Words of Radiance

She didn’t let herself linger in the bath. A quarter hour later—by the clock—she stood dressed and combing her damp hair before the mirror.

How would she ever go back to Jah Keved and a placid, rural life again? The answer was simple. She probably would never return. Once, that thought would have horrified her. Now it thrilled her—though she was determined to bring her brothers to the Shattered Plains. They would be far safer here than at her father’s estates, and what would they be leaving behind? Barely anything at all. She’d begun to think it was a far better solution than anything else, and let them dodge the issue of the missing Soulcaster, to an extent.

She’d gone to one of the information stations connected to Tashikk—there was one in every warcamp—and paid to have a letter, along with a spanreed, sent by messenger from Valath to her brothers. It would take weeks to arrive, unfortunately. If it even did. The merchant she’d talked to at the information station had warned her that moving through Jah Keved was difficult these days, with the succession war. To be careful, she’d sent a second letter from Northgrip, which was as far from the battlefields as one could get. Hopefully at least one of the two would arrive safely.

When she established contact again, she’d make a single argument to her brothers. Abandon the Davar estates. Take the money Jasnah had sent and flee to the Shattered Plains. For now, she’d done what she could.

She rushed through the room, hopping on one foot as she pulled on a slipper, and passed the maps. I’ll deal with you later.

It was time to go woo her betrothed. Somehow. The novels she’d read made it seem easy. A batting of eyelashes, blushes at appropriate times. Well, she had that last one down in good measure. Except maybe the appropriate part. She buttoned up the sleeve over her safehand, then paused at the door as she looked back and saw her sketchbook and pencil lying on the table.

She didn’t want to leave without those ever again. She tucked both in her satchel and rushed out. On the way through the white-marbled house, she passed Palona and Sebarial in a room with enormous glass windows, facing leeward over the gardens. Palona lay facedown, getting a massage—completely bare-backed—while Sebarial reclined and ate sweets. A young woman stood at a lectern in the corner, reciting poetry to them.

Shallan had a difficult time judging those two. Sebarial. Was he a clever civil planner or an indolent glutton? Both? Palona certainly did like the luxuries of wealth, but she didn’t seem the least bit arrogant. Shallan had spent the last three days poring over Sebarial’s house ledgers, and had found them an absolute mess. He seemed so smart in some areas. How could he have let his ledgers get so overgrown?

Shallan wasn’t especially good with numbers, not compared to her art, but she did enjoy math on occasion and was determined to tackle those ledgers.

Gaz and Vathah waited for her outside the doors. They followed her toward Sebarial’s coach, which waited for her to use, along with one of her slaves to act as footman. En said he’d done the job before, and he smiled at her as she stepped up. That was good to see. She couldn’t remember any of the five smiling on their trip out, even when she’d released them from the cage.

“You are being treated well, En?” she asked as he opened the coach door for her.

“Yes, mistress.”

“You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

“Er, yes, mistress.”

“And you, Vathah?” she asked, turning to him. “How are you finding your accommodations?”

He grunted.

“I assume that means they’re accommodating?” she asked.

Gaz chuckled. The short man had an ear for wordplay.

“You’ve kept your bargain,” Vathah said. “I’ll give you that. The men are happy.”

“And you?”

“Bored. All we do every day is sit around, collect what you pay us, and go drinking.”

“Most men would consider that an ideal profession.” She smiled at En, then climbed into the coach.

Vathah shut the door for her, then looked in the window. “Most men are idiots.”

“Nonsense,” Shallan said, smiling. “By the law of averages, only half of them are.”

He grunted. She was learning to interpret those, which was essential to speaking Vathahese. This one roughly meant, “I’m not going to acknowledge that joke because it would spoil my reputation as a complete and utter dunnard.”

“I suppose,” he said, “we have to ride up top.”

