FIVE YEARS AGO
Shallan longed to stay outside. Here in the gardens, people didn’t scream at each other. Here there was peace.
Unfortunately, it was a fake peace—a peace of carefully planted shalebark and cultivated vines. A fabrication, designed to amuse and distract. More and more she longed to escape and visit places where the plants weren’t carefully trimmed into shapes, where people didn’t step lightly, as if afraid of causing a rockslide. A place away from the shouting.
A cool mountain breeze came down from the heights and swept through the gardens, making vines shy backward. She sat away from the flowerbeds, and the sneezing they would bring her, instead studying a section of sturdy shalebark. The cremling she sketched turned at the wind, its enormous feelers twitching, before leaning back down to chew on the shalebark. There were so many kinds of cremlings. Had anyone tried to count them all?
By luck, her father had owned a drawing book—one of the works of Dandos the Oilsworn—and she used that for instruction, letting it rest open beside her.
A yell sounded from inside the nearby manor house. Shallan’s hand stiffened, making an errant streak across her sketch. She took a deep breath and tried to return to her drawing, but another series of shouts put her on edge. She set her pencil down.
She was nearly out of sheets from the latest stack her brother had brought her. He returned unpredictably but never for long, and when he came, he and Father avoided one another.
Nobody in the manor knew where Helaran went when he left.
She lost track of time, staring at a blank sheet of paper. That happened to her sometimes. When she raised her eyes, the sky was darkening. Almost time for Father’s feast. He had those regularly now.
Shallan packed up her things in the satchel, then took off her sun hat and walked toward the manor house. Tall and imposing, the building was an exemplar of the Veden ideal. Solitary, strong, towering. A work of square blocks and small windows, dappled by dark lichen. Some books called manors like this the soul of Jah Keved—isolated estates, each brightlord ruling independently. It seemed to her that those writers romanticized rural life. Had they ever actually visited one of the manors, experienced the true dullness of country life in person, or did they merely fantasize about it from the comfort of their cosmopolitan cities?
Inside the house, Shallan turned up the stairs toward her quarters. Father would want her looking nice for the feast. There would be a new dress for her to wear as she sat quietly, not interrupting the discussion. Father had never said so, but she suspected he thought it a pity she had begun speaking again.
Perhaps he did not wish her to be able to speak of things she’d seen. She stopped in the hallway, her mind going blank.
“Shallan?”
She shook herself to find Van Jushu, her fourth brother, on the steps behind her. How long had she been standing and staring at the wall? The feast would start soon!
Jushu’s jacket was undone and hung askew, his hair mussed, his cheeks flushed with wine. No cufflinks or belt; they had been fine pieces, each with a glowing gemstone. He’d have gambled those away.
“What was Father yelling about earlier?” she asked. “Were you here?”
“No,” Jushu said, running his hand through his hair. “But I heard. Balat has been starting fires again. Nearly burned down the storming servants’ building.” Jushu pushed past her, then stumbled, grabbing the bannister to keep from falling.
Father was not going to like Jushu coming to the feast like this. More yelling.
“Storms-cursed idiot,” Jushu said as Shallan helped him right himself. “Balat is going straight crazy. I’m the only one left in this family with any sense. You were staring at the wall again, weren’t you?”
She didn’t reply.
“He’ll have a new dress for you,” Jushu said as she helped him toward his room. “And nothing for me but curses. Bastard. He loved Helaran, and none of us are him, so we don’t matter. Helaran is never here! He betrayed Father, almost killed him. And still, he’s the only one who matters. . . .”
They passed Father’s chambers. The heavy stumpweight door was open a crack as a maid tidied the room, allowing Shallan to see the far wall.
And the glowing strongbox.
It was hidden behind a painting of a storm at sea that did nothing to dim the powerful white glow. Right through the canvas, she saw the outline of the strongbox blazing like a fire. She stumbled, pulling to a stop.
“What are you staring at?” Jushu demanded, holding to the bannister.
“The light.”
“What light?”
“Behind the painting.”
