things happened during highstorms, and none had spoken of it since.
Fool, she told herself, flipping to an empty page in the notes. Start acting like a scholar. Jasnah would be disappointed. She wrote down what Pattern had said just now.
“Pattern,” she said, tapping her pencil—one she’d gotten from the merchants, along with paper. “This table has four legs. Would you not say that is a truth, independent of my perspective?”
Pattern buzzed uncertainly. “What is a leg? Only as it is defined by you. Without a perspective, there is no such thing as a leg, or a table. There is only wood.”
“You’ve told me the table perceives itself this way.”
“Because people have considered it, long enough, as being a table,” Pattern said. “It becomes truth to the table because of the truth the people create for it.”
Interesting, Shallan thought, scribbling away at her notebook. She wasn’t so interested in the nature of truth at the moment, but in how Pattern perceived it. Is this because he’s from the Cognitive Realm? The books say that the Spiritual Realm is a place of pure truth, while the Cognitive is more fluid.
“Spren,” Shallan said. “If people weren’t here, would spren have thought?”
“Not here, in this realm,” Pattern said. “I do not know about the other realm.”
“You don’t sound concerned,” Shallan said. “Your entire existence might be dependent on people.”
“It is,” Pattern said, again unconcerned. “But children are dependent upon parents.” He hesitated. “Besides, there are others who think.”
“Voidbringers,” Shallan said, cold.
“Yes. I do not think that my kind would live in a world with only them. They have their own spren.”
Shallan sat up sharply. “Their own spren?”
Pattern shrank on her table, scrunching up, his ridges growing less distinct as they mashed together.
“Well?” Shallan asked.
“We do not speak of this.”
“You might want to start,” Shallan said. “It’s important.”
Pattern buzzed. She thought he was going to insist on the point, but after a moment, he continued in a very small voice. “Spren are . . . power . . . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men. Honor, Cultivation, and . . . and another. Fragments broken off.”
“Another?” Shallan prodded.
Pattern’s buzz became a whine, going so high pitched she almost couldn’t hear it. “Odium.” He spoke the word as if needing to force it out.
Shallan wrote furiously. Odium. Hatred. A type of spren? Perhaps a large unique one, like Cusicesh from Iri or the Nightwatcher. Hatredspren. She’d never heard of such a thing.
As she wrote, one of her slaves approached in the darkening night. The timid man wore a simple tunic and trousers, one of the sets given to Shallan by the merchants. The gift was welcome, as the last of Shallan’s spheres were in the goblet before her, and wouldn’t be enough to buy a meal at some of the finer restaurants in Kharbranth.
“Brightness?” the man asked.
“Yes, Suna?”
“I . . . um . . .” He pointed. “The other lady, she asked me to tell you . . .”
He was pointing toward the tent used by Tyn, the tall woman who was leader of the few remaining caravan guards.
“She wants me to visit her?” Shallan asked.
“Yes,” Suna said, looking down. “For food, I guess?”
“Thank you, Suna,” Shallan said, freeing him to go back toward the fire where he and the other slaves were helping with the cooking while parshmen gathered wood.
Shallan’s slaves were a quiet group. They had tattoos on their foreheads, rather than brands. It was the kinder way to do it, and usually marked a person who had entered servitude willingly, as opposed to being forced into it as a punishment for a violent or terrible crime. They were men with debts or the children of slaves who still bore the debt of their parents.
These were accustomed to labor, and seemed frightened by the idea of what she was paying them. Pittance though it was, it would see most of them freed in under two years. They were obviously uncomfortable with that idea.
Shallan shook her head, packing away her things. As she walked toward Tyn’s tent, Shallan paused at the fire and asked Red to lift her table back into the wagon and secure it there.
She did worry about her things, but she no longer kept any spheres in there, and had left it open so Red and Gaz could glimpse inside and see only books. Hopefully there would be no incentive for people to go rooting through them.
You dance around the truth too, she thought to herself as she