She had Lightweaving, but she was already using that. Could she Lightweave a second image at the same time? How was her disguise doing, anyway? It would be draining the Light from her spheres. She almost pulled them out to see how much was gone, then stopped herself. Fool. She was worried about being robbed, and so she considered revealing a handful of money?
She stopped after two blocks. Some people did walk this street, a handful of men in workers’ clothing heading home for the night. The buildings here certainly weren’t as nice as the ones she’d left behind.
“Nobody follows,” Pattern said from her feet.
Shallan jumped nearly to the rooftops. She raised her freehand to her breast, breathing in and out deeply. She really thought she could infiltrate a group of assassins? Her own spren often made her jump.
Tyn said that nothing would teach me, Shallan thought, but personal experience. I’m just going to have to muddle through these first few times and hope I get used to this before I get myself killed.
“Let’s keep moving,” Shallan said. “We’re running out of time.” She started forward, digging into the fruit. It really was good, though her nerves prevented her from fully enjoying it.
The street with the taverns was actually five blocks away, not six. Shallan’s increasingly wrinkled paper showed the meeting place as a tenement building across from a tavern with blue light shining through the windows.
Shallan tossed aside her fruit stick as she stepped up to the tenement building. It couldn’t be old—nothing in these warcamps could be more than five or six years old—but it looked ancient. The stones weathered, the window shutters hanging askew in places. She was surprised a highstorm hadn’t blown the thing over.
Fully aware that she could be striding into the whitespine’s den for dinner, she walked up and knocked. The door was opened by a darkeyed man the size of a boulder who had a beard trimmed like a Horneater’s. His hair did seem to have some red in it.
She resisted the urge to shuffle from one foot to the next as he looked her up and down. Finally, he opened the door all the way, motioning her in with thick fingers. She didn’t miss the large axe that leaned against the wall just next to him, illuminated by the single feeble Stormlight lamp—it looked like it only had a chip in it—on the wall.
Taking a deep breath, Shallan entered.
The place smelled moldy. She heard water dripping from somewhere farther inside, stormwater infallibly making its way from a leaking roof down, down, down to the ground floor. The guard did not speak as he led her along the hall. The floor was wood. There was something about walking on wood that made her feel as if she were going to fall through. It seemed to groan with every step. Good stone never did anything like that.
The guard nodded toward an opening in the wall, and Shallan stared into the blackness there. Steps. Down.
Storms, what am I doing?
Not being timid. That was what she was doing. Shallan glanced at the brutish guard and raised an eyebrow, forcing her voice to sound calm. “You really went all-out on the decor. How long did you have to look to find a den in the Shattered Plains that had a creepy staircase in it?”
The guard actually smiled. It didn’t make him look any less intimidating.
“The stairs aren’t going to collapse under me, are they?” Shallan asked.
“Is fine,” the guard said. His voice was surprisingly high pitched. “He did not collapse for me, and I had two breakfasts today.” He patted his stomach. “Go. They wait for you.”
She got out a sphere for light and started down the stairwell. The stone walls here had been cut. Who would go to the trouble to burrow out a basement for a rotting tenement building? The answer came as she noticed several extended crem dribbles on the wall. A little like wax melting down the side of a candle, these had hardened to stone long ago.
This hole was here before the Alethi came, she thought. When settling this warcamp, Sebarial had built this building above an already-existent basement. The warcamp craters must have once held people. There was no other explanation. Who had they been? The Natan people of long ago?
The steps led down into a small, empty room. How odd to find a basement in such a ramshackle building; normally, you found them only in wealthy homes, as the precautions one needed to take to prevent flooding were extensive. Shallan folded her arms, confused, until one corner of the floor opened, bathing the room in light. Shallan stepped back, breath catching. A part of the rock floor was false, hiding a trapdoor.
The basement had a basement. She stepped up to the edge of the hole and saw a ladder heading down toward red carpet and light that seemed almost blinding following the dimness she’d been in. This place must flood something fierce after a storm.