He squinted, lurching forward. “What in the Halls are you talking about, girl? It really did ruin your mind, didn’t it? Watching him kill Mother?” Jushu pulled away from her, cursing softly to himself. “I’m the only one in this family who hasn’t gone crazy. The only storming one . . .”
Shallan stared into that light. There hid a monster.
There hid Mother’s soul.
The betrayal of spren has brought us here.
They gave their Surges to human heirs,
But not to those who know them most dear, before us.
’Tis no surprise we turned away
Unto the gods we spent our days
And to become their molding clay, they changed us.
—From the Listener Song of Secrets, 40th stanza
“Th’information’ll cost ya twelve broams,” Shallan said. “Ruby, you see. I’ll check each one.”
Tyn laughed, tossing her head back, jet-black hair falling free around her shoulders. She sat in the driver’s seat of the wagon. Where Bluth used to sit.
“You call that a Bav accent?” Tyn demanded.
“I’ve only heard them three or four times.”
“You sounded like you have rocks in your mouth!”
“That’s how they sound!”
“Nah, it’s more like they have pebbles in their mouths. But they talk really slow, with overemphasized sounds. Like this. ‘Oi looked over the paintings that ya gave me, and they’re roit nice. Roit nice indeed. Ain’t never had a cloth for my backside that was so pleasant.’”
“You’re exaggerating that!” Shallan said, though she couldn’t help laughing.
“A tad,” Tyn said, leaning back and sweeping her long, chull-guiding reed in front of her like a Shardblade.
“I don’t see why knowing a Bav accent would be useful,” Shallan said. “They’re not a very important people.”
“Kid, that’s why they’re important.”
“They’re important because they’re unimportant,” Shallan said. “All right, I know I’m bad at logic sometimes, but something about that statement seems off.”
Tyn smiled. She was so relaxed, so . . . free. Not at all what Shallan had expected after their first encounter.
But then the woman had been playing a part. Leader of the guard. This woman Shallan was talking to now, this seemed real.
“Look,” Tyn said, “if you’re going to fool people, you’ll need to learn how to act beneath them as well as above them. You’re getting the whole ‘important lighteyes’ thing down. I assume you’ve had good examples.”
“You could say that,” Shallan replied, thinking of Jasnah.
“Thing is, in a lot of situations, being an important lighteyes is useless.”
“Being unimportant is important. Being important is useless. Got it.”
Tyn eyed her, chewing on some jerky. Her sword belt hung from a peg on the side of the seat, swaying to the rhythm of the chull’s gait. “You know, kid, you get kind of mouthy when you let your mask down.”
Shallan blushed.
“I like it. I prefer people who can laugh at life.”
“I can guess what you’re trying to teach me,” Shallan said. “You’re saying that a person with a Bav accent, someone who looks lowly and simple, can go places a lighteyes never could.”
“And can hear or do things a lighteyes never could. Accent is important. Elocute with distinction, and it often won’t matter how little money you have. Wipe your nose on your arm and speak like a Bav, and sometimes people won’t even glance to see if you’re wearing a sword.”
“But my eyes are light blue,” Shallan said. “I’ll never pass for lowly, no matter what my voice sounds like!”
Tyn fished in her trouser pocket. She had slung her coat over another peg, and so wore only the pale tan trousers—tight, with high boots—and a buttoned shirt. Almost a worker’s shirt, though of nicer material.
“Here,” Tyn said, tossing something to her.
Shallan barely caught it. She blushed at her clumsiness, then held it up toward the sun: a small vial with some dark liquid inside.
“Eyedrops,” Tyn said. “They’ll darken your eyes for a few hours.”
“Really?”
“Not hard to find, if you have the right connections. Useful stuff.”
Shallan lowered the vial, suddenly feeling a chill. “Is there—”
“The reverse?” Tyn cut in. “Something to turn a darkeyes into a lighteyes? Not that I know of. Unless you believe the stories about Shardblades.”
“Makes sense,” Shallan said, relaxing. “You can darken glass by painting it, but I don’t think you can lighten it without melting down the whole thing.”