“Thank you for offering,” Shallan said, then pulled down the window shade. Outside, Gaz chuckled again. The two climbed into the guard positions on the top back of the carriage, and En joined the coachman up front. It was a true proper coach, pulled by horses and everything. Shallan had originally felt bad about asking to use it, but Palona had laughed. “Take the thing whenever you want! I have my own, and if Turi’s coach is gone, he’ll have an excuse to not go when people ask him to visit. He loves that.”

Shallan closed the other window shade as the coachman started the vehicle rolling, then got out her sketchbook. Pattern waited on the first blank white page. “We are going to find out,” Shallan whispered, “just what we can do.”

“Exciting!” Pattern said.

She got out her pouch of spheres and breathed in some of the Stormlight. Then, she puffed it out in front of her, trying to shape it, meld it.

Nothing.

Next, she tried holding a very specific image in her head—herself, with one small change: black hair instead of red. She puffed out the Stormlight, and this time it shifted around her and hung for a moment. Then it too vanished.

“This is silly,” Shallan said softly, Stormlight trailing from her lips. She did a quick sketch of herself with dark hair. “What does it matter if I draw it first or not? The pencils don’t even show color.”

“It shouldn’t matter,” Pattern said. “But it matters to you. I do not know why.”

She finished the sketch. It was very simple—it didn’t show her features, only really her hair, everything else indistinct. Yet when she used Stormlight this time, the image took and her hair darkened to black.

Shallan sighed, Stormlight leaking from her lips. “So, how do I make the illusion vanish?”

“Stop feeding it.”

“How?”

“I am supposed to know this?” Pattern asked. “You are the expert on feeding.”

Shallan gathered all of her spheres—several were now dun—and set them on the seat across from her, out of reach. That wasn’t far enough, for as her Stormlight ran out, she breathed in using instincts she hadn’t realized she had. Light streamed from across the carriage and into her.

“I’m quite good at that,” Shallan said sourly, “considering how short a time I’ve been doing it.”

“Short time?” Pattern said. “But we first . . .”

She stopped listening until he was done.

“I really need to find another copy of Words of Radiance,” Shallan said, starting another sketch. “Maybe it talks about how to dismiss the illusions.”

She continued to work on her next sketch, a picture of Sebarial. She’d taken a Memory of him while dining the night before, just after returning from a session scouting Amaram’s compound. She wanted to get the details of this sketch right for her collection, so it took some time. Fortunately, the level roadway meant no big bumps. It wasn’t ideal, but she seemed to have less and less time these days, with her research, her work for Sebarial, infiltrating the Ghostbloods, and meetings with Adolin Kholin. She’d had so much more time when she was younger. She couldn’t help thinking she’d wasted much of it.

She let the work consume her. The familiar sound of pencil on paper, the focus of creation. Beauty was out there, all around. To create art was not to capture it, but to participate in it.

When she finished, a glance out the window showed them approaching the Pinnacle. She held up the sketch, studying it, then nodded to herself. Satisfactory.

Next she tried using Stormlight to create an image. She breathed out a lot of it, and it formed immediately, snapping into an image of Sebarial sitting across from her in the carriage. He held the same position as he did in her sketch, hands out to slice food that was not included in her image.

Shallan smiled. The detail was perfect. Folds in skin, individual hairs. She hadn’t drawn those—no sketch could capture all the hairs on a head, all the pores in skin. Her image had these things, so it didn’t create exactly what she drew, but the drawing was a focus. A model that the image built from.

“Mmm,” Pattern said, sounding satisfied. “One of your most truthful lies. Wonderful.”

“He doesn’t move,” Shallan said. “Nobody would mistake this for something living, never mind the unnatural pose. The eyes are lifeless; the chest doesn’t rise and fall with breath. The muscles don’t shift. It’s detailed—but like a statue can be detailed yet still dead.”

“A statue of light.”

“I didn’t say it isn’t impressive,” Shallan said. “But the images will be much harder to use unless I can give them life.” How strange that she should feel that her sketches were alive, but this thing—which was so much more realistic—was dead.