The thought made Shallan feel cold inside.
Once they were close enough to the tailor’s shop that she didn’t worry about him being safe as he walked back on his own, Shallan forced herself to pull out of his grip. She held his hand a moment with her freehand. “I need to be going.”
“You aren’t to meet the cult until sunset.”
“I need to steal some food first to pay them.”
Still, he held to her hand. “What do you do out there, Shallan? Who do you become?”
“Everyone,” she said. Then she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for being you, Adolin.”
“Everyone else was taken already,” he mumbled.
Never stopped me.
He watched her until she ducked around a corner, heart thumping. Adolin Kholin in her life was like a warm sunrise.
Veil started to seep out, and she was forced to acknowledge that sometimes she preferred the storm and the rain to the sun.
She checked at the drop point, inside a corner of a building that was now rubble. Here, Red had deposited a pack that contained Veil’s outfit. She grabbed it and went hunting a good place to change.
The end of the world had come, but that seemed most true after a storm. Refuse strewn about, people who hadn’t gotten to shelters moaning from fallen shacks or alongside streets.
It was like each storm tried to wipe them off Roshar, and they only remained through sheer grit and luck. Now, with two storms, it was even worse. If they defeated the Voidbringers, would the Everstorm remain? Had it begun to erode their society in a way that—win the war or not—would eventually end with them all swept out to sea?
She felt her face changing as she walked, draining Stormlight from her satchel. It rose in her like a flaring flame, before dimming to an ember as she became the people from the sketches Adolin had seen.
The poor man who tried doggedly to keep the area around his little pallet clean, as if to try to maintain some control over an insane world.
The lighteyed girl who wondered what had happened to the joy of adolescence. Instead of her wearing her first havah to a ball, her family was forced to take in dozens of relatives from neighboring towns, and she spent the days locked away because the streets weren’t safe.
The mother with a child, sitting in darkness, looking toward the horizon and a hidden sun.
Face after face. Life after life. Overpowering, intoxicating, alive. Breathing, and crying, and laughing, and being. So many hopes, so many lives, so many dreams.
She unbuttoned her havah up the side, then let it fall. She dropped her satchel, which thumped from the heavy book inside. She stepped forward in only her shift, safehand uncovered, feeling the wind on her skin. She was still wearing an illusion, one that didn’t disrobe, so nobody could see her.
Nobody could see her. Had anyone ever seen her? She stopped on the street corner, wearing shifting faces and clothing, enjoying the sensation of freedom, clothed yet naked skin shivering at the wind’s kiss.
Around her, people ducked away into buildings, frightened.
Just another spren, Shallan/Veil/Radiant thought. That’s what I am. Emotion made carnal.
She lifted her hands to the sides, exposed, yet invisible. She breathed the breaths of a city’s people.
“Mmm…” Pattern said, unweaving himself from her discarded dress. “Shallan?”
“Maybe,” she said, lingering.
Finally, she let herself slip fully into Veil’s persona. She immediately shook her head and fetched the clothing and satchel. She was lucky it hadn’t been stolen. Foolish girl. They didn’t have time for prancing around from poem to poem.
Veil found a secluded location beside a large gnarled tree whose roots spread all the way along the wall in either direction. She quickly rearranged her underclothing, then put on her trousers and did up her shirt. She pulled on her hat, checked herself in a hand mirror, then nodded.
Right, then. Time to meet up with Vathah.
He was waiting at the inn where Wit had once stayed. Radiant retained hope that she’d meet him again there, for a more thorough interrogation. In the private room, away from the eyes of the fretting innkeeper, Vathah laid out a couple of spheres to light the maps he’d purchased. They detailed the manor she intended to hit this afternoon.
“They call it the Mausoleum,” Vathah explained as Veil sat. He showed her an artist’s sketch he’d purchased, which was of the building’s grand hall. “Those statues are all Soulcast, by the way. They’re favored servants of the house, turned to storming stone.”
“It’s a sign of honor and respect among lighteyes.”
“It’s creepy,” Vathah said. “When I die, burn my corpse up right good. Don’t leave me staring for eternity while your descendants sip their tea.”
Veil nodded absently, placing Shallan’s sketchbook on the table. “Pick an alias from this. This map says the larder is on the outside wall. Time is tight, so we might want to do this one the easy way. Have Red make a distraction, then use Shallan’s Blade to cut us an opening right in to the food.”
“You know, they’re said to have quite the fortune at the Mausoleum. The Tenet family riches are…” He trailed off as he saw her expression. “No riches, then.”
“We get the food to pay the cult, then we get out.”
“Fine.” He settled on the image of the man sweeping around his pallet, staring at it. “You know, when you reformed me from banditry, I figured I was done with stealing.”
“This is different.”
“Different how? We stole mostly food back then too, Brightness. Just wanted to stay alive and forget.”
“And do you still want to forget?”
He grunted. “No, suppose I don’t. Suppose I sleep a little better now at night, don’t I?”
The door opened and the innkeeper bustled in, holding drinks. Vathah yelped, though Veil turned with a droll expression. “I believe,” she said, “I wanted to not be interrupted.”
