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 take 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