The Way of Kings

It seemed an awful lot of trouble to go through. Why not just spring the trap and reveal Shallan as a thief? The fact that she couldn’t get the Soulcaster to work left her straining plausibility for explanations.

She stopped humming and opened her eyes. The stick had not changed. So much for that tip, she thought, setting the stick aside with a sigh. She’d been so hopeful.

She lay back on the bed, resting, staring up at the brown stone ceiling, cut – like the rest of the Conclave – directly out of the mountain. Here, the stone had been left intentionally rough, evoking the roof of a cave. It was quite beautiful in a subtle way she’d never noticed before, the colors and contours of the rock rippling like a disturbed pond.

She took a sheet from her portfolio and began to sketch the rock patterns. One sketch to calm her, and then she would get back to the Soulcaster. Perhaps she should try it on her other hand again.

She couldn’t capture the colors of the strata, not in charcoal, but she could record the fascinating way the strata wove together. Like a work of art. Had some stoneworker cut this ceiling intentionally, crafting this subtle creation, or was it an accident of nature? She smiled, imagining some overworked stonecutter noticing the beautiful grain of the rock and deciding to form a wave pattern for his own personal wonder and sense of beauty.

“What are you?”

Shallan yelped, sitting up, sketchpad bouncing free of her lap. Someone had whispered those words. She’d heard them distinctly!

“Who is there?” she asked.

Silence.

“Who’s there!” she said more loudly, her heart beating quickly.

Something sounded outside her door, from the sitting room. Shallan jumped, hiding the hand wearing the Soulcaster under a pillow as the door creaked open, revealing a wizened palace maid, darkeyed and dressed in a white and black uniform.

“Oh dear!” the woman exclaimed. “I had no idea you were here, Brightness.” She bowed low.

A palace maid. Here to clean the room, an everyday occurrence. Focused on her meditation, Shallan hadn’t heard her enter. “Why did you speak to me?”

“Speak to you, Brightness?”

“You…” No, the voice had been a whisper, and it had quite distinctly come from inside Shallan’s room. It couldn’t have been the maid.

She shivered and glanced about. But that was foolish. The tiny room was easily inspected. There were no Voidbringers hiding in the corners or under her bed.

What, then, had she heard? Noises from the woman cleaning, obviously. Shallan’s mind had just interpreted those random sounds as words.

Forcing herself to relax, Shallan looked out past the maid into the sitting room. The woman had cleaned up the wineglass and crumbs. A broom leaned against the wall. In addition, Jasnah’s door was cracked open. “Were you in Brightness Jasnah’s room?” Shallan demanded.

“Yes, Brightness,” the woman said. “Tidying up the desk, making the bed–”

“Brightness Jasnah does not like people entering her room. The maids have been told not to clean in there.” The king had promised that his maids were very carefully chosen, and there had never been issues of theft, but Jasnah still insisted that none enter her bedchamber.

The woman paled. “I’m sorry, Brightness. I didn’t hear! I wasn’t told–”

“Hush, it’s all right,” Shallan said. “You’ll want to go tell her what you’ve done. She always notices if her things were moved. It will be better for you if you go to her and explain.”

“Y–Yes, Brightness.” The woman bowed again.

“In fact,” Shallan said, something occurring to her. “You should go now. No point putting it off.”

The elderly maid sighed. “Yes, of course, Brightness.” She withdrew. A few seconds later, the outside door closed and locked.

Shallan leapt up, pulling off the Soulcaster and stuffing it back in her safepouch. She hurried outside, heart thumping, the strange voice forgotten as she seized the opportunity to look into Jasnah’s room. It was unlikely that Shallan would discover anything useful about the Soulcaster, but she couldn’t pass up the chance – not with the maid to blame for moving things.

She felt only a glimmer of guilt for this. She’d already stolen from Jasnah. Compared with that, poking through her room was nothing.

The bedroom was larger than Shallan’s, though it still felt cramped because of the unavoidable lack of windows. Jasnah’s bed, a four-poster monstrosity, took up half the space. The vanity was against the far wall, and beside it the dressing table from which Shallan had originally stolen the Soulcaster. Other than a dresser, the only other thing in the room was the desk, books piled high on the left side.