“I will consider,” Kaladin said.
“Good, good,” Graves said. “You can get back to us through Moash. Be the surgeon this kingdom needs.”
“Come on,” Kaladin said to Moash. “The others will be wondering where we got to.”
He walked out, Moash following after making a few hasty farewells. Kaladin, honestly, expected one of them to try to stop him. Didn’t they worry that he’d turn them in, as he’d threatened?
They let him go. Back out into the clattering, chattering common room.
Storms, he thought. I wish their arguments hadn’t been so good. “How did you meet them?” Kaladin asked as Moash jogged up to join him.
“Rill, that’s the fellow who was sitting at the table, he was a mercenary on some of the caravans I worked before ending up in the bridge crews. He came to me once we were free of slavery.” Moash took Kaladin by the arm, halting him before they got back to their table. “They’re right. You know they are, Kal. I can see it in you.”
“They’re traitors,” Kaladin said. “I want nothing to do with them.”
“You said you’d consider!”
“I said that,” Kaladin said softly, “so that they’d let me leave. We have a duty, Moash.”
“Is it greater than the duty to the country itself?”
“You don’t care about the country,” Kaladin snapped. “You just want to pursue your grudge.”
“All right, fine. But Kaladin, did you notice? Graves treats all men the same, regardless of eye color. He doesn’t care that we’re darkeyed. He married a darkeyed woman.”
“Really?” Kaladin had heard of wealthy darkeyes marrying lowborn lighteyes, but never anyone as high-dahn as a Shardbearer.
“Yeah,” Moash said. “One of his sons is even a one-eye. Graves doesn’t give a storm about what other people think of him. He does what is right. And in this case, it’s—” Moash glanced around. They were now surrounded by people. “It’s what he said. Someone has to do it.”
“Don’t speak of this to me again,” Kaladin said, pulling his arm free and walking back toward the table. “And don’t meet with them anymore.”
He sat back down, Moash slinking into his place, annoyed. Kaladin tried to get himself to rejoin the conversation with Rock and Lopen, but he just couldn’t.
All around him, people laughed or shouted.
Be the surgeon this kingdom needs. . . .
Storms, what a mess.
Yet, were the orders not disheartened by so great a defeat, for the Lightweavers provided spiritual sustenance; they were enticed by those glorious creations to venture on a second assault.
—From Words of Radiance, chapter 21, page 10
“It doesn’t make sense,” Shallan said. “Pattern, these maps are baffling.”
The spren hovered nearby in his three-dimensional form full of twisting lines and angles. Sketching him had proven difficult, as whenever she looked closely at a section of his form, she found that it had so much detail as to defy proper depiction.
“Mmm?” Pattern asked in his humming voice.
Shallan climbed off her bed and tossed the book onto her white-painted writing desk. She knelt beside Jasnah’s trunk, digging through it before coming out with a map of Roshar. It was ancient, and not terribly accurate; Alethkar was depicted as far too large and the world as a whole was misshapen, with trade routes emphasized. It clearly predated modern methods of survey and cartography. Still, it was important, for it showed the Silver Kingdoms as they had supposedly existed during the time of the Knights Radiant.
“Urithiru,” Shallan said, pointing toward a shining city depicted on the map as the center of everything. It wasn’t in Alethkar, or Alethela as it had been known at the time. The map put it in the middle of the mountains near what might have been modern Jah Keved. However, Jasnah’s annotations said other maps from the time placed it elsewhere. “How could they not know where their capital was, the center of the orders of knights? Why does every map argue with its fellows?”
“Mmmmmm . . .” Pattern said, thoughtful. “Perhaps many had heard of it, but never visited.”
“Cartographers as well?” Shallan asked. “And the kings who commissioned these maps? Surely some of them had been to the place. Why on Roshar would it be so difficult to pinpoint?”
“They wished to keep its location secret, perhaps?”
Shallan stuck the map to the wall using some weevilwax from Jasnah’s supplies. She backed away, folding her arms. She hadn’t dressed for the day yet, and wore her dressing gown, hands uncovered.
