did a sketch of Yalb, though the face felt off to her, and she didn’t quite capture the mischievous spark in his eyes. Perhaps the errors related to how sad she became, thinking of what had probably happened to him.
She flipped the page and started a random sketch, whatever came into her mind. Her pencil moved into a depiction of an elegant woman in a stately gown. Loose but sleek below the waist, tight across the chest and stomach. Long, open sleeves, one hiding the safehand, the other cut at the elbow exposing the forearm and draping down below.
A bold, poised woman. In control. Still drawing unconsciously, Shallan added her own face to the elegant woman’s head.
She hesitated, pencil hovering above the image. That wasn’t her. Was it? Could it be?
She stared at that image as the wagon bumped over rocks and plants. She flipped to the next page and started another drawing. A ball gown, a woman at court, surrounded by the elite of Alethkar as she imagined them. Tall, strong. The woman belonged among them.
Shallan added her face to the figure.
She flipped the page and did another one. And then another.
The last one was a sketch of her standing at the edge of the Shattered Plains as she imagined them. Looking eastward, toward the secrets that Jasnah had sought.
Shallan flipped the page and drew again. A picture of Jasnah on the ship, seated at her desk, papers and books sprawled around her. It wasn’t the setting that mattered, but the face. That worried, terrified face. Exhausted, pushed to her limits.
Shallan got this one right. The first drawing since the disaster that captured perfectly what she’d seen. Jasnah’s burden.
“Stop the wagon,” Shallan said, not looking up.
Bluth glanced at her. She resisted the urge to say it again. He didn’t, unfortunately, obey immediately.
“Why?” he demanded.
Shallan looked up. The smoke column was still distant, but she’d been right, it was growing thicker. The group ahead had stopped and built a sizable fire for the midday meal. Judging by that smoke, they were a much larger group than the one behind.
“I’m going to get into the back,” Shallan said. “I need to look something up. You can continue when I’m settled, but please stop and call to me once we’re near to the group ahead.”
He sighed, but stopped the chull with a few whacks on the shell. Shallan climbed down, then took the knobweed and notebook, moved to the back of the wagon. Once she was in, Bluth started up again immediately, shouting back to Tvlakv, who had demanded to know the meaning of the delay.
With the walls up her wagon was shaded and private, particularly with it being last in line so nobody could look in the back door at her. Unfortunately, riding in the back wasn’t as comfortable as riding in the front. Those tiny rockbuds caused a surprising amount of jarring and jolting.
Jasnah’s trunk was tied in place near the front wall. She opened the lid—letting the spheres inside provide dusky illumination—then settled back on her improvised cushion, a pile of the cloths Jasnah had used to wrap her books. The blanket she used at night—as Tvlakv had been unable to produce one for her—was the velvet lining she had ripped out of the trunk.
Settling back, she unwrapped her feet to apply the new knobweed. They were scabbed over and much improved from their condition just a day before. “Pattern?”
He vibrated from somewhere nearby. She’d asked him to remain in the back so as to not alarm Tvlakv and the guards.
“My feet are healing,” she said. “Did you do this?”
“Mmmm . . . I know almost nothing of why people break. I know less of why they . . . unbreak.”
“Your kind don’t get wounded?” she asked, snapping off a knobweed stem and squeezing the drops onto her left foot.
“We break. We just do it . . . differently than men do. And we do not unbreak without aid. I do not know why you unbreak. Why?”
“It is a natural function of our bodies,” she said. “Living things repair themselves automatically.” She held one of her spheres close, searching for signs of little red rotspren. Where she found a few of them along one cut, she was quick to apply sap and chase them off.
“I would like to know why things work,” Pattern said.
“So would many of us,” Shallan said, bent over. She grimaced as the wagon hit a particularly large rock. “I made myself glow last night, by