The Way of Kings (166 page)

Dalinar’s smile widened. “At least we won’t have to guess, then. Don’t be so glum, nephew. You learned something today. Your uncle doesn’t want to kill you.”

“He just wants to make me a target.”

“For your own good, son,” Dalinar said, walking to the door. “Don’t fret too much. I’ve got some plans on how, exactly, to keep you alive.” He opened the door, revealing a nervous group of guards keeping at bay a nervous group of servants and attendants.

“He’s just fine,” Dalinar said to them. “See?” He stepped aside, letting the guards and servants in to attend their king.

Dalinar turned to go. Then he hesitated. “Oh, and Elhokar? Your mother and I are now courting. You’ll want to start growing accustomed to that.”

Despite everything else that had happened in the last few minutes, this got a look of pure astonishment from the king. Dalinar smiled and pulled the door closed, walking away with a firm step.

Most everything was still wrong. He was still furious at Sadeas, pained by the loss of so many of his men, confused at what to do with Navani, dumbfounded by his visions, and daunted by the idea of bringing the warcamps to unity.

But at least now he had something to work with.

Shallan lay quietly in the bed of her little hospital room. She’d cried herself dry, then had actually retched into the bedpan, over what she had done. She felt miserable.

She’d betrayed Jasnah. And Jasnah knew. Somehow, disappointing the princess felt worse than the theft itself. This entire plan had been foolish from the start.

Beyond that, Kabsal was dead. Why did she feel so sick about
that
? He’d been an assassin, trying to kill Jasnah, willing to risk Shallan’s life to achieve his goals. And yet, she missed him. Jasnah hadn’t seemed surprised that someone would want to kill her; perhaps assassins were a common part of her life. She likely thought Kabsal a hardened killer, but he’d been sweet with Shallan. Could that all really have been a lie?

He had to be somewhat sincere,
she told herself, curled up on her bed.
If he didn’t care for me, why did he work so hard to get me to take the jam?

He had handed Shallan the antidote first, rather than taking it himself.

And yet, he
did
take it eventually,
she thought.
He put that fingerful of jam into his mouth. Why didn’t the antidote save him?

This question began to haunt her. As it did, something else struck her, something she would have noticed earlier, had she not been distracted by her own betrayal.

Jasnah had eaten the bread.

Arms wrapped around herself, Shallan sat up, pulling back to the bed’s headboard.
She ate it, but she wasn’t poisoned,
she thought.
My life makes no sense lately. The creatures with the twisted heads, the place with the dark sky, the Soulcasting… and now this.

How had Jasnah survived? How?

With trembling fingers, Shallan reached to the pouch on the stand beside her bed. Inside, she found the garnet sphere that Jasnah had used to save her. It gave off weak light; most had been used in the Soulcasting. It was enough light to illuminate her sketchpad sitting beside the bed. Jasnah probably hadn’t even bothered to look through it. She was so dismissive of the visual arts. Next to the sketchpad was the book Jasnah had given her. The
Book of Endless Pages
. Why had she left that?

Shallan picked up the charcoal pencil and flipped through to a blank page in her sketchbook. She passed several pictures of the symbol-headed creatures, some set in this very room. They lurked around her, always. At some times, she thought she saw them in the corners of her eyes. At others, she could hear them whispering. She hadn’t dared speak back to them again.

She began to draw, fingers unsteady, sketching Jasnah on that day in the hospital. Sitting beside Shallan’s bed, holding the jam. Shallan hadn’t taken a distinct Memory, and wasn’t as accurate as if she had, but she remembered well enough to draw Jasnah with her finger stuck into the jam. She had raised that finger to smell the strawberries. Why? Why put her finger into the jam? Wouldn’t raising the jar to her nose have been enough?

Jasnah hadn’t made any faces at the scent. In fact, Jasnah hadn’t mentioned that the jam had spoiled. She’d just replaced the lid and handed back the jar.

Shallan flipped to another blank page and drew Jasnah with a piece of bread raised to her lips. After eating it, she’d grimaced. Odd.

Shallan lowered her pen, looking at that sketch of Jasnah, piece of bread pinched between her fingers. It wasn’t a perfect reproduction, but it was close enough. In the sketch, it looked like the piece of bread was
melting
. As if it were squished unnaturally between Jasnah’s fingers as she put it into her mouth.

Could it… could it be?

Shallan slid out of the bed, gathering the sphere and carrying it in her hand, sketchpad tucked under her arm. The guard was gone. Nobody seemed to care what happened to her; she was being shipped off in the morning anyway.

The stone floor was cold beneath her bare feet. She wore only the white robe, and felt almost naked. At least her safehand was covered. There was a door to the city outside at the end of the hallway, and she stepped through it.

She crossed quietly through the city, making her way to the Ralinsa, avoiding dark alleyways. She walked up toward the Conclave, long red hair blowing free behind her, drawing more than a few strange looks and stares. It was so late at night that nobody on the roadway cared enough to ask if she wanted help.

The master-servants at the entrance to the Conclave let her pass. They recognized her, and more than a few asked if she needed help. She declined, walking alone down to the Veil. She passed inside, then looked up at the walls full of balconies, some of them lit with spheres.

Jasnah’s alcove was occupied. Of course it was. Always working, Jasnah was. She’d be particularly bothered by having lost so much time over Shallan’s presumed suicide attempt.

