He jogged over, hand on his weapon, watching Bluth and Tag with overt hostility. The woman said something to him in a tongue Shallan didn’t know, and he nodded, then jogged off toward the caravan below. The woman followed.
“Wait,” Shallan called to her.
“I don’t have time to talk,” the woman snapped. “We’ve got two bandit groups to fight.”
“Two?” Shallan said. “You didn’t defeat the one that attacked you earlier?”
“We fought them off, but they’ll be back soon.” The woman hesitated on the side of the hill. “The fire was an accident, I think. They were using flaming brands to scare us. They pulled back to let us fight the fires, as they didn’t want to lose any more goods.”
Two forces, then. Bandits ahead and behind. Shallan found herself sweating in the cold air as the sun finally vanished beneath the western horizon.
The woman was looking northward, toward where her group of bandits must have retreated. “Yeah, they’ll be back,” the woman said. “They’ll want to be done with us before the storm comes tonight.”
“I offer you my protection,” Shallan found herself saying.
“Your protection?” the woman said, turning back to Shallan, sounding baffled.
“You may accept me and mine into your camp,” Shallan said. “I will see to your safety tonight. I will need your service after that to convey me to the Shattered Plains.”
The woman laughed. “You are gutsy, whoever you are. You can join our camp, but you’ll die there with the rest of us!”
Cries rose from the caravan. A second later, a flight of arrows fell through the night from that direction, pelting wagons and caravan workers.
Screams.
Bandits followed, emerging from the blackness. They weren’t nearly as well equipped as the deserters, but they didn’t need to be. The caravan had fewer than a dozen guards left. The woman cursed and started running down the hillside.
Shallan shivered, eyes wide at the sudden slaughter below. Then she turned and walked to Tvlakv’s wagons. This sudden chill was familiar to her. The coldness of clarity. She knew what she had to do. She didn’t know if it would work, but she saw the solution—like lines in a drawing, coming together to transform random scribbles into a full picture.
“Tvlakv,” she said, “take Tag below and try to help those people fight.”
“What!” he said. “No. No, I will not throw my life away for your foolishness.”
She met his eyes in the near darkness, and he stopped. She knew that she was glowing softly; she could feel the storm within. “Do it.” She left him and walked to her wagon. “Bluth, turn this wagon around.”
He stood with a sphere beside the wagon, looking down at something in his hand. A sheet of paper? Surely Bluth of all people didn’t know glyphs.
“Bluth!” Shallan snapped, climbing into the wagon. “We need to be moving. Now!”
He shook himself, then tucked the paper away and scrambled into the seat beside her. He whipped at the chull, turning it. “What are we doing?” he asked.
“Heading south.”
“Into the bandits?”
“Yes.”
For once, he did as she told him without complaint, whipping the chull faster—as if he were eager to just get this all over with. The wagon rattled and shook as they went down one hillside, then climbed another.
They reached the top and looked down at the force climbing toward them. The men carried torches and sphere lanterns, so she could see their faces. Dark expressions on grim men with weapons drawn. Their breastplates or leather jerkins might once have held symbols of allegiance, but she could see where those had been cut or scratched away.
The deserters looked at her with obvious shock. They had not expected their prey to come to them. Her arrival stunned them for a moment. An important moment.
There will be an officer, Shallan thought, standing up on her seat. They are soldiers, or once were. They’ll have a command structure.
She took a deep breath. Bluth raised his sphere, looking at her, and grunted as if surprised.
“Bless the Stormfather that you’re here!” Shallan cried to the men. “I need your help desperately.”
The group of deserters just stared at her.
“Bandits,” Shallan said. “They’re attacking our friends in the caravan just two hills over. It’s a slaughter! I said I’d seen soldiers back here, moving toward the Shattered Plains. Nobody believed me. Please. You must help.”
