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Shallan wakes in her new white suite at Sebarial's manor after dark, still in the clothes she arrived in, to Pattern humming on the comforter beside her, lace-like in the bedspread weave. The shades have been drawn for her. In the sitting room sweet-paste flatbread and dipping sauces wait on a tray under a covered lid; a note explains that Vathah and her soldiers have been quartered in a nearby tenement and her five rescued slaves folded into the manor staff. She sits down ravenous and asks Pattern to remind her in the morning to thank Palona, who is divine. *Mmm. No. I think she is . . . exaggeration?* He has been catching on quickly. He asks her, earnestly, to explain *taste*: she fumbles toward *like colour, but you see with your mouth*, apologises for the metaphor, and is told off for saying she is *on* her stomach when she means *in* it — *those are some of the best lies.* She tells him that sometimes he is about as intelligible as a Bavlander quoting ancient Vorin poetry.

She opens her first trunk to unpack and finds Tyn's spanreed blinking red. She sets the board up, places the reed, and waits — the operator in Tashikk has stepped away. Sorting through Tyn's saved exchanges she notes that the way Tyn talks to her handler is not the tone of a thief writing to a one-off employer; Tyn writes about *getting in good* and *moving up* within the Ghostbloods. Pattern interrupts her — *pattern, in the words.* He has found a quintet-letter authentication code woven through the opening words of each message: the handler opens with three first-words covering three letters of a quintet, Tyn's first two words give back the matching two. She blushes; she would have outed herself the moment the reed wrote and she answered without it. She cannot do this. She has to.

She opens her sketchbook and lets her fingers move on their own. She needs to be older but not too much older. Darkeyed, so as not to be remarked upon — to the right people she can imply use of eyedrops. Long hair, but black instead of red. Same height and build, a more worn face like Tyn's, a scar across the chin, more angular than pretty, *straightforward*. She breathes in Stormlight from the lamp and finishes in a rush. She breathes the Light back out; it twists around her; her vision clouds and clears. The lock of hair on her shoulder is black. The mirror in the washroom returns a tan-skinned, dark-eyed stranger with the face she just drew — a full transformation, not the small scuff-corrections she has managed before. *Whatever we imagine,* Pattern says approvingly from the wall. *Or whatever you can imagine. I am not good with what is not. But I like the taste of it.* He sounds very pleased with himself.

Something is off. She finds the side of the false nose has a fuzzy gap where she had not finished the line on the sketch; close up it looks like a strange scar, but it offends her artistic sense. She presses through the image and finds her own real nose underneath; her fingers fuzz the Stormlight like blown smoke and the image snaps back when she pulls them away. Pattern tells her the disguise feeds on Light. Her safepouch spheres are all dun from the day before; she swaps a fresh sphere from the wall lamp into her fist and one of the dun ones into the lamp, and resolves to keep an infused stock on her at all times.

The reed begins to write. *I think some information I have today will work.* The first words match the code; she answers *But you said that last time*, careful that her first two words give the matching letters back, and blesses the hours Tyn had made her spend on forgery — she can now imitate Tyn's sloppier hand convincingly. *You'll like this. They want to meet. Tonight, Tyn.* The clock reads half past first night bell. The handler is insistent because Jasnah's ward arrived in the warcamps today; if Tyn refuses tonight it might mean a severing of ties. *I thought I had Jasnah's ward captive,* Shallan writes back in Tyn's tone, *but the girl betrayed me. I'm not well. I will send my apprentice.* *Another one, Tyn? After what happened with Si?* The handler doubts the Ghostbloods will accept. They don't have a choice, Shallan writes; she does not trust herself yet to Lightweave a specific other person's face. After a pause across half the world the handler returns: they will accept. The meeting is in a tenement in Sebarial's own warcamp — one of the few with gates open all night — at Salas's moonheight, twenty-five minutes away. A sketch map follows.

She dresses in Tyn's loose brown trousers, a white buttoned shirt, a thin glove over her safehand (she feels naked with the hand only gloved instead of sleeved, but darkeyed plantation women back home dress like this), and Tyn's stiff white coat tied at the waist with a thick hogshide belt. Her false face blushes when she does and wrinkles its nose when she wrinkles hers, which is going to make hiding embarrassment harder. She tops the outfit with Bluth's folded white hat to throw shadow over the imperfect nose; on her it looks silly, but she is no judge in this skin. Tyn's white coat that looked imposing on Tyn makes Shallan feel like a girl from rural Jah Keved playing dress-up. She summons Jasnah's old line — *authority is mere vapors, an illusion. I can create that illusion . . . as can you.* She fills her pocket with infused spheres from the room's lamps, pulls open the ground-floor window, and climbs out into the night with Pattern.