“If that’s the case,” Shallan said, “they did too good a job of it.” She dug out a few other maps from the time, created by other kingdoms. In each, Shallan noted, the country of origin was presented far larger than it should have been. She stuck these to the wall too.
“Each shows Urithiru in a different location,” Shallan said. “Notably close to their own lands, yet not in their lands.”
“Different languages on each,” Pattern said. “Mmm . . . There are patterns here.” He started to try sounding them out.
Shallan smiled. Jasnah had told her that several of them were thought to have been written in the Dawnchant, a dead language. Scholars had been trying for years to—
“Behardan King . . . something I do not understand . . . order, perhaps . . .” Pattern said. “Map? Yes, that would likely be map. So the next is perhaps to draw . . . draw . . . something I do not understand . . .”
“You’re reading it?”
“It is a pattern.”
“You’re reading the Dawnchant.”
“Not well.”
“You’re reading the Dawnchant!” Shallan exclaimed. She scrambled up to the map beside which Pattern hovered, then rested her fingers on the script at the bottom. “Behardan, you said? Maybe Bajerden . . . Nohadon himself.”
“Bajerden? Nohadon? Must people have so many names?”
“One is honorific,” Shallan said. “His original name wasn’t considered symmetrical enough. Well, I guess it wasn’t really symmetrical at all, so the ardents gave him a new one centuries ago.”
“But . . . the new one isn’t symmetrical either.”
“The h sound can be for any letter,” Shallan said absently. “We write it as the symmetrical letter, to make the word balance, but add a diacritical mark to indicate it sounds like an h so the word is easier to say.”
“That— One can’t just pretend that a word is symmetrical when it isn’t!”
Shallan ignored his sputtering, instead staring at the alien script of what was supposedly the Dawnchant. If we do find Jasnah’s city, Shallan thought, and if it does have records, they might be in this language. “We need to see how much of the Dawnchant you can translate.”
“I did not read it,” Pattern said, annoyed. “I postulated a few words. The name I could translate because of the sounds of the cities above.”
“But those aren’t written in the Dawnchant!”
“The scripts are derived from one another,” Pattern said. “Obviously.”
“So obvious that no human scholar has ever figured it out.”
“You are not as good with patterns,” he said, sounding smug. “You are abstract. You think in lies and tell them to yourselves. That is fascinating, but it is not good for patterns.”
You are abstract . . . Shallan rounded the bed and slipped a book from the pile there, one written by the scholar Ali-daughter-Hasweth of Shinovar. The Shin scholars were among the most interesting to read, as their perspectives on the rest of Roshar could be so frank, so different.
She found the passage she wanted. Jasnah had highlighted it in her notes, so Shallan had sent out for the full book. Sebarial’s stipend to her—which he was paying—came in very handy. Vathah and Gaz, by her request, had spent the last few days visiting book merchants asking after Words of Radiance, the book Jasnah had given her just before dying. So far no luck, though one merchant had claimed he might be able to order it in from Kholinar.
“Urithiru was the connection to all nations,” she read from the Shin writer’s work. “And, at times, our only path to the outside world, with its stones unhallowed.” She looked up at Pattern. “What does that mean to you?”
“It means what it says,” Pattern replied, still hovering beside the maps. “That Urithiru was well connected. Roads, perhaps?”
“I’ve always read the phrase metaphorically. Connected in purpose, in thought, and scholarship.”
“Ah. Lies.”
“What if it’s not a metaphor? What if it’s like what you say?” She rose and crossed the room toward the maps, resting her fingers on Urithiru at the center. “Connected . . . but not by roads. Some of these maps don’t have any roads leading to Urithiru at all. They all place it in the mountains, or at least the hills. . . .”
“Mmm.”
“How do you reach a city if not by roads?” Shallan asked. “Nohadon could walk there, or so he claimed. But others do not speak of riding, or walking, to Urithiru.” True, there were few accounts of people visiting the city. It was a legend. Most modern scholars considered it a myth.
