Kelek, Veil realized as he scooted closer. He’s flirting with me.
She probably shouldn’t have found it so surprising. She’d come in alone, and while Shallan would never have described Veil as “cute,” she wasn’t ugly. She was kind of normal, if rugged, but she dressed well and obviously had money. Her face and hands were clean, her clothing—while not rich silks—a generous step up from worker garb.
Initially she was offended by his attention. Here she’d gone to all this trouble to make herself capable and hard as rocks, and the first thing she did was attract some guy? One who cracked his knuckles and tried to tell her how to drink her alcohol?
Just to spite him, she downed the rest of her cup in a single shot.
She immediately felt guilty for her annoyance at the man. Shouldn’t she be flattered? Granted, Adolin could have destroyed this man in any conceivable way. Adolin even cracked his knuckles louder.
“So…” the bouncer said. “Which warcamp you from?”
“Sebarial,” Veil said.
The bouncer nodded, as if he’d expected that. Sebarial’s camp had been the most eclectic. They chatted a little longer, mostly with Shallan making the odd comment while the bouncer—his name was Jor—went off on various stories with many tangents. Always smiling, often boasting.
He wasn’t too bad, though he didn’t seem to care what she actually said, so long as it prompted him to keep talking. She drank some more of the terrible liquid, but found her mind wandering.
These people … they each had lives, families, loves, dreams. Some slumped at their boxes, lonely, while others laughed with friends. Some kept their clothing, poor though it was, reasonably clean—others were stained with crem and lavis ale. Several of them reminded her of Tyn, the way they talked with confidence, the way their interactions were a subtle game of one-upping each other.
Jor paused, as if expecting something from her. What … what had he been saying? Following him was getting harder, as her mind drifted.
“Go on,” she said.
He smiled, and launched into another story.
I’m not going to be able to imitate this, she thought, leaning against her box, until I’ve lived it. No more than I could draw their lives without having walked among them.
The barkeep came back with the bottle, and Shallan nodded. That last cup hadn’t burned nearly as much as the others.
“You … sure you want more?” the bouncer asked.
Storms … she was starting to feel really sick. She’d had four cups, yes, but they were little cups. She blinked, and turned.
The room spun in a blur, and she groaned, resting her head on the table. Beside her, the bouncer sighed.
“I could have told you that you were wasting your time, Jor,” the barkeep said. “This one will be out before the hour is done. Wonder what she’s trying to forget…”
“She’s just enjoying a little free time,” Jor said.
“Sure, sure. With eyes like those? I’m sure that’s it.” The barkeep moved away.
“Hey,” Jor said, nudging Shallan. “Where are you staying? I’ll call you a palanquin to cart you home. You awake? You should get going before things go too late. I know some porters who can be trusted.”
“It’s … not even late yet…” Shallan mumbled.
“Late enough,” Jor said. “This place can get dangerous.”
“Yeaaah?” Shallan asked, a glimmer of memory waking inside of her. “People get stabbed?”
“Unfortunately,” Jor said.
“You know of some…?”
“Never happens here in this area, at least not yet.”
“Where? So I … so I can stay away…” Shallan said.
“All’s Alley,” he said. “Keep away from there. Someone got stabbed behind one of the taverns just last night there. They found him dead.”
“Real … real strange, eh?” Shallan asked.
“Yeah. You heard?” Jor shivered.
Shallan stood up to go, but the room upended about her, and she found herself slipping down beside her stool. Jor tried to catch her, but she hit the ground with a thump, knocking her elbow against the stone floor. She immediately sucked in a little Stormlight to help with the pain.
The cloud around her mind puffed away, and her vision stopped spinning. In a striking moment, her drunkenness simply vanished.
She blinked. Wow. She stood up without Jor’s help, dusting off her coat and then pulling her hair back away from her face. “Thanks,” she said, “but that’s exactly the information I need. Barkeep, we settled?”
The woman turned, then froze, staring at Shallan, pouring liquid into a cup until it overflowed.
Shallan picked up her cup, then turned it and shook the last drop into her mouth. “That’s good stuff,” she noted. “Thanks for the conversation, Jor.” She set a sphere on the boxes as a tip, pulled on her hat, then patted Jor fondly on the cheek before striding out of the tent.
“Stormfather!” Jor said from behind her. “Did I just get played for a fool?”
It was still busy out, reminding her of Kharbranth, with its midnight markets. That made sense. Neither sun nor moon could penetrate to these halls; it was easy to lose track of time. Beyond that, while most people had been put immediately to work, many of the soldiers had free time without plateau runs to do any longer.
Shallan asked around, and managed to get pointed toward All’s Alley. “The Stormlight made me sober,” she said to Pattern, who had crawled up her coat and now dimpled her collar, folded over the top.
“Healed you of poison.”
“That will be useful.”
“Mmmm. I thought you’d be angry. You drank the poison on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but the point wasn’t to get drunk.”
He buzzed in confusion. “Then why drink it?”
“It’s complicated,” Shallan said. She sighed. “I didn’t do a very good job in there.”
“Of getting drunk? Mmm. You gave it a good effort.”
“As soon as I got drunk, as soon as I lost control, Veil slipped away from me.”
“Veil is just a face.”
No. Veil was a woman who didn’t giggle when she got drunk, or whine, fanning her mouth when the drink was too hard for her. She never acted like a silly teenager. Veil hadn’t been sheltered, practically locked away, until she went crazy and murdered her own family.
Shallan stopped in place, suddenly frantic. “My brothers. Pattern, I didn’t kill them, right?”
“What?” he said.
“I talked to Balat over spanreed,” Shallan said, hand to her forehead. “But … I had Lightweaving then … even if I didn’t fully know it. I could have fabricated that. Every message from him. My own memories…”
“Shallan,” Pattern said, sounding concerned. “No. They live. Your brothers live. Mraize said he rescued them. They are on their way here. This isn’t the lie.” His voice grew smaller. “Can’t you tell?”
She adopted Veil again, her pain fading. “Yes. Of course I can tell.” She started forward again.
“Shallan,” Pattern said. “This is … mmm … there is something wrong with these lies you place upon yourself. I don’t understand it.”
“I just need to go deeper,” she whispered. “I can’t be Veil only on the surface.”
Pattern buzzed with a soft, anxious vibration—fast paced, high pitched. Veil hushed him as she reached All’s Alley. A strange name for a tavern, but she had seen stranger. It wasn’t an alley at all, but a big set of five tents sewn together, each a different color. It glowed dimly from within.