you refuse, it might mean a severing of ties.
Stormfather! Tonight? Shallan ran her fingers through her hair, staring at the page. Could she do it tonight?
Would waiting really change anything?
Heart thumping, she wrote, I thought I had Jasnah’s ward captive, but the girl betrayed me. I’m not well. But I will send my apprentice.
Another one, Tyn? the reed wrote. After what happened with Si? Anyway, I doubt they’ll like meeting with an apprentice.
They don’t have a choice, Shallan wrote.
Perhaps she could have created a Lightweaving around herself that made her look like Tyn, but she doubted she was ready for something like that. Pretending to be someone she’d invented would be tough enough—but imitating a specific person? She’d be discovered for sure.
I’ll see, the messenger wrote.
Shallan waited. In distant Tashikk, the messenger would be getting out another spanreed and acting as intermediary to the Ghostbloods. Shallan spent the time checking on the sphere she’d carried in from the washroom.
Its light had faded a small amount. Keeping this Lightweaving going would require her to keep a stock of infused spheres on her person.
The spanreed started writing again. They’ll do it. Can you get to Sebarial’s warcamp quickly?
I think I can, Shallan wrote. Why there?
It’s one of the few with gates open all night, the messenger wrote. There is a tenement where your employers will meet your apprentice. I’ll draw you a map. Have your apprentice arrive at Salas’s moonheight. Good luck.
A sketch followed, indicating the location. Salas’s moonheight? She’d have twenty-five minutes, and she didn’t know the camp at all. Shallan leaped to her feet, then froze. She couldn’t go like this, dressed as a lighteyed woman. She hurried to Tyn’s trunk and dug through clothing.
A few minutes later she stood in front of the mirror, wearing loose brown trousers, a white buttoned shirt, and a thin glove on her safehand. She felt naked with her hand exposed like that. The trousers weren’t so bad—darkeyed women wore them when working the plantation back home, though she’d never seen a lighteyed lady in them. But that glove . . .
She shivered, noticing that her false face blushed when she did. The nose moved when she wrinkled her own as well. That was a good thing, though she’d been hoping to be able to hide her embarrassment.
She pulled on one of Tyn’s white coats. The stiff thing went all the way down to the top of her boots, and she tied it at the waist with a thick black hogshide belt so that it was mostly closed in front, as Tyn had worn it. She finished by replacing the spheres in the pouch in her pocket with infused ones from the lamps in the room.
That flaw in her nose still bothered her. Something to shade the face, she thought, hurrying back to her trunk. There, she dug out Bluth’s white hat, the one with the sides that folded upward at a slant. Hopefully it would look better on her than it had on Bluth.
She put it on, and when she returned to the mirror, she was pleased with how it shaded her face. It did look kind of silly. But then, she felt that everything about this outfit looked silly. A gloved hand? Trousers? The coat had seemed imposing on Tyn—it indicated experience and a sense of personal style. When Shallan wore it, she looked like she was pretending. She saw through the illusion to the frightened girl from rural Jah Keved.
Authority is not a real thing. Jasnah’s words. It is mere vapors—an illusion. I can create that illusion . . . as can you.
Shallan stood up taller, straightened the hat, then went to the bedroom and tucked a few things in her pockets, including the map of where to go. She walked to the window and pulled it open. Fortunately, she was on the ground floor.
“Here we go,” she whispered to Pattern.
Out she went, into the night.
And thus were the disturbances in the Revv toparchy quieted, when, upon their ceasing to prosecute their civil dissensions, Nalan’Elin betook himself to finally accept the Skybreakers who had named him their master, when initially he had spurned their advances and, in his own interests, refused to countenance that which he deemed a pursuit of vanity and annoyance; this was the last of the Heralds to admit to such patronage.
—From Words of Radiance, chapter 5, page 17
The warcamp was still busy, despite the hour. She wasn’t surprised; her time in Kharbranth had taught her that not