“You purposely gave me a slow one,” Shallan complained, “didn’t you?”

“Sure did.”

“I’d smack you. If I could reach you up there.”

He chuckled. “You said you don’t have a lot of experience riding, so I picked a horse that had a lot of experience being ridden. Trust me, you’ll be thankful.”

“I want to ride in a majestic charge as we begin our expedition!”

“And you can do so.”

“Slowly.”

“Technically, slow speeds can be very majestic.”

“Technically,” she said, “a man doesn’t need all of his toes. Shall we remove a few of yours and prove it?”

He laughed. “As long as you don’t hurt my face, I suppose.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I like your face.”

He grinned, Shardplate helm hanging from his saddle so as to not mess up his hair. She waited for him to add a quip to hers, but he didn’t.

That was all right. She liked Adolin as he was. He was kind, noble, and genuine. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t brilliant or . . . or whatever else Kaladin was. She couldn’t even define it. So there.

Passionate, with an intense, smoldering resolve. A leashed anger that he used, because he had dominated it. And a certain tempting arrogance. Not the haughty pride of a highlord. Instead, the secure, stable sense of determination that whispered that no matter who you were—or what you did—you could not hurt him. Could not change him.

He was. Like the wind and rocks were.

Shallan completely missed what Adolin said next. She blushed. “What was that?”

“I said that Sebarial has a carriage. You might want to travel with him.”

“Because I’m too delicate for riding?” Shallan said. “Did you miss that I walked back through the chasms in the middle of a highstorm?”

“Um, no. But walking and riding are different. I mean, the soreness . . .”

“Soreness?” Shallan asked. “Why would I be sore? Doesn’t the horse do all of the work?”

Adolin looked at her, eyes widening.

“Um,” she said. “Dumb question?”

“You said you’d ridden before.”

“Ponies,” she said, “on my father’s estates. Around in circles . . . All right, from that expression, I’m led to believe I’m being an idiot. When I get sore, I’ll go ride with Sebarial.”

“Before you get sore,” Adolin said. “We’ll give it an hour.”

As annoyed as she was at this turn, she couldn’t deny his expertise. Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

She determined to not be bothered, and instead enjoy the ride. The army as a whole moved slowly, considering that each piece seemed to be so efficient. Spearmen in blocks, scribes on horseback, scouts roving outward. Dalinar had six of the massive mechanical bridges, but he had also brought all of the former bridgemen and their simpler, man-carried bridges, designed as copies of the ones they’d left in Sadeas’s camp. That was good, since Sebarial only had a couple of bridge crews.

She allowed herself a moment of personal satisfaction at the fact that he’d come on the expedition. As she was thinking on that, she noticed someone running up the line of troops behind her. A short man, with an eye patch, who drew glares from Adolin’s bridgeman guards for the day.

“Gaz?” Shallan said with relief as he hustled up, carrying a package under his arm. Her fears that he’d been knifed in an alley somewhere were unfounded.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “It came. You owe the merchant two sapphire broams, Brightness.”

“It?” Shallan asked, accepting the package.

“Yeah. You asked me to find one for you. I storming did.” He seemed proud of himself.

She unwrapped the cloth around the rectangular object, and found inside a book. Words of Radiance, the cover said. The sides were worn, and the pages faded—one patch across the top was even stained from spilled ink sometime in the past.

Rarely had she been as pleased to receive something so damaged. “Gaz!” she said. “You’re wonderful!”

He grinned, shooting Vathah a triumphant smile. The taller man rolled his eyes, muttering something Shallan didn’t hear.

“Thank you,” Shallan said. “Thank you truly, Gaz.”

* * *

As the time passed and one day led into another, Shallan found the distraction of the book extremely welcome. The armies moved about as fast as a herd of sleepy chulls, and the scenery was actually quite boring, though she’d never admit that to Kaladin or Adolin, considering what she’d told them last time she was out here.

The book, though. The book was wonderful. And frustrating.

But what was the “wicked thing of eminence” that led to the Recreance? she thought, writing the quote in her notebook. It was the second day of their travels on the Plains, and she had agreed to ride in the coach Adolin had provided—alone, though it baffled Adolin why she wouldn’t want her lady’s maid with her. Shallan did not want to explain Pattern to the girl.

The book had a chapter for each order of Knights Radiant, with talk of their traditions, their abilities, and their attitudes. The author admitted that a lot of it was hearsay—the book had been written two hundred years after the Recreance, and by then facts, lore, and superstition had mixed freely. Beyond that, it was in an old dialect of Alethi, using the protoscript, a precursor to the true women’s script of modern day. She spent a lot of her time sorting out meanings, occasionally calling over some of Navani’s scholars to provide definitions or interpretation.