“I brought drinks!”
“Which is an interruption,” Veil said, pointing out the door. “If we’re thirsty, we’ll ask.”
The innkeeper grumbled, then backed out the door, carrying his tray. He’s suspicious, Veil thought. He thinks we were up to something with Wit, and wants to find out what.
“Time to move these meetings to another location, eh, Vathah?” She looked back at the table.
And found someone else sitting there.
Vathah was gone, replaced by a bald man with thick knuckles and a well-kept smock. Shallan glanced at the picture on the table, then at the drained sphere beside it, then back at Vathah.
“Nice,” she said. “But you forgot to do the back of the head, the part not in the drawing.”
“What?” Vathah asked, frowning.
She showed him the hand mirror.
“Why’d you put his face on me?”
“I didn’t,” Veil said, standing. “You panicked and this happened.”
Vathah prodded at his face, still looking in the mirror, confused.
“I’ll bet the first few times are always accidents,” Veil said. She tucked the mirror away. “Gather this stuff up. We’ll do the mission as planned, but tomorrow you’re relieved of infiltration duty. I’ll want you practicing with your Stormlight instead.”
“Practicing…” He finally seemed to get it, his brown eyes opening widely. “Brightness! I’m no storming Radiant.”
“Of course not. You’re probably a squire—I think most orders had them. You might become something more. I think Shallan was making illusions off and on for years before she said the oaths. But then, it’s all kind of muddled in her head. I had my sword when I was very young, and…”
She took a deep breath. Fortunately, Veil hadn’t lived through those days.
Pattern hummed in warning.
“Brightness…” Vathah said. “Veil, you really think that I…”
Storms, he seemed like he was going to cry.
She pa
tted him on the shoulder. “We don’t have time to waste. The cult will be waiting for me in four hours, and expect a nice payment of food. You going to be all right?”
“Sure, sure,” he said. The illusion finally dropped, and the image of Vathah himself so emotional was even more striking. “I can do this. Let’s go steal from some rich people and give to some crazy people instead.”
A coalition has been formed among scholar Radiants. Our goal is to deny the enemy their supply of Voidlight; this will prevent their continuing transformations, and give us an edge in combat.
—From drawer 30-20, second emerald
Veil had exposed herself.
That nagged at her as the wagon—filled with spoils from the robbery—rolled toward the appointed meeting place with the cult. She nestled in the back, against a bag of grain, feet up on a paper-wrapped haunch of cured pork.
“Swiftspren” was Veil, as she was the one who had been seen distributing the food. Therefore, to enter this revel, she would have to go as herself.
The enemy knew what she looked like. Should she have created a new persona, a false face, to not expose Veil?
But Veil is a false face, a part of her said. You could always abandon her.
She strangled that part of her, smothered it deep. Veil was too real, too vital, to abandon. Shallan would be easier.
First moon was up by the time they reached the steps to the Oathgate platform. Vathah rolled the wagon into place, and Veil hopped off, coat rippling around her. Two guards here were dressed as flamespren, with golden and red tassels. Their muscular builds, and those two spears set near the steps, hinted these men might have been soldiers before joining the cult.
A woman bustled between them, wearing a flat white mask with eyeholes but no mouth or other features. Veil narrowed her eyes; the mask reminded her of Iyatil, Mraize’s master in the Ghostbloods. But it was a very different shape.
“You were told to come alone, Swiftspren,” the woman said.
“You expected me to unload all of this on my own?” Veil waved to the back of the wagon.
“We can handle it,” the woman said smoothly, stepping over as one of the guards held up a torch—not a sphere lamp—and the other lowered the wagon’s tailgate. “Mmmm…”
Veil turned sharply. That hum …
The guards started unloading the food.
“You can take all but the two bags marked with red,” Veil said, pointing. “I need those for my rounds visiting the poor.”
“I wasn’t aware this was a negotiation,” the cultist said. “You asked for this. You’ve been leaving whispers through the city that you want to join the revel.”
Wit’s work, apparently. She’d have to thank him.
“Why are you here?” the cultist asked, sounding curious. “What is it you want, Swiftspren, so-called hero of the markets?”
“I just … keep hearing this voice. It says that this is the end, that I should give in to it. Embrace the time of spren.” She turned toward the Oathgate platform; an orange glow was rising from the top. “The answers are up there, aren’t they?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw the three nod to one another. She’d passed some kind of test.
“You may climb the steps to enlightenment,” the cultist in white told her. “Your guide will meet you at the top.”
She tossed her hat to Vathah and met his eyes. Once the unloading was through, he’d pull away and set up a few streets farther off, where he could watch the edge of the Oathgate platform. If she had trouble, she would throw herself off, counting on Stormlight to heal her after falling.
She started up the steps.
* * *
Kaladin normally liked the feeling of the city after a storm. Clean and fresh, washed of grime and refuse.
He’d done evening patrol, checking over their beat to see everything was all right following the storm. Now he stood on the top of the wall, waiting for the rest of his squad, who were still stowing their equipment. The sun had barely set, and it was time for dinner.
