The Way of Kings (110 page)

He shrugged, obviously trying to feign nonchalance. “At least I’ll get a sketch. Won’t I?”

She nodded as the lift finally shuddered to a halt. She walked down the dark hallway, Kabsal following with the lanterns. Jasnah looked up appraisingly as Shallan entered their alcove, but did not ask why she’d taken so long. Shallan found herself blushing as she gathered her drawing tools. Kabsal hesitated in the doorway. He’d left a basket of bread and jam on the desk. The top of it was still wrapped with a cloth; Jasnah hadn’t touched it, though he always offered her some as a peace offering. Without jam, since Jasnah hated it.

“Where should I sit?” Kabsal asked.

“Just stand there,” Shallan said, sitting down, propping her sketchpad against her legs and holding it still with her covered safehand. She looked up at him, leaning with one hand against the doorframe. Head shaved, light grey robe draped around him, sleeves short, waist tied with a white sash. Eyes confused. She blinked, taking a Memory, then began to sketch.

It was one of the most awkward experiences of her life. She didn’t tell Kabsal that he could move, and so he held the pose. He didn’t speak. Perhaps he thought it would spoil the picture. Shallan found her hand shaking as she sketched, though—thankfully—she managed to hold back tears.

Tears,
she thought, doing the final lines of the wall around Kabsal.
Why should I cry? I’m not the one who just got rejected. Can’t my emotions make sense once in a while?

“Here,” she said, pulling the page free and holding it up. “It will smudge unless you spray it with lacquer.”

Kabsal hesitated, then walked over, taking the picture in reverent fingers. “It’s wonderful,” he whispered. He looked up, then hurried to his lantern, opening it and pulling out the garnet broam inside. “Here,” he said, proffering it. “Payment.”

“I can’t take that! For one thing, it’s not yours.” As an ardent, anything Kabsal carried would belong to the king.

“Please,” Kabsal said. “I want to give you something.”

“The picture is a gift,” she said. “If you pay me for it, then I haven’t given you anything.”

“Then I’ll commission another,” he said, pressing the glowing sphere into her fingers. “I’ll take the first likeness for free, but do another for me, please. One of the two of us together.”

She paused. She rarely did sketches of herself. They felt strange to draw. “All right.” She took the sphere, then furtively tucked it into her safepouch, beside her Soulcaster. It was a little odd to carry something so heavy there, but she’d gotten accustomed to the bulge and weight.

“Jasnah, do you have a mirror?” she asked.

The other woman sighed audibly, obviously annoyed by the distraction. She felt through her things, taking out a mirror. Kabsal fetched it.

“Hold it up beside your head,” Shallan said, “so I can see myself.”

He walked back over, doing so, looking confused.

“Angle it to the side a little,” Shallan said, “all right, there.” She blinked, freezing in her mind the image of her face beside his. “Have a seat. You don’t need the mirror any longer. I just wanted it for reference—it helps me for some reason to place my features into the scene I want to sketch. I’ll put myself sitting beside you.”

He sat on the floor, and Shallan began to work, using it to distract herself from her conflicting emotions. Guilt at not feeling as strongly for Kabsal as he did for her, yet sorrow that she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. And above it all, anxiety about the Soulcaster.

Sketching herself in beside him was challenging. She worked furiously, blending the reality of Kabsal sitting and a fiction of herself, in her flower-embroidered dress, sitting with her legs to the side. The face in the mirror became her reference point, and she built her head around it. Too narrow to be beautiful, with hair too light, cheeks dotted with freckles.

The Soulcaster,
she thought.
Being here in Kharbranth with it is a danger. But leaving is dangerous too. Could there be a third option? What if I sent it away?

She hesitated, charcoal pencil hovering above the picture. Dared she send the fabrial—packaged, delivered to Tozbek in secret—back to Jah Keved without her? She wouldn’t have to worry about being incriminated if her room or person were searched, though she’d want to destroy all pictures she’d drawn of Jasnah with the Soulcaster. And she wouldn’t risk suspicion by vanishing when Jasnah discovered her Soulcaster didn’t work.

