Summary of A Dance of Burning Blades
The narrative of A Dance of Burning Blades begins in a continent reeling from the events of the Lordsgrave Massacre and the discovery of ancient techwork linked to the extinct Scathed people. The highblood clans Mizito, Itahua, Navret, Tarsin, Qaneen, and Adatali maintain power through the “Bond,” a spiritual connection to their founding ancestors, mediated by the Holy Orders of monks and nuns. However, the Ahiki Royal Clan, which rules the Nine Lands from the secluded “Garden,” hides a history of conquest and suppression. Beneath the surface, the “underplane” (or Throxx) consists of multiple strata where spirits, “Intelligences,” and exiled entities dwell. As the King initiates a war to reclaim the Feverlands territory inhabited by the greybloods factions within the clans and the Holy Orders begin to move toward rebellion.
Part One: The Spark of Rebellion
The Adatali Secession and Father Boleo’s Gambit The prologue introduces Father Emata, a “Keeper of Truths” and royal spy, who plans to assassinate Warlord Daloya Adatali during his birthday celebrations in Ewo City. She intends to use poison (“Wraith’s Blood”) and frame a crime syndicate to justify the King erasing the entire Adatali bloodline. However, Daloya and his senior monk, Father Boleo, anticipate the betrayal. Using a techwork staff, Boleo projects Emata’s own conspiratorial words to the assembled nobles, turning the crowd against her. Boleo reveals he has switched the poison, and as Emata collapses, Daloya’s personal guard, the Batide, perform an unsanctioned invocation. Captain Omadella, Daloya’s spouse, publicly declares that Adataliland is no longer part of the Nine Lands and will no longer serve the “traitor king”. This act marks the start of an open rebellion, as word is sent to Adatali battalions at the war front to retreat.
Temi Baker and the Unrest in Lordsgrave In the Nine Lords’ eastern slum of Lordsgrave, Temi Baker a lowblood bonded to the spirit eater Vunaji struggles in a district on the brink of collapse. The district is under heavy surveillance by Father Palui the Pure, a royal monk obsessed with finding “techwork” hidden in the bakery. Tensions boil over when Palui’s monks assault Temi’s grandfather, Old Baba, sparking the “Lordsgrave Riots”. Amidst the chaos, the Bhuten crime Family attempts to recruit Temi, revealing that her grandfather has been secretly providing translation services for the monks to keep the family safe. Vunaji, the voice in Temi’s head, urges her to return to the ancestral realm to strengthen him so he can protect her family.
Temi’s life is further complicated when a rival gang, the Red Hands, torches her bakery, demanding her family leave Lordsgrave within thirty days. Believing she can use techwork to help the district before they are forced to flee to Jebba, Temi visits a hidden underground workshop run by “The Smithy”. The Smithy provides her with a “code amplifier” for her water-cleaning votives as a debt repayment to Old Baba. When Temi drops the amplified device into the River Ae, it summons the “Spirit of the Ae,” a towering wall of water that displays images of the past and the time of the Scathed.
Janzen Farmer’s Struggle on the War Front Lord Jinao Mizito, living in hiding as the lowblood “Janzen Farmer,” toils in the Feverlands as part of a tree-felling company. He is driven by a promise to kill the Bairneater, the greyblood who murdered his family. During a massive, coordinated greyblood attack at night, Jinao witnesses ordinary Adatali soldiers invoking ancestors, confirming the news of the rebellion. Jinao is eventually moved to an “advanced scouting” team under Father Iqdao, a role essentially meant for “death”. In the toxic air of the Feverlands, Jinao’s team begins to die off from infection and exposure. Desperate, Jinao seeks a spiritual healing from Taaben, a war-camp “spirit witch”. Taaben realizes Jinao is of high blood and attempts to bypass a “curse” on Jinao’s bond, which was placed by the Bairneater. The healing causes agonizing visions but momentarily allows Jinao to hear his ancestors, Mizito and Sumalong. However, the Woodsmaiden a named greyblood raids the camp and captures Jinao and his friend Balu.
Part Two: The Cost of Power
Ohemah and the Chedu Family “Runt” is taken in by her father, Gamani Chedu, and renamed Ohemah (“Queen”). She moves to Riverhouse, the Chedu compound, where she discovers the Family is a secret organization of invokers dedicated to restoring human power stolen by the Ahikis. Her brother Zee, however, is suffering from a horrific transformation following a healing from “The Cloistered” (blue spirits). Ohemah realizes that the blue spirits are not just healers but are replacing the souls of those they “fix”. Gamani introduces Ohemah to the Council of Elders in the ancestral realm, where she sees Chedu himself. However, the Cloistered prevent her from fully connecting with her ancestors, claiming the realm is “not safe” for her.
Ohemah’s arc takes a dark turn when she discovers Gamani is poisoning his own mother, Old Mama, with “ambleweed” to keep her from speaking against him. With Ohemah’s help, Old Mama regains her lucidity long enough to warn her that Gamani is obsessed with “Kusandi,” a rogue ancestor who was Chedu’s brother. When Gamani discovers their interference, he has his lieutenant Casten murder Old Mama in front of Ohemah. Ohemah’s horror culminates when Zee’s body is “born” into a new physical form for one of the Cloistered, and the boy she loved is gone.