Again, they just stared at her. A little like the mink wandering into the whitespine’s den and asking when dinner is . . . she thought. Finally, the men shuffled uneasily and turned toward a man near the center. Tall, bearded, he had arms that looked too long for his body.
“Bandits, you say,” the man replied, voice empty of emotion.
Shallan leaped down from the wagon and walked toward the man, leaving Bluth sitting as a silent lump. Deserters stepped away from her, wearing ripped and dirty clothing, with grizzled, unkempt hair and faces that hadn’t seen a razor—or a washcloth—in ages. And yet, by torchlight, their weapons gleamed without a spot of rust and their breastplates were polished to the point where they reflected her features.
The woman she glimpsed in one breastplate looked too tall, too stately, to be Shallan herself. Instead of tangled hair, she had flowing red locks. Instead of refugee rags, she wore a gown woven with golden embroidery. She had not been wearing a necklace before, and when she raised her hand toward the leader of the band, her chipped fingernails appeared perfectly manicured.
“Brightness,” the man said as she stepped up to him, “we aren’t what you think we are.”
“No,” Shallan replied. “You aren’t what you think yourselves to be.”
Those around her in the firelight regarded her with eager stares, and she felt the hair rising in a shiver across her body. Into the predator’s den indeed. Yet the tempest within her spurred her to action, and urged her to greater confidence.
The leader opened his mouth as if to give some order. Shallan cut him off. “What is your name?”
“I’m called Vathah,” the man said, turning toward his allies. It was a Vorin name, like Shallan’s own. “And I’ll decide what to do with you later. Gaz, take this one and—”
“What would you do, Vathah,” Shallan said in a loud voice, “to erase the past?”
He looked back toward her, face lit on one side by primal torchlight.
“Would you protect instead of kill, if you had the choice?” Shallan asked. “Would you rescue instead of rob if you could do it over again? Good people are dying as we speak here. You can stop it.”
Those dark eyes of his seemed dead. “We can’t change the past.”
“I can change your future.”
“We are wanted men.”
“Yes, I came here wanting men. Hoping to find men. You are offered the chance to be soldiers again. Come with me. I will see to it you have new lives. Those lives start by saving instead of killing.”
Vathah snorted in derision. His face looked unfinished in the night, rough, like a sketch. “Brightlords have failed us in the past.”
“Listen,” Shallan said. “Listen to the screams.”
The piteous sounds reached them from behind her. Shouts for help. Workers, both men and women, from the caravan. Dying. Haunting sounds. Shallan was surprised, despite having pointed them out, how well the sounds carried. How much they sounded like pleas for help.
“Give yourself another chance,” Shallan said softly. “If you return with me, I will see that your crimes are erased. I promise it to you, by all that I have, by the Almighty himself. You can start over. Start over as heroes.”
Vathah held her eyes. This man was stone. She could see, with a sinking feeling, that he wasn’t swayed. The tempest inside of her began to fade away, and her fears boiled higher. What was she doing? This was crazy!
Vathah looked away from her again, and she knew she’d lost him. He barked the order to t
ake her captive.
Nobody moved. Shallan had focused only on him, not the other two dozen or so men, who had drawn in close, torches raised high. They looked at her with open faces, and she saw very little of the lust she’d noticed before. Instead, they bore wide eyes, longing, reacting to the distant yells. Men fingered their uniforms, where the insignias had been. Others looked down at spears and axes, weapons of their service perhaps not so long ago.
“You fools are considering this?” Vathah said.
One man, a short fellow with a scarred face and an eye patch, nodded his head. “I wouldn’t mind starting over,” he muttered. “Storms, but it would be nice.”
“I saved a woman’s life once,” another said, a tall, balding man who was easily into his forties. “I felt a hero for weeks. Toasts in the tavern. Warmth. Damnation! We’re dying out here.”
“We left to get away from their oppression!” Vathah bellowed.
“And what have we done with our freedom, Vathah?” a man asked from the back of the group.
In the silence that followed, Shallan could hear only the screams for help.
