Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“She’s just enjoying a little free time,” Jor said.

“Sure, sure. With eyes like those? I’m sure that’s it.” The barkeep moved away.

“Hey,” Jor said, nudging Shallan. “Where are you staying? I’ll call you a palanquin to cart you home. You awake? You should get going before things go too late. I know some porters who can be trusted.”

“It’s … not even late yet…” Shallan mumbled.

“Late enough,” Jor said. “This place can get dangerous.”

“Yeaaah?” Shallan asked, a glimmer of memory waking inside of her. “People get stabbed?”

“Unfortunately,” Jor said.

“You know of some…?”

“Never happens here in this area, at least not yet.”

“Where? So I … so I can stay away…” Shallan said.

“All’s Alley,” he said. “Keep away from there. Someone got stabbed behind one of the taverns just last night there. They found him dead.”

“Real … real strange, eh?” Shallan asked.

“Yeah. You heard?” Jor shivered.

Shallan stood up to go, but the room upended about her, and she found herself slipping down beside her stool. Jor tried to catch her, but she hit the ground with a thump, knocking her elbow against the stone floor. She immediately sucked in a little Stormlight to help with the pain.

The cloud around her mind puffed away, and her vision stopped spinning. In a striking moment, her drunkenness simply vanished.

She blinked. Wow. She stood up without Jor’s help, dusting off her coat and then pulling her hair back away from her face. “Thanks,” she said, “but that’s exactly the information I need. Barkeep, we settled?”

The woman turned, then froze, staring at Shallan, pouring liquid into a cup until it overflowed.

Shallan picked up her cup, then turned it and shook the last drop into her mouth. “That’s good stuff,” she noted. “Thanks for the conversation, Jor.” She set a sphere on the boxes as a tip, pulled on her hat, then patted Jor fondly on the cheek before striding out of the tent.

“Stormfather!” Jor said from behind her. “Did I just get played for a fool?”

It was still busy out, reminding her of Kharbranth, with its midnight markets. That made sense. Neither sun nor moon could penetrate to these halls; it was easy to lose track of time. Beyond that, while most people had been put immediately to work, many of the soldiers had free time without plateau runs to do any longer.

Shallan asked around, and managed to get pointed toward All’s Alley. “The Stormlight made me sober,” she said to Pattern, who had crawled up her coat and now dimpled her collar, folded over the top.

“Healed you of poison.”

“That will be useful.”

“Mmmm. I thought you’d be angry. You drank the poison on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but the point wasn’t to get drunk.”

He buzzed in confusion. “Then why drink it?”

“It’s complicated,” Shallan said. She sighed. “I didn’t do a very good job in there.”

“Of getting drunk? Mmm. You gave it a good effort.”

“As soon as I got drunk, as soon as I lost control, Veil slipped away from me.”

“Veil is just a face.”

No. Veil was a woman who didn’t giggle when she got drunk, or whine, fanning her mouth when the drink was too hard for her. She never acted like a silly teenager. Veil hadn’t been sheltered, practically locked away, until she went crazy and murdered her own family.

Shallan stopped in place, suddenly frantic. “My brothers. Pattern, I didn’t kill them, right?”

“What?” he said.

“I talked to Balat over spanreed,” Shallan said, hand to her forehead. “But … I had Lightweaving then … even if I didn’t fully know it. I could have fabricated that. Every message from him. My own memories…”

“Shallan,” Pattern said, sounding concerned. “No. They live. Your brothers live. Mraize said he rescued them. They are on their way here. This isn’t the lie.” His voice grew smaller. “Can’t you tell?”

She adopted Veil again, her pain fading. “Yes. Of course I can tell.” She started forward again.

“Shallan,” Pattern said. “This is … mmm … there is something wrong with these lies you place upon yourself. I don’t understand it.”

“I just need to go deeper,” she whispered. “I can’t be Veil only on the surface.”

Pattern buzzed with a soft, anxious vibration—fast paced, high pitched. Veil hushed him as she reached All’s Alley. A strange name for a tavern, but she had seen stranger. It wasn’t an alley at all, but a big set of five tents sewn together, each a different color. It glowed dimly from within.

A bouncer stood out front, short and squat, with a scar running up his cheek, across his forehead, and onto his scalp. He gave Veil a critical looking-over, but didn’t stop her as she sauntered—full of confidence—into the tent. It smelled worse than the other pub, with all these drunken people crammed together. The tents had been sewn to create partitioned-off areas, darkened nooks—and a few had tables and chairs instead of boxes. The people who sat at them didn’t wear the simple clothing of workers, but instead leathers, rags, or unbuttoned military coats.

Both richer than the other tavern, Veil thought, and lower at the same time.

She rambled through the room, which—despite oil lamps on some tables—was quite dim. The “bar” was a plank set across some boxes, but they’d draped a cloth over the middle. A few people waited for drinks; Veil ignored them. “What’s the strongest thing you’ve got?” she asked the barkeep, a fat man in a takama. She thought he might be lighteyed. It was too dim to tell for certain.

He looked her over. “Veden saph, single barrel.”

“Right,” Veil said dryly. “If I wanted water, I’d go to the well. Surely you’ve got something stronger.”

The barkeep grunted, then reached behind himself and took out a jug of something clear, with no label. “Horneater white,” he said, thumping it down on the table. “I have no idea what they ferment to make the stuff, but it takes paint off real nicely.”

“Perfect,” Veil said, clacking a few spheres onto the improvised counter. The others in line had been shooting her glares for ignoring the line, but at this their expressions turned to amusement.

The barkeep poured Veil a very small cup of the stuff and set it before her. She downed it in one gulp. Shallan trembled inside at the burning that followed—the immediate warmth to her cheeks and almost instant sense of nausea, accompanied by a tremor through her muscles as she tried to resist throwing up.

Veil was expecting all this. She held her breath to stifle the nausea, and relished the sensations. No worse than the pains already inside, she thought, warmth radiating through her.

“Great,” she said. “Leave the jug.”

Those idiots beside the bar continued to gawk as she poured another cup of the Horneater white and downed it, feeling its warmth. She turned to inspect the tent’s occupants. Who to approach first? Aladar’s scribes had checked watch records for anyone else killed the same way as Sadeas, and they’d come up empty—but a killing in an alleyway might not get reported. She hoped that the people here would know of it regardless.