accept nothing else. She could accept nothing else.
So make it happen, she thought.
Would that it were so easy as wishing. As the palanquin turned up the switchbacks leading to the palace, her new satchel—from Tyn’s things—shook and hit her foot. She picked it up and flipped through the pages inside, finding the crinkled sketch of Bluth as she’d imagined him. A hero instead of a slaver.
“Mmmmm . . .” Pattern said from the seat beside her.
“This picture is a lie,” Shallan said.
“Yes.”
“And yet it isn’t. This is what he became, at the end. To a small degree.”
“Yes.”
“So what is the lie, and what is the truth?”
Pattern hummed softly to himself, like a contented axehound before the hearth. Shallan fingered the picture, smoothing it. Then she pulled out a sketchpad and a pencil, and started drawing. It was a difficult task in the lurching palanquin; this would not be her finest drawing. Still, her fingers moved across the sketch with an intensity she hadn’t felt in weeks.
Broad lines at first, to fix the image in her head. She wasn’t copying a Memory this time. She was searching for something nebulous: a lie that could be real if she could just imagine it correctly.
She scratched frantically at the paper, hunkering down, and soon stopped feeling the rhythm of the porters’ steps. She saw only the drawing, knew only the emotions she bled onto that page. Jasnah’s determination. Tyn’s confidence. A sense of rightness that she could not describe, but which she drew from her brother Helaran, the best person she’d ever known.
It all poured from her into the pencil and onto the page. Streaks and lines that became shadows and patterns that became figures and faces. A quick sketch, hurried, yet one alive. It depicted Shallan as a confident young woman standing before Dalinar Kholin, as she imagined him. She’d put him in Shardplate as he, and those around him, studied Shallan with penetrating consternation. She stood strong, hand raised toward them as she spoke with confidence and power. No trembling here. No fear of confrontation.
This is what I would have been, Shallan thought, if I had not been raised in a household of fear. So this is what I will be today.
It wasn’t a lie. It was a different truth.
A knock came at the palanquin’s door. It had stopped moving; she’d barely noticed. With a nod to herself, she folded the sketch and slipped it into the pocket of her safehand sleeve. Then she stepped out of the vehicle and onto cold rock. She felt invigorated, and realized she had sucked in a tiny amount of Stormlight without meaning to.
The palace was both finer and more mundane than she might have expected. Certainly, this was a warcamp, and so the king’s seat wouldn’t match the majesty of the royal dwellings of Kharbranth. At the same time, it was amazing that such a structure could have been crafted here, away from the culture and resources of Alethkar proper. The towering stone fortress of sculpted rock, several stories high, perched at the pinnacle of the hill.
“Vathah, Gaz,” she said. “Attend me. The rest of you, take up position here. I will send word.”
They saluted her; she wasn’t certain if that was appropriate or not. She strode forward, and noticed with amusement that she’d chosen one of the tallest of the deserters and one of the shortest to accompany her, and so when they flanked her, it created an even slope of height: Vathah, herself, Gaz. Had she really just chosen her guards based on aesthetic appeal?
The front gates of the palace complex faced west, and here Shallan found a large group of guards standing before open doors that led to a deep tunnel of a corridor into the hill itself. Sixteen guards at the door? She had read that King Elhokar was paranoid, but this seemed excessive.
“You’ll need to announce me, Vathah,” she said softly as they walked up.
“As?”
“Brightness Shallan Davar, ward of Jasnah Kholin and causal betrothed of Adolin Kholin. Wait to say it until I indicate.”
The grizzled man nodded, hand on his axe. Shallan didn’t share his discomfort. If anything, she was excited. She strode by the guards with head held high, acting as if she belonged.
They let her pass.
Shallan almost stumbled. Over a dozen guards at the door, and they didn’t challenge her. Several raised hands as if to do so—she saw this from the corner of her eye—but they backed down into silence. Vathah snorted softly from beside her