“We need to go down and ask the other caravan for help,” Shallan said.

“No!” Tvlakv said, snatching the spyglass back. “We need to flee! The bandits will see this richer but weakened group and will fall upon them instead of us!”

“And you think they won’t chase us after that?” Shallan said. “With our tracks so easily visible? You think they won’t run us down in the following days?”

“There should be a highstorm tonight,” Tvlakv said. “It might cover our tracks, blowing away the shells of the plants we crush.”

“Unlikely,” Shallan said. “If we stand with this new caravan, we can add our little strength to theirs. We can hold. It—”

Bluth held up a hand suddenly, turning. “A noise.” He spun around, reaching for his cudgel.

A figure stood up nearby, hidden by shadows. Apparently, the caravan below had a scout of its own. “You led them right toward us, did you?” asked a woman’s voice. “What are they? More bandits?”

Tvlakv held up his sphere, which revealed the scout to be a lighteyed woman of medium height and wiry build. She wore trousers and a long coat that almost looked like a dress, buckled at the waist. She wore a tan glove over her safehand, and spoke Alethi without an accent.

“I . . .” Tvlakv said. “I am just a humble merchant, and—”

“The ones chasing us are certainly bandits,” Shallan cut in. “They have chased us all day.”

The woman cursed, raising a spyglass of her own. “Good equipment,” she mumbled. “Deserters, I’d guess. As if this weren’t bad enough. Yix!”

A second figure stood up nearby, wearing tan clothing the color of stone. Shallan jumped. How had she missed spotting him? He was so close! He had a sword at his waist. A lighteyes? No, a foreigner, judging by that golden hair. She never was sure what eye color meant for their social standing. There weren’t people with light eyes in the Makabaki region, though they had kings, and practically everyone in Iri had light yellow eyes.

He jogged over, hand on his weapon, watching Bluth and Tag with overt hostility. The woman said something to him in a tongue Shallan didn’t know, and he nodded, then jogged off toward the caravan below. The woman followed.

“Wait,” Shallan called to her.

“I don’t have time to talk,” the woman snapped. “We’ve got two bandit groups to fight.”

“Two?” Shallan said. “You didn’t defeat the one that attacked you earlier?”

“We fought them off, but they’ll be back soon.” The woman hesitated on the side of the hill. “The fire was an accident, I think. They were using flaming brands to scare us. They pulled back to let us fight the fires, as they didn’t want to lose any more goods.”

Two forces, then. Bandits ahead and behind. Shallan found herself sweating in the cold air as the sun finally vanished beneath the western horizon.

The woman was looking northward, toward where her group of bandits must have retreated. “Yeah, they’ll be back,” the woman said. “They’ll want to be done with us before the storm comes tonight.”

“I offer you my protection,” Shallan found herself saying.

“Your protection?” the woman said, turning back to Shallan, sounding baffled.

“You may accept me and mine into your camp,” Shallan said. “I will see to your safety tonight. I will need your service after that to convey me to the Shattered Plains.”

The woman laughed. “You are gutsy, whoever you are. You can join our camp, but you’ll die there with the rest of us!”

Cries rose from the caravan. A second later, a flight of arrows fell through the night from that direction, pelting wagons and caravan workers.

Screams.

Bandits followed, emerging from the blackness. They weren’t nearly as well equipped as the deserters, but they didn’t need to be. The caravan had fewer than a dozen guards left. The woman cursed and started running down the hillside.

Shallan shivered, eyes wide at the sudden slaughter below. Then she turned and walked to Tvlakv’s wagons. This sudden chill was familiar to her. The coldness of clarity. She knew what she had to do. She didn’t know if it would work, but she saw the solution—like lines in a drawing, coming together to transform random scribbles into a full picture.

“Tvlakv,” she said, “take Tag below and try to help those people fight.”

“What!” he said. “No. No, I will not throw my life away for your foolishness.”

She met his eyes in the near darkness, and he stopped. She knew that she was glowing softly; she could feel the storm within. “Do it.” She left him and walked to her wagon. “Bluth, turn this wagon around.”

He stood with a sphere beside the wagon, looking down at something in his hand. A sheet of paper? Surely Bluth of all people didn’t know glyphs.

“Bluth!” Shallan snapped, climbing into the wagon. “We need to be moving. Now!”

He shook himself, then tucked the paper away and scrambled into the seat beside her. He whipped at the chull, turning it. “What are we doing?” he asked.

“Heading south.”

“Into the bandits?”

“Yes.”

For once, he did as she told him without complaint, whipping the chull faster—as if he were eager to just get this all over with. The wagon rattled and shook as they went down one hillside, then climbed another.

