“Let us chat,” Jasnah said, nodding toward the far end of the long, rectangular room.
Shallan sighed, closed her notebook, and followed Jasnah to the other end, near a pattern of tiles on the wall. This far from the spheres brought for the meeting, the lighting was dim.
“May I?” Jasnah said, holding out her hand for Shallan’s notebook.
She relinquished it.
“A fine depiction of the young captain,” Jasnah said. “I see … three lines of notes here? After you were pointedly instructed to take the minutes.”
“We should have sent for a scribe.”
“We had a scribe. To take notes is not a lowly task, Shallan. It is a service you can provide.”
“If it’s not a lowly task,” Shallan said, “then perhaps you should have done it.”
Jasnah closed the sketchpad and fixed Shallan with a calm, level stare. The type that made Shallan squirm.
“I remember,” Jasnah said, “a nervous, desperate young woman. Frantic to earn my goodwill.”
Shallan didn’t reply.
“I understand,” Jasnah said, “that you have enjoyed independence. What you accomplished here is remarkable, Shallan. You even seem to have earned my uncle’s trust—a challenging task.”
“Then maybe we can just call the wardship finished, eh?” Shallan said. “I mean, I’m a full Radiant now.”
“Radiant, yes,” Jasnah said. “Full? Where’s your armor?”
“Um … armor?”
Jasnah sighed softly, opening up the sketchpad again. “Shallan,” she said in a strangely … comforting tone. “I’m impressed. I am impressed, truly. But what I’ve heard of you recently is troubling. You’ve ingratiated yourself with my family, and made good on the causal betrothal to Adolin. Yet here you are with wandering eyes, as this sketch testifies.”
“I—”
“You skip meetings that Dalinar calls,” Jasnah continued, soft but immovable. “When you do go, you sit at the back and barely pay attention. He tells me that half the time, you find an excuse to slip out early.
“You investigated the presence of an Unmade in the tower, and frightened it off basically alone. Yet you never explained how you found it when Dalinar’s soldiers could not.” She met Shallan’s eyes. “You’ve always hidden things from me. Some of those secrets were very damaging, and I find myself unwilling to believe you don’t have others.”
Shallan bit her lip, but nodded.
“That was an invitation,” Jasnah said, “to talk to me.”
Shallan nodded again. She wasn’t working with the Ghostbloods. That was Veil. And Jasnah didn’t need to know about Veil. Jasnah couldn’t know about Veil.
“Very well,” Jasnah said with a sigh. “Your wardship is not finished, and won’t be until I’m convinced that you can meet minimum requirements of scholarship—such as taking shorthand notes during an important conference. Your path as a Radiant is another matter. I don’t know that I can guide you; each order was distinctive in its approach. But as a young man will not be excused from his geography lessons simply because he has achieved competence with the sword, I will not release you from your duties to me simply because you have discovered your powers as a Radiant.”
Jasnah handed back the sketchpad and walked toward the ring of chairs. She settled next to Renarin, prodding him gently to speak with her. He looked up for the first time since the meeting had begun and nodded, saying something Shallan couldn’t hear.
“Mmmm…” Pattern said. “She is wise.”
“That’s perhaps her most infuriating feature,” Shallan said. “Storms. She makes me feel like a child.”
“Mmm.”
“Worst part is, she’s probably right,” Shallan said. “Around her, I do act more like a child. It’s like part of me wants to let her take care of everything. And I hate, hate, hate that about myself.”
“Is there a solution?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps … act like an adult?”
Shallan put her hands to her face, groaning softly and rubbing her eyes with her fingers. She’d basically asked for that, hadn’t she? “Come on,” she said, “let’s go to the rest of the meeting. As much as I want an excuse to get out of here.”
“Mmm…” Pattern said. “Something about this room…”
“What?” Shallan asked.
“Something…” Pattern said in his buzzing way. “It has memories, Shallan.”