She continued her drawing, increasingly withdrawn into her thoughts, letting her fingers work. If she sent the Soulcaster back alone, then she could stay in Kharbranth. It was a golden, tempting prospect, but one that threw her emotions further into a jumbled mess. She’d been preparing herself to leave for so long. What would she do about Kabsal? And Jasnah. Could Shallan really remain here, accepting Jasnah’s freely given tutelage, after what she’d done?

Yes,
Shallan thought.
Yes, I could.

The fervency of that emotion surprised her. She would live with the guilt, day by day, if it meant continuing to learn. It was terribly selfish of her, and she was ashamed of it. But she would do it for a little longer, at least. She’d have to go back eventually, of course. She couldn’t leave her brothers to face danger alone. They needed her.

Selfishness, followed by courage. She was nearly as surprised by the latter as she had been by the former. Neither was something she often associated with who she was. But she was coming to realize that she hadn’t
known
who she was. Not until she left Jah Keved and everything familiar, everything she’d been expected to be.

Her sketching grew more and more fervent. She finished the figures and moved to the background. Quick, bold lines became the floor and the archway behind. A scribbled dark smudge for the side of the desk, casting a shadow. Crisp, thin lines for the lantern sitting on the floor. Sweeping, breezelike lines to form the legs and robes of the creature standing behind—

Shallan froze, fingers drawing an unintended line of charcoal, breaking away from the figure she’d sketched directly behind Kabsal. A figure that wasn’t really there, a figure with a sharp, angular symbol hovering above its collar instead of a head.

Shallan stood, throwing back her chair, sketchpad and charcoal pencil clutched in the fingers of her freehand.

“Shallan?” Kabsal said, standing.

She’d done it again. Why? The peace she’d begun to feel during the sketching evaporated in a heartbeat, and her heart started to race. The pressures returned. Kabsal. Jasnah. Her brothers. Decisions, choices, problems.

“Is everything all right?” Kabsal said, taking a step toward her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I made a mistake.”

He frowned. To the side, Jasnah looked up, brow wrinkled.

“It’s all right,” Kabsal said. “Look, let’s have some bread and jam. We can calm down, then you could finish it. I don’t care about a—”

“I need to go,” Shallan cut in, feeling suffocated. “I’m sorry.”

She brushed past the dumbfounded ardent, hurrying from the alcove, giving a wide berth to the place where the figure stood in her sketch. What was
wrong
with her?

She rushed to the lift, calling for the parshmen to lower her. She glanced over her shoulder. Kabsal stood in the hallway, looking after her. Shallan reached the lift, drawing pad clutched in her hand, her heart racing.
Calm yourself,
she thought, leaning back against the lift platform’s wooden railing as the parshmen began to take her down. She looked up at the empty landing above her.

And found herself blinking, memorizing that scene. She began sketching again.

She drew with concise motions, sketchpad held against her safearm. For illumination, she had just two very small spheres at either side, where the taut ropes quivered. She moved without thought, just
drawing
, staring upward.

She looked down at what she had drawn. Two figures stood on the landing above, wearing the too-straight robes, like cloth made from metal. They leaned down, watching her go.

She looked up again. The landing was empty.
What’s happening to me?
she thought with increasing horror. When the lift hit the ground, she scrambled away, her skirt fluttering. She all but ran to the exit of the Veil, hesitating beside the doorway, ignoring the master-servants and ardents who gave her confused looks.

Where to go? Sweat trickled down the sides of her face. Where to run when you were going mad?

She cut into the main cavern’s crowd. It was late afternoon, and the dinner rush had begun—servants pushing dining carts, lighteyes strolling to their rooms, scholars walking with hands behind their backs. Shallan dashed through their midst, her hair coming free of its bun, the hairspike dropping to the rock behind her with a high-pitched clink. Her loose red hair streamed behind. She reached the hallway leading to their rooms, panting, hair askew, and glanced over her shoulder. Amid the flow of traffic she’d left a trail of people looking after her in confusion.

Almost against her will, she blinked and took a Memory. She raised her pad again, gripping her charcoal pencil in slick fingers, quickly sketching the crowded cavern scene. Just faint impressions. Men of lines, women of curves, walls of sloping rock, carpeted floor, bursts of light in sphere lanterns on the walls.

