Mraize took the picture from her and raised it. He studied it, leaving Shallan to sweat nervously.
“It is rare,” Mraize said, “that I am proven a fool. Congratulations.”
Was that a good thing?
“Tyn doesn’t have this skill,” Mraize continued, still inspecting the sheet. “You saw this room yourself?”
“There is a reason that she chose a scholar as her assistant. My skills are meant to complement her own.”
Mraize lowered the sheet. “Surprising. Your mistress might be a brilliant thief, but her choice of associates has always been unenlightened.” He had such a refined way of speaking. It didn’t seem to match his scarred face, misaligned lip, and weathered hands. He talked like a man who had spent his days sipping wine and listening to fine music, but he looked like someone who had repeatedly had his bones broken—and likely returned the favor many times over.
“Pity there is not more detail to these maps,” Mraize noted, inspecting the picture again.
Shallan obligingly got out the other five pictures she’d drawn for him. Four were the maps on the walls in detail, the other a closer depiction of the wall scrolls with Amaram’s script. In each one, the actual writing was indecipherable, just wiggled lines. Shallan had done this on purpose. Nobody would expect an artist to be able to capture such detail from memory, even though she could.
She would keep the details of the script from them. She intended to gain their trust, to learn what she could, but she would not help them more than she had to.
Mraize passed his blowgun to the side. The short, masked girl was there, holding the cremling that Mraize had speared along with a dead mink, a blowgun dart in its neck. No, its leg twitched. It was merely stunned. Some poison on the dart, then?
Shallan shivered. Where had this woman been hiding? Those dark eyes stared at Shallan, unblinking, the rest of the face hidden behind the mask of paint and shell. She took the blowgun.
“Amazing,” Mraize said of Shallan’s pictures. “How did you get in? We watched the windows.”
Was that how Tyn would have done it, sneaking in during the dead of night through one of the windows? She hadn’t trained Shallan in that sort of thing, only accents and imitation. Perhaps she had spotted that Shallan, who sometimes stumbled over her own feet, would not be best at acrobatic larceny.
“These are masterful,” Mraize said, walking to a table and setting out the pictures. “A triumph, certainly. Such artistry.”
What had happened to the dangerous, emotionless man who had confronted her at her first meeting with the Ghostbloods? Animated with emotion, he leaned down, studying the pictures one at a time. He even got out a magnifying glass in order to inspect the details.
She did not ask what she wondered. What is Amaram doing? Do you know how he got his Shardblade? How he… killed Helaran Davar? Her breath caught in her throat even still as she thought about it, but a part of her had admitted years ago that her brother wasn’t coming back.
That didn’t stop her from feeling a distinct, and surprising, hatred for the man Meridas Amaram.
“Well?” Mraize asked, glancing at her. “Come sit down, child. You did this yourself?”
“I did,” Shallan said, shoving down her emotions. Had Mraize just called her “child”? She’d intentionally made this version of her look older, with a more angular face. What did she need to do? Start adding grey hairs to her head?
She settled into the seat beside the table. The woman with the mask appeared beside her, holding a cup and a kettle of something steaming. Shallan nodded hesitantly, and was rewarded with a cup of mulled orange wine. She sipped it—she probably didn’t need to worry about poison, as these people could have killed her at any time. The others under the pavilion spoke with one another in hushed voices, but Shallan couldn’t make out any of it. She felt like she was on display before an audience.
“I copied some of the text for you,” Shallan said, fishing out one page of script. These were lines she had specifically chosen to show them—they didn’t reveal too much, but might act as a primer to get Mraize talking about the topic. “We didn’t have much time in the room, so I only got a few lines.”
“You spent so long in there drawing the pictures, and so little recording the text?” Mraize asked.
“Oh,” Shallan said. “No, I did those pictures from memory.”
He looked up at her, jaw lowered a fraction, an expression of genuine surprise crossing his face before he quickly restored his usual confident equanimity.
That… probably wasn’t wise to admit, Shallan realized. How many people could draw so well from memory? Had Shallan publicly demonstrated her skill in the warcamps?
So far as she knew, she hadn’t. Now she would have to keep that aspect of her skill secret, lest the Ghostbloods make a connection between Shallan the lighteyed lady and Veil the darkeyed con artist. Storms.
Well, she was bound to make some mistakes. At least this one wasn’t life threatening. Probably.
“Jin,” Mraize snapped.
A golden-haired man with a bare chest beneath a flowing outer robe stood up from one of the chairs.
“Look at him,” Mraize said to Shallan.
She took a Memory.
“Jin, leave us. You will draw him, Veil.”
She had no choice but to oblige. As Jin walked off, grumbling to himself at the rain, Shallan started sketching. She did a full sketch—not just his face and shoulders, but an environment study, including the background of fallen boulders. Nervous, she didn’t do as good a job as she could have, but Mraize still cooed over her picture like a proud father. She finished and got out her lacquer—this was in charcoal, and would want it—but Mraize plucked it from her fingers first.
“Incredible,” he said, holding the sheet up. “You are wasted with Tyn. You can’t do this with text, however?”
“No,” Shallan lied.
“Pity. Still, this is marvelous. Marvelous. There should be ways to use this, yes indeed.” He looked to her. “What is your goal, child? I might have a place for you in my organization, if you prove reliable.”
Yes! “I wouldn’t have agreed to come in Tyn’s place if I hadn’t wanted that opportunity.”
Mraize narrowed his eyes at Shallan. “You killed her, didn’t you?”
Oh, blast. Shallan blushed immediately, of course. “Uh…”
“Ha!” Mraize exclaimed. “She finally picked an assistant who was too capable. Delightful. After all of her arrogant posturing, she was brought down by someone she thought to make into a sycophant.”
“Sir,” Shallan said. “I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t want to. She turned on me.”
“That must be quite the story,” Mraize said, smiling. It was not a pleasant smile. “Know that what you have done is not forbidden, but it is hardly encouraged. We cannot run an organization properly if subordinates consider hunting their superiors to be a primary method of advancement.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your superior, however, was not a member of our organization. Tyn thought herself to be the hunter, but she was game all along. If you are to join us, you should understand. We are not like others you may have known. We have a greater purpose, and we are… protective of one another.”