POV: shallan
Summary
The second day of the Shadesmar voyage opens — or, since the sun does not move here, simply occurs — with Shallan in retreat. Yesterday's feigned cheer left her empty. After Veil's stunt breaking the compact to drag the three most suspicious Lightweavers onto the trip, Veil cannot be allowed the body either. So Radiant rises, does her exercises, and looks for something to do with the day. The soldiers have their camp duties; Zu chats with the peakspren crew; Arshqqam is reading; Adolin is caring for his swords. Radiant sets Beryl and Ishnah to recording observations of Shadesmar and tells Vathah to see if the peakspren sailors need help. *Find the spy,* Shallan whispers from inside. Radiant answers, perfectly, that she is ill-equipped for espionage; perhaps drawings, until Veil's punishment is over. But Shallan does not emerge, and the tension worries the other two.
Radiant sits by the rail with Ialai's journal and listens to the churning beads. Most of the book has yielded by now. The unfamiliar place names belong to worlds beyond the various expanses of Shadesmar — Pattern has confirmed it by talking to spren who have met travelers from those places. The conjectures about the Ghostbloods' mysterious leader Thaidakar read, from context, like notes about a man from one of those distant worlds. And the Ghostbloods are obsessed with one spren in particular: Ba-Ado-Mishram, one of the Unmade from myth — the spren who took up Odium's work after the Final Desolation and granted the singers their forms of power. Humankind ended the war by capturing her in a gemstone, which in the same stroke stole the singers' minds and reduced them to parshmen for the centuries since. Reading those passages against the brief, poignant notes left in Urithiru by the ancient Radiants before they walked away, Radiant is increasingly sure that Mraize is hunting that gemstone. He probably thought it would be at Urithiru — but if it had been, the Midnight Mother would have freed her ally during the centuries she ruled the tower. *He also wants to transport Stormlight off-world,* Shallan thinks, surfacing for a moment. Perhaps these things are connected; perhaps she is part of how he intends to do it.
Radiant tries to give Shallan the body and is told *no, you're trying to trick me, go find the spy*. So Radiant votes Veil's punishment ended. Veil surfaces, surprised and grateful, and feels for a moment that Shadesmar — bead ocean, black sky, strange spren, infinite questions — is the perfect place for her. *Find the spy,* Shallan says again. Veil sits down with Shallan's charcoal pencil and a sketchbook and begins to draw Ua'pam as badly as she can. She is sorry, she tells Shallan silently, for breaking the compact — she needed those three on board to watch them, but should have persuaded the other two first. *So go investigate.* Radiant is right, Veil thinks. The spy can wait. Something larger is going on, something that is making all of them erratic; why does Shallan keep lying to Adolin? The Formless thing stirs deep inside her, the personality that *could be*. Veil is a drunkard with bad scope and a host of attributes Shallan wishes she did not have — but at her core she was created to protect Shallan, and she will go to Damnation before she lets that Formless thing take her place. So she goes on drawing. Adolin gets a unibrow. Then crossed eyes. Then an ugly coat, then cut-off knee-length trousers. *Fine!* Shallan cries, rips the page out, and finally relaxes. Yes, the cube has been moved. Yes, a friend is a spy. She can handle it; she has two weeks. Today she can be on a barge full of fascinating spren and let it be enough.
Adolin finds her five hours later still against the rail, sketching furiously. He has brought warm curry and lavis — some of the last *real* food before they switch entirely to Soulcast lumps. She sets down the sketchbook and leans against him to eat. He asks about Ialai's book; she tells him the Ghostbloods are after Ba-Ado-Mishram but she cannot yet say what they want her for. He asks about the spy; she tells him she would rather not talk about it today and feels his chest tense. She redirects him: he is the one who looks tense, this part of the trip is supposed to be the easy part. He repeats Syl's warning that the honorspren are unlikely to listen to them. She points out that they cannot know what will happen between here and the gate. *I set out to be Jasnah's ward,* she tells him after a moment of taking grains of lavis on her tongue. *No. I set out to rob her.* She braces for shock; Adolin laughs. *Robbing Jasnah*, he repeats. *Robbing Jasnah.* He guesses correctly that she fooled her for a little while; she admits the swap, the fake Soulcaster, and that she was always going to be doomed because the device had been a dummy from the start. They trade puns. He volunteers *you stole my heart*; she returns *you're full of awe* on his *that was awful*, and the chapter takes its title.
She turns back to the cultivationspren and peakspren sketches and tells him she wants subjects of both sexes for each variety — no one in the modern era has done a natural history of the Radiant spren. He whistles at the drawings, thanks her for the reminder that he can't know what is coming, and offers to help her get the peakspren garment hanging right. They talk about nothing for a while. Veil whispers a promise that they will work on the spy tomorrow.
Then the mistspren drifts over to peek at the sketchbook. *Oh. It is just me?* When Shallan mentions the Unmade earlier, she thought she might be drawing them. Shallan sits up. Does the spren know anything about Ba-Ado-Mishram? *Hardly anything.* Shallan asks anyway — what happened to her, how she Connected to the singers, how the binding turned them into parshmen. *Excellent questions,* the mistspren says. *Hardly anything. I was not alive when she was free. If you wish to know more, ask the Heralds. Several of them were there for her binding. Nalan. Kelek. Find them; ask them.* And she drifts off. Shallan sets the sketchbook aside and picks up the cold curry. Spren should be alien, she tells Adolin. She likes that Dreaming-though-Awake is a little weird. But the words stay with her: Heralds were there. The Heralds are the Sons of Honor's great obsession — and the Sons of Honor are the order Mraize has sent her to hunt. It is all one knot. She has to unravel it without unraveling herself.