Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

But she was here, in costume, on time. Barely. She strode forward, listening to the rain patter on stone around her. She had always liked rainfalls like these. The younger sisters of highstorms, they brought life without the fury. Even the desolate stormlands here west of the warcamps bloomed with the advent of water. Rockbuds split, and though these didn’t have blossoms like the ones back home, they did put out vibrant green vines. Grass rose thirstily from holes and refused to retreat until it was practically stepped on. Some reeds produced flowers to entice cremlings, which would feast upon the petals and in so doing rub themselves with spores that would give rise to the next generation, once mixed with the spores of other plants.

If she’d been at home, there would be far more vines—so many that it would be hard to walk without tripping. Going out in a wooded area would require a machete to move more than a couple of feet. Here, the vegetation became colorful, but not an impediment.

Shallan smiled at the wonderful surroundings, the light rainfall, the beautiful plant life. A little dampness was a small price to pay for the melodious sound of sprinkling rain, for fresh clean air and a beautiful sky full of clouds that varied in every shade of grey.

Shallan walked with a waterproof satchel under her arm, the hired carriage driver—she couldn’t use Sebarial’s coach for today’s activity—awaiting her return as she’d instructed. This coach was pulled by parshmen instead of horses, but they were faster than chulls and had worked well enough.

She hiked toward a hillside ahead of her, the destination indicated on the map she’d received via spanreed. She wore a nice pair of sturdy boots. This clothing of Tyn’s might be unusual, but Shallan was glad for it. The coat and hat kept off the rain, and the boots gave her sure footing on the slick rock.

She rounded the hill and found that it was broken on the other side, the rock having cracked and fallen in a small avalanche. The strata of hardened crem were clearly visible on the edges of the chunks of rock, which meant this was a newer fracture. If it had been old, new crem would have obscured that coloring.

The crack made a small valley in the hillside—full of clefts and ridges from the crumbled rock. These had caught spores and windborne stems, and that in turn had created an explosion of life. Wherever sheltered from the wind, plants would find purchase and start to grow.

The snarl of green grew haphazardly—this was not a true lait, where life would be safe over time, but instead a temporary shelter, good for a few years at most. For now, plants grew eagerly, sometimes atop one another, sprouting, blossoming, shaking, twisting, alive. It was an example of raw nature.

The pavilion, however, was not.

It covered four people who sat in chairs too fine for the surroundings. Snacking, they were warmed by a brazier at the center of the open-sided tent. Shallan approached, taking Memories of the people’s faces. She’d draw those later, as she had done with the first group of the Ghostbloods she’d met. Two of them were the same as last time. Two were not. The discomforting woman with the mask did not seem to be present.

Mraize, standing tall and proud, inspected his long blowgun. He did not look up as Shallan stepped under the awning.

“I like to learn to use the local weapons,” Mraize said. “It is a quirk, though I feel it is justified. If you want to understand a people, learn their weapons. The way men kill one another says far more about a culture than any scholar’s ethnography.”

He raised his weapon toward Shallan, and she froze in place. Then he turned toward the crack and puffed, blowing a dart into the foliage.

Shallan stepped up beside him. The dart pinned a cremling to one of the plant stems. The small, many-legged creature spasmed and thrashed, trying to get free, though surely having a dart sticking through it would prove lethal.

“This is a Parshendi blowgun,” Mraize noted. “What does it say about them, do you suppose, little knife?”

“It’s obviously not for killing big game,” Shallan said. “Which makes sense. The only big game I know of in the area are the chasmfiends, which the Parshendi are said to have worshipped as gods.”

She wasn’t convinced that they actually did. Early reports—which she’d read in detail at Jasnah’s insistence—made the assumption that the Parshendi gods were the chasmfiends. It wasn’t actually clear.

“They probably used it for stalking small game,” Shallan continued. “Which means they hunted for food, rather than pleasure.”

“Why do you say this?” Mraize asked.

“Men who glory in the hunt seek grand captures,” Shallan said. “Trophies. That blowgun is the weapon of a man who simply wants to feed his family.”

“And if he used it against other men?”

“It wouldn’t be useful in war,” Shallan said. “Too short a range, I’d guess, and the Parshendi have bows anyway. Maybe this could be used in assassination, though I’d be very curious to discover if it was.”

“And why is that?” Mraize asked.

A test of some sort. “Well,” Shallan said, “most indigenous populations—the Silnasen natives, the Reshi peoples, the runners of the Iri plains—have no real concept of assassination. From what I know, they don’t seem to have much use for battle at all. Hunters are too valuable, and so a ‘war’ in these cultures will involve a lot of shouting and posturing, but few deaths. That kind of boastful society doesn’t seem the type to have assassins.”

And yet the Parshendi had sent one. Against the Alethi.

Mraize was studying her—watching her with unreadable eyes, long blowgun held lightly in his fingertips. “I see,” he finally said, “Tyn chose a scholar to be her apprentice this time around? I find that unusual.”

Shallan blushed. It occurred to her that this person she became when she put on the hat and dark hair was not an imitation of someone else, not a different person. It was just a version of Shallan herself.

That could be dangerous.

“So,” Mraize said, fishing another dart from his shirt pocket, “what excuse did Tyn give you today?”

“Excuse?” Shallan asked.

“For failing in her mission.” Mraize loaded the dart.

Failing? Shallan began to sweat, cold prickles on her forehead. But she’d watched to see if anything out of the ordinary happened at Amaram’s camp! This morning, she’d gone back—the real reason she’d been late to Adolin’s duel—while wearing the face of a worker. She’d listened to see if anyone spoke of a break-in, or of Amaram being suspicious. She’d found nothing.

Well, obviously Amaram had not made his suspicions public. After all the work she’d done to cover up her incursion, she had failed. She probably shouldn’t be surprised, but she was anyway.

“I—” Shallan began.

“I’m beginning to wonder if Tyn really is sick,” Mraize said, raising the blowgun and shooting another dart into the foliage. “To not even try to carry out the assigned task.”

“Not even try?” Shallan asked, baffled.

“Oh, is that the excuse?” Mraize asked. “That she made an attempt, and failed? I have people watching that house. If she had…”

He trailed off as Shallan shook the water from her satchel, then carefully undid it and lifted out a sheet of paper. It was a representation of Amaram’s locked room with its maps on the walls. She’d had to guess at some of the details—it had been dark, and her single sphere hadn’t illuminated much—but she figured it was close enough.