Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

All of this should have resulted in a person who was decidedly unfeminine. Yet Jasnah wore the finest makeup, and wore it well, with shadowed eyes and bright red lips. She kept her safehand covered, and preferred intricate and fetching styles of braids from her hairdresser. Her writings and her mind made her the very model of Vorin femininity.

Next to Jasnah, Shallan felt pale, stupid, and completely lacking in curves. What would it be like, to be so confident? So beautiful, yet so unconstrained, all at once? Surely, Jasnah Kholin had far fewer problems in life than Shallan. At the very least, she created far fewer for herself than Shallan did.

It was about this point that Shallan realized she’d missed a good fifteen minutes of the meeting, and had again lapsed in her note-taking. Blushing furiously, she huddled up on her chair and did her best to remain focused for the rest of the meeting. At the end, she presented a sheet of formal shorthand to Jasnah.

The woman looked it over, then cocked a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the line at the center where Shallan had grown distracted. Dalinar said some stuff here, the line read. It was very important and useful, so I’m sure you remember it without needing a reminder.

Shallan smiled apologetically and shrugged.

“Please write this out in longhand,” Jasnah said, handing it back. “Have a copy sent to my mother and to my brother’s head scribe.”

Shallan took it as a dismissal and rushed away. She felt like a student who had just been released from lessons, which angered her. At the same time, she wanted to run off and immediately do as Jasnah had asked, to renew her mistress’s faith in her, which angered her even more.

She ran up the steps out of the tower’s basement, using Stormlight to prevent fatigue. The different sides within her clashed, snapping at each other. She imagined months spent under Jasnah’s watchful care, training to become a mousy scribe as her father had always wanted.

She remembered the days in Kharbranth, when she’d been so uncertain, so timid. She couldn’t return to that. She wouldn’t. But what to do instead?

When she finally reached her rooms, Pattern was buzzing at her. She tossed aside her sketchpad and satchel, digging out Veil’s coat and hat. Veil would know what to do.

However, pinned to the inside of Veil’s coat was a sheet of paper. Shallan froze, then looked around the room, suddenly anxious. Hesitantly, she unpinned the sheet and unfolded it.

The top read:

You have accomplished the task we set out for you. You have investigated the Unmade, and not only learned something of it, but also frightened it away. As promised, here is your reward.

The following letter explains the truth about your deceased brother, Nan Helaran, acolyte of the Radiant order of the Skybreakers.

As for Uli Da, it was obvious from the outset that she was going to be a problem. Good riddance.

There are at least two major institutions on Roshar, other than ourselves, which presaged the return of the Voidbringers and the Desolations, the letter read.

You are familiar with the first of these, the men who call themselves the Sons of Honor. The old king of Alethkar—the Blackthorn’s brother, Gavilar Kholin—was a driving force in their expansion. He brought Meridas Amaram into their fold.

As you no doubt discovered upon infiltrating Amaram’s mansion in the warcamps, the Sons of Honor explicitly worked for the return of the Desolations. They believed that only the Voidbringers would cause the Heralds to show themselves—and they believed that a Desolation would restore both the Knights Radiant and the classical strength of the Vorin church. King Gavilar’s efforts to rekindle the Desolations are likely the true reason he was assassinated. Though there were many in the palace that night who had reason to see him dead.

A second group who knew the Desolations might return are the Skybreakers. Led by the ancient Herald Nalan’Elin—often simply called Nale—the Skybreakers are the only order of Radiants that did not betray its oaths during the Recreance. They have maintained a continuous clandestine line from ancient days.

Nale believed that men speaking the Words of other orders would hasten the return of the Voidbringers. We do not know how this could possibly be true, but as a Herald, Nale has access to knowledge and understanding beyond us.

You should know that the Heralds are no longer to be seen as allies to man. Those that are not completely insane have been broken. Nale himself is ruthless, without pity or mercy. He has spent the last two decades—perhaps much longer—dealing with anyone close to bonding a spren. Sometimes he recruited these people, bonding them to highspren and making them Skybreakers. Others he eliminated. If the person had already bonded a spren, then Nale usually went in person to dispatch them. If not, he sent a minion.

A minion like your brother Helaran.

Your mother had intimate contact with a Skybreaker acolyte, and you know the result of that relationship. Your brother was recruited because Nale was impressed with him. Nale may also have learned, through means we do not understand, that a member of your house was close to bonding a spren. If this is true, they came to believe that Helaran was the one they wanted. They recruited him with displays of great power and Shards.

Helaran had not yet proved himself worthy of a spren bond. Nale is exacting with his recruits. Likely, Helaran was sent to kill Amaram as a test—either that or he took it upon himself as a way of proving his worthiness for knighthood.

It is also possible that the Skybreakers knew someone in Amaram’s army was close to bonding a spren, but I believe it likelier that the attack on Amaram was simply a strike against the Sons of Honor. From our spying upon the Skybreakers, we have records showing the only member of Amaram’s army to have bonded a spren was long since eliminated.

The bridgeman was not, so far as we understand, known to them. If he had been, he would certainly have been killed during his months as a slave.

It ended there. Shallan sat in her room, lit only by the faintest sphere. Helaran, a Skybreaker? And King Gavilar, working with Amaram to bring back the Desolations?

Pattern buzzed with concern on her skirts and moved up onto the page, reading the letter. She whispered the words again to herself, to memorize them, for she knew she couldn’t keep this letter. It was too dangerous.

“Secrets,” Pattern said. “There are lies in this letter.”

So many questions. Who else had been there on the night Gavilar had died, as the letter hinted? And what about this reference to another Surgebinder in Amaram’s army? “He’s dangling tidbits in front of me,” Shallan said. “Like a man on the docks who has a trained kurl that will dance and wave its arms for fish.”

“But … we want those tidbits, don’t we?”

“That’s why it works.” Storm it.

She couldn’t deal with this at the moment. She took a Memory of the page. It wasn’t a particularly efficient method in regards to text, but it would work in a pinch. Then she stuffed the letter in a basin of water and washed off the ink, before shredding it and wadding it into a ball.

From there, she changed into her coat, trousers, and hat, and snuck from the rooms as Veil.

* * *

Veil found Vathah and some of his men playing at pieces in their barracks common room. Though this was for Sebarial’s soldiers, she saw men in blue uniforms as well—Dalinar had ordered his men to spend time with the soldiers of his allies, to help foster a sense of comradery.