Adolin seemed perfectly at ease both with his station and those around him. When he waved for the master-servant to bring him a list of wines, he smiled at the woman, though she was darkeyed. That smile was enough to produce a blush even in a master-servant.
Shallan was supposed to get this man to court her? Storms! She’d felt far more capable when trying to scam the leader of the Ghostbloods. Act refined, Shallan told herself. Adolin has moved with the elite, and has been in relationships with the most sophisticated ladies of the world. He will expect that from you.
“So,” he said, flipping through the list of wines, described by glyphs, “we are supposed to get married.”
“I would lighten that phrasing, Brightlord,” Shallan said, choosing her words carefully. “We aren’t supposed to get married. Your cousin Jasnah merely wanted us to consider a union, and your aunt seemed to agree.”
“The Almighty save a man when his female relatives collude about his future,” Adolin said with a sigh. “Sure, it’s all right for Jasnah to run about into her middle years without a spouse, but if I reach my twenty-third birthday without a bride, it’s like I’m some kind of menace. Sexist of her, don’t you think?”
“Well, she wanted me to get married too,” Shallan said. “So I wouldn’t call her sexist. Merely . . . Jasnah-ist?” She paused. “Jasnagynistic? No, drat. It would have to be Misjasnahistic, and that doesn’t work nearly as well, does it?”
“You’re asking me?” Adolin asked, turning around the menu so she could see it. “What do you think we should order?”
“Storms,” she breathed. “Those are all different kinds of wine?”
“Yeah,” Adolin said. He leaned toward her, as if conspiratorial. “Honestly, I don’t pay a lot of attention. Renarin knows the difference between them—he’ll drone on if you let him. Me, I order something that sounds important, but I’m really just choosing based on color.” He grimaced. “We’re technically at war. I won’t be able to take anything too intoxicating, just in case. Kind of silly, as there won’t be any plateau runs today.”
“You’re sure? I thought they were random.”
“Yeah, but my warcamp isn’t up. They almost never come too close before a highstorm, anyway.” He leaned back, scanning the menu, before pointing at one of the wines and winking at the serving woman.
Shallan felt cold. “Wait. Highstorm?”
“Yeah,” Adolin said, checking the clock in the corner. Sebarial had mentioned that those were growing more and more common around here. “Should come any time now. You didn’t know?”
She sputtered, looking eastward, across the cracked landscape. Act poised! she thought. Elegant! Instead, a primal part of her wanted to scramble for a hole and hide. Suddenly she imagined she could sense the pressure dropping, as if the air itself were trying to escape. Could she see it out there, starting? No, that was nothing. She squinted anyway.
“I didn’t look at the list of storms Sebarial keeps,” Shallan forced herself to say. In all honesty, it was probably outdated, knowing him. “I’ve been busy.”
“Huh,” Adolin said. “I wondered why you didn’t ask about this place. I just assumed you’d heard of it already.”
This place. The open balcony, facing east. The lighteyes drinking wine now seemed anticipatory to her, with an air of nervousness. The second room—the large one for bodyguards she’d seen with the substantial doors—made far more sense now.
“We’re here to watch?” Shallan whispered.
“It’s the new fad,” Adolin said. “Apparently we’re supposed to sit here until the storm is almost upon us, then run into that other room and take shelter. I’ve wanted to come for weeks now, and only just managed to convince my minders that I’d be safe here.” He said that last part somewhat bitterly. “We can go move into the safe room now, if you want.”
“No,” Shallan said, forcing herself to pry her fingers from the table edge. “I’m fine.”
“You look pale.”
“It’s natural.”
“Because you’re Veden?”
“Because I’m always at the edge of panic these days. Oh, is that our wine?”
Poised, she reminded herself yet again. She pointedly did not look eastward.
The servant had brought them two cups of brilliant blue wine. Adolin picked his up and studied it. He smelled it, sipped it, then nodded in satisfaction and dismissed the servant with a parting smile. He watched the woman’s backside as she retreated.
Shallan raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn’t seem to notice that he’d done anything wrong. He looked back at Shallan and leaned in again. “I know you’re supposed to swish the wine about and taste it and things,” he whispered, “but nobody has ever explained to me what I’m looking for.”
“Bugs floating in the liquid, perhaps?”
“Nah, my new food taster would have spotted one of those.” He smiled, but Shallan realized he probably wasn’t joking. A thin man who didn’t wear a uniform had walked over to chat with the bodyguards. Probably the food taster.
Shallan sipped her wine. It was good—slightly sweet, a tad spicy. Not that she could spare much thought for its taste, with that storm—
Stop it, she told herself, smiling at Adolin. She needed to make sure this meeting went well for him. Get him to talk about himself. That was one piece of advice she remembered from books.
“Plateau runs,” Shallan said. “How do you know when to begin one, anyway?”
“Hmm? Oh, we have spotters,” Adolin said, lounging back in his chair. “Men who stand atop towers with these enormous spyglasses. They inspect every plateau we can reach in a reasonable time, watching for a chrysalis.”
“I hear you’ve captured your share of those.”