The Siege of Ewo and the Sun Tower In Ewo, Father Boleo manages a city under siege by a royal army led by the warrior monk Father Unworthy. Boleo utilizes ancient blackglass monoliths to create a protective barrier around the city. His apprentice, Kipteni, discovers the “Sun Tower,” a hidden Scathed structure that is actually a massive communications device. Boleo eventually brings Vunaji (appearing as a nine-year-old girl) into the mortal realm via a spirit-wood cage. Vunaji agrees to help Boleo by capturing the spirit of the Ahiki King, but she also sabotages Boleo’s techwork defenses to force a confrontation between the Ahiki Princen and himself.
The battle at Ewo reaches a fever pitch when Father Unworthy unleashes a “storm of screaming, spectral people” the spirits of those he has captured. Lord Morayo Adatali, who has been training with the arokin dancer Oni and Elder Sollu, performs the true “Dance of Burning Blades”. This dance allows him to invoke not just Adatali, but the “Eight Blades” eight ancestral warriors who once rejected the Ahiki King. During the battle, Captain Omadella sacrifices her spirit to empower the Adatali ancestor, allowing him to cleave the “Blight” a monstrous greyblood in two.
Part Three: The Waste and the Wilds
The Fall of Lordsgrave While Temi is visiting the Bhutens in Nine Lords, the Holy Orders execute a “magnified” techwork attack that completely razes Lordsgrave District. Temi returns to find her home in ruins and most of her family “snuffed from existence”. The attack was designed to destroy the Spirit of the Ae and eliminate any “witnesses” to the rebellion. Temi finds Old Baba alive only because he had a personal shield generator. In her grief, Vunaji takes Temi through the various strata of the underplane to show her that her family’s spirits are not in the “Ancestral Realm” (First Stratum) but in the “Place Beyond”. Vunaji also reveals the truth: the Ahikis have been poisoning the people of the Nine Lands for five millennia through the River Ae to sever their connection to their true power.
Jinao’s Transformation The Woodsmaiden subjects Jinao to systematic torture, eventually amputating his arm and blinding him in one eye. She attempts to “birth” a better version of Jinao to act as a host for his ancestors. Jinao is rescued by a group of greybloods led by Seema, who disagree with the Woodsmaiden’s cruelty. They replace his missing limbs with techwork parts a “Forbidden” eye and arm. Jinao realizes that greybloods were originally created by the Ahikis as “weapons” and “tools of obedience”.
Jinao discovers that “John,” the leader of Seema’s group and father to the child Lucy, is actually the Bairneater. Jinao and his ancestor Sumalong fight the Bairneater, but the battle is interrupted by Lucy. Eventually, Jinao learns that his mother, Sulin Mizito, had coordinated with the Bairneater to lure the greybloods toward Ewo as part of a larger plan to seize control of the “Core Command”.
Part Four: The Final Command
The Reset and the New Alliance At the height of the Siege of Ewo, Father Boleo succeeds in capturing the spirit of the founding Ahiki King. From the King’s memories, Boleo learns the “core command” used to control greybloods. He issues a “New Core Command” in Urobi: “Destroy Clan Ahiki”. This turns the massive greyblood horde against the royal army, though the effort costs Boleo his humanity as he is consumed by the spirit he bonded with, becoming a pulsing “cocoon” of purple matter.
Following the battle, the supposedly extinct Clan Kzani arrives on the Royal Causeway, led by Warlord Mukisa. They offer “spiritual procedures” to the survivors. Lord Kartuuk Itahua also arrives, warning of the “spiritual contagion” of the blue spirits (The Cloistered) that has already claimed the city of Qenqar.
Temi’s Resolve and Lyela’s Sabotage Temi confronts Gamani Chedu in the ruins of Lordsgrave. She realizes he has “tethered” Ohemah’s soul to his own using warrior monk techwork. Temi refuses to leave the city and aligns with the Bhutens, intending to build a “new Family” to fight both the monks and the Chedus. She manages to blackmail a High Mother nun into giving her “tatauing ink,” which she uses to ink the images of Arrant Hill and the River Ae onto her own arms, creating a new type of bond.
Finally, Princen Lyelatuana (Lyela) completes her mission to sabotage her family from within. She destroys the “Gateway” in Nine Lords used by the Ahikis to trade blackglass for power with entities from beyond. She tosses her father’s severed hand (containing his spirit) into the fire, effectively orphaning the Royal Clan’s power source.
Epilogue
The Awakening As the book ends, a “Prisoner” in an Ahiki cell is revealed to be Jethar Mizito. His Bonded Intelligence, Aan, restores his memories and announces that it is “time to awaken”. Across the continent, other individuals a farmhand, a street thief, a servant begin to hear similar voices as the ancient neural blocks placed on humanity by the Ahikis start to fail. The stage is set for a total collapse of the old order as the Nine Lands face an unprecedented confluence of greyblood rebellion, ancestral awakening, and the spread of the blue spirits.