She needed more information. She scrambled over to Jasnah’s trunk, digging out one of her notebooks. “She said that Urithiru wasn’t on the Shattered Plains,” Shallan said, “but what if the pathway to it is here? Not an ordinary pathway, though. Urithiru was the city of Surgebinders. Of ancient wonders, like Shardblades.”
“Mm . . .” Pattern said softly. “Shardblades are no wonder . . .”
Shallan found the reference she was searching for. It wasn’t the quote she found curious, but Jasnah’s annotation of it. Another folktale, this one recorded in Among the Darkeyed, by Calinam. Page 102. Stories of instantaneous travel and the Oathgates pervade these tales.
Instantaneous travel. Oathgates.
“That’s what she was coming here for,” Shallan whispered. “She thought she could find a passageway here, on the Plains. But they’re barren stormlands, just stone, crem, and greatshells.” She looked up at Pattern. “We really need to get out there, onto the Shattered Plains.”
Her announcement was accompanied by an ominous chime from the clock. Ominous in that it meant the hour was far later than she’d assumed. Storms! She needed to meet Adolin by noon. She had to leave in a half hour if she was going to meet him on time.
Shallan yelped and ran for the washroom. She turned the spigot for water to fill the tub. After a moment of it spitting out dirty cremwater, clean, warm water began to flow, and she put in the stopper. She put her hand underneath it, marveling yet again. Flowing warm water. Sebarial said that artifabrians had visited recently, arranging to set up a fabrial that would keep the water in the cistern above perpetually warm, like the ones in Kharbranth.
“I,” she said, shucking off her dressing gown, “am going to allow myself to grow very, very accustomed to this.”
She climbed into the tub as Pattern moved along the wall above her. She had decided not to be bashful around him. True, he had a male voice, but he wasn’t really a man. Besides, there were spren everywhere. The tub probably had one in it, as did the walls. She’d seen for herself that everything had a soul, or a spren, or whatever. Did she care if the walls watched her? No. So why should she care about Pattern?
She did have to repeat this line of reasoning every time he saw her undress. It would help if he weren’t so blasted curious about everything.
“The anatomical differences between genders are so slight,” Pattern said, humming to himself. “Yet so profound. And you augment them. Long hair. Blush on the cheeks. I went and watched Sebarial bathe last night and—”
“Please tell me you didn’t,” Shallan said, blushing as she grabbed some pasty soap from the jar beside the iron tub.
“But . . . I just told you that I did. . . . Anyway, I wasn’t seen. I would not need to do this if you’d be more accommodating.”
“I am not doing nude sketches for you.”
She had made the mistake of mentioning that many of the great artists had trained themselves this way. After much pleading back home, she’d gotten several of the maids to pose for her, so long as she promised to destroy the sketches. Which she had. She’d never sketched men that way. Storms, that would be embarrassing!
She didn’t let herself linger in the bath. A quarter hour later—by the clock—she stood dressed and combing her damp hair before the mirror.
How would she ever go back to Jah Keved and a placid, rural life again? The answer was simple. She probably would never return. Once, that thought would have horrified her. Now it thrilled her—though she was determined to bring her brothers to the Shattered Plains. They would be far safer here than at her father’s estates, and what would they be leaving behind? Barely anything at all. She’d begun to think it was a far better solution than anything else, and let them dodge the issue of the missing Soulcaster, to an extent.
She’d gone to one of the information stations connected to Tashikk—there was one in every warcamp—and paid to have a letter, along with a spanreed, sent by messenger from Valath to her brothers. It would take weeks to arrive, unfortunately. If it even did. The merchant she’d talked to at the information station had warned her that moving through Jah Keved was difficult these days, with the succession war. To be careful, she’d sent a second letter from Northgrip, which was as far from the battlefields as one could get. Hopefully at least one of the two would arrive safely.
When she established contact again, she’d make a single argument to her brothers. Abandon the Davar estates. Take the money Jasnah had sent and flee to the Shattered Plains. For now, she’d done what she could.
She rushed through the room, hopping on one foot as she pulled on a slipper, and passed the maps. I’ll deal with you later.
