She turned toward the market, where she hoped to get a feel for Kholinar’s people. She needed to know how they thought before she could begin to understand how the Cult of Moments had come to be, and therefore how to infiltrate it.
This market was very different from those at Urithiru, or the night markets of Kharbranth. First off, this one was obviously ancient. These worn, weathered shops felt like they’d been here for the first Desolation. These were stones smoothed by the touch of a million fingers, or indented by the press of thousands of passing feet. Awnings bleached by the progression of day after day.
The street was wide, and not crowded. Some stalls were empty, and the remaining merchants didn’t shout at her as she passed. These seemed effects of the smothered sensation everyone felt—the feeling of a city besieged.
Yokska served only men, and Veil wouldn’t have wanted to reveal herself to the woman anyway. So she stopped at a clothier and tried on some new coats. She chatted with the woman who ran the accounts—her husband was the actual tailor—and got some suggestions on where to look for a coat matching her current one, then stepped back out onto the street.
Soldiers in light blue patrolled here, the glyphs on their uniforms proclaiming them to be of House Velalant. Yokska had described their brightlord as a minor player in the city until so many lighteyes had vanished into the palace.
Veil shivered, remembering the line of corpses. Adolin and Elhokar were fairly certain those were the remnants of a distant Kholin and his attendants—a man named Kaves, who had often tried to gain power in the city. Neither were sad to see him go, but it whispered of a continuing mystery. More than thirty people had gone to meet with the queen, many more powerful than Kaves. What had happened to them?
She passed an assortment of vendors peddling the usual range of necessities and curiosities, from ceramics to dining wares, to fine knives. It was nice to see that here, the soldiers had imposed some semblance of order. Perhaps rather than fixating on the closed stalls, Veil should have appreciated how many were still open.
The third clothing shop finally had a coat she liked, of the same style as her old one—white and long, past her knees. She paid to have it taken in, then casually asked the seamstress about the city’s grain.
The answers led her one street over to a grain station. It had formerly been a Thaylen bank, with the words Secure Keeps across the top in Thaylen and the women’s script. The proprietors had long ago fled—moneylenders seemed to have a sixth sense for impending danger, the way some animals could sense a storm hours before it arrived.
The soldiers in light blue had appropriated it, and the vaults now protected precious grain. People waited in line outside, and at the front, soldiers doled out enough lavis for one day’s flatbread and gruel.
It was a good sign—if a distinct and terrible reminder of the city’s situation. She would have applauded Velalant’s kindness, save for his soldiers’ blatant incompetence. They shouted at everyone to stay in line, but didn’t do anything to enforce the order. They did have a scribe watching to make sure nobody got in line twice, but they didn’t exclude people who were obviously too well-to-do to need the handout.
Veil glanced around the market, and noted people watching from the crannies and hollows of abandoned stalls. The poor and unwanted, those destitute beyond even the refugees. Tattered clothing, dirty faces. They watched like spren drawn by a powerful emotion.
Veil settled down on a low wall beside a drainage trough. A boy huddled nearby, watching the line with hungry eyes. One of his arms ended in a twisted, unusable hand: three fingers mere nubs, the other two crooked.
She fished in her trouser pocket. Shallan didn’t carry food, but Veil knew the importance of having something to chew on. She could have sworn she’d tucked something in while getting ready.… There it was. A meat stick, Soulcast but flavored with sugar. Not quite large enough to be a sausage. She bit off an end, then wagged the rest toward the urchin.
The boy sized her up, probably trying to determine her angle. Finally he crept over and took the offering, quickly stuffing the whole thing into his mouth. He waited, eyeing her to see if she had more.
“Why don’t you get in line?” Veil asked.
“They got rules. Gotta be a certain age. And if you’re too poor, they shove ya out of line.”
“For what reason?”
The boy shrugged. “Don’t need one, I guess. They say you’ve already been through, ’cept you haven’t.”
“Many of those people … they’re servants from wealthy homes, aren’t they?”
The urchin nodded.
Storming lighteyes, Veil thought as she watched. Some of the poor were shoved out of line for one infraction or another, as the urchin had claimed. The others waited patiently, as it was their job. They’d been sent by wealthy homes to collect food. Many bore the lean, strong look of house guards, though they didn’t wear uniforms.
Storms. Velalant’s men really had no idea how to do this. Or maybe they know exactly what they’re doing, she thought. And Velalant is just keeping the local lighteyes happy and ready to support his rule, should the winds turn his way.
It made Veil sick. She fished out a second meat stick for the urchin, then started to ask him how far Velalant’s influence reached—but the kid was gone in a heartbeat.
The grain distribution ended, and a lot of unhappy people called out in despair. The soldiers said they’d do another handout in the evening, and counseled people to line up and wait. Then the bank closed its doors.
But where did Velalant get the food? Veil rose and continued through the market, passing pools of angerspren. Some looked like the normal pools of blood; others were more like tar, pitch-black. When the bubbles in these popped, they showed a burning red within, like embers. Those vanished as people settled down to wait—and exhaustionspren appeared instead.
Her optimism about the market evaporated. She passed crowds milling about, looking lost, and read depression in people’s eyes. Why try to pretend life could go on? They were doomed. The Voidbringers were going to rip this city apart—if they didn’t simply let everyone starve.
Someone needed to do something. Veil needed to do something. Infiltrating the Cult of Moments suddenly seemed too abstract. Couldn’t she do something directly for these poor people? Except … she hadn’t even been able to save her own family. She had no idea what Mraize had done with her brothers, and she refused to think about them. How would she save an entire city?
She shouldered through the crowd, seeking freedom, suddenly feeling trapped. She needed out. She—
What was that sound?
Shallan pulled up short, turning, hearing. Storms. It couldn’t be, could it? She drifted toward the sound, that voice.
“You say that, my dear man,” it proclaimed, “but everyone thinks they know the moons. How could they not? We live beneath their gaze each night. We’ve known them longer than our friends, our wives, our children. And yet … and yet…”
Shallan pushed through the milling crowd to find him sitting on the low wall around a storm cistern. A metal brazier burned before him, emitting thin lines of smoke that twisted in the wind. He was dressed, strangely, in a soldier’s uniform—Sadeas’s livery, with the coat unbuttoned and a colored scarf around his neck.