“Storm it, I’m going,” said the short man with the eye patch, jogging up the hill. Others broke off and followed him. Shallan turned—hands clasped in front of her—as nearly the entire group took off in a charge. Bluth stood up on his wagon, his shocked face showing in the torchlight that passed. Then he actually whooped, jumping down from the wagon and raising his cudgel high as he joined the deserters charging toward the battle.
Shallan was left with Vathah and two other men. Those seemed dumbfounded by what had just happened. Vathah folded his arms, letting out an audible sigh. “Idiots, every one.”
“They are not idiots for wanting to be better than they are,” Shallan said.
He snorted, looking her over. She had an immediate flash of fear. Moments ago, this man was ready to rob her and probably worse. He didn’t make any moves toward her, though his face looked even more threatening now that most of the torches had gone.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Shallan Davar.”
“Well, Brightness Shallan,” he said, “I hope for your sake you can keep your word. Come on, boys. Let’s see if we can keep those fools alive.” He left with the others who had remained behind, marching up over the hill toward the fighting.
Shallan stood alone in the night, exhaling softly. No Light came out; she’d used it all. Her feet were no longer so much as sore, but she felt exhausted, drained like a punctured wineskin. She walked to the wagon and slumped against it, then finally settled down on the ground. Head back, she looked up at the sky. A few exhaustionspren rose around her, little swirls of dust spinning into the air.
Salas, the first moon, made a violet disc in the center of a cluster of bright white stars. The screams and yells of fighting continued. Would the deserters be enough? She didn’t know how many bandits there were.
She’d be useless there, only getting in the way. She squeezed her eyes shut, then climbed up into the seat and took out her sketchbook. To the sounds of the fighting and dying, she sketched the glyphs for a prayer of hope.
“They listened,” Pattern said, buzzing from beside her. “You changed them.”
“I can’t believe it worked,” Shallan said.
“Ah . . . You are good with lies.”
“No, I mean, that was a figure of speech. It seems impossible that they’d actually listen to me. Hardened criminals.”
“You are lies and truth,” Pattern said softly. “They transform.”
“What does that mean?” It was hard to sketch with only the light of Salas to see by, but she did her best.
“You spoke of one Surge, earlier,” Pattern said. “Lightweaving, the power of light. But you have something else. The power of transformation.”
“Soulcasting?” Shallan said. “I didn’t Soulcast anyone.”
“Mmmm. And yet, you transformed them. And yet. Mmmm.”
Shallan finished her prayer, then held it up, noticing that a previous page had been ripped out of the notebook. Who had done that?
She couldn’t burn the prayer, but she didn’t think the Almighty would mind. She pressed it close to her breast and closed her eyes, waiting until the shouts from below quieted.
Mediationform made for peace, it’s said.
Form of teaching and consolation.
When used by the gods, it became instead
Form of lies and desolation.
—From the Listener Song of Listing, 33rd stanza
Shallan closed Bluth’s eyes, not looking at the ripped-out hole in his torso, the bloody entrails. Around her, workers salvaged what they could from the camp. People groaned, though some of those groans cut off as Vathah executed the bandits one by one.
Shallan didn’t stop him. He did the duty grimly, and as he walked past he didn’t look at her. He’s thinking these bandits could have easily been him and his men, Shallan thought, looking back down at Bluth, his dead face lit by fires. What separates the heroes from the villains? One speech in the night?
Bluth wasn’t the only casualty of the assault; Vathah had lost seven soldiers. They had killed over twice that many bandits. Exhausted, Shallan rose, but hesitated as she saw something poking out of Bluth’s jacket. She leaned down and pushed the jacket open.
There, stuffed in his pocket, was her picture of him. The one that depicted him not as he was, but as she imagined he might once have been. A soldier in an army, in a crisp uniform. Eyes forward, rather than looking down all the time. A hero.
When had he taken it from her sketchbook? She slipped it free and folded it, flattening the wrinkles.
