“Brightness?” a young male master-servant said, approaching. “What do you need?”
“A new sense of perspective, apparently,” Shallan said absently. “How…”
“This room is called the Veil,” the servant explained softly. “That which comes before the Palanaeum itself. Both were here when the city was founded. Some think these chambers might have been cut by the Dawnsingers themselves.”
“Where are the books?”
“The Palanaeum proper is this way.” The servant gestured, leading her to a set of doors on the other side of the room. Through them, she entered a smaller chamber that was partitioned with walls of thick crystal. Shallan approached the nearest one, feeling it. The crystal’s surface was rough like hewn rock.
“Soulcast?” she asked.
The servant nodded. Behind him, another servant passed leading an elderly ardent. Like most ardents, the aged man had a shaved head and a long beard. His simple grey robes were tied with a brown sash. The servant led him around a corner, and Shallan could vaguely make out their shapes on the other side, shadows swimming through the crystal.
She took a step forward, but her servant cleared his throat. “I will need your chit of admittance, Brightness.”
“How much does one cost?” Shallan asked hesitantly.
“A thousand sapphire broams.”
“So much?”
“The king’s many hospitals require much upkeep,” the man said apologetically. “The only things Kharbranth has to sell are fish, bells, and information. The first two are hardly unique to us. But the third… well, the Palanaeum has the finest collection of tomes and scrolls on Roshar. More, even, than the Holy Enclave in Valath. At last count, there were over seven hundred thousand separate texts in our archive.”
Her father had owned exactly eighty-seven books. Shallan had read them all several times over. How much could be contained in seven hundred thousand books? The weight of that much information dazzled her. She found herself hungering to look through those hidden shelves. She could spend months just reading their titles.
But no. Perhaps once she’d made certain her brothers were safe – once her house’s finances were restored – she could return. Perhaps.
She felt like she was starving, yet leaving a warm fruit pie uneaten. “Where might I wait?” she asked. “If someone I know is inside.”
“You may use one of the reading alcoves,” the servant said, relaxing. Perhaps he’d feared that she would make a scene. “No chit is required to sit in one. There are parshman porters who will raise you to the higher levels, if that is what you wish.”
“Thank you,” Shallan said, turning her back on the Palanaeum. She felt like a child again, locked in her room, not allowed to run through the gardens because of her father’s paranoid fears. “Does Brightness Jasnah have an alcove yet?”
“I can ask,” the servant said, leading the way back into the Veil, with its distant, unseen ceiling. He hurried off to speak with some others, leaving Shallan standing beside the doorway to the Palanaeum.
She could run in. Sneak through–
No. Her brothers teased her for being too timid, but it was not timidity that held her back. There would undoubtedly be guards; bursting in would not only be futile, it would ruin any chance she had of changing Jasnah’s mind.
Change Jasnah’s mind, prove herself. Considering it made her sick. She hated confrontation. During her youth, she’d felt like a piece of delicate crystalware, locked in a cabinet to be displayed but never touched. The only daughter, the last memory of Brightlord Davar’s beloved wife. It still felt odd to her that she been the one to take charge after… After the incident… After…
Memories attacked her. Nan Balat bruised, his coat torn. A long, silvery sword in her hand, sharp enough to cut stones as if they were water.
No, Shallan thought, her back to the stone wall, clutching her satchel. No. Don’t think of the past.
She sought solace in drawing, raising fingers to her satchel and reaching for her paper and pencils. The servant came back before she had a chance to get them out, however. “Brightness Jasnah Kholin has indeed asked that a reading alcove be set aside for her,” he said. “You may wait there for her, if you wish it.”
“I do,” Shallan said. “Thank you.”
The servant led her to a shadowed enclosure, inside of which four parshmen stood upon a sturdy wooden platform. The servant and Shallan stepped onto the platform, and the parshmen pulled ropes that were strung into a pulley above, raising the platform up the stone shaft. The only lights were broam spheres set at each corner of the lift’s ceiling. Amethysts, which had a soft violet light.
She needed a plan. Jasnah Kholin did not seem the type to change her mind easily. Shallan would have to surprise her, impress her.
They reached a level about forty feet or so off the ground, and the servant waved for the porters to stop. Shallan followed the master-servant down a dark hallway to one of the small balconies that extended out over the Veil. It was round, like a turret, and had a waist-high stone rim with a wooden railing above that. Other occupied alcoves glowed with different colors from the spheres being used to light them; the darkness of the huge space made them seem to hover in the air.
This alcove had a long, curving stone desk joined directly into the rim of the balcony. There was a single chair and a gobletlike crystal bowl. Shallