

“I had been just a child, when I met him. Just a child, and he had taken me in, told me I should feel grateful because he only beat me sparingly, because he waited a few years to rape me, because he didn’t send me off to my death like he did to so many others. Aren’t you lucky, Tisaanah. Don’t I treat you well.”

Esmaris not only enslaved Tisaanah but also separated her from other enslaved people by making her believe that he favored her and ensuring that her lot was far better than that of other captives. The bitterness of her description of his manipulation here suggests that age and experience have made her recognize his abuse for what it was.

“He wasn’t giving me another pretty trinket. No, Max—Max, the man who had taken such great care to carve out his own solitary corner of the world—was giving me what I’d never had. The real gift was not the necklace. The gift was a home to come back to.”

Max has just given Tisaanah the graduation gift of a butterfly necklace. It contains a Stratagram that will lead her back to his cottage whenever she wishes to return. Tisaanah has spent her life feeling rootless, which is why she describes herself as a “daughter of no worlds.” Max’s gift gives her a home for the first time since her family was destroyed.

“For each of us, there were so many equally broken souls—thousands who hurt and loved and grieved just as hard as we did. And for every Esmaris, for every Ahzeen, there were hundreds of other Threllian Lords who threw bodies into wars and beds and beneath whips like they were nothing but sacks of flesh.”

Tisaanah is thinking about the plight of the captive workers in Threll. Significantly, she doesn’t see her war against the Threllian Lords as a personal vendetta, even though she will definitely seek vengeance against Ahzeen Mikov for his father’s crimes against her. In contrast, Max cannot let go of his personal vendetta against the Orders—a narrow perspective that allows him to more clearly identify the ways in which they are using Tisaanah.

“‘But it’s not just about him,’ I whispered. ‘There are so, so many.’ Because, after all, such heavy sacrifices had already been made for me. How could I not return them? How could I stop at anything that would ever repay them? That was all I was worth.”

Tisaanah is plagued with survivor’s guilt at being free while her former companions are still enslaved. She is thinking particularly about what her escape cost Vos and Serel, feeling unworthy of their sacrifices on her behalf.

“The papers were spread out in front of him. Three inky pages detailing everything that I have ever wanted. Three pages that guaranteed the safety of my friends and a chance—at least a chance—at a better life for thousands of people. And three pages that sold me back into slavery.”

Tisaanah is looking at the blood oath contract that she is about to sign with Zeryth. In this deal, Tisaanah seemingly gets everything she wants: power, magic, and resources for war against Threll. However, she is astute enough to realize that by taking the offer, she is shackling herself to the Orders, which will wring out every drop of usefulness from her in their civil war.

“I had done the same thing. I’d sat in the Arch Commandant’s office as he offered me everything I’d ever wanted. Selfish things. Petty things. That’s all it took, and I signed away my soul. I’d deserved it, at least. But Tisaanah […] Tisaanah, and her noble causes.”

Max is filled with shame that when he agreed to be the Host for Reshaye, he was motivated only by worldly ambitions. In contrast, Tisaanah does so to free her people. Max’s disparagement of his ignoble motives is a moral judgment: He feels that he deserved Reshaye’s punishment for being selfish, but Tisaanah does not.

“Morally fucking superior. Me, sitting here alone with the flowers, while Tisaanah suffered. Me, living in this cottage that had become her home just as much as it was mine, going back to a meaningless life and telling myself, ‘Well, it’s the only thing I can do.’”

After refusing Nura’s request that he help Tisaanah manage Reshaye, Max is once again castigating himself for his bad choices. He is the only person who has undergone the same ordeal, but just as he chose to spite the Orders by refusing to train Tisaanah, he again withholds his help as a feeble protest against Zeryth and Nura’s ambition.

“I had spent my life being powerless. I knew how to find power where there was none. And so, instead of reaching out to Reshaye with another strike, I reached out with a caress.”

Reshaye is having a tantrum because Tisaanah prefers Max. However, Tisaanah has learned how to find resistance in a position of weakness: By using the tactic of a caress, she handles the love-starved Reshaye as she once handled Esmaris, wheedling and cajoling the much more powerful entity into complacency.

“I would pretend that wasn’t the case as long as I possibly could. I was, after all, a well-practiced, world-renowned expert in denial. I was good at magic, good at fighting, good at gardening. But I was excellent at avoiding inconvenient truths.”

Max is thinking about his attraction toward Tisaanah. However, since the novel mixes elements of the romance genre with those of fantasy, the quote applies to far more than his growing affection for her. Throughout the novel, Max has always succeeded in ignoring the obvious when it suits him to do so. He failed to recognize that teaching Tisaanah was the right thing to do. He also later insisted that he wouldn’t aid her after she became Reshaye’s Host. Fortunately, Max eventually allows himself to acknowledge inconvenient truths before it’s too late.

“I watched Max as he slumped back down onto that crate, my teeth gritted. Stupid. So stupid, in that uniquely male way, to sink to getting into a dick-waving contest instead of stopping to think about what that would mean. Gods, what a privilege that must be.”

Tisaanah makes this sardonically humorous comment after watching Max and Zeryth posturing for dominance with one another. Typically, Max thinks about defending his own position first and only later gets around to understanding the real issue at stake. Tisaanah never loses sight of the big picture. Here, she suggests that pointless turf battles are a common male weakness.

“Max wanted to believe that one person was capable of making something change. Because—If you can do it, I can do it. I choked out, ‘You can do it even if I can’t […] You are the best of men, Maxantarius Farlione, no matter how much you try to convince the world otherwise. Promise me that you’ll keep fighting your battles even if I lose mine.’”

In the aftermath of Tisaanah’s slaughter at the enslavers’ compound, she is unsure of her ability to control Reshaye again. Thus, she tells Max that he must go on without her. Dying for someone is easy, but living on after they are gone is difficult. She recognizes the degree to which she pulled Max out of his spiral of despair and worries about what might happen to him without her. Tisaanah again sees the big picture that Max so often misses.

“In my panic, I threw at it the only thing I could think to offer. The thing it wanted most of all. The thing that I had always sold in exchange for the safety of myself or the people I cared for: I love you. I love you, Reshaye.”

As she has done at previous points in the story, Tisaanah seeks to placate Reshaye using the tactics she learned while still enslaved. Like Esmaris, Reshaye wants to be reassured of Tisaanah’s singular devotion. The entity’s self-involvement is extreme, so it doesn’t question the sincerity of Tisaanah’s declaration. Abject submission is all that is required.

“[I]t did not help Ahzeen politically to punish some faceless, nameless slave. No—Ahzeen needed power. He needed respect. And in the world of the Threllian Lords, respect was earned through honor and dominance.”

Tisaanah is analyzing the reason why Ahzeen lured an Orders delegation to his mansion only to capture them in full view of his party guests. She recognizes that Ahzeen’s staging of the event was pure theater. Displays of dominance are usually sufficient to grant power to the aggressor, which is why Threllian Lords behave as ostentatiously as they do.

“All of my certainties had been rearranged, some destroyed, some new ones built in their place. And for the first time in so long, something new altogether had begun to grow in the space between those certainties, something harder to see but more powerful, more dangerous, more beautiful: Possibility.”

During the return voyage to Ara, Max considers how Tisaanah’s arrival has changed his life. He chooses words that evoke horticulture, a metaphor that compares “Possibility” to a new species of plant that sprang up without intention in his carefully tended garden. He describes this new species as both beautiful and dangerous—like Tisaanah and the future.