She swung onto the ladder and made her way down, glad for the trousers. The trapdoor closed above—it appeared to have some sort of pulley mechanism.
She hopped off onto the carpet and turned, finding a room that was incongruously palatial. A long dining table ran down the center, and it sparkled with glass goblets that had gemstones set in their sides; their glow sprayed the room with light. Cozy shelves lined the walls, each laden with books and ornaments. Many were in small glass cases. Trophies of some sort?
Of the half-dozen or so people in the room, one drew her attention most. Straight-backed, with jet-black hair, he wore white clothing and stood in front of the room’s crackling hearth. He reminded her of someone, a man from her childhood. The messenger with the smiling eyes, the enigma who knew so much. Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty. . . .
The man turned around, revealing light violet eyes and a face scarred by old wounds, including a cut that ran down his cheek and deformed his upper lip. Though he looked refined—holding a goblet of wine in his left hand and dressed in the finest of suits—his face and hands told another story. Of battles, of killing, and of strife.
This was not the messenger from Shallan’s past. The man raised his right hand, in which he held some kind of long reed. He placed this to his lips. He held it like a weapon, pointed right at Shallan.
She froze in place, unable to move, staring down that weapon across the room. Finally, she glanced over her shoulder. A target hung on the wall in the form of a tapestry with various creatures on it. Shallan yelped and jumped to the side just before the man blew on his weapon, shooting a small dart through the air. It passed within inches of her before embedding itself in one of the figures on the wall hanging.
Shallan raised her safehand to her breast and took a deep breath. Steady, she thought at herself. Steady.
“Tyn,” the man said, lowering the blowgun, “is unwell?” The quiet way he spoke made Shallan shiver. She could not place his accent.
“Yes,” Shallan said, finding her voice.
The man set his goblet on the mantel beside him, then slipped another dart from his shirt pocket. He tucked this carefully into the end of the blowgun. “She does not seem the type to let something so trivial keep her from an important meeting.”
He looked up at Shallan, blowgun loaded. Those violet eyes seemed like glass, his scarred face expressionless. The room seemed to hold its breath.
He’d seen through her lie. Shallan felt a cold sweat.
“You are right,” Shallan said. “Tyn is well. However, the plan did not go as she promised. Jasnah Kholin is dead, but the implementation of the assassination was sloppy. Tyn felt it prudent to work through an intermediary for now.”
The man narrowed his eyes, then finally raised his reed and blew sharply. Shallan jumped, but the dart did not strike her, instead flying to hit the wall hanging.
“She reveals herself as a coward,” he said. “You came here willingly, knowing that I might just kill you for her mistakes?”
“Every woman starts somewhere, Brightlord,” Shallan said, voice trembling rebelliously. “I can’t claw my way upward without taking a few chances. If you don’t kill me, then I have had a chance to meet people that Tyn probably would never have introduced me
to.”
“Bold,” the man said. He gestured with two fingers, and one of the people sitting beside the hearth—a spindly lighteyed man with teeth so large, he might have had some rat in his heritage somewhere—scrambled forward and plunked something down on the long table near Shallan.
A sack of spheres. Inside it must be broams; the sack, though dark brown, glowed brightly.
“Tell me where she is, and you may have that money,” said the scarred man, loading another dart. “You have ambition. I like that. I will not only pay you for her location, but will attempt to find you a position in my organization.”
“Pardon, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “But you know I won’t sell her out to you.” Surely he could see her fear, sweat dampening the lining of her hat, trickling down her temples. Indeed, fearspren wiggled up through the ground beside her, though his view of them might be blocked by the table. “If I were willing to betray Tyn for a price, then of what worth would I ever be to you? You’d know that I’d do the same to you, if offered a big enough bounty.”
“Honor?” the man asked, expression still blank, dart pinched between two fingers. “From a thief?”