Below, he picked out buildings newly scarred from lightning strikes. A pod of corrupted windspren danced past, trailing intense red light. Even the smell of the air was wrong somehow. Moldy and sodden.
Syl sat quietly on his shoulder until Beard and the others piled into the stairwell. He finally joined them, walking down below to the barrack, where both platoons—his and the one they shared the space with—were gathering for dinner. Roughly twenty of the men from the other platoon would be on wall duty tonight, but everyone else was present.
Not long after Kaladin arrived, the two platoon captains called their men to muster. Kaladin fell into line between Beard and Ved, and together they saluted as Azure stepped into the doorway. She was arrayed for battle as always, with her breastplate, chain, and cloak.
Tonight, she decided to do a formal inspection. Kaladin held attention with the others as she walked down their lines and commented quietly to the two captains. She looked over a few swords, and asked several of the men if they needed anything. Kaladin felt as if he’d stood in similar lines a hundred times, sweating and hoping that the general would find everything in order.
They always did. This wasn’t the type of inspection that was intended to actually find problems—this was a chance for the men to show off for their highmarshal. They swelled as she told them they “just might be the finest platoons of fighting men I’ve ever had the privilege of leading.” Kaladin was certain he’d heard those exact words from Amaram.
Trite or not, the words inspired the men. They gave the highmarshal shouts of approval once they were given leave to break ranks. Perhaps the number of “finest platoons” in the army went up during times of war, when everyone craved a morale boost.
Kaladin walked to the officers’ table. It hadn’t taken much work to get himself invited to dine with the highmarshal. Noro really wanted him promoted to lieutenant, and most of the others were too intimidated by Azure to sit at her table.
The highmarshal hung her cloak and strange sword on a peg. She kept her gloves on, and though he couldn’t see her chest because of the breastplate, that face and build were obviously female. She was also very Alethi, with the skin tone and hair, her eyes a glimmering light orange.
She must have spent time as a mercenary out west, Kaladin thought. Sigzil had once told him that women fought in the west, particularly among mercenaries.
The meal was simple curried grain. Kaladin took a bite, well acquainted by now with the aftertaste of Soulcast grain. A lingering staleness. The curry helped, but the cooks had used the boiled-off starch of the grain to thicken it, so it had some of the same flavor.
He’d been placed relatively far from the center of the table, where Azure conversed with the two platoon captains. Eventually, one excused himself to use the privy.
Kaladin thought for a moment, then picked up his plate and moved down the table to settle into the open spot.
* * *
Veil reached the top of the platform, entering what felt like a little village. The monastery structures here were much smaller—yet far nicer—than the ones on the Shattered Plains had been. A cluster of fine stonework structures with slanted, wedge-shaped roofs, the points toward the Origin.
Ornamental shalebark grew around the bases of most of the buildings, cultivated and carved into swirling patterns. Veil took a Memory for Shallan, but her focus was on the firelight coming from farther inward. She couldn’t see the control building. All of these other structures were in the way. She could see the palace off to her left, glowing in the night with windows lit. It connected to the Oathgate platform by a covered walkway called the Sunwalk. A small group of soldiers, visible in the darkness only as shadows, guarded the way across.
Close to her—at the top of the steps—a rotund man sat along a shalebark ridge. He had short hair and light green eyes, and gave her an affable grin. “Welcome! I’m your guide tonight, for your first time at the revel! It can be … ah, disorienting.”
Those are ardent robes, Veil noted. Ripped, stained from what appeared to be a variety of foods.
“Everyone who comes up here,” he said, hopping off his seat, “is reborn. Your name is now … um…” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Where did I write that? Well, suppose it isn’t important. Your name is Kishi. Doesn’t that sound nice? Good job getting up here. This is where you’ll find the real fun in the city.”
He shoved his hands back in his pockets and looked down one of the roadways, then his shoulders slumped. “Anyway,” he said. “Let’s get going. Lots of reveling to do tonight. Always so much reveling to be done…”
“And you are?”
“Me? Oh, um, Kharat is what they named me. I think? I forget.” He ambled forward without waiting to see if she followed.
She did, eager to get to the center. However, just past the first building, she reached the revel—and had to stop to take it in. A bonfire burned right on the ground, flames crackling and whipping in the wind, bathing Veil in heat. Corrupted flamespren, vivid blue and somehow more jagged, danced inside of it. Tables lined the walkway here, piled with food. Candied meats, stacks of flatbread crusted with sugar, fruits and pastries.
A variety of people passed by, occasionally scooping food off the tables with their bare hands. They laughed and shouted. Many had been ardents, marked by brown robes. Others were lighteyes, though their clothing had … decayed? It seemed a fitting word for these suits with missing jackets, havah dresses whose skirts were ragged from brushing the ground. Safehand sleeves ripped off at the shoulder and discarded somewhere.
They moved like fish in a school, flowing from right to left. She picked out soldiers, both lighteyed and dark, in the remnants of uniforms. They seemed to take no note of her or Kharat standing to the side.
She’d have to cut through the stream of people to get farther inward to the Oathgate control building. She started to do so, but Kharat took her by the arm, steering her to join the flow of people.