“Well, I probably shouldn’t talk about it. Father doesn’t want it to be a competition anymore.” He looked at her, expectant.
“But surely you can talk about what happened before,” Shallan said, feeling as if she were filling an expected role.
“I suppose,” Adolin said. “There was one run a few months back where I seized the chrysalis basically by myself. You see, Father and I, we would usually jump the chasm first and clear the way for the bridges.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Shallan asked, dutifully looking at him with widened eyes.
“Yes, but we’re Shardbearers. We have strength and power granted by the Almighty. It’s a great responsibility, and it’s our duty to use it for the protection of our men. We save hundreds of lives by going across first. Lets us lead the army, firsthand.”
He paused.
“So brave,” Shallan said, in what she hoped was a breathy, adoring voice.
“Well, it’s the right thing to do. But it is dangerous. That day, I leaped across, but my father and I got pushed too far apart by the Parshendi. He was forced to jump back across, and a blow to his leg meant that when he landed, his greave—that’s a piece of armor on the leg—cracked. That made it dangerous for him to jump back again. I was left alone while he waited for the bridge to lock down.”
He paused again. She was probably supposed to ask what happened next.
“What if you need to poop?” she asked instead.
“Well, I put my back to the chasm and laid about me with my sword, intending to . . . Wait. What did you say?”
“Poop,” Shallan said. “You’re out there on the battlefield, encased in metal like a crab in its shell. What do you do if nature calls?”
“I . . . er . . .” Adolin frowned at her. “That is not something any woman has ever asked me before.”
“Yay for originality!” Shallan said, though she blushed as she said it. Jasnah would have been displeased. Couldn’t Shallan mind her tongue for a single conversation? She’d gotten him talking about something he liked; everything had been going well. Now this.
“Well,” Adolin said slowly, “every battle has breaks in the flow, and men rotate in and out of the front lines. For every five minutes you’re fighting, you often
have almost as many resting. When a Shardbearer pulls back, men inspect his armor for cracks, give him something to drink or eat, and help him with . . . what you just mentioned. It’s not something that makes a good topic of conversation, Brightness. We don’t really talk about it.”
“That’s precisely what makes it a good topic of conversation,” she said. “I can find out about wars and Shardbearers and glorious killing in the official accounts. The grimy details, though—nobody writes those down.”
“Well, it does get grimy,” Adolin said with a grimace, taking a drink. “You can’t really . . . I can’t believe I’m saying this . . . you can’t really wipe yourself in Shardplate, so someone has to do it for you. Makes me feel like an infant. Then, sometimes, you just don’t have time . . .”
“And?”
He inspected her, narrowing his eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“Just trying to determine if you’re secretly Wit wearing a wig. This is something he would do to me.”
“I’m not doing anything to you,” she said. “I’m just curious.” And honestly, she was. She’d thought about this. Perhaps more than it deserved consideration.
“Well,” Adolin said, “if you must know, an old adage on the battlefield teaches that it’s better to be embarrassed than dead. You can’t let anything draw your attention from fighting.”
“So . . .”
“So yes, I, Adolin Kholin—cousin to the king, heir to the Kholin princedom—have shat myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose.” He downed the rest of his wine. “You are a very strange woman.”
“If I must remind you,” Shallan said, “you are the one who opened our conversation today with a joke about Sebarial’s flatulence.”
“I guess I did at that.” He grinned. “This is not exactly going the way it’s supposed to, is it?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” Adolin said, then his grin widened. “Actually, it’s kind of refreshing. Do you know how many times I’ve told that story about saving the plateau run?”
“I’m sure you were quite brave.”
“Quite.”
“Though probably not as brave as the poor men who have to clean your armor.”
Adolin bellowed out a laugh. For the first time it seemed like something genuine—an emotion from him that wasn’t scripted or expected. He pounded his fist on the table, then waved for more wine, wiping a tear from his eye. The grin he gave her threatened to bring out another blush.
Wait, Shallan thought, did that just . . . work? She was supposed to be acting feminine and delicate, not asking men what it’s like to have to defecate in battle.
“All right,” Adolin said, taking the cup of wine. He didn’t even glance at the serving woman this time. “What other dirty secrets do you want to know? You’ve got me laid bare. There are tons of things the stories and official histories don’t mention.”
“The chrysalises,” Shallan said, eager. “What do they look like?”
“That’s what you want to know?” Adolin said, scratching his head. “I thought for sure you’d want to know about the chafing. . . .”
Shallan got out her satchel, setting a piece of paper on the table and starting a sketch. “From what I’ve been able to determine, nobody has done a solid study on the Chasmfiends. There are some sketches of dead ones, but that’s it, and the anatomy on those is dreadful.
“They must have an interesting life cycle. They haunt these chasms, but I doubt they actually live here. There’s not enough food to support creatures of their size. That means they come here as part of some migratory pattern. They come here to pupate. Have you ever seen a juvenile? Before they form the chrysalis?”
“No,” Adolin said, scooting his chair around the table. “It often happens at night, and we don’t spot them until morning. They’re hard to see out there, colored like rock. Makes me think that the Parshendi must be watching us. We end up fighting over plateaus so often. It might mean they spot us mobilizing, then use the direction we’re going to judge where to find the chrysalis. We get a head start, but they move faster over the Plains, so we arrive near the same time. . . .”