“Pardon again, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “But I am no mere thief.”
“And if I were to torture you? I could get the information that way, I assure you.”
“I don’t doubt that you could, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “But do you really think Tyn would send me with knowledge of her location? What would be the point of torturing me?”
“Well,” the man said, looking down and tucking the dart into place, “for one thing, it would be fun.”
Breathe, Shallan told herself. Slowly. Normally. It was hard to manage. “I don’t think you’ll do that, Brightlord.”
He raised the reed and blew with a swift motion. The dart thumped as it stuck into the wall. “And why not?”
“Because you don’t seem the type to throw away something useful.” She nodded toward the relics in glass boxes.
“You presume to be of use to me?”
Shallan raised her head, meeting his gaze. “Yes.”
He held her eyes. The hearth crackled.
“Very well,” he finally said, turning toward his fireplace and picking up his cup again. He continued to hold the reed in one hand, but drank with the other, his back to her.
Shallan felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She exhaled in relief, legs wobbling, and sat down on one of the chairs beside the dining table. Fingers trembling, she got out a handkerchief and wiped her brow and temples, pushing back the hat.
When she stopped to put the handkerchief away, she realized that someone had taken the seat beside her. Shallan hadn’t even seen him move, and his presence gave her a start. The short, tan-skinned person had some kind of carapace mask tied to his face, pulled tight. In fact, it looked like . . . like the skin had started to grow around the edges of the mask somehow.
The arrangement of red-orange carapace pieces was like a mosaic, giving a hint of eyebrows, of anger and rage. Behind that mask, a pair of dark eyes regarded her, unblinking, and an impassive mouth and chin were also left exposed. The man . . . no, the woman—Shallan noticed the hint of breasts and shape of the torso. The exposed safehand had thrown her.
Shallan stifled a blush. The woman wore dark brown clothing, simple, tied at the waist with an intricate belt, studded with more carapace. Four other people wearing more traditional Alethi clothing chatted softly beside the fire. The tall man who had questioned her did not speak again.
“Um, Brightlord?” Shallan said, looking toward him.
“I am considering,” the man said. “I had been expecting to kill you and hunt down Tyn. You can tell her she would have been fine coming to me—I am not angry that she did not retrieve the information from Jasnah. I hired the hunter I felt best for the task, and I understood the risks. Kholin is dead, and Tyn was to achieve that at all other costs. I may not have commended her on the job, but I was satisfied.
“Deciding not to come explain in person, however—that cowardice turns my stomach. She hides, like prey.” He took a sip of his wine. “You are not a coward. She sent someone she knew I would not kill. She always has been clever.”
Great. What did that mean for Shallan? She hesitantly rose from her seat, wanting to be away from the strange little woman with the unblinking eyes. Instead, Shallan took the chance to inspect the room in greater detail. Where was the smoke from the fire going? Had they cut a flue all the way down here?
The right wall had the greater number of trophies, including several enormous gemhearts. Those were, together, likely worth more than her father’s estates. Fortunately, they weren’t infused. Even uncut as they were, they’d probably glow enough to blind. There were also shells that Shallan vaguely recognized. That tusk was probably from a whitespine. And that eye socket, that looked frighteningly close to the structure of a santhid’s skull.
Other curiosities baffled her. A vial of pale sand. A couple of thick hairpins. A lock of golden hair. The branch of a tree with writing on it she couldn’t read. A silver knife. An odd flower preserved in some kind of solution. There were no plaques to explain these mementos. That chunk of pale pink crystal looked like it might be some kind of gemstone, but why was it so delicate? Bits of it had flaked off in its case, as if simply setting it down had almost crushed it.
She stepped, hesitantly, closer to the back of the room. Smoke from the fire rose, then curled and twisted around something hanging at the top of the hearth. A gemstone? . . . No, a fabrial. It gathered the smoke as a spool gathered thread. She’d never seen anything like it.