The lift felt rickety beneath Shallan’s feet as the parshmen lifted her up to Jasnah’s level. She rode in silence, feeling disconnected from the world around her. Walking around through the palace—through the
city
—in only a robe? Confronting Jasnah Kholin
again
? Hadn’t she learned?

But what did she have to lose?

She walked down the familiar stone hallway to the alcove, weak blue sphere held before her. Jasnah sat at her desk. Her eyes looked uncharacteristically fatigued, dark circles underneath, her face stressed. She looked up and stiffened as she saw Shallan. “You are not welcome here.”

Shallan walked in anyway, surprised by how calm she felt. Her hands should be shaking.

“Don’t make me call the soldiers to get rid of you,” Jasnah said. “I could have you thrown in prison for a hundred years for what you did. Do you have any idea what—”

“The Soulcaster you wear is a fake,” Shallan said quietly. “It was a fake the whole time, even before I made the swap.”

Jasnah froze.

“I wondered why you didn’t notice the switch,” Shallan said, sitting in the room’s other chair. “I spent weeks confused. Had you noticed, but decided to keep quiet in order to catch the thief? Hadn’t you Soulcast in all that time? It didn’t make any sense. Unless the Soulcaster I stole was a decoy.”

Jasnah relaxed. “Yes. Very clever of you to realize that. I keep several decoys. You’re not the first to try to steal the fabrial, you see. I keep the real one carefully hidden, of course.”

Shallan took out her sketchpad and searched through for a specific picture. It was the image she’d drawn of the strange place with the sea of beads, the floating flames, the distant sun in a black, black sky. Shallan regarded it for a moment. Then she turned it and held it up for Jasnah.

The look of utter shock Jasnah displayed was nearly worth the night spent feeling sick and guilty. Jasnah’s eyes bulged and she sputtered for a moment, trying to find words. Shallan blinked, taking a Memory of that. She couldn’t help herself.

“Where did you find that?” Jasnah demanded. “What book described that scene to you?”

“No book, Jasnah,” Shallan said, lowering the picture. “I visited that place. The night when I accidentally Soulcast the goblet in my room to blood, then covered it up by faking a suicide attempt.”

“Impossible. You think I’d believe—”

“There
is
no fabrial, is there, Jasnah? There’s no Soulcaster. There never has been. You use the fake ‘fabrial’ to distract people from the fact that you have the power to Soulcast on your own.”

Jasnah fell silent.

“I did it too,” Shallan said. “The Soulcaster was tucked away in my safepouch. I wasn’t touching it—but that didn’t matter. It was a fake. What I did, I did without it. Perhaps being near you has changed me, somehow. It has something to do with that place and those creatures.”

Again, no reply.

“You suspected Kabsal of being an assassin,” Shallan said. “You knew immediately what had happened when I fell; you were expecting poison, or at least were aware that it was possible. But
you
thought the poison was in the jam. You Soulcast it when you opened the lid and pretended to smell it. You didn’t know how to re-create strawberry jam, and when you tried, you made that vile concoction. You thought to get rid of poison. But you inadvertently Soulcast away the
antidote
.

“You didn’t want to eat the bread either, just in case there was something in it. You always refused it. When I convinced you to take a bite, you Soulcast it into something else as you put it in your mouth. You said you’re terrible at making organic things, and what you created was revolting. But you got rid of the poison, which is why you didn’t succumb to it.”

Shallan met her former mistress’s eyes. Was it the fatigue that made her so indifferent to the consequences of confronting this woman? Or was it her knowledge of the truth? “You did all that, Jasnah,” Shallan finished, “with a
fake
Soulcaster. You hadn’t spotted my swap yet. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. I took it on the night when you killed those three thugs.”

Jasnah’s violet eyes showed a glimmer of surprise.

“Yes,” Shallan said, “that long ago. You didn’t replace it with a decoy. You didn’t know you’d been tricked until I got out the fabrial and let you save me with it. It’s all a lie, Jasnah.”

“No,” Jasnah said. “You’re just delusional from your fatigue and the stress.”

“Very well,” Shallan said. She stood up, clutching the dim sphere. “I guess I’ll have to show you. If I can.”

Creatures,
she said in her head.
Can you hear me?

Yes, always,
a whisper came in response. Though she’d hoped to hear it, she still jumped.

Can you return me to that place?
she asked.

You need to tell me something true,
it replied.
The more true, the stronger our bond.

Jasnah is using a fake Soulcaster,
Shallan thought.
I’m sure that’s a truth.

That’s not enough,
the voice whispered.
I must know something true about you. Tell me. The stronger the truth, the more hidden it is, the more powerful the bond. Tell me. Tell me. What are you?

“What am I?” Shallan whispered. “Truthfully?” It was a day for confrontation. She felt strangely strong, steady. Time to speak it. “I’m a murderer. I killed my father.”

Ah,
the voice whispered.
A powerful truth indeed….

And the alcove vanished.

Shallan fell, dropping into that sea of dark glass beads. She struggled, trying to stay at the surface. She managed it for a moment. Then something tugged on her leg, pulling her down. She screamed, slipping beneath the surface, tiny beads of glass filling her mouth. She panicked. She was going to—

The beads above her parted. Those beneath her surged, bearing her upward, out to where someone stood, hand outstretched. Jasnah, back to the black sky, face lit by nearby hovering flames. Jasnah grasped Shallan’s hand, pulling her upward, onto something. A raft.
Made
from the beads of glass. They seemed to obey Jasnah’s will.