“Anyway,” Tyn said, “you’ll need a good backwater accent or two. Herdazian, Bavlander, something like that.”
“I probably have a rural Veden accent,” Shallan admitted.
“That won’t work out here. Jah Keved is a cultured country, and your internal accents are too similar to one another for outsiders to recognize. Alethi won’t hear rural from you, like a fellow Veden would. They’ll just hear exotic.”
“You’ve been to a lot of places, haven’t you?” Shallan asked.
“I go wherever the winds take me. It’s a good life, so long as you’re not attached to stuff.”
“Stuff?” Shallan asked. “But you’re—pardon—you’re a thief. That’s all about getting more stuff!”
“I take what I can get, but that just proves how transient stuff is. You’ll take some things, but then you’ll lose them. Just like the job I pulled down south. My team never returned from their mission; I’m half convinced they ran off without seeing me paid.” She shrugged. “It happens. No need to get worked up.”
“What kind of job was it?” Shallan asked, blinking pointedly to take a Memory of Tyn lounging there, sweeping her reed as if conducting musicians, not a care in the world. They’d nearly died a couple of weeks back, but Tyn took it in stride.
“It was a big job,” Tyn said. “Important, for the kinds of people who make things change in the world. I still haven’t heard back from the ones who hired us. Maybe my men didn’t run off; maybe they just failed. I don’t know for certain.” Here, Shallan caught tension in Tyn’s face. A tightening of the skin around the eyes, a distance to her gaze. She was worried about what her employers might do to her. Then it was gone, smoothed away. “Have a look,” Tyn said, nodding up ahead.
Shallan followed the gesture and noticed moving figures a few hills over. The landscape had slowly changed as they approached the Plains. The hills grew steeper, but the air a little warmer, and plant life was more prevalent. Stands of trees clustered in some of the valleys, where waters would flow after highstorms. The trees were squat, different from the flowing majesty of the ones she’d known in Jah Keved, but it was still nice to see something other than scrub.
The grass here was fuller. It pulled smartly away from the wagons, sinking into its burrows. The rockbuds here grew large, and shalebark cropped up in patches, often with lifespren bouncing about like tiny green motes. During their days traveling they’d passed other caravans, more plentiful now that they were closer to the Shattered Plains. So Shallan wasn’t surprised to see someone up ahead. The figures, however, rode horses. Who could afford animals like that? And why didn’t they have an escort? There seemed to be only four of them.
The caravan rolled to a stop as Macob yelled an order from the first wagon. Shallan had learned, through awful experience, just how dangerous any encounter out here could be. None were taken lightly by caravan masters. She was the authority here, but she allowed those with more experience to call stops and choose their path.
“Come on,” Tyn said, stopping the chull with a whack of the stick, then hopping down from the wagon and grabbing her coat and sword off their pegs.
Shallan scrambled down, putting on her Jasnah face. She let herself be herself with Tyn. With the others, she needed to be a leader. Stiff, stern, but hopefully inspiring. To that end, she was pleased with the blue dress that Macob had given her. Embroidered with silver, made of the finest silk, it was a wonderful upgrade from her tattered one.
They walked past where Vathah and his men marched just behind the lead wagon. The leader of the deserters shot Tyn a glare. His dislike of the woman was only more reason to respect her, despite her criminal proclivities.
“Brightness Davar and I will handle this,” Tyn said to Macob as they passed.
“Brightness?” Macob said, standing and looking toward Shallan. “What if they are bandits?”
“There are only four of them, Master Macob,” Shallan said lightly. “The day I can’t handle four bandits on my own is a day I deserve to be robbed.”
They passed the wagon, Tyn tying on her belt.
“What if they are bandits?” Shallan hissed once they were out of earshot.
“I thought you said you could handle four.”
“I was just going along with your attitude!”
“That’s dangerous, kid,” Tyn said with a grin. “Look, bandits wouldn’t let us see them, and they certainly wouldn’t just sit there.”