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Shallan sits up at last in her hospital bed in Kharbranth and asks Jasnah for the rest of the notes. Jasnah hands them to her without comment. They are stacked thick: cross-references in seven scripts, marginal corrections in Jasnah's own hand, photographs of broken cave glyphs, fragments of devotary chants whose meaning was lost two centuries ago. Shallan reads. She does not stop for the rest of the day.

The references converge from impossible angles on a single conclusion. The Voidbringers of the Desolations — the ancient enemy of mankind from a hundred Vorin children's stories — were not driven beyond the veil at the Last Desolation. They were not banished. They were *defeated and bound*. The parshmen who haul the carts in every Vorin city are descendants of them, sleeping under a curse that was old when Nohadon was young. The Parshendi on the Shattered Plains are their wilder cousins — the same species, with a portion of the binding broken. The war Elhokar is fighting on the Plains is not a war of vengeance. It is the opening skirmish of a new Desolation no one has noticed yet.

Shallan sets the notes down and looks at Jasnah, who has been watching her face. Jasnah does not soften the conclusion. She also tells Shallan that her research has drawn the attention of an organisation called the Ghostbloods, who have killed scholars for less. Jasnah does not seem afraid, only weary. *Now you know*, she tells Shallan, *why I did not waste a great deal of breath on dramatic exits and trembling stares. There is too much to do.*