"Yes, Brightness! Thank you."

Jasnah waved in dismissal and Shallan grabbed her portfolio and hastened from the alcove. She hadn't had any free time since the day she'd gone sketching on her own in the gardens. She'd been gently chided for that; Jasnah had left her in her rooms to rest, not go out sketching.

Shallan waited impatiently as the parshman porters lowered her lift to the Veil's groundfloor, then hurried out into the cavernous central hall. A long walk later, she approached the guest quarters, nodding to the master-servants who served there. Half guards, half concierges, they monitored who entered and left.

She used her thick brass key to unlock the door to Jasnah's rooms, then slipped inside and locked the door behind her. The small sitting chamber-furnished with a rug and two chairs beside the hearth-was lit by topazes. The table still contained a half-full cup of orange wine from Jasnah's late research the night before, along with a few crumbs of bread on a plate.

Shallan hurried to her own chamber, then shut the door and took the Soulcaster out of her safepouch. The warm glow of the gemstones bathed her face in white and red light. They were large enough-and therefore bright enough-that it was hard to look at them directly. Each would be worth ten or twenty broams.

She'd been forced to hide them outside in the recent highstorm to infuse them, and that had been its own source of anxiety. She took a deep breath, then knelt and slid a small wooden stick from under the bed. A week and a half of practice, and she still hadn't managed to make the Soulcaster do…well, anything at all. She'd tried tapping the gems, twisting them, shaking her hand, and flexing her hand in exact mimicry of Jasnah. She'd studied picture after picture she'd drawn of the process. She tried speaking, concentrating, and even begging.

However, she'd found a book the day before that had offered what seemed like a useful tip. It claimed that humming, of all things, could make a Soulcasting more effective. It was just a passing reference, but it was more than she'd found anywhere else. She sat down on her bed and forced herself to concentrate. She closed her eyes, holding the stick, imagining it transforming into quartz. Then she began humming.

Nothing happened. She kept on humming though, trying different notes, concentrating as hard as she could. She kept her attention on the task for a good half hour, but eventually her mind began to wander. A new worry began to nibble at her. Jasnah was one of the most brilliant, insightful scholars in the world. She'd put the Soulcaster out where it could be taken. Had she intentionally duped Shallan with a fake?

It seemed an awful lot of trouble to go through. Why not just spring the trap and reveal Shallan as a thief? The fact that she couldn't get the Soulcaster to work left her straining plausibility for explanations.

She stopped humming and opened her eyes. The stick had not changed. So much for that tip, she thought, setting the stick aside with a sigh. She'd been so hopeful.

She lay back on the bed, resting, staring up at the brown stone ceiling, cut-like the rest of the Conclave-directly out of the mountain. Here, the stone had been left intentionally rough, evoking the roof of a cave. It was quite beautiful in a subtle way she'd never noticed before, the colors and contours of the rock rippling like a disturbed pond.

She took a sheet from her portfolio and began to sketch the rock patterns. One sketch to calm her, and then she would get back to the Soulcaster. Perhaps she should try it on her other hand again.

She couldn't capture the colors of the strata, not in charcoal, but she could record the fascinating way the strata wove together. Like a work of art. Had some stoneworker cut this ceiling intentionally, crafting this subtle creation, or was it an accident of nature? She smiled, imagining some overworked stonecutter noticing the beautiful grain of the rock and deciding to form a wave pattern for his own personal wonder and sense of beauty.

"What are you?"

Shallan yelped, sitting up, sketchpad bouncing free of her lap. Someone had whispered those words. She'd heard them distinctly!

"Who is there?" she asked.

Silence.

"Who's there!" she said more loudly, her heart beating quickly.

Something sounded outside her door, from the sitting room. Shallan jumped, hiding the hand wearing the Soulcaster under a pillow as the door creaked open, revealing a wizened palace maid, darkeyed and dressed in a white and black uniform.

"Oh dear!" the woman exclaimed. "I had no idea you were here, Brightness." She bowed low.

A palace maid. Here to clean the room, an everyday occurrence. Focused on her meditation, Shallan hadn't heard her enter. "Why did you speak to me?"

"Speak to you, Brightness?"

"You…" No, the voice had been a whisper, and it had quite distinctly come from inside Shallan's room. It couldn't have been the maid.

She shivered and glanced about. But that was foolish. The tiny room was easily inspected. There were no Voidbringers hiding in the corners or under her bed.

What, then, had she heard? Noises from the woman cleaning, obviously. Shallan's mind had just interpreted those random sounds as words.

Forcing herself to relax, Shallan looked out past the maid into the sitting room. The woman had cleaned up the wineglass and crumbs. A broom leaned against the wall. In addition, Jasnah's door was cracked open. "Were you in Brightness Jasnah's room?" Shallan demanded.

"Yes, Brightness," the woman said. "Tidying up the desk, making the bed-"

"Brightness Jasnah does not like people entering her room. The maids have been told not to clean in there." The king had promised that his maids were very carefully chosen, and there had never been issues of theft, but Jasnah still insisted that none enter her bedchamber.

The woman paled. "I'm sorry, Brightness. I didn't hear! I wasn't told-"

"Hush, it's all right," Shallan said. "You'll want to go tell her what you've done. She always notices if her things were moved. It will be better for you if you go to her and explain."

"Y-Yes, Brightness." The woman bowed again.

"In fact," Shallan said, something occurring to her. "You should go now. No point putting it off."

The elderly maid sighed. "Yes, of course, Brightness." She withdrew. A few seconds later, the outside door closed and locked.

Shallan leapt up, pulling off the Soulcaster and stuffing it back in her safepouch. She hurried outside, heart thumping, the strange voice forgotten as she seized the opportunity to look into Jasnah's room. It was unlikely that Shallan would discover anything useful about the Soulcaster, but she couldn't pass up the chance-not with the maid to blame for moving things.

She felt only a glimmer of guilt for this. She'd already stolen from Jasnah. Compared with that, poking through her room was nothing.

The bedroom was larger than Shallan's, though it still felt cramped because of the unavoidable lack of windows. Jasnah's bed, a four-poster monstrosity, took up half the space. The vanity was against the far wall, and beside it the dressing table from which Shallan had originally stolen the Soulcaster. Other than a dresser, the only other thing in the room was the desk, books piled high on the left side.

Shallan never got a chance to look at Jasnah's notebooks. Might she, perhaps, have taken notes on the Soulcaster? Shallan sat at the desk, hurriedly pulling open the top drawer and poking through the brushpens, charcoal pencils, and sheets of paper. All were organized neatly, and the paper was blank. The bottom right drawer held ink and empty notebooks. The bottom left drawer had a small collection of reference books.

That left the books on the top of the table. Jasnah would have the majority of her notebooks with her as she worked. But…yes, there were still a few here. Heart fluttering, Shallan gathered up the three thin volumes and set them before her.