of a man who simply wants to feed his family.”
“And if he used it against other men?”
“It wouldn’t be useful in war,” Shallan said. “Too short a range, I’d guess, and the Parshendi have bows anyway. Maybe this could be used in assassination, though I’d be very curious to discover if it was.”
“And why is that?” Mraize asked.
A test of some sort. “Well,” Shallan said, “most indigenous populations—the Silnasen natives, the Reshi peoples, the runners of the Iri plains—have no real concept of assassination. From what I know, they don’t seem to have much use for battle at all. Hunters are too valuable, and so a ‘war’ in these cultures will involve a lot of shouting and posturing, but few deaths. That kind of boastful society doesn’t seem the type to have assassins.”
And yet the Parshendi had sent one. Against the Alethi.
Mraize was studying her—watching her with unreadable eyes, long blowgun held lightly in his fingertips. “I see,” he finally said, “Tyn chose a scholar to be her apprentice this time around? I find that unusual.”
Shallan blushed. It occurred to her that this person she became when she put on the hat and dark hair was not an imitation of someone else, not a different person. It was just a version of Shallan herself.
That could be dangerous.
“So,” Mraize said, fishing another dart from his shirt pocket, “what excuse did Tyn give you today?”
“Excuse?” Shallan asked.
“For failing in her mission.” Mraize loaded the dart.
Failing? Shallan began to sweat, cold prickles on her forehead. But she’d watched to see if anything out of the ordinary happened at Amaram’s camp! This morning, she’d gone back—the real reason she’d been late to Adolin’s duel—while wearing the face of a worker. She’d listened to see if anyone spoke of a break-in, or of Amaram being suspicious. She’d found nothing.
Well, obviously Amaram had not made his suspicions public. After all the work she’d done to cover up her incursion, she had failed. She probably shouldn’t be surprised, but she was anyway.
“I—” Shallan began.
“I’m beginning to wonder if Tyn really is sick,” Mraize said, raising the blowgun and shooting another dart into the foliage. “To not even try to carry out the assigned task.”
“Not even try?” Shallan asked, baffled.
“Oh, is that the excuse?” Mraize asked. “That she made an attempt, and failed? I have people watching that house. If she had . . .”
He trailed off as Shallan shook the water from her satchel, then carefully undid it and lifted out a sheet of paper. It was a representation of Amaram’s locked room with its maps on the walls. She’d had to guess at some of the details—it had been dark, and her single sphere hadn’t illuminated much—but she figured it was close enough.
Mraize took the picture from her and raised it. He studied it, leaving Shallan to sweat nervously.
“It is rare,” Mraize said, “that I am proven a fool. Congratulations.”
Was that a good thing?
“Tyn doesn’t have this skill,” Mraize continued, still inspecting the sheet. “You saw this room yourself?”
“There is a reason that she chose a scholar as her assistant. My skills are meant to complement her own.”
Mraize lowered the sheet. “Surprising. Your mistress might be a brilliant thief, but her choice of associates has always been unenlightened.” He had such a refined way of speaking. It didn’t seem to match his scarred face, misaligned lip, and weathered hands. He talked like a man who had spent his days sipping wine and listening to fine music, but he looked like someone who had repeatedly had his bones broken—and likely returned the favor many times over.
“Pity there is not more detail to these maps,” Mraize noted, inspecting the picture again.
Shallan obligingly got out the other five pictures she’d drawn for him. Four were the maps on the walls in detail, the other a closer depiction of the wall scrolls with Amaram’s script. In each one, the actual writing was indecipherable, just wiggled lines. Shallan had done this on purpose. Nobody would expect an artist to be able to capture such detail from memory, even though she could.
She would keep the details of the script from them. She intended to gain their trust, to learn what she could, but she would not help them more than she had to.
Mraize passed his blowgun to the side. The short, masked girl was there, holding the cremling that Mraize had speared along with a dead mink, a blowgun dart in its neck. No, its leg twitched. It was merely stunned. Some