Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

She hoped she wasn’t as bad. She had Tyn’s perfume, but the Alethi elite preferred frequent bathing and a clean scent—part of the wisdom of the Heralds. Wash with the coming highstorm, both servant and brightlord, to ward away rotspren and purify the body.

She’d done what she could with some pails of water, but did not have the luxury of stopping to prepare more properly. She needed the protection of a highprince, and quickly. Now that she had arrived, the immensity of her tasks struck her afresh: Discover what Jasnah had been looking for on the Shattered Plains. Use the information there to persuade the Alethi leadership to take measures against the parshmen. Investigate the people Tyn had been meeting with and… do what? Scam them somehow? Find out what they knew about Urithiru, deflect their attention away from her brothers, and perhaps find a way to repay them for what they’d done to Jasnah?

So much to do. She would need resources. Dalinar Kholin was her best hope for that.

“But will he take me in?” she whispered.

“Mmmm?” Pattern said from the seat nearby.

“I will need him as a patron. If Tyn’s sources know that Jasnah is dead, then Dalinar probably knows as well. How will he react to my unexpected arrival? Will he take her books, pat me on the head, and send me back to Jah Keved? The Kholin house has no need of a bond to a minor Veden like me. And I… I’m just rambling out loud, aren’t I?”

“Mmmm,” Pattern said. He sounded drowsy, though she didn’t know if spren could get tired.

Her anxiety grew as her procession approached the warcamps. Tyn had been adamant that Shallan not ask for Dalinar’s protection, as that would make her beholden to him. Shallan had killed the woman, but she still respected Tyn’s opinion. Was there merit to what she’d said about Dalinar?

A knock came at her palanquin window. “We’re going to have the parshmen put you down for a bit,” Vathah said. “Need to ask around and see where the highprince is.”

“Fine.”

She waited impatiently. They must have sent the palanquin owner on the errand—Vathah was as nervous as she was at the idea of sending one of his men into the warcamps alone. She eventually heard a muffled conversation outside, and Vathah returned, his boots scraping rock. She drew back the curtain, looking up at him.

“Dalinar Kholin is with the king,” Vathah said. “The whole lot of the highprinces are there.” He looked disturbed as he turned toward the warcamps. “Something’s on the winds, Brightness.” He squinted. “Too many patrols. Lots of soldiers out. The palanquin owner won’t say, but from the sound of it, something happened recently. Something deadly.”

“Take me to the king, then,” Shallan said.

Vathah raised an eyebrow at her. The king of Alethkar was arguably the most powerful man in the world. “You aren’t going to kill him, are you?” Vathah asked softly, leaning down.

“What?”

“I figure it’s one reason a woman would have… you know.” He didn’t meet her eyes. “Get close, summon the thing, have it through a man’s chest before anyone knows what happened.”

“I’m not going to kill your king,” she said, amused.

“Wouldn’t care if you did,” Vathah said softly. “Almost hope you would. He’s a child wearing his father’s clothes, that one is. Everything’s gotten worse for Alethkar since he took the throne. But my men, we’d have a hard time getting away if you did something like that. Hard time indeed.”

“I will keep my promise.”

He nodded, and she let the drapes fall back down over the palanquin window. Stormfather. Give a woman a Shardblade, get her close… Had anyone ever tried that? They must have, though thinking about it made her sick.

The palanquin turned northward. Passing the warcamps took a long time; they were enormous. Eventually, she peeked out and saw a tall hill to the left with a building sculpted from—and onto—the stone of the top. A palace?

What if she did convince Brightlord Dalinar to take her in and trust her with Jasnah’s research? What would she be in Dalinar’s household? A lesser scribe, to be tucked aside and ignored? That was how she’d spent most of her life. She found herself suddenly, passionately determined not to let it happen again. She needed the freedom and the funding to investigate Urithiru and Jasnah’s murder. Shallan would accept nothing else. She could accept nothing else.

So make it happen, she thought.

Would that it were so easy as wishing. As the palanquin turned up the switchbacks leading to the palace, her new satchel—from Tyn’s things—shook and hit her foot. She picked it up and flipped through the pages inside, finding the crinkled sketch of Bluth as she’d imagined him. A hero instead of a slaver.

“Mmmmm…” Pattern said from the seat beside her.

“This picture is a lie,” Shallan said.

“Yes.”

“And yet it isn’t. This is what he became, at the end. To a small degree.”

“Yes.”

“So what is the lie, and what is the truth?”

Pattern hummed softly to himself, like a contented axehound before the hearth. Shallan fingered the picture, smoothing it. Then she pulled out a sketchpad and a pencil, and started drawing. It was a difficult task in the lurching palanquin; this would not be her finest drawing. Still, her fingers moved across the sketch with an intensity she hadn’t felt in weeks.

Broad lines at first, to fix the image in her head. She wasn’t copying a Memory this time. She was searching for something nebulous: a lie that could be real if she could just imagine it correctly.

She scratched frantically at the paper, hunkering down, and soon stopped feeling the rhythm of the porters’ steps. She saw only the drawing, knew only the emotions she bled onto that page. Jasnah’s determination. Tyn’s confidence. A sense of rightness that she could not describe, but which she drew from her brother Helaran, the best person she’d ever known.

It all poured from her into the pencil and onto the page. Streaks and lines that became shadows and patterns that became figures and faces. A quick sketch, hurried, yet one alive. It depicted Shallan as a confident young woman standing before Dalinar Kholin, as she imagined him. She’d put him in Shardplate as he, and those around him, studied Shallan with penetrating consternation. She stood strong, hand raised toward them as she spoke with confidence and power. No trembling here. No fear of confrontation.

This is what I would have been, Shallan thought, if I had not been raised in a household of fear. So this is what I will be today.

It wasn’t a lie. It was a different truth.

A knock came at the palanquin’s door. It had stopped moving; she’d barely noticed. With a nod to herself, she folded the sketch and slipped it into the pocket of her safehand sleeve. Then she stepped out of the vehicle and onto cold rock. She felt invigorated, and realized she had sucked in a tiny amount of Stormlight without meaning to.

The palace was both finer and more mundane than she might have expected. Certainly, this was a warcamp, and so the king’s seat wouldn’t match the majesty of the royal dwellings of Kharbranth. At the same time, it was amazing that such a structure could have been crafted here, away from the culture and resources of Alethkar proper. The towering stone fortress of sculpted rock, several stories high, perched at the pinnacle of the hill.