Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

“Hey, what’re you drawing?” Jushu asked. “Is it the hearth from home?”

She smiled, and though the real Jushu had spoken, she incorporated him into her mental image. One of her four older brothers—because in this memory, she still had four. Jushu and Wikim were twins, though Jushu laughed more than Wikim did. Wikim was thoughtful. And Balat, he would sit in the chair nearby, pretending to be confident. Helaran was back, and Balat always puffed up when the eldest Davar brother was around.

She opened her eyes and glanced at the little creationspren gathering around her, imitating mundane things. Her mother’s teakettle. The fireplace poker. Objects from her home in Jah Keved, not objects here—somehow they responded to her imaginings. One in particular made her feel cold. A necklace chain slinking across the ground.

In truth, those days at home had been terrible times. Times of tears, and screams, and a life unraveling. It was also the last time she could remember her entire family together.

Except … no, that wasn’t the entire family. This memory had happened after … after Shallan had killed her mother.

Confront it! she thought at herself, angry. Don’t ignore it! Pattern moved across the floor of the room here in Urithiru, spinning among the dancing creationspren.

She’d been only eleven years old. Seven years ago now—and if that timeline was correct, she must have begun seeing Pattern as a young child. Long before Jasnah had first encountered her spren. Shallan didn’t remember her first experiences with Pattern. Other than the distinct image of summoning her Shardblade to protect herself as a child, she had excised all such memories.

No, they’re here, Veil thought. Deep within, Shallan.

She couldn’t see those memories; didn’t want to see them. As she shied away from them, something dark shifted inside her, growing stronger. Formless. Shallan didn’t want to be the person who had done those things. That … that person could not … not be loved.…

She gripped her pencil in tight fingers, the drawing half-finished in her lap. She’d buckled down and forced herself to read studies on other people with fragmented personas. She’d found only a handful of mentions in medical texts, though the accounts implied people like her were treated as freaks even by the ardents. Oddities to be locked away in the darkness for their own good, studied by academics who found the cases “novel in their bizarre nature” and “giving insight to the addled mind of the psychotic.” It was clear that going to such experts with her problems was not an option.

Memory loss was apparently common to these cases, but the rest of what Shallan experienced seemed distinctly different. Importantly, she wasn’t experiencing continued memory loss. So maybe she was fine. She’d stabilized.

Everything was getting better. Surely it was.

“Storms,” Jushu said. “Shallan, that’s some … some weird stuff you’ve drawn.”

She focused on the sketch—which she’d drawn poorly, since her eyes had been closed. It took her a second to notice that in the fireplace back home, she’d drawn burning souls. One might have mistaken them for flamespren, but for the fact that they looked so similar to her and her three brothers.…

She snapped the sketchbook closed. She wasn’t back in Jah Keved. The hearth before her now had no flames; it was a depression with a heating fabrial resting in it, set into the wall of a Urithiru room.

She had to live in the present. Jushu was no longer the plump, readily smiling boy from her memories. He was an overweight man with a full beard who had to be watched almost constantly, lest he steal something and try to pawn it for gambling money. They’d twice caught him trying to remove the heating fabrial.

The way he smiled at her was a lie. Or maybe he was simply trying the best he could to remain upbeat. Almighty knew she understood that.

“Nothing to say?” he asked. “No quip? You almost never make wisecracks anymore.”

“You aren’t around enough for me to make sport of,” she said. “And no one else is quite as inspiring in their incompetence.”

He smiled, but winced, and Shallan immediately felt ashamed. The joke was too accurate. She couldn’t act like when they’d been kids; then, their father had been a great unifying enemy, making their gallows humor a way to cope.

She worried about them drifting apart. So she visited, almost defiantly.

Jushu rose to get some food, and Shallan wanted to try another joke. She let him go instead. With a sigh, she rummaged in her satchel and brought out Ialai’s little notebook. She was piecing some of its meanings together. For instance, Ialai’s spies had caught members of the Ghostbloods talking about a new route through the Sea of Lost Lights. That was the place she and the others had traveled in Shadesmar a year back. Indeed, an entire three pages were filled with locations from the mysterious world of the spren.

I saw a map, Ialai had written, in the things of the Ghostblood we captured—and should have thought to copy it, for it was lost in the fire. Here is what I remember.

Shallan made some notes at the bottom of Ialai’s crude map. Whatever skills in politics the woman had possessed, they had been offset by a dearth of artistic ability. But perhaps Shallan could find some actual maps of Shadesmar and compare?

The door opened, admitting Balat and a friend returning from their duties as guardsmen, though Shallan’s back was to the group. From the quiet voices, Eylita—Balat’s wife—had met them somewhere in the hallway, and was laughing at something Balat said. Over the last year, Shallan had grown surprisingly fond of the young woman. As a child, Shallan remembered being jealous of anyone who might take her brothers away—but as an adult, she saw better. Eylita was kind and genuine. And it took a special person to love a member of the Davar family.

Shallan continued her study of the book, listening with half an ear as Balat and Eylita chatted with their friend. Eylita had encouraged Balat to find an occupation, though Shallan wasn’t certain becoming a guardsman was the best match for him. Balat had a tendency to enjoy the pain of other creatures a little too much.

Balat, Eylita, and his friend made their way to the other room, where a cooling fabrial kept some meats and curries chilled for meals. Their life was growing so convenient, and it could be even more so. Shallan’s elevation to wife of a highprince could have awarded this home dozens of servants.

Her brothers, however, had grown distrustful of servants—and they had grown accustomed to living without in the lean days. Besides, these fabrials did the work of a dozen people. No need for someone to chop or carry wood, no need for a fresh trip to the tower kitchens each day. Almost, Shallan feared, Navani’s artifabrians would make them all lazy.

As if having servants hasn’t already made most lighteyes lazy, Shallan thought. Focus. Why are the Ghostbloods so interested in Shadesmar? Veil, any thoughts?

Veil frowned, absently turned around to put her back to the wall, then tucked her foot through the strap of her satchel to prevent it from being pulled away. When she became Veil, the colors in the room … muted. The colors didn’t change, but her perception shifted. Shallan would have described those strata lines as rust colored, but to Veil they were just red.

Veil kept one eye on the door to the balcony. Balat, Eylita, and Jushu had all moved out there, and were joking with that other guardsman. Laughterspren moved in front of the door. Who was this friend? Shallan hadn’t bothered to check.