Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

—From drawer 4-17, second topaz

This city had a heartbeat, and Veil felt she could hear it when she closed her eyes.

She crouched in a dim room, hands touching the smooth stone floor, which had been eroded by thousands upon thousands of footfalls. If stone met a man, stone might win—but if stone met humanity, then no force could preserve it.

The city’s heartbeat was deep within these stones, old and slow. It had yet to realize something dark had moved in. A spren as ancient as it was. An urban disease. People didn’t speak of it; they avoided the palace, mentioned the queen only to complain about the ardent who had been killed. It was like standing in a highstorm and griping that your shoes were too tight.

A soft whistling drew Veil’s attention. She looked up and scanned the small loading dock around her, occupied only by herself, Vathah, and their wagon. “Let’s go.”

Veil eased the door open and entered the mansion proper. She and Vathah wore new faces. Hers was a version of Veil with too large a nose and dimpled cheeks.

His was the face of a brutish man Shallan had seen in the market. Red’s whistle meant the coast was clear, so they strode down the hallway without hesitation.

This extravagant stone mansion had been built around a square, skylit atrium, where manicured shalebark and rockbuds flourished, bobbing with lifespren. The atrium went up four stories, with walkways around each level. Red was on the second, whistling as he leaned on the balustrade.

The real showpiece of the mansion, however, wasn’t the garden, but waterfalls. Because not a single one of them was actually water.

They had been, once. But sometime long ago, someone had mixed far too much wealth with far too much imagination. They had hired Soulcasters to transform large fountains of water that had been poured from the top level, four stories up. They’d been Soulcast into other materials right as the water splashed to the floor.

Veil’s path took her along rooms to her left, with an overhang of the first floor’s atrium balcony overhead. A former waterfall spilled down to her right, now made of crystal. The shape of flowing water crashed forever onto the stone floor, where it blossomed outward in a wave, brilliant and glistening. The mansion had changed hands dozens of times, and people called it Rockfall—despite the newest owner’s attempt over the last decade to rename it the incredibly boring Hadinal Keep.

Veil and Vathah hurried along, accompanied by Red’s reassuring whistling. The next waterfall was similar in shape, but made instead from polished dark stumpweight wood. It looked strangely natural, almost like a tree could have grown in that shape, poured from above and running down in an undulating column, splashing outward at the base.

They soon passed a room to their left, where Ishnah was talking with the current mistress of Rockfall. Each time the Everstorm struck, it left destruction—but in an oddly distinct way from a highstorm. Everstorm lightning had proven its greatest danger. The strange red lightning didn’t merely set fires or scorch the ground; it could break through rock, causing blasts of fragmenting stone.

One such strike had broken a gaping hole in the side of this ancient, celebrated mansion. It had been patched with an unsightly wooden wall that would be covered with crem, then finally bricked over. Brightness Nananav—a middle-aged Alethi woman with a bun of hair practically as tall as she was—gestured at the boarded-up hole, and then at the floor.

“You’ll make them match the others,” Nananav said to Ishnah, who wore the guise of a rug merchant. “I won’t stand for them to be even a shade off. When you return with the repaired rugs, I’m going to set them beside the ones in other rooms to check!”

“Yes, Brightness,” Ishnah said. “But the damage is much worse than I—”

“These rugs were woven in Shinovar. They were made by a blind man who trained thirty years with a master weaver before being allowed to produce his own rugs! He died after finishing my commission, so there are no others like these.”

“I’m well aware, as you’ve told me three times now.…”

Veil took a Memory of the woman; then she and Vathah slipped past the room, continuing along the atrium. They were supposedly part of Ishnah’s staff, and wouldn’t be suffered to wander about freely. Red—noting that they were on their way—started to head back to rejoin Ishnah. He’d have been excused to visit the privy, but would be missed if he was gone too long.

His tune cut off.

Veil opened a door and pulled Vathah inside, heart thrumming as—right outside—a pair of guards walked down the stairwell from the second level.

“I still say we should be doing this at night,” Vathah whispered.

“They have this place guarded like a fort at night.”

The change of the guard was in midmorning, so Veil and the others had come just before that. Theoretically, this meant the guards would be tired and bored after an uneventful night.

Veil and Vathah had entered a small library lit by a few spheres in a goblet on the table. Vathah eyed them, but didn’t move—this infiltration was about far more than a few chips. Veil set down her pack and rummaged until she got out a notebook and charcoal pencil.

Veil took a deep breath, then let Shallan bleed back into existence. She quickly sketched Nananav from the glimpse earlier.

“I’m still amazed you were both of them, all along,” Vathah said. “You don’t act anything like one another.”

“That’s rather the point, Vathah.”

“I wish I’d picked it out myself.” He grunted, scratching the side of his head. “I like Veil.”

“Not me?”

“You’re my boss. I’m not supposed to like you.”

Straightforward, if rude. At least you always knew where you stood with him. He listened at the door, then cracked it open, tracking the guards. “All right. We go up the stairs, then come back along the second-floor walkway. We grab the goods, stuff them in the dumbwaiter, and make for the exit. Storms. I wish we could do this when nobody was awake.”

“What would be the fun of that?” Shallan finished her drawing with a flourish, then stood, poking Vathah in the side. “Admit it. You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m as nervous as a new recruit on his first day at war,” Vathah said. “My hands shake, and I swear every noise means someone spotted us. I feel sick.”

“See?” Shallan said. “Fun.” She pushed beside him and glanced out through the cracked door. Storming guards. They’d set up in the atrium nearby. They could undoubtedly hear the real Nananav’s voice from there, so if Shallan strolled out wearing the woman’s face, that would certainly cause alarm.