(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Shallan rides the front seat of the lead wagon beside Tyn — in Bluth's old place — as the caravan rolls the last day and a half toward the Shattered Plains. The land has gone a little kinder around them: steeper hills, slightly warmer air, fuller rockbuds and patches of shalebark with lifespren bouncing like tiny green motes, and stands of squat trees in the valleys where the storm water collects. Tyn has shed her stiff guard-leader persona almost entirely; in trousers, boots and a loose shirt with the sword belt slung over a peg, she is teaching Shallan accents — Bavlander first, with Shallan gamely pushing pebbles around in her mouth and Tyn mocking the result — and then Herdazian and Horneater. The principle: being an *important lighteyes* is useless in many situations, and to fool people one has to act beneath them as well as above them. Speak Bav and wipe your nose on your arm and people will not even look to see if you are wearing a sword.

Tyn tosses Shallan a small vial of eyedrops that darken light eyes for a few hours, and — at her question — confirms there is nothing that goes the other way: only the old stories about Shardblades. She admits, in passing, that her own big job down south has gone wrong: her team never came back, her employers — the kind of people who change things in the world — have not paid her, and she does not yet know whether her men ran off or simply failed. The worry shows on her face for an instant and is smoothed away. She lounges back in the seat sweeping her chull-reed like a Shardblade. Shallan takes a Memory of her there, perfectly at ease.

Four mounted men appear on the ridge ahead. Macob halts the caravan; Shallan puts on her Jasnah-face and her good blue silk dress and the embroidered slippers Macob gave her, and she and Tyn walk out to meet them, Vathah glaring after Tyn as they pass. The riders wait at the top of the next hill, and Tyn uses the walk to ask Shallan who she will be — and announces her, before she can decline, as Princess *Unulukuak'kina'autu'atai*. The lead rider is darkeyed, dark-haired, long-haired, mounted reluctantly — and recognises the Horneater right away as wearing a Vorin dress that would set Rock off. He is called Kal, riding scout for Dalinar's personal guard on a sweep for bandits as part of Dalinar's push to extend his patrol perimeter around the Plains. Shallan registers, with a small inner groan, that this man works directly for her would-be father-in-law.

She plays it straight anyway — broken Alethi, indignant red-faced *I am offend!*, Tyn feeding her lines like a sideman — and when Tyn (correctly) provokes angerspren out of her by suggesting Kal has insulted her weight, she lets the part run. She demands his boots in apology. He refuses; she promises to tell all the warcamps that *Kholin is stealer of boots and taker of women's vesture*; he sputters, calls her a stormer, peels his boots off on horseback to reveal a hole in his sock, throws them down and rides on, promising to pass the bandit report along and see this stretch of road patrolled. Neither woman knows who the soldier is. Shallan privately hopes she does not run into him again.

On the walk back to the caravan with the much-too-large boots, Shallan bursts out laughing, and the laughter sets a rare flock of blue joyspren spiralling up out of the stone around her like leaves caught in a sudden gust. Tyn tells her, smiling, that she has to be able to do exactly that — be ridiculous in front of people who might well catch her — if she is going to be any use at this trade; the more outrageous the act, the straighter you play it, and you only get better by practising in public. They will continue working on her Horneater accent once they are back at the wagon: with that red hair of hers, Tyn says, she will find more chances to use that one than most. The boots are too large. Shallan decides she will pad them — she is sick of walking on stone barefoot or in Macob's lighteyed slippers — and worries, briefly, whether Kal will be all right without them on the way home. Tyn rolls her eyes; they will have to talk about that kindheartedness sometime.