And five symbol-headed figures in black, too-stiff robes and cloaks. Each had a different symbol, twisted and unfamiliar to her, hanging above a neckless torso. The creatures wove through the crowd unseen. Like predators. Focused on Shallan.

I’m just imagining it,
she tried to tell herself.
I’m overtaxed, too many things weighing on me.
Did they represent her guilt? The stress of betraying Jasnah and lying to Kabsal? The things she had done before leaving Jah Keved?

She tried to stand there, waiting, but her fingers refused to remain still. She blinked, then started drawing again on a new sheet. She finished with a shaking hand. The figures were almost to her, angular not-heads hanging horrifically where faces should have been.

Logic warned that she was overreacting, but no matter what she told herself, she couldn’t believe it. These were
real
. And they were coming for her.

She dashed away, surprising several servants who had been approaching her to offer assistance. She ran, slippered feet sliding on the hallway carpets, eventually reaching the door to Jasnah’s rooms. Sketchpad under her arm, she unlocked it with quivering fingers, then pushed through and slammed it behind her. She locked it again and ran for her chamber. She slammed that door closed too, then turned, backing away. The only light in the room came from the three diamond marks in the large crystal goblet on her nightstand.

She got on the bed, then scrambled back as far from the door as she could, until she was against the wall, breathing through her nose with frantic breaths. She still had her sketchpad under her arm, though she’d lost the charcoal. There was more in her nightstand.

Don’t do it,
she thought.
Just sit and calm yourself.

She felt a growing chill, a rising terror. She
had
to know. She scrambled to pull out the charcoal, then blinked and began to sketch her room.

Ceiling first. Four straight lines. Down the walls. Lines at the corners. Her fingers kept moving, drawing, depicting the pad itself, held before her, safehand shrouded and bracing the pad from behind. And then on. To the beings standing around her—twisted symbols unconnected to their uneven shoulders. Those not-heads had unreal angles, surfaces that melded in weird, impossible ways.

The creature at the front was reaching too-smooth fingers toward Shallan. Just inches from the right side of the sketchpad.

Oh, Stormfather…
Shallan thought, charcoal pencil falling still. The room was empty, yet depicted right in front of her was an image of it crowded full of sleek figures. They were close enough that she should be able to feel them breathing, if they breathed.

Was there a chill in the room? Hesitantly—terrified but unable to stop herself—Shallan dropped her pencil and raised her freehand to the right.

And felt something.

She screamed then, jumping to her feet on her bed, dropping the pad, backing against the wall. Before she could consciously think of what she was doing, she was struggling with her sleeve, trying to get the Soulcaster out. It was the only thing she had resembling a weapon. No, that was stupid. She didn’t know how to use it. She was helpless.

Except…

Storms!
she thought, frantic.
I can’t use that. I promised myself.

She began the process anyway. Ten heartbeats, to bring forth the fruit of her sin, the proceeds of her most horrific act. She was interrupted midway through by a voice, uncanny yet distinct:

What are you?

She clutched her hand to her chest, losing her balance on the soft bed, falling to her knees on the rumpled blanket. She put one hand to the side, steadying herself on the nightstand, fingers brushing the large glass goblet that sat there.

“What am I?” she whispered. “I’m terrified.”

This is true.

The bedroom transformed around her.

The bed, the nightstand, her sketchpad, the walls, the ceiling—everything seemed to
pop
, forming into tiny, dark glass spheres. She found herself in a place with a black sky and a strange, small white sun that hung on the horizon, too far away.

Shallan screamed as she found herself in midair, falling backward in a shower of beads. Flames hovered nearby, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. Like the tips of candles floating in the air and moving in the wind.

She hit something. An endless dark sea, except it wasn’t wet. It was made of the small beads, an entire ocean of tiny glass spheres. They surged around her, moving in an undulating swell. She gasped, flailing, trying to stay afloat.

You want me to change?
a warm voice said in her mind, distinct and different from the cold whisper she had heard earlier. It was deep and hollow and conveyed a sense of great age. It seemed to come from her hand, and she realized she was grasping something there. One of the beads.