Still, she had learned a great deal. For example, each order had different Ideals, or standards, to determine advancement. Some were specific, others left to the interpretation of the spren. Also, some orders were individualistic, while others—like the Windrunners—functioned in teams, with a specific hierarchy.

She settled back, thinking about the powers described. Would the others be appearing, then? As she and Jasnah had? Men who could glide elegantly across the ground as if they weighed nothing, women who could melt stone with a touch. Pattern had offered some few insights, but mostly he had been of use telling her what sounded likely to have been real, and what from the book was a mistake based on hearsay. His memory was spotty, but growing much better, and hearing what the book said often made him remember more.

Right now, he buzzed on the seat beside her in a contented way. The carriage hit a bump—it was rough out here—but at least in the coach, she could read and reference other books at the same time. That would have been practically impossible while riding.

The coach did make her feel shut away, though. Not everyone who tries to take care of you is trying to do what your father did, she told herself firmly.

Adolin’s warned-of soreness had never manifested, of course. Originally, she’d felt a small amount of pain in her thighs from holding herself in place in the saddle, but Stormlight had made it vanish.

“Mmm,” Pattern said, climbing onto the door of the carriage. “It comes.”

Shallan looked out the window and felt a drop of water sprinkle against her face. Rock darkened as rain coated it. Soon, the air filled with a steady drizzle, light and pleasant. Though colder, it reminded her of some of the rainfalls back in Jah Keved. Here in the stormlands, it seemed that rain was rarely this soft.

She pulled down the shades and scooted to the center of the seat so she wouldn’t get rained on. She soon found that the pleasing sound of water muffled the soldiers’ voices and the monotonous sound of marching feet, making it a nice accompaniment to reading. A quote sparked her interest, and so she dug out her sketch of the Shattered Plains and her old maps of Stormseat.

I need to find out how these maps relate, she thought. Multiple points of reference, preferably. If she could identify two places on the Shattered Plains that matched points on her map of Stormseat, she could judge how large Stormseat had been—the old map had no scale—and then overlay it on the map of the Shattered Plains. That would give them some context.

What really drew her attention was the Oathgate. On the map of Stormseat, Jasnah thought it was represented by a round disc, like a dais, on the southwestern side of the city. Was there a doorway there on that dais somewhere? A magical portal to Urithiru? How did one of the knights operate it?

“Mmm,” Pattern said.

Shallan’s carriage started to slow. She frowned, scooting to the door, meaning to peek out the window. The door opened, however, to reveal Highlady Navani standing outside, Dalinar himself holding up an umbrella for her.

“Would you mind company?” Navani asked.

“Not at all, Brightness,” Shallan said, scrambling to pick up her papers and books, which she’d spread about on all of the seats. Navani patted Dalinar fondly on the arm, then climbed into the coach, using a towel to dry her feet and legs. She sat once Dalinar shut the door.

They started rolling again, and Shallan fidgeted with her papers. What was her relationship with Navani? She was Adolin’s aunt, but she was romantically involved with his father. So she was kind of Shallan’s future mother-in-law, though by Vorin tradition Dalinar would never be allowed to marry her.

Shallan had tried for weeks to get this woman to listen to her, and had failed. Now, she seemed to have been forgiven for bearing the news of Jasnah’s death. Did that mean Navani . . . liked her?

“So,” Shallan said, feeling awkward, “did Dalinar exile you to the coach to protect you from getting sore, as Adolin did to me?”

“Sore? Heavens no. If anyone should be riding in the coach, it’s Dalinar. When there is fighting to be done, we’ll need him rested and ready. I came because it’s rather difficult to read while riding in the rain.”

“Oh.” Shallan shifted in her seat.

Navani studied her, then finally sighed. “I have been ignoring things,” the older woman said, “that I should not. Because they bring me pain.”

“I am sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Navani held out her hand toward Shallan. “May I?”

Shallan looked at her handful of notes, diagrams, and maps. She hesitated.

“You are engaged in work you obviously think very important,” Navani said softly. “This city Jasnah was searching for, according to the notes you sent me? Perhaps I can help you interpret my daughter’s intentions.”

Was there anything in these pages that would incriminate Shallan and reveal her powers? Her activities as Veil?

She didn’t think so. She’d been studying the Knights Radiant as part of it, but she was searching for their center of power, so that made sense. Hesitant, she handed over the papers.

Navani leafed through them, reading by spherelight. “The organization of these notes is . . . interesting.”