a clever civil planner or an indolent glutton? Both? Palona certainly did like the luxuries of wealth, but she didn’t seem the least bit arrogant. Shallan had spent the last three days poring over Sebarial’s house ledgers, and had found them an absolute mess. He seemed so smart in some areas. How could he have let his ledgers get so overgrown?
Shallan wasn’t especially good with numbers, not compared to her art, but she did enjoy math on occasion and was determined to tackle those ledgers.
Gaz and Vathah waited for her outside the doors. They followed her toward Sebarial’s coach, which waited for her to use, along with one of her slaves to act as footman. En said he’d done the job before, and he smiled at her as she stepped up. That was good to see. She couldn’t remember any of the five smiling on their trip out, even when she’d released them from the cage.
“You are being treated well, En?” she asked as he opened the coach door for her.
“Yes, mistress.”
“You’d tell me if you weren’t?”
“Er, yes, mistress.”
“And you, Vathah?” she asked, turning to him. “How are you finding your accommodations?”
He grunted.
“I assume that means they’re accommodating?” she asked.
Gaz chuckled. The short man had an ear for wordplay.
“You’ve kept your bargain,” Vathah said. “I’ll give you that. The men are happy.”
“And you?”
“Bored. All we do every day is sit around, collect what you pay us, and go drinking.”
“Most men would consider that an ideal profession.” She smiled at En, then climbed into the coach.
Vathah shut the door for her, then looked in the window. “Most men are idiots.”
“Nonsense,” Shallan said, smiling. “By the law of averages, only half of them are.”
He grunted. She was learning to interpret those, which was essential to speaking Vathahese. This one roughly meant, “I’m not going to acknowledge that joke because it would spoil my reputation as a complete and utter dunnard.”
“I suppose,” he said, “we have to ride up top.”
“Thank you for offering,” Shallan said, then pulled down the window shade. Outside, Gaz chuckled again. The two climbed into the guard positions on the top back of the carriage, and En joined the coachman up front. It was a true proper coach, pulled by horses and everything. Shallan had originally felt bad about asking to use it, but Palona had laughed. “Take the thing whenever you want! I have my own, and if Turi’s coach is gone, he’ll have an excuse to not go when people ask him to visit. He loves that.”
Shallan closed the other window shade as the coachman started the vehicle rolling, then got out her sketchbook. Pattern waited on the first blank white page. “We are going to find out,” Shallan whispered, “just what we can do.”
“Exciting!” Pattern said.
She got out her pouch of spheres and breathed in some of the Stormlight. Then, she puffed it out in front of her, trying to shape it, meld it.
Nothing.
Next, she tried holding a very specific image in her head—herself, with one small change: black hair instead of red. She puffed out the Stormlight, and this time it shifted around her and hung for a moment. Then it too vanished.
“This is silly,” Shallan said softly, Stormlight trailing from her lips. She did a quick sketch of herself with dark hair. “What does it matter if I draw it first or not? The pencils don’t even show color.”
“It shouldn’t matter,” Pattern said. “But it matters to you. I do not know why.”
She finished the sketch. It was very simple—it didn’t show her features, only really her hair, everything else indistinct. Yet when she used Stormlight this time, the image took and her hair darkened to black.
Shallan sighed, Stormlight leaking from her lips. “So, how do I make the illusion vanish?”
“Stop feeding it.”
“How?”
“I am supposed to know this?” Pattern asked. “You are the expert on feeding.”
Shallan gathered all of her spheres—several were now dun—and set them on the seat across from her, out of reach. That wasn’t far enough, for as her Stormlight ran out, she breathed in using instincts she hadn’t realized she had. Light streamed from across the carriage and into her.
“I’m quite good at that,” Shallan said sourly, “considering how short a time I’ve been doing it.”
“Short time?” Pattern said. “But we first . . .”
She stopped listening until he was done.
“I really need to find another copy of Words of Radiance,” Shallan said, starting another sketch. “Maybe it talks about how to dismiss the illusions.”
She continued to work on her