He trailed off, cocking his head to get a better look at her sketch. “Storms! That’s really good, Shallan.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean really good.”
She’d done a quick sketch of several types of chrysalises she had read about in her books, along with quick depictions of a man beside them for size reference. It wasn’t very good—she’d done it for speed. Yet Adolin seemed genuinely impressed.
“The shape and texture of the chrysalis,” Shallan said, “could help place the chasmfiends in a family of similar animals.”
“It looks most like this one,” Adolin said, scooting closer and pointing at one of the sketches. “When I’ve touched one, they’ve been hard as rock. It’s hard to dig into one without a Shardblade. It can take men with hammers forever to break into one.”
“Hmmm,” Shallan said, making a note. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah. That’s how they look. Why?”
“That’s the chrysalis of a yu-nerig,” Shallan said. “A greatshell from the seas around Marabethia. The people there feed criminals to them, I’m told.”
“Ouch.”
“This might be a false positive, a coincidence. The yu-nerig are an aquatic species. The only time they come onto land is to pupate. Seems tenuous to assume a relationship to the chasmfiends . . .”
“Sure,” Adolin said, taking a drink of wine. “If you say so.”
“This is probably important,” Shallan said.
“For research. Yeah, I know. Aunt Navani is always talking about things like that.”
“This could be of more practical import than that,” Shallan said. “About how many of these things total are killed by your armies and the Parshendi each month?”
Adolin shrugged. “One every three days or so, I’d guess. Sometimes more, sometimes less. So . . . fifteen or so a month?”
“You see the problem?”
“I . . .” Adolin shook his head. “No. Sorry. I’m kind of useless at anything that doesn’t involve someone getting stabbed.”
She smiled at him. “Nonsense. You proved skilled at choosing wine.”
“I did that basically at random.”
“And it tastes delicious,” Shallan said. “Empirical proof of your methodology. Now, you probably don’t see the problem because you don’t have the proper facts. Greatshells, generally, are slow to breed and slow to grow. This is because most ecosystems can only support a small population of apex predators of this size.”
“I’ve heard some of those words before.”
She looked to him, raising an eyebrow. He’d gotten a lot closer to her, in order to look at her drawing. He wore a faint cologne, a brisk woody scent. Oh my . . .
“All right, all right,” he said, chuckling as he inspected her drawings. “I’m not as dense as I feign. I see what you’re saying. You really think we could kill enough of them that it could be a problem? I mean, people have been doing greatshell hunts for generations, and the beasts are still around.”
“You’re not hunting them here, Adolin. You’re harvesting them. You’re systematically destroying their juvenile population. Have fewer of them been pupating lately?”
“Yeah,” he said, though he sounded reluctant. “We think it might be the season.”
“It might be. Or, it might be that, after over five years of harvesting, the population is starting to dwindle. Animals like the chasmfiends don’t normally have predators. Suddenly losing a hundred and fifty or more of their numbers a year could be catastrophic to their population.”
Adolin frowned. “The gemhearts we get feed the people of the warcamps. Without a constant flow of new stones of reasonable size, the Soulcasters will eventually crack the ones we have, and we won’t be able to support the armies here.”
“I’m not telling you to stop your hunt
s,” Shallan said, blushing. This probably wasn’t the point she should be making. Urithiru and the parshmen, that was the immediate problem. Still, she needed to gain Adolin’s trust. If she could provide useful help regarding the chasmfiends, perhaps he’d listen when she approached him with something even more revolutionary.
“All I’m saying,” Shallan continued, “is that it’s worth thinking about and studying. What would it be like if you could start raising chasmfiends, growing them to juveniles in batches like men raise chulls? Instead of hunting three a week, what if you could breed and harvest hundreds?”
“That would be useful,” Adolin said thoughtfully. “What would you need in order to make it happen?”
“Well, I wasn’t saying . . . I mean . . .” She stopped herself. “I need to get out onto the Shattered Plains,” she said more firmly. “If I’m going to try to figure out how to breed them, I’d need to see one of these chrysalises before it’s been cut into. Preferably, I get to see an adult chasmfiend, and—ideally—I’d like a captured juvenile to study.”
“Just a small list of impossibilities.”
“Well, you did ask.”
“I might be able to get you onto the Plains,” Adolin said. “Father promised that he’d show Jasnah a dead chasmfiend, so I think he was planning to take her out after a hunt. Seeing a chrysalis, though . . . those rarely appear close to camp. I’d have to take you dangerously close to Parshendi territory.”
“I’m sure you can protect me.”
He looked at her, expectant.
“What?” Shallan asked.
“I’m waiting for a wisecrack.”
“I was serious,” Shallan said. “With you there, I’m certain the Parshendi wouldn’t dare get close.”
Adolin smiled.
“I mean,” she said, “the stench alone—”
“I suspect I’m never going to live down telling you about that.”
“Never,” Shallan agreed. “You were honest, detailed, and engaging. Those aren’t the sorts of things I let myself forget about a man.”