grounds; she’d merely appropriated the area for her test.
She held her arm out to him. “You’re as bad as your father.”
“Perhaps I am,” he said, taking her arm. That Plated hand of his might have made some women uncomfortable, but she’d been around Plate far, far more often than most.
They started down the wide steps together. “Aunt,” he said. “Have you been, uh, doing anything to encourage my father’s advances? Between you two, I mean.” For a boy who spent half his life flirting with anything in a dress, he certainly did blush a lot when he said that.
“Encourage him?” Navani said. “I did more than that, child. I practically had to seduce the man. Your father is certainly stubborn.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Adolin said dryly. “You realize how much more difficult you’ve made his position? He’s trying to force the other highprinces to follow the Codes using the social constraints of honor, yet he’s pointedly ignoring something similar.”
“A bothersome tradition.”
“You seem content to ignore only the ones you find bothersome, while expecting us to follow all the others.”
“Of course,” Navani said, smiling. “You haven’t figured that out before now?”
Adolin’s expression grew grim.
“Don’t sulk,” Navani said. “You’re free from the causal for now, as Jasnah has apparently decided to gallivant off someplace. I won’t have the chance to marry you off quite yet, at least not until she reappears.” Knowing her, that could be tomorrow—or it could be months from now.
“I’m not sulking,” Adolin said.
“Of course you aren’t,” she said, patting his armored arm as they reached the bottom of the steps. “Let’s get to the palace. I don’t know if your father will be able to delay the meeting for us if we’re tardy.”
And when they were spoken of by the common folk, the Releasers claimed to be misjudged because of the dreadful nature of their power; and when they dealt with others, always were they firm in their claim that other epithets, notably “Dustbringers,” often heard in the common speech, were unacceptable substitutions, in particular for their similarity to the word “Voidbringers.” They did also exercise anger in great prejudice regarding it, though to many who speak, there was little difference between these two assemblies.
—From Words of Radiance, chapter 17, page 11
Shallan awoke as a new woman.
She wasn’t yet completely certain who that woman was, but she knew who that woman was not. She was not the same frightened girl who had suffered the storms of a broken home. She was not the same naive woman who had tried to steal from Jasnah Kholin. She was not the same woman who had been deceived by Kabsal and then Tyn.
That did not mean she was not still frightened or naive. She was both. But she was also tired. Tired of being shoved around, tired of being misled, tired of being dismissed. During the trip with Tvlakv, she’d pretended she could lead and take charge. She no longer felt the need to pretend.
She knelt beside one of Tyn’s trunks. She’d resisted letting the men break it open—she wanted a few trunks for keeping clothing—but her search of the tent hadn’t found the proper key.
“Pattern,” she said. “Can you look inside of this? Squeeze in through the keyhole?”
“Mmm . . .” Pattern moved onto the side of the trunk, then shrank down to be the size of her thumbnail. He moved in easily. She heard his voice from inside. “Dark.”
“Drat,” she said, fishing out a sphere and holding it up to the keyhole. “Does that help?”
“I see a pattern,” he said.
“A pattern? What kind of—”
Click.
Shallan started, then reached to lift the lid of the trunk. Pattern buzzed happily inside.
“You unlocked it.”
“A pattern,” he said happily.
“You can move things?”
“Push a little here and there,” he said. “Very little strength on this side. Mmm . . .”
The trunk was filled with clothing and had a pouch of spheres in a black cloth bag. Both would be very useful. Shallan searched through and found a dress with fine embroidery and a modern cut. Tyn needed it, of course, for times when she pretended to be of a higher status. Shallan put it on, found it loose through the bust but otherwise acceptable, then did her face and hair at the mirror using the dead woman’s makeup and brushes.
When she left the tent that morning, she felt—for the first time in what seemed ages—like a true lighteyed woman. That was well, for today she would finally reach the Shattered Plains. And, hopefully, destiny.
She strode out into