POV: shallan
Summary
Kaladin lies on his bench in the Kholin gaol, ignoring his afternoon bowl of tallew. He thinks of the whitespine Shallan showed him in the menagerie — a caged predator wilting in confinement — and prays not to come out of this place as that animal. He has stopped caring about the days. Old slave habits surface, the ones that worry him: stop caring, do not think, do not hope. He throws himself at the bars, jams an arm between them, reaches for a lamp sphere just out of his fingertips, and asks the Almighty not to let the dark take him again. The Light resists and then gives, streaming into him in a thin bright thread. He paces with the storm pulsing under his skin and finds Syl perched on the bars like a child on a swing. She tells him he is going dark — worse than the cage — then is distracted by a red-violet cremling and goes to inspect its shell. The watch passes and the guard finds the dun sphere on a check, shakes his head, and replaces it. The dread, for a moment, has eased.
In the monastery, Shallan has nowhere to go. Amaram is coming through the door. She spits out her remaining Stormlight and wraps herself in the simplest disguise she can think of — pure black, clothes, skin, hat, hair — and presses herself into the back corner. The Lightweaving swallows the trails of Stormlight that would normally rise off her. Amaram enters with a young darkeyed Alethi in Kholin livery — Bordin — pockets a key behind them, and crosses to the bed. He kneels, sets a hand on the madman's shoulder, asks him to turn so he can see his face.
Amaram kneels at the bedside, names the madman beautiful, names him true on all ten counts, addresses Gavilar by name and tells him their long project has at last succeeded. He asks the Great Prince for the same words once again. The madman recites the litany Shallan has just written down. Amaram turns. Bordin confirms — the litany every day, the Honorblades only once. A cache of them. Amaram swears he will not press for them again in here; he tells the Great Prince he will recover the treasures, that the Blades will be put to good use. Bordin presses him to leave at once — if the madman is overheard speaking of the place, others will find it empty. Amaram strides out; Bordin lingers a moment, then follows and clicks the door shut.
Shallan sags to the floor. She has fallen, she tells Pattern, into a sea that is not water and does not know how to swim in it. She paints Veil back over herself, walks the hallway, apologizes to the ardents for getting lost looking for water, and asks for an escort to her palanquin. She hugs Iyatil in farewell and presses the transcribed litany into her gloved hand, along with a verbal account of Amaram's visit and a promise of a full spanreed report tonight. Iyatil asks who Veil really is — she catches her at a stakeout, loses her in the streets, draws like nothing Mraize has seen, and now this. Shallan tells her she seeks the truth wherever it sits and whoever holds it, then pulls away.
That night, after sending in the full report with promised drawings of the madman, Amaram and Bordin, a single message comes back from Mraize: he writes that truth, in his trade, is more often a destroyer than a savior — but she has proven herself. The rest of the Ghostbloods have been told not to touch her; she is required to take a specific tattoo somewhere on her person, sketch to follow, to be shown when they next meet. She has been admitted to the Ghostbloods.