“Tell me.”
He buzzed with an annoyed sound, quick and high pitched. “I will learn what I can of you before you kill me.”
“You think . . . You think I’m going to kill you?”
“It happened to the others,” Pattern said, his voice softer now. “It will happen to me. It is . . . a pattern.”
“This has to do with the Knights Radiant,” Shallan said, raising her hands to start braiding her hair. That would be better than leaving it wild—though without a comb and brush, even braiding it was hard. Storms, she thought, I need a bath. And soap. And a dozen other things.
“Yes,” Pattern said. “The knights killed their spren.”
“How? Why?”
“Their oaths,” Pattern said. “It is all I know. My kind, those who were unbonded, we retreated, and many kept our minds. Even still, it is hard to think apart from my kind, unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Unless we have a person.”
“So that’s what you get out of it,” Shallan said, untangling her hair with her fingers. “Symbiosis. I get access to Surgebinding, you get thought.”
“Sapience,” Pattern said. “Thought. Life. These are of humans. We are ideas. Ideas that wish to live.”
Shallan continued working on her hair. “I’m not going to kill you,” she said firmly. “I won’t do it.”
“I don’t suppose the others intended to either,” he said. “But it is no matter.”
“It is an important matter,” Shallan said. “I won’t do it. I’m not one of the Knights Radiant. Jasnah made that clear. A man who can use a sword isn’t necessarily a soldier. Just because I can do what I do doesn’t make me one of them.”
“You spoke oaths.”
Shallan froze.
Life before death . . . The words drifted toward her from the shadows of her past. A past she would not think of.
“You live lies,” Pattern said. “It gives you strength. But the truth . . . Without speaking truths you will not be able to grow, Shallan. I know this somehow.”
She finished with her hair and moved to rewrap her feet. Pattern had moved to the other side of the rattling wagon chamber, settling onto the wall, only faintly visible in the dim light. She had a handful of infused spheres left. Not much Stormlight, considering how quickly that other had left her. Should she use what she had to further heal her feet? Could she even do that intentionally, or would the ability elude her, as Lightweaving had?
She tucked the spheres into her safepouch. She would save them, just in case. For now, these spheres and their Light might be the only weapon available to her.
Bandages redone, she stood up in the rattling wagon and found that her foot pain was nearly gone. She could walk almost normally, though she still wouldn’t want to go far without shoes. Pleased, she knocked on the wood nearest to Bluth. “Stop the wagon!”
This time, she didn’t have to repeat herself. She rounded the wagon and, taking her seat beside Bluth, immediately noticed the smoke column ahead. It had grown darker, larger, roiling violently.
“That’s no cook fire,” Shallan said.
“Aye,” Bluth said, expression dark. “Something big is burning. Probably wagons.” He glanced at her. “Whoever is up there, it doesn’t look like things went well for them.”