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She nodded as the lift finally shuddered to a halt. She walked down the dark hallway, Kabsal following with the lanterns. Jasnah looked up appraisingly as Shallan entered their alcove, but did not ask why she’d taken so long. Shallan found herself blushing as she gathered her drawing tools. Kabsal hesitated in the doorway. He’d left a basket of bread and jam on the desk. The top of it was still wrapped with a cloth; Jasnah hadn’t touched it, though he always offered her some as a peace offering. Without jam, since Jasnah hated it.
“Where should I sit?” Kabsal asked.
“Just stand there,” Shallan said, sitting down, propping her sketchpad against her legs and holding it still with her covered safehand. She looked up at him, leaning with one hand against the doorframe. Head shaved, light grey robe draped around him, sleeves short, waist tied with a white sash. Eyes confused. She blinked, taking a Memory, then began to sketch.
It was one of the most awkward experiences of her life. She didn’t tell Kabsal that he could move, and so he held the pose. He didn’t speak. Perhaps he thought it would spoil the picture. Shallan found her hand shaking as she sketched, though—thankfully—she managed to hold back tears.
Tears, she thought, doing the final lines of the wall around Kabsal. Why should I cry? I’m not the one who just got rejected. Can’t my emotions make sense once in a while?
“Here,” she said, pulling the page free and holding it up. “It will smudge unless you spray it with lacquer.”
Kabsal hesitated, then walked over, taking the picture in reverent fingers. “It’s wonderful,” he whispered. He looked up, then hurried to his lantern, opening it and pulling out the garnet broam inside. “Here,” he said, proffering it. “Payment.”
“I can’t take that! For one thing, it’s not yours.” As an ardent, anything Kabsal carried would belong to the king.
“Please,” Kabsal said. “I want to give you something.”
“The picture is a gift,” she said. “If you pay me for it, then I haven’t given you anything.”
“Then I’ll commission another,” he said, pressing the glowing sphere into her fingers. “I’ll take the first likeness for free, but do another for me, please. One of the two of us together.”
She paused. She rarely did sketches of herself. They felt strange to draw. “All right.” She took the sphere, then furtively tucked it into her safepouch, beside her Soulcaster. It was a little odd to carry something so heavy there, but she’d gotten accustomed to the bulge and weight.
“Jasnah, do you have a mirror?” she asked.
The other woman sighed audibly, obviously annoyed by the distraction. She felt through her things, taking out a mirror. Kabsal fetched it.
“Hold it up beside your head,” Shallan said, “so I can see myself.”
He walked back over, doing so, looking confused.
“Angle it to the side a little,” Shallan said, “all right, there.” She blinked, freezing in her mind the image of her face beside his. “Have a seat. You don’t need the mirror any longer. I just wanted it for reference—it helps me for some reason to place my features into the scene I want to sketch. I’ll put myself sitting beside you.”
He sat on the floor, and Shallan began to work, using it to distract herself from her conflicting emotions. Guilt at not feeling as strongly for Kabsal as he did for her, yet sorrow that she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. And above it all, anxiety about the Soulcaster.
Sketching herself in beside him was challenging. She worked furiously, blending the reality of Kabsal sitting and a fiction of herself, in her flower-embroidered dress, sitting with her legs to the side. The face in the mirror became her reference point, and she built her head around it. Too narrow to be beautiful, with hair too light, cheeks dotted with freckles.
The Soulcaster, she thought. Being here in Kharbranth with it is a danger. But leaving is dangerous too. Could there be a third option? What if I sent it away?
She hesitated, charcoal pencil hovering above the picture. Dared she send the fabrial—packaged, delivered to Tozbek in secret—back to Jah Keved without her? She wouldn’t have to worry about being incriminated if her room or person were searched, though she’d want to destroy all pictures she’d drawn of Jasnah with the Soulcaster. And she wouldn’t risk suspicion by vanishing when Jasnah discovered her Soulcaster didn’t work.
She continued her drawing, increasingly withdrawn into her thoughts, letting her fingers work. If she sent the Soulcaster back alone, then she could stay in Kharbranth. It was a golden, tempting prospect, but one that threw her emotions further into a jumbled mess. She’d been preparing herself to leave for so long. What would she do about Kabsal? And Jasnah. Could Shallan really remain here, accepting Jasnah’s freely given tutelage, after what she’d done?
Yes, Shallan thought. Yes, I could.
The fervency of that emotion surprised her. She would live with the guilt, day by day, if it meant continuing to learn. It was terribly selfish of her, and she was ashamed of it. But she would do it for a little longer, at least. She’d have to go back eventually, of course. She couldn’t leave her brothers to face danger alone. They needed her.
Selfishness, followed by courage. She was nearly as surprised by the latter as she had been by the former. Neither was something she often associated with who she was. But she was coming to realize that she hadn’t known who she was. Not until she left Jah Keved and everything familiar, everything she’d been expected to be.
Her sketching grew more and more fervent. She finished the figures and moved to the background. Quick, bold lines became the floor and the archway behind. A scribbled dark smudge for the side of the desk, casting a shadow. Crisp, thin lines for the lantern sitting on the floor. Sweeping, breezelike lines to form the legs and robes of the creature standing behind—
Shallan froze, fingers drawing an unintended line of charcoal, breaking away from the figure she’d sketched directly behind Kabsal. A figure that wasn’t really there, a figure with a sharp, angular symbol hovering above its collar instead of a head.
Shallan stood, throwing back her chair, sketchpad and charcoal pencil clutched in the fingers of her freehand.
“Shallan?” Kabsal said, standing.
She’d done it again. Why? The peace she’d begun to feel during the sketching evaporated in a heartbeat, and her heart started to race. The pressures returned. Kabsal. Jasnah. Her brothers. Decisions, choices, problems.
“Is everything all right?” Kabsal said, taking a step toward her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I made a mistake.”
He frowned. To the side, Jasnah looked up, brow wrinkled.
“It’s all right,” Kabsal said. “Look, let’s have some bread and jam. We can calm down, then you could finish it. I don’t care about a—”
“I need to go,” Shallan cut in, feeling suffocated. “I’m sorry.”
She brushed past the dumbfounded ardent, hurrying from the alcove, giving a wide berth to the place where the figure stood in her sketch. What was wrong with her?
She rushed to the lift, calling for the parshmen to lower her. She glanced over her shoulder. Kabsal stood in the hallway, looking after her. Shallan reached the lift, drawing pad clutched in her hand, her heart racing. Calm yourself, she thought, leaning back against the lift platform’s wooden railing as the parshmen began to take her down. She looked up at the empty landing above her.