Memories. Did he mean in Shadesmar? She’d avoided traveling there—that was at least one thing in which she’d listened to Jasnah.
She made her way back to her seat, and after a moment’s thought, slipped Jasnah a quick note. Pattern says this room has memories. Worth investigating in Shadesmar?
Jasnah regarded the note, then wrote back.
I’ve found that we should not ignore the offhand comments of our spren. Press him; I will investigate this place. Thank you for the suggestion.
The meeting started again, and now turned to discussion of specific kingdoms around Roshar. Jasnah was most keen on getting the Shin to join them. The Shattered Plains held the easternmost of the Oathgates, and that was already under Alethi control. If they could gain access to the one farthest to the west, they could travel the breadth of Roshar—from the entry point of the highstorms to the entry point of the Everstorms—in a heartbeat.
They didn’t talk tactics too specifically; that was a masculine art, and Dalinar would want his highprinces and generals to discuss the battlefields. Still, Shallan didn’t fail to notice the tactical terms Jasnah used now and then.
In things like this, Shallan had difficulty understanding the woman. In some ways, Jasnah seemed fiercely masculine. She studied whatever she pleased, and she talked tactics as easily as she talked poetry. She could be aggressive, even cold—Shallan had seen her straight-up execute thieves who had tried to rob her. Beyond that … well, it probably was best not to speculate on things with no meaning, but people did talk. Jasnah had turned down every suitor for her hand, including some very attractive and influential men. People wondered. Was she perhaps simply not interested?
All of this should have resulted in a person who was decidedly unfeminine. Yet Jasnah wore the finest makeup, and wore it well, with shadowed eyes and bright red lips. She kept her safehand covered, and preferred intricate and fetching styles of braids from her hairdresser. Her writings and her mind made her the very model of Vorin femininity.
Next to Jasnah, Shallan felt pale, stupid, and completely lacking in curves. What would it be like, to be so confident? So beautiful, yet so unconstrained, all at once? Surely, Jasnah Kholin had far fewer problems in life than Shallan. At the very least, she created far fewer for herself than Shallan did.
It was about this point that Shallan realized she’d missed a good fifteen minutes of the meeting, and had again lapsed in her note-taking. Blushing furiously, she huddled up on her chair and did her best to remain focused for the rest of the meeting. At the end, she presented a sheet of formal shorthand to Jasnah.
The woman looked it over, then cocked a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the line at the center where Shallan had grown distracted. Dalinar said some stuff here, the line read. It was very important and useful, so I’m sure you remember it without needing a reminder.
Shallan smiled apologetically and shrugged.
“Please write this out in longhand,” Jasnah said, handing it back. “Have a copy sent to my mother and to my brother’s head scribe.”
Shallan took it as a dismissal and rushed away. She felt like a student who had just been released from lessons, which angered her. At the same time, she wanted to run off and immediately do as Jasnah had asked, to renew her mistress’s faith in her, which angered her even more.
She ran up the steps out of the tower’s basement, using Stormlight to prevent fatigue. The different sides within her clashed, snapping at each other. She imagined months spent under Jasnah’s watchful care, training to become a mousy scribe as her father had always wanted.
She remembered the days in Kharbranth, when she’d been so uncertain, so timid. She couldn’t return to that. She wouldn’t. But what to do instead?
When she finally reached her rooms, Pattern was buzzing at her. She tossed aside her sketchpad and satchel, digging out Veil’s coat and hat. Veil would know what to do.
However, pinned to the inside of Veil’s coat was a sheet of paper. Shallan froze, then looked around the room, suddenly anxious. Hesitantly, she unpinned the sheet and unfolded it.
The top read:
You have accomplished the task we set out for you. You have investigated the Unmade, and not only learned something of it, but also frightened it away. As promised, here is your reward.
The following letter explains the truth about your deceased brother, Nan Helaran, acolyte of the Radiant order of the Skybreakers.