Words of Radiance

“Yes,” Pattern said, voice sounding grave.

She looked up from her feet. He had moved up onto the inside of the chest’s lid, lit by the varied light of the differently colored spheres. “You know something about the danger? The parshmen, the Voidbringers?” Perhaps she was reading too much into his tones. He wasn’t human, and often spoke with strange inflections.

“My return…” Pattern said. “Because of this.”

“What? Why haven’t you said something!”

“Say… speaking… Thinking… All hard. Getting better.”

“You came to me because of the Voidbringers,” Shallan said, moving closer to the trunk, bloodied rag forgotten in her hand.

“Yes. Patterns… we… us… Worry. One was sent. Me.”

“Why to me?”

“Because of lies.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

He buzzed in dissatisfaction. “You. Your family.”

“You watched me with my family? That long ago?”

“Shallan. Remember…”

Again those memories. This time, not a garden seat, but a sterile white room. Her father’s lullaby. Blood on the floor.

No.

She turned away and began cleaning her feet again.

“I know… little of humans,” Pattern said. “They break. Their minds break. You did not break. Only cracked.”

She continued her washing.

“It is the lies that save you,” Pattern said. “The lies that drew me.”

She dipped her rag in the bucket. “Do you have a name? I’ve called you Pattern, but it’s more of a description.”

“Name is numbers,” Pattern said. “Many numbers. Hard to say. Pattern… Pattern is fine.”

“As long as you don’t start calling me Erratic as a contrast,” Shallan said.

“Mmmmmm…”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“I am thinking,” Pattern said. “Considering the lie.”

“The joke?”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t think too hard,” Shallan said. “It wasn’t a particularly good joke. If you want to ponder a real one, consider that stopping the return of the Voidbringers might depend on me, of all people.”

“Mmmmm…”

She finished with her feet as best she could, then wrapped them with several other cloths from the trunk. She had no slippers or shoes. Perhaps she could buy an extra pair of boots from one of the slavers? The mere thought made her stomach churn, but she didn’t have a choice.

Next, she sorted through the contents of the trunk. This was only one of Jasnah’s trunks, but Shallan recognized it as the one the woman kept in her own cabin—the one the assassins had taken. It contained Jasnah’s notes: books and books full of them. The trunk contained few primary sources, but that didn’t matter, as Jasnah had meticulously transcribed all relevant passages.

As Shallan set aside the last book, she noticed something on the bottom of the trunk. A loose piece of paper? She picked it up, curious—then nearly dropped it in surprise.

It was a picture of Jasnah, drawn by Shallan herself. Shallan had given it to the woman after being accepted as her ward. She’d assumed Jasnah had thrown it away—the woman had little fondness for visual arts, which she considered a frivolity.

Instead, she’d kept it here with her most precious things. No. Shallan didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to face it.

“Mmm…” Pattern said. “You cannot keep all lies. Only the most important.”

Shallan reached up and found tears in her eyes. For Jasnah. She’d been avoiding the grief, had stuffed it into a little box and set it away.

As soon as she let that grief come, another piled on top of it. A grief that seemed frivolous in comparison to Jasnah’s death, but one that threatened to tow Shallan down as much, or even more.

“My sketchpads…” she whispered. “All gone.”

“Yes,” Pattern said, sounding sorrowful.

“Every drawing I’ve ever kept. My brothers, my father, Mother…” All sunk into the depths, along with her sketches of creatures and her musings on their connections, biology, and nature. Gone. Every bit of it gone.

The world didn’t depend upon Shallan’s silly pictures of skyeels. She felt as if everything was broken anyway.

“You will draw more,” Pattern whispered.

“I don’t want to.” Shallan blinked free more tears.

“I will not stop vibrating. The wind will not stop blowing. You will not stop drawing.”

Shallan brushed her fingers across the picture of Jasnah. The woman’s eyes were alight, almost alive again—it was the first picture Shallan had drawn of Jasnah, done on the day they’d met. “The broken Soulcaster was with my things. It’s now on the bottom of the ocean, lost. I won’t be able to repair it and send it to my brothers.”

Pattern buzzed in what sounded like a morose tone to her.

“Who are they?” Shallan asked. “The ones who did this, who killed her and took my art from me. Why would they do such horrible things?”

“I do not know.”

“But you are certain that Jasnah was right?” Shallan said. “The Voidbringers are going to return?”

“Yes. Spren… spren of him. They come.”

“These people,” Shallan said, “they killed Jasnah. They were probably of the same group as Kabsal, and… and as my father. Why would they kill the person closest to understanding how, and why, the Voidbringers are coming back?”

“I…” He faltered.