“Um, yes. If my tongue is particularly spicy in the coming days, I blame you.”
“Shallan, there’s something similar that we need to talk about. Something about you we can’t just ignore.”
“I…” I killed my parents. I stabbed my mother through the chest and I strangled my father while singing to him.
“You,” Adolin said, “have a Shardblade.”
I didn’t want to kill her. I had to. I had to.
Adolin grabbed her by the shoulders and she started, focusing on him. He was … grinning?
“You have a Shardblade, Shallan! A new one. That’s incredible. I dreamed for years of earning my Blade! So many men spend their lives with that very dream and never see it fulfilled. And here you have one!”
“And that’s a good thing, right?” she said, held in his grip with arms pulled tight against her body.
“Of course it is!” Adolin said, letting go of her. “But, I mean, you’re a woman.”
“Was it the makeup that tipped you off, or the dress? Oh, it was the breasts, wasn’t it? Always giving us away.”
“Shallan, this is serious.”
“I know,” she said, calming her nerves. “Yes, Pattern can become a Shardblade, Adolin. I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I can’t give it away.… Stormfather. You want to teach me how to use it, don’t you?”
He grinned. “You said that Jasnah was a Radiant too. Women, gaining Shardblades. It’s weird, but it’s not like we can ignore it. What about Plate? Do you have that hidden somewhere too?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. Her heart was beating quickly, her skin growing cold, her muscles tense. She fought against the sensation. “I don’t know where Plate comes from.”
“I know it’s not feminine, but who cares? You’ve got a sword; you should know how to use it, and custom can go to Damnation. There, I said it.” He took a deep breath. “I mean, the bridgeboy can have one, and he’s darkeyed. Well, he was. Anyway, it’s not so different from that.”
Thank you, Shallan thought, for ranking all women as something equivalent to peasants. But she held her tongue. This was obviously an important moment for Adolin, and he was trying to be broad-minded.
But … thinking of what she’d done pained her. Holding the weapon would be worse. So much worse.
She wanted to hide. But she couldn’t. This truth refused to budge from her mind. Could she explain? “So, you’re right, but—”
“Great!” Adolin said. “Great. I brought the Blade guards so we won’t hurt each other. I stashed them back at the guard post. I’ll go fetch them.”
He was out the door a moment later. Shallan stood with her hand stretched toward him, objections dying on her lips. She curled her fingers up and brought her hand to her breast, her heart thundering within.
“Mmmm,” Pattern said. “This is good. This needs to be done.”
Shallan scrambled through the room to the small mirror she’d hung from the wall. She stared at herself, eyes wide, hair an utter mess. She’d started breathing in sharp, quick gasps. “I can’t—” she said. “I can’t be this person, Pattern. I can’t just wield the sword. Some brilliant knight on a tower, pretending she should be followed.”
Pattern hummed softly a tone she’d come to recognize as confusion. The bewilderment of one species trying to comprehend the mind of another.
Sweat trickled down Shallan’s face, running beside her eye as she stared at herself. What did she expect to see? The thought of breaking down in front of Adolin heightened her tension. Her every muscle grew taut, and the corners of her vision started to darken. She could see only before herself, and she wanted to run, go somewhere. Be away.
No. No, just be someone else.
Hands shaking, she scrambled over and dug out her drawing pad. She ripped pages, flinging them out of the way to reach an empty one, then seized her charcoal pencil.
Pattern moved over to her, a floating ball of shifting lines, buzzing in concern. “Shallan? Please. What is wrong?”
I can hide, Shallan thought, drawing at a frenzied pace. Shallan can flee and leave someone in her place.
“It’s because you hate me,” Pattern said softly. “I can die, Shallan. I can go. They will send you another to bond.”
A high-pitched whine started to rise in the room, one Shallan didn’t immediately recognize as coming from the back of her own throat. Pattern’s words were like knives to her side. No, please. Just draw.
Veil. Veil would be fine holding a sword. She didn’t have Shallan’s broken soul, and hadn’t killed her parents. She’d be able to do this.
No. No, what would Adolin do if he returned and found a completely different woman in the room? He couldn’t know of Veil. The lines she sketched, ragged and unrefined from the shaking pencil, quickly took the shape of her own face. But hair in a bun. A poised woman, not as flighty as Shallan, not as unintentionally silly.
A woman who hadn’t been sheltered. A woman hard enough, strong enough, to wield this sword. A woman like … like Jasnah.
Yes, Jasnah’s subtle smile, composure, and self-confidence. Shallan outlined her own face with these ideals, creating a harder version of it. Could … could she be this woman?
I have to be, Shallan thought, drawing in Stormlight from her satchel, then breathing it out in a puff around her. She stood up as the change took hold. Her heartbeat slowed, and she wiped the sweat from her brow, then calmly undid her safehand sleeve, tossed aside the foolish extra pouch she’d tied around her hand inside, then rolled the sleeve back to expose her still-gloved hand.
Good enough. Adolin couldn’t possibly expect her to put on sparring clothing. She pulled her hair back into a bun and fixed it in place with hairspikes from her satchel.
When Adolin returned to the room a moment later, he found a poised, calm woman who wasn’t quite Shallan Davar. Brightness Radiant is her name, she thought. She will go only by title.
Adolin carried two long, thin pieces of metal that somehow could meld to the front of Shardblades and make them less dangerous for use in sparring. Radiant inspected them with a critical eye, then held her hand to the side, summoning Pattern. The Blade formed—a long, thin weapon nearly as tall as she was.
“Pattern,” she said, “can modulate his shape, and will dull his edge to safe levels. I shan’t need such a clunky device.” Indeed, Pattern’s edge rippled, dulling.
“Storms, that’s handy. I’ll still need one though.” Adolin summoned his own Blade, a process that took him ten heartbeats—during which he turned his head, looking at her.
Shallan glanced down, realizing that she’d enhanced her bust in this guise. Not for him, of course. She’d just been making herself look more like Jasnah.
Adolin’s sword finally appeared, with a thicker blade than her own, sinuous along the sharp edge, with delicate crystalline ridges along the back. He put one of the guards on the sword’s edge.
Radiant put one foot forward, Blade lifted high in two hands beside her head.
“Hey,” Adolin said. “That’s not bad.”
“Shallan did spend quite a lot of time drawing you all.”