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In Tyn's magnificent tent after the storm, the air still wet and Tyn's rug stained at the edges, Shallan watches the spanreed write itself with news from a Tashikk correspondent. Highprince Valam may be dead — his health was poor, the rumor says his illness finally took him — but his bastard son's forces are gearing up to seize Vedenar either way, and even if Valam is dead the son will likely pretend otherwise for a time. The reed lists the players in the succession; Tyn asks Shallan if she knows any of them personally, and Shallan, truthfully, says she was never important enough for those types. Tyn floats Jah Keved as their next destination after the warcamps — *war means desperation, and desperation is our mother's milk* — and Shallan, sitting in her too-thin slippers on the leaking tent floor, calculates what a succession war does to her family's old creditors and to the Ghostbloods hunting them for the Soulcaster. She catches a soft shadow moving on the tent wall: Pattern, practically invisible.

The reed shifts errand. The informants at the Shattered Plains confirm what Tyn implied earlier — Vathah and his men are wanted deserters of Sadeas's army with bounties on their heads, Vathah at four emerald broams and the rest at two apiece. Tyn means to turn them all in. Shallan refuses, hissing it: *I gave them my word.* Tyn laughs at the word, hauls her to a quieter tone for fear of being overheard, and gives her the hardest lesson of the trade. The lies they tell are not real and cannot be allowed to become real. A good con woman dies when she starts believing her own lies, when she finds something good and wants to keep it going for one day more, then one day more after that. She drops her wine cup as she says it; the wine splashes red across the rug, and for a moment Shallan sees again a different rug, white once, now red. Tyn jeers at the idea that Shallan could ever extract clemency from Sadeas in order to free murderers as a favor against Dalinar's political enemy. How long, she demands, did Shallan think she could keep this lie going? Shallan sits agitated at both Tyn and at herself. She knows Vathah's men probably deserve their punishments. She will not betray them anyway.

Oblivious, the reed begins to write again — and Tyn brightens. The southern job in Amydlatn that she was paid to run has succeeded by accident: their benefactors confirm the *target* did not survive, the Wind's Pleasure is reported lost with all hands, Jasnah Kholin is dead. The patrons no longer need the information they had hoped to recover; they have found what they wanted about *a city they have been researching* elsewhere. Tyn says aloud, satisfied, that she will be paid after all. Shallan reads what she has just read — *Tyn was the contract that killed Jasnah* — and only now do the pieces line up. Tyn, distracted, mentions she would have gone herself but cannot stomach ships.

The reed keeps writing. *You asked after House Davar in Jah Keved. Jasnah, before leaving Kharbranth, took a new ward — a girl named Shallan. Red hair. Pale skin.* Both women look up at the same instant. *Ah, Damnation,* Tyn says, and slams Shallan face-first into the rug, plants a boot on her back, kneels on her, and demands again and again whether Jasnah lived. *No,* Shallan whispers, weeping. Tyn admits she had her men clear the area around the tent earlier, expecting that Shallan might try to alert the deserters about the bounty.

A voice — Jasnah's voice, perfect — speaks from beyond the canvas: *The ship, you may have noticed, has two very fine cabins which I hired out for us at no small expense.* Tyn leaps up, cursing. It is Pattern mimicking, and the noise outside is rising. Shallan scrambles for the tent wall and Tyn yanks her back by the leg. A primal panic surges in her — her father's violence, a family falling apart, the years of being powerless — and she fights back, clawing and scratching, leaving four bloody rips across Tyn's cheek before Tyn's fist in her stomach drops her. Tyn growls that this is a mess, that she will have to invite Vathah here and pin the killing on him, and draws her sword. She is genuinely sorry, she says; Shallan would have been good at the trade. She had fooled her.

Shallan begins counting heartbeats; ten is far too many. She breathes in the spheres in her sleeve as a raging tempest, thrusts out a hand, and a rippling image of herself as a court woman stands briefly between them. Tyn waves the sword through the projection and watches it smoke away. *So I'm going mad,* she says. *Hearing voices. Seeing things. I guess part of me doesn't want to do this.* She advances. Shallan thrusts out both hands; mist writhes between them; a brilliantly silver Blade forms — Pattern in weapon-shape — and spears Tyn through the chest. Tyn's eyes burn out in her skull. Her corpse slides off the metal and crumples at Shallan's feet. *Difficult things,* Shallan growls. *Yes. I believe I told you. I've learned that lesson already. Thank you.*

The tent flap rips open. Vathah, Gaz and Red stand at the entrance with bloodied weapons, having cut their way through Tyn's cordon. They stare at the smoking sockets on the ground and at the silvery Blade in Shallan's hand. Vathah whispers that she could have killed every one of them and the bandits too that first night, on her own. Red says they heard a voice telling them to come — *was it the voice of the Almighty?* Vathah asks. *It was my spren. That is all you need know.* She orders the tent searched and any document brought to her, claiming after a fashion that Tyn had been hired to assassinate her. She keeps the Blade in her hand longer than she needs to because she needs something to hold to, hating it, then dismisses it and tells the men not to speak of what they saw. She knows the promise will not hold for long; rumors about a woman with a Shardblade always spread.

Sitting alone at the table, she changes the reed's sheet and lets Tyn's distant accomplice resume. *Your benefactors on the Amydlatn job wish to meet. The Ghostbloods have something else for you to do. Would you like me to arrange a meeting in the warcamps?* The same people who killed Jasnah, who threaten her brothers, are hunting Urithiru from another angle now. She switches the fabrial's setting and writes one word in reply. *Yes.* Part Two ends.