It was time to go woo her betrothed. Somehow. The novels she’d read made it seem easy. A batting of eyelashes, blushes at appropriate times. Well, she had that last one down in good measure. Except maybe the appropriate part. She buttoned up the sleeve over her safehand, then paused at the door as she looked back and saw her sketchbook and pencil lying on the table.
She didn’t want to leave without those ever again. She tucked both in her satchel and rushed out. On the way through the white-marbled house, she passed Palona and Sebarial in a room with enormous glass windows, facing leeward over the gardens. Palona lay facedown, getting a massage—completely bare-backed—while Sebarial reclined and ate sweets. A young woman stood at a lectern in the corner, reciting poetry to them.
Shallan had a difficult time judging those two. Sebarial. Was he a clever civil planner or an indolent glutton? Both? Palona certainly did like the luxuries of wealth, but she didn’t seem the least bit arrogant. Shallan had spent the last three days poring over Sebarial’s house ledgers, and had found them an absolute mess. He seemed so smart in some areas. How could he have let his ledgers get so overgrown?
Shallan wasn’t especially good with numbers, not compared to her art, but she did enjoy math on occasion and was determined to tackle those ledgers.
Gaz and Vathah waited for her outside the doors. They followed her toward Sebarial’s coach, which waited for her to use, along with one of her slaves to act as footman. En said he’d done the job before, and he smiled at her as she stepped up. That was good to see. She couldn’t remember any of the five smiling on their trip out, even when she’d released them from the cage.
“You are being treated well, En?” she asked as he opened the coach door for her.
“Yes, mistress.”
“You’d tell me if you weren’t?”
“Er, yes, mistress.”
“And you, Vathah?” she asked, turning to him. “How are you finding your accommodations?”
He grunted.
“I assume that means they’re accommodating?” she asked.
Gaz chuckled. The short man had an ear for wordplay.
“You’ve kept your bargain,” Vathah said. “I’ll give you that. The men are happy.”
“And you?”
“Bored. All we do every day is sit around, collect what you pay us, and go drinking.”
“Most men would consider that an ideal profession.” She smiled at En, then climbed into the coach.
Vathah shut the door for her, then looked in the window. “Most men are idiots.”
“Nonsense,” Shallan said, smiling. “By the law of averages, only half of them are.”
He grunted. She was learning to interpret those, which was essential to speaking Vathahese. This one roughly meant, “I’m not going to acknowledge that joke because it would spoil my reputation as a complete and utter dunnard.”
“I suppose,” he said, “we have to ride up top.”
“Thank you for offering,” Shallan said, then pulled down the window shade. Outside, Gaz chuckled again. The two climbed into the guard positions on the top back of the carriage, and En joined the coachman up front. It was a true proper coach, pulled by horses and everything. Shallan had originally felt bad about asking to use it, but Palona had laughed. “Take the thing whenever you want! I have my own, and if Turi’s coach is gone, he’ll have an excuse to not go when people ask him to visit. He loves that.”
Shallan closed the other window shade as the coachman started the vehicle rolling, then got out her sketchbook. Pattern waited on the first blank white page. “We are going to find out,” Shallan whispered, “just what we can do.”
“Exciting!” Pattern said.
She got out her pouch of spheres and breathed in some of the Stormlight. Then, she puffed it out in front of her, trying to shape it, meld it.
Nothing.
Next, she tried holding a very specific image in her head—herself, with one small change: black hair instead of red. She puffed out the Stormlight, and this time it shifted around her and hung for a moment. Then it too vanished.
“This is silly,” Shallan said softly, Stormlight trailing from her lips. She did a quick sketch of herself with dark hair. “What does it matter if I draw it first or not? The pencils don’t even show color.”
“It shouldn’t matter,” Pattern said. “But it matters to you. I do not know why.”
She finished the sketch. It was very simple—it didn’t show her features, only really her hair, everything else indistinct. Yet when she used Stormlight this time, the image took and her hair darkened to black.
Shallan sighed, Stormlight leaking from her lips. “So, how do I make the illusion vanish?”
“Stop feeding it.”
“How?”