She sat there for an extended time, feeling ashamed of her weakness, but also proud. She’d done it. It was small, but she’d done something.

Eventually, she rose and nodded to Jix, letting him lead the way back toward their box. Father should be finished with his meeting by now.

It turned out that he had finished that meeting only to start another. A man she did not know sat next to Father with a cup of chilled water in one hand. Tall, slender, and blue-eyed, he had deep black hair without a hint of impurity and wore clothing the same shade. He glanced at Shallan as she stepped up into the box.

The man started, dropping his cup to the table. He caught it with a swift lunge, keeping it from tipping over, then turned to stare at her with a slack jaw.

It was gone in a second, replaced with an expression of practiced indifference.

“Clumsy fool!” Father said.

The newcomer turned away from Shallan, speaking softly to Father. Shallan’s stepmother stood to the side, with the cooks. Shallan slipped over to her. “Who is that?”

“Nobody of consequence,” Malise said. “He claims to have brought word from your brother, but is of low enough dahn that he can’t even produce a writ of lineage.”

“My brother? Helaran?”

Malise nodded.

Shallan turned back to the newcomer. She caught, with a subtle movement, the man slipping something from his coat pocket and moving it up toward the drinks. A shock coursed through Shallan. She raised a hand. Poison—

The newcomer covertly dumped the pouch’s contents into his own drink, then raised it to his lips, gulping down the powder. What had it been?

Shallan lowered her hand. The newcomer stood up a moment later. He didn’t bow to Father as he left. He gave Shallan a smile, then was down the steps and out of the box.

Word from Helaran. What had it been? Shallan timidly moved to the table. “Father?”

Father’s eyes were on the duel in the center of the ring. Two men with swords, no shields, harking back to classical ideals. Their sweeping methods of fighting were said to be an imitation of fighting with a Shardblade.

“Word from Nan Helaran?” Shallan prodded.

“You will not speak his name,” Father said.

“I—”

“You will not speak of that one,” Father said, looking to her, thunder in his expression. “Today I declare him disinherited. Tet Balat is officially now Nan Balat, Wikim becomes Tet, Jushu becomes Asha. I have only three sons.”

She knew better than to push him when he was like this. But how would she discover what the messenger had said? She sank into her chair, shaken again.

“Your brothers avoid me,” Father said, watching the duel. “Not one chooses to dine with their father as would be proper.”

Shallan folded her hands in her lap.

“Jushu is probably drinking somewhere,” Father said. “The Stormfather only knows where Balat has run off to. Wikim refuses to leave the carriage.” He downed the wine in his cup. “Will you speak with him? This has not been a good day. If I went to him, I . . . worry what I would do.”

Shallan rose, then rested a hand on her father’s shoulder. He slumped, leaning forward, one hand around the empty wine flagon. He raised his other hand and patted hers on his shoulder, his eyes distant. He did try. They all did.

Shallan sought out their carriage, which stood parked with a number of others near the western slope of the fairgrounds. Jella trees here rose high, their hardened trunks colored the light brown of crem. The needles sprouted like a thousand tongues of fire from each limb, though the nearest ones pulled in as she approached.

She was surprised to see a mink slinking in the shadows; she’d expected all those in the area to have been trapped by now. The coachmen played cards in a ring nearby; some of them had to stay and watch the carriages, though Shallan had heard Ren speaking of some kind of rotation so that they all got a chance at the fair. In fact, Ren wasn’t there at the moment, though the other coachmen bowed as she passed.

Wikim sat in their carriage. The slender, pale youth was only fifteen months older than Shallan. He shared some resemblance to his twin, but few people mistook them for one another. Jushu looked older, and Wikim was so thin he looked sickly.

Shallan climbed in to sit across from Wikim, setting her satchel on the seat beside her.

“Did Father send you,” Wikim asked, “or did you come on one of your new little missions of mercy?”

“Both?”

Wikim turned away from her, looking out the window toward the trees, away from the fair. “You can’t fix us, Shallan. Jushu will destroy himself. It’s only a matter of time. Balat is becoming Father, step by step. Malise spends one night in two weeping. Father will kill her one of these days, like he did Mother.”

“And you?” Shallan asked. It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it the moment it came out of her mouth.

“Me? I won’t be around to see any of it. I’ll be dead by then.”

Shallan wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her legs up beneath her on the seat. Brightness Hasheh would have chided her for the unladylike posture.

What did she do? What did she say? He’s right, she thought. I can’t fix this. Helaran could have. I can’t.

They were all slowly unraveling.

