Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Storms, Shallan thought, continuing her sketch.

“Oh, I guess I’m jumping about, but I forgot!” Yokska continued. “In the middle of the rioting, a proclamation came from the queen. Oh, Your Majesty. She wanted to execute the city’s parshmen! Well, we all thought she must be—I’m sorry—but we thought she must be mad. Poor things. What have they ever done? That’s what we thought. We didn’t know.

“Well, the queen posted criers all over the city, proclaiming the parshmen to be Voidbringers. And I must say, about that she was right. Yet it was still so strange. She didn’t even seem to notice that half the city was rioting!”

“The dark spren,” Elhokar said, making a fist. “It must be blamed, not Aesudan.”

“Were there reports of any strange murders?” Adolin asked. “Murders, or violence, that came in pairs—a man would die, and then a few days later someone else would be killed in the exact same way?”

“No, Brightlord. Nothing … nothing like that, though there were many who were killed.”

Shallan shook her head. It was a different Unmade here; another ancient spren of Odium. Religion and lore spoke of them vaguely at best, tending to simplistically conflate them into one evil entity. Navani and Jasnah had begun to research them over the last weeks, but they still didn’t know very much.

She finished her sketch of the painspren, then did one of the exhaustionspren they’d seen earlier. She’d managed to glimpse some hungerspren around a refugee on their way. Oddly, those didn’t look any different. Why?

Need more information, Shallan thought. More data. What was the most embarrassing thing she could think of?

“Well,” Elhokar said, “though we didn’t order the parshmen executed, only exiled, at least that order seems to have reached Aesudan. She must have been free enough from the control of the dark forces to heed our words via spanreed.”

Of course, he didn’t mention the logical problems. If the tailor was correct about the dark spren arriving during the Everstorm, then Aesudan had executed the ardent on her own—as that had happened before. Likewise, the order to exile the parshmen would also have come before the Everstorm. And who knew if an Unmade could even influence someone like the queen? The spren in Urithiru had mimicked people, not controlled them.

Yokska did seem to be a little scattered in her retelling of events, so maybe Elhokar could be forgiven for mixing up the timeline. Either way, Shallan needed something embarrassing. When I spilled wine the first time Father gave me some at a dinner party. No … no … something more …

“Oh!” Yokska said. “Your Majesty, you should know. The proclamation requiring the execution of the parshmen … well, a coalition of important lighteyes didn’t follow it. Then, after that terrible storm, the queen started giving other orders, so the lighteyes went to meet with her.”

“Let me guess,” Kaladin said. “They never came back from the palace.”

“No, Brightlord, they did not.”

How about when I woke and faced Jasnah, after I’d almost died, and she’d discovered that I’d betrayed her?

Surely remembering that event would be enough.

No?

Bother.

“So the parshmen,” Adolin said. “Did they get executed?”

“No,” Yokska continued. “Like I said, everyone was concerned with the riots—save for the servants posting the queen’s orders, I suppose. The Wall Guard eventually took action. They restored some measure of order in the city, then rounded up the parshmen and exiled them to the plain outside. And then…”

“The Everstorm came,” Shallan said, covertly undoing the button on her safehand sleeve.

Yokska seemed to shrink down in her seat. The others fell silent, which provided the perfect opportunity for Shallan. She took a deep breath, then strolled forward, holding her sketchpad as if distracted. She tripped herself over a roll of cloth on the floor, yelped, and tumbled into the center of the ring of chairs.

She ended up sprawled on the floor, skirts up about her waist—and she wasn’t even wearing the leggings today. Her safehand bulged out from between the sleeve buttons, poking into the open right in front of not just the king, but Kaladin and Adolin.

Perfectly, horribly, incredibly mortifying. She felt a deep blush come on, and shamespren dropped around her in a wave. Normally, they took the shape of falling red and white flower petals.

These were like pieces of broken glass.

The men, of course, were more distracted by the position she’d gotten herself into. She squawked, managed to take a Memory of the shamespren, and righted herself, blushing furiously and tucking her hand in her sleeve.

That, she thought, might be the craziest thing you’ve ever done. Which is saying a lot.

She grabbed her sketchbook and bustled away, passing Yokska’s white-bearded husband—Shallan still hadn’t heard him speak a word—standing in the doorway with a tray of wine and tea. Shallan grabbed the darkest cup of wine and downed it in a single gulp, feeling the stares of the men on her back.

“Shallan?” Adolin piped up. “Um…”

“I’mfinethatwasanexperiment,” she said, ducking into the showroom and throwing herself into a seat placed there for customers. Storms, that was humiliating.

She could still see partway into the other room. Yokska’s husband walked with his silver tray to the group. He stopped by Yokska—though serving the king first would have been the correct protocol—and rested a hand on her shoulder. She put her own on his.

Shallan flipped open her sketchpad, and was pleased to see more shamespren dropping around her. Still glass. She started a drawing, burying herself in it to keep from thinking about what she’d just done.

“So…” Elhokar said in the next room. “We were talking about the Wall Guard. They obeyed the queen’s orders?”

“Well, that was around the time that the highmarshal appeared. I’ve never seen him either. He doesn’t come down from the wall much. He restored order, so that’s good, but the Wall Guard doesn’t have the numbers to police the city and watch the wall—so they’ve taken to watching the wall and mostly leaving us to just … survive in here.”

“Who rules now?” Kaladin asked.

“Nobody,” Yokska said. “Various highlords … well, they basically seized sections of the city. Some argued that the monarchy had fallen, that the king—I beg pardon, Your Majesty—had abandoned them. But the real power in the city is the Cult of Moments.”

Shallan looked up from her drawing.

“Those people we saw on the street?” Adolin asked. “Dressed like spren.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Yokska said. “I don’t … I don’t know what to tell you. Spren look strange sometimes in the city, and people think it has to do with the queen, the weird storm, the parshmen … They’re scared. Some have started claiming they can see a new world coming, a truly strange new world. One ruled by spren.

“The Vorin church has declared the Cult of Moments a heresy, but so many of the ardents were in the palace when it grew dark. Most of those remaining took refuge with one of the highlords who claimed small sections of Kholinar. Those are increasingly isolated, ruling their districts on their own. And then … and then there are the fabrials.…”