They reached the top and looked down at the force climbing toward them. The men carried torches and sphere lanterns, so she could see their faces. Dark expressions on grim men with weapons drawn. Their breastplates or leather jerkins might once have held symbols of allegiance, but she could see where those had been cut or scratched away.

The deserters looked at her with obvious shock. They had not expected their prey to come to them. Her arrival stunned them for a moment. An important moment.

There will be an officer, Shallan thought, standing up on her seat. They are soldiers, or once were. They’ll have a command structure.

She took a deep breath. Bluth raised his sphere, looking at her, and grunted as if surprised.

“Bless the Stormfather that you’re here!” Shallan cried to the men. “I need your help desperately.”

The group of deserters just stared at her.

“Bandits,” Shallan said. “They’re attacking our friends in the caravan just two hills over. It’s a slaughter! I said I’d seen soldiers back here, moving toward the Shattered Plains. Nobody believed me. Please. You must help.”

Again, they just stared at her. A little like the mink wandering into the whitespine’s den and asking when dinner is . . . she thought. Finally, the men shuffled uneasily and turned toward a man near the center. Tall, bearded, he had arms that looked too long for his body.

“Bandits, you say,” the man replied, voice empty of emotion.

Shallan leaped down from the wagon and walked toward the man, leaving Bluth sitting as a silent lump. Deserters stepped away from her, wearing ripped and dirty clothing, with grizzled, unkempt hair and faces that hadn’t seen a razor—or a washcloth—in ages. And yet, by torchlight, their weapons gleamed without a spot of rust and their breastplates were polished to the point where they reflected her features.

The woman she glimpsed in one breastplate looked too tall, too stately, to be Shallan herself. Instead of tangled hair, she had flowing red locks. Instead of refugee rags, she wore a gown woven with golden embroidery. She had not been wearing a necklace before, and when she raised her hand toward the leader of the band, her chipped fingernails appeared perfectly manicured.

“Brightness,” the man said as she stepped up to him, “we aren’t what you think we are.”

“No,” Shallan replied. “You aren’t what you think yourselves to be.”

Those around her in the firelight regarded her with eager stares, and she felt the hair rising in a shiver across her body. Into the predator’s den indeed. Yet the tempest within her spurred her to action, and urged her to greater confidence.

The leader opened his mouth as if to give some order. Shallan cut him off. “What is your name?”

“I’m called Vathah,” the man said, turning toward his allies. It was a Vorin name, like Shallan’s own. “And I’ll decide what to do with you later. Gaz, take this one and—”

“What would you do, Vathah,” Shallan said in a loud voice, “to erase the past?”

He looked back toward her, face lit on one side by primal torchlight.

“Would you protect instead of kill, if you had the choice?” Shallan asked. “Would you rescue instead of rob if you could do it over again? Good people are dying as we speak here. You can stop it.”

Those dark eyes of his seemed dead. “We can’t change the past.”

“I can change your future.”

“We are wanted men.”

“Yes, I came here wanting men. Hoping to find men. You are offered the chance to be soldiers again. Come with me. I will see to it you have new lives. Those lives start by saving instead of killing.”

Vathah snorted in derision. His face looked unfinished in the night, rough, like a sketch. “Brightlords have failed us in the past.”

“Listen,” Shallan said. “Listen to the screams.”

The piteous sounds reached them from behind her. Shouts for help. Workers, both men and women, from the caravan. Dying. Haunting sounds. Shallan was surprised, despite having pointed them out, how well the sounds carried. How much they sounded like pleas for help.

“Give yourself another chance,” Shallan said softly. “If you return with me, I will see that your crimes are erased. I promise it to you, by all that I have, by the Almighty himself. You can start over. Start over as heroes.”

Vathah held her eyes. This man was stone. She could see, with a sinking feeling, that he wasn’t swayed. The tempest inside of her began to fade away, and her fears boiled higher. What was she doing? This was crazy!

Vathah looked away from her again, and she knew she’d lost him. He barked the order to take her captive.

Nobody moved. Shallan had focused only on him, not the other two dozen or so men, who had drawn in close, torches raised high. They looked at her with open faces, and she saw very little of the lust she’d noticed before. Instead, they bore wide eyes, longing, reacting to the distant yells. Men fingered their uniforms, where the insignias had been. Others looked down at spears and axes, weapons of their service perhaps not so long ago.

“You fools are considering this?” Vathah said.

One man, a short fellow with a scarred face and an eye patch, nodded his head. “I wouldn’t mind starting over,” he muttered. “Storms, but it would be nice.”

“I saved a woman’s life once,” another said, a tall, balding man who was easily into his forties. “I felt a hero for weeks. Toasts in the tavern. Warmth. Damnation! We’re dying out here.”