“So what was it?” Wikim said. “Out of curiosity, what did you come up with to ‘save’ me? I’m guessing you used the girl on Balat.”

She nodded.

“You were obvious about that,” Wikim said. “With the letters you sent her. Jushu? What of him?”

“I have a list of the day’s duels,” Shallan whispered. “He so wishes he could duel. If I show him the fights, maybe he’ll want to come watch them.”

“You’ll have to find him first,” Wikim said with a snort. “And what about me? You have to know that neither swords nor pretty faces will work for me.”

Feeling a fool, Shallan dug in her satchel and came out with several sheets of paper.

“Drawings?”

“Math problems.”

Wikim frowned and took them from her, absently scratching the side of his face as he looked them over. “I’m no ardent. I’ll not be boxed up and forced to spend my days convincing people to listen to the Almighty—who suspiciously has nothing to say for himself.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t study,” Shallan said. “I gathered those from Father’s books, equations for determining highstorm timing. I translated and simplified the writing to glyphs, so you could read them. I figured you could try to guess when the next ones would come. . . .”

He shuffled through the papers. “You copied and translated it all, even the drawings. Storms, Shallan. How long did this take you?”

She shrugged. It had taken weeks, but she had nothing but time. Days sitting in the gardens, evenings sitting in her room, the occasional visit to the ardents for some peaceful tutoring about the Almighty. It was good to have things to do.

“This is stupid,” Wikim said, lowering the papers. “What do you think you’ll accomplish? I can’t believe you wasted so much time on this.”

Shallan bowed her head and then, blinking tears, scrambled out of the carriage. It felt horrible—not just Wikim’s words, but the way her emotions betrayed her. She couldn’t hold them in.

She hastened away from the carriages, hoping the coachmen wouldn’t see her wiping her eyes with her safehand. She sat down on a stone and tried to compose herself, but failed, tears flowing freely. She turned her head aside as a few parshmen trotted past, running their master’s axehounds. There would be several hunts as part of the festivities.

“Axehound,” a voice said from behind her.

Shallan jumped, safehand to breast, and spun.

He rested up on a tree limb, wearing his black outfit. He moved as she saw him, and the spiky leaves around him retreated in a wave of vanishing red and orange. It was the messenger who had spoken to Father earlier.

“I have wondered,” the messenger said, “if any of you find the term odd. You know what an axe is. But what is a hound?”

“Why does that matter?” Shallan asked.

“Because it is a word,” the messenger replied. “A simple word with a world embedded inside, like a bud waiting to open.” He studied her. “I did not expect to find you here.”

“I . . .” Her instincts told her to back away from this strange man. And yet, he had news of Helaran—news her father would never share. “Where did you expect to find me? At the dueling grounds?”

The man swung around the branch and dropped to the ground.

Shallan stepped backward.

“No need for that,” the man said, settling onto a rock. “You needn’t fear me. I’m terribly ineffective at hurting people. I blame my upbringing.”

“You have news of my brother Helaran.”

The messenger nodded. “He is a very determined young man.”

“Where is he?”

“Doing things he finds very important. I would fault him for it, as I find nothing more frightening than a man trying to do what he has decided is important. Very little in the world has ever gone astray—at least on a grand scale—because a person decided to be frivolous.”

“He is well, though?” she asked.

“Well enough. The message for your father was that he has eyes nearby, and is watching.”

No wonder it had put Father in a bad mood. “Where is he?” Shallan said, timidly stepping forward. “Did he tell you to speak to me?”

“I’m sorry, young one,” the man said, expression softening. “He gave me only that brief message for your father, and that only because I mentioned I would be traveling this direction.”

“Oh! I assumed he’d sent you here. I mean, that coming to us was your primary purpose.”

“Turns out that it was. Tell me, young one. Do spren speak to you?”

The lights going out, life drained from them.

Twisted symbols the eye should not see.

Her mother’s soul in a box.

“I . . .” she said. “No. Why would a spren speak to me?”

“No voices?” the man said, leaning forward. “Do spheres go dark when you are near?”

“I’m sorry,” Shallan said, “but I should be getting back to my father. He will be missing me.”

“Your father is slowly destroying your family,” the messenger said. “Your brother was right on that count. He was wrong about everything else.”

“Such as?”

“Look.” The man nodded back toward the carriages. She was at the right angle to see into the window of her father’s carriage. She squinted.

Inside, Wikim leaned forward, using a pencil taken from her satchel—which she’d left behind. He scribbled at the mathematical problems she’d left.