“Do you know the man named Amaram?” asked the scarred man in white.
“No, Brightlord.”
“I am called Mraize,” the man said. “You may use that title for me. And you are?”
“I’m called Veil,” Shallan said, using a name she’d been toying with.
“Very well. Amaram is a Shardbearer in the court of Highprince Sadeas. He is also my current prey.”
Hearing it spoken like that sent a shiver through Shallan. “And what do you wish of me, Mraize?” She tried, but didn’t get the pronunciation of the title quite right. It wasn’t a Vorin term.
“He owns a manor near Sadeas’s palace,” Mraize said. “Inside, Amaram hides secrets. I would know which ones. Tell your mistress to investigate and return to me with information next week on Chachel. She will know what I seek. If she does this, my disappointment with her will fade.”
Sneaking into the manor of a Shardbearer? Storms! Shallan had no idea how she’d accomplish such a thing. She should leave this place, abandon her disguise, and count herself lucky for having escaped alive.
Mraize set down his empty cup of wine, and she saw that his right hand was scarred, the fingers crooked, as if they had been broken and badly reset. There, glistening and golden on Mraize’s middle finger, was a signet ring bearing the same symbol that Jasnah had drawn. The symbol Shallan’s steward had carried, the symbol that Kabsal had tattooed on his body.
There was no backing out. Shallan would do whatever she had to in order to find out what these people knew. About her family, about Jasnah, and about the end of the world itself.
“The task will be done,” Shallan said to Mraize.
“No question of payment?” Mraize asked, amused, removing a dart from his pocket. “Your mistress always asked.”
“Brightlord,” Shallan said, “one does not haggle at the finest winehouses. Your payment will be accepted.”
For the first time since she’d entered, she saw Mraize smile, though he didn’t look toward her. “Do not harm Amaram, little knife,” he warned. “His life belongs to another. Do not alert anyone or bring suspicion. Tyn is to investigate and return. Nothing more.”
He turned around and blew a dart into the wall. Shallan glanced at the other four people by the fire and took Memories of them with a quick blink each. Then—sensing she had been dismissed—she walked to the ladde
r.
She felt Mraize’s eyes on her back as he raised his blowgun one last time. The trapdoor opened above. Shallan felt the gaze follow her as she climbed up the ladder.
A dart passed just beneath her, between the rungs, and stabbed the wall. Breathing quickly, Shallan left the hidden chamber, entering the dusty upper basement again. The trapdoor closed, shutting her away into the darkness.
Her poise broke, and she scrambled up the steps and out of the building. She stopped outside, breathing deeply. The street outside had grown more busy, not less, with those taverns drawing a crowd. Shallan hurried on her way.
She realized now that she hadn’t had much of a plan in coming to meet with the Ghostbloods. What was she going to do? Get information from them somehow? That would require earning their trust. Mraize didn’t seem the type to trust anyone. How would she find out what he knew about Urithiru? How to call his people off her brothers? How would she—
“Following,” Pattern said.
Shallan pulled up short. “What?”
“People follow,” Pattern said, voice pleasant, as if he had no idea how tense this entire experience had been for Shallan. “You asked me to watch. I watched.”
Of course Mraize would send someone to tail her. Her cold sweat returning, Shallan forced herself to move, not looking over her shoulder. “How many?” she asked Pattern, who had climbed up onto the side of her coat.
“One,” Pattern said. “The person with the mask, though she now wears a black cloak. Should we go speak with her? You are friends now, right?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that.”
“Mmm . . .” Pattern said. She suspected he was trying to figure out the nature of human interactions. Good luck.
What to do? Shallan doubted she could lose her tail. The woman would have practice with this sort of thing, while Shallan . . . well, she had a lot of practice reading books and sketching pictures.
Lightweaving, she thought. Can I do something with that? Her disguise was still working—the dark hair trailing down her shoulder proved that. Could she change to a different image overlaying herself?