Navani said. “Then it’s probably true. That girl never did have the decency to be wrong an appropriate amount of the time.”
Shallan nodded, glancing at the notes, feeling anxious.
“Oh, don’t get so touchy,” Navani said. “I’m not going to steal the project from you.”
“I’m that transparent?” Shallan said.
“This research is obviously very important to you. I assume Jasnah persuaded you that the fate of the world itself rested upon the answers you find?”
“She did.”
“Damnation,” Navani said, flipping to the next page. “I shouldn’t have ignored you. It was petty.”
“It was the act of a grieving mother.”
“Scholars don’t have time for such nonsense.” Navani blinked, and Shallan caught a tear in the woman’s eye.
“You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.”
Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?”
“Comes from being too brilliant,” Shallan said. “You grow accustomed to everyone else being something of an idiot, trying to keep up with you.”
“Chana knows, I wondered sometimes how I raised that child without strangling her. By age six, she was pointing out my logical fallacies as I tried to get her to go to bed on time.”
Shallan grinned. “I always just assumed she was born in her thirties.”
“Oh, she was. It just took thirty-some years for her body to catch up.” Navani smiled. “I won’t take this from you, but neither should I allow you to attempt a project so important on your own. I would be part. Figuring out the puzzles that captivated her . . . it will be like having her again. My little Jasnah, insufferable and wonderful.”
How surreal it was to imagine Jasnah as a child being held by a mother. “It would be an honor to have your aid, Brightness Navani.”
Navani held up the page. “You’re trying to overlay Stormseat with the Shattered Plains. It’s not going to work unless you have a point of reference.”
“Preferably two,” Shallan said.
“It’s been centuries since that city fell. It was destroyed during Aharietiam itself, I believe. We’re going to have trouble finding clues out here, though your list of descriptions will help.” She tapped her finger against the papers. “This isn’t my area of expertise, but I have several archaeologists among Dalinar’s scribes. I should show them these pages.”
Shallan nodded.
“We’ll want copies of everything here,” Navani said. “I don’t want to lose originals to all of this rain. I could have the scribes work on it tonight, after we camp.”
“If you wish.”
Navani looked up at her, then frowned. “It is your decision.”
“You’re serious?” Shallan asked.
“Absolutely. Think of me as an additional resource.”
All right then. “Yes, have them make copies,” Shallan said, digging in her satchel. “And copies of this too—it’s my attempt at re-creating one of the murals described as being on the outer wall of the temple to Chanaranach in Stormseat. It faced leeward, and was supposedly shaded, so we might be able to find hints of it.
“Also, I need a surveyor to measure each new plateau we cross, once we get farther in. I can draw them out, but my spatial reasoning can be off. I want exact sizes to make the map more accurate. I’ll need guards and scribes to ride out with me ahead of the army to visit plateaus parallel to our course. It would really help if you could convince Dalinar to allow this.
“I’d like a team to study the quotes on that page underneath the map. They talk about methods for opening the Oathgate, which was supposed to be the duty of the Knights Radiant. Hopefully we can discover another method. Also, alert Dalinar that we’ll be trying to open the portal if we find it. I do not expect there to be anything dangerous on the other side, but he’ll undoubtedly want to send soldiers through first.”
Navani raised an eyebrow at her. “You’ve done a touch of thinking about this, I see.”
Shallan nodded, blushing.
“I’ll see it done,” Navani said. “I myself will head the research team studying those quotes you mention.” She hesitated. “Do you know why Jasnah thought this city, Urithiru, was so important?”
“Because it was the seat of the Knights Radiant, and she expected to find information on them—and the Voidbringers—there.”
“So she was like Dalinar,” Navani said, “trying to bring back powers that—perhaps—we should leave alone.”
Shallan felt a sudden spike of anxiety. I need to say it. Say something. “She wasn’t trying. She succeeded.”
“Succeeded?”
Shallan took a deep breath. “I don’t know what