“I was wrong,” she whispered. “You were a fine way to restart my collection, Bluth. Fight well for the Almighty in your sleep, bold one.”
She rose and looked over the camp. Several of the caravan’s parshmen pulled corpses to the fires for burning. Shallan’s intervention had rescued the merchants, but not without heavy losses. She hadn’t counted, but the toll looked high. Dozens dead, including most of the caravan’s guards—among them the Iriali man from earlier in the night.
In her fatigue, Shallan wanted to crawl into her wagon and curl up for sleep. Instead, she went looking for the caravan leaders.
The haggard, bloodstained scout from before stood beside a travel table, where she was talking to an older, bearded man in a felt cap. His eyes were blue, and he moved his fingers through his beard as he looked over a list the woman had brought him.
Both looked up as Shallan approached. The woman rested a hand on her sword; the man continued to stroke his beard. Nearby, caravan workers sorted through the contents of a wagon that had toppled over, spilling bales of cloth.
“And here is our savior,” the older man said. “Brightness, the winds themselves cannot speak of your majesty or the wonder of your timely arrival.”
Shallan didn’t feel majestic. She felt tired, sore, and grungy. Her bare feet—hidden by the bottom of her skirts—had started to ache again, and her ability to Lightweave was expended. Her dress looked almost as bad as a pauper’s, and her hair—though braided—was an absolute mess.
“You are the caravan owner?” Shallan asked.
“Macob is my name,” he said. She couldn’t place his accent. Not Thaylen or Alethi. “You have met my associate Tyn.” He nodded toward the woman. “She is head of our guards. Both her soldiers and my goods have . . . dwindled from tonight’s encounters.”
Tyn folded her arms. She still wore her tan coat, and in the light of Macob’s spheres, Shallan could see that it was of fine leather. What to make of a woman who dressed like a soldier and wore a sword at her waist?
“I’ve been telling Macob of your offer,” Tyn said. “Earlier, on the hill.”
Macob chuckled, an incongruous sound considering their surroundings. “Offer, she calls it. My associate is under the impression that it was really a threat! These mercenaries obviously work for you. We are wondering what your intenti
on is for this caravan.”
“The mercenaries didn’t work for me before,” Shallan said, “but they do now. It took a little persuasion.”
Tyn raised an eyebrow. “That must have been some mighty fine persuasion, Brightness . . .”
“Shallan Davar. All I ask of you is what I said to Tyn before. Accompany me to the Shattered Plains.”
“Surely your soldiers can do that,” Macob said. “You don’t need our assistance.”
I want you here to remind the “soldiers” what they’ve done, Shallan thought. Her instincts said that the more reminders of civilization the deserters had, the better off she would be.
“They are soldiers,” Shallan said. “They have no idea how to properly convey a lighteyed woman in comfort. You, however, have nice wagons and goods aplenty. If you can’t tell from my humble aspect, I am in dreadful need of a little luxury. I’d rather not arrive at the Shattered Plains looking like a vagabond.”
“We could use her soldiers,” Tyn said. “My own force is reduced to a handful.” She inspected Shallan again, this time with curiosity. It wasn’t an unfriendly look.
“Then we shall make an accord,” Macob said, smiling broadly and reaching across the table toward Shallan. “In my gratitude for my life, I shall see you cared for with new apparel and fine foodstuffs for the duration of our travels together. You and your men will ensure our safety the rest of the way, and then we will part, nothing more owed to one another.”
“Agreed,” Shallan said, taking his hand. “I shall allow you to join me, your caravan unto mine.”
He hesitated. “Your caravan.”
“Yes.”
“And your authority, then, I assume?”
“You expected otherwise?”
He sighed, but shook on the deal. “No, I suppose not. I suppose not.” He released her hand, then waved toward a pair of people off at the side of the wagons. Tvlakv and Tag. “And what of those?”
“They are mine,” Shallan said. “I will deal with them.”