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A letter from Captain Tozbek arrives at Shallan's guest hallway by morning runner: he has read her last note as a pickup request and will be at the Kharbranth docks in one week to take her home to Jah Keved. His wife asks only that Shallan scribe their ledgers on the voyage in exchange for the passage. It is exactly the deadline she had not quite let herself ask for. It is also exactly the deadline she needed. Three weeks since the Soulcaster swap. If Jasnah has not reacted by then, the substitution has gone unnoticed; the broken Davar fabrial in Jasnah's jewelry case will pass for hers until someone tries to make it work.

It breaks her, sitting in the morning light with the letter on her lap, to realise that she will be on that ship. She has wanted to be Jasnah's ward almost since the day she walked into the Palanaeum in pursuit of her — the wanting is real; it is one of the only honest wants she has — and yet she will board Tozbek's deck and sail home and never see Jasnah again, because her family's survival is not negotiable and the three-diamond faction is not patient.

She walks the corridors back to the Veil and stands outside Jasnah's alcove for a long moment before she opens the curtain. Jasnah is at the desk in midthought and tells her, without looking up, that she may do whatever she wishes with her free day. *What I want to do*, Shallan hears herself say, *is study.* Jasnah smiles in a private, self-satisfied way at the page in front of her and does not try to dissuade her. *If she only knew*, Shallan thinks. She crosses to her usual chair, breaks open the last of Kabsal's bread and strawberry jam for breakfast, and opens a book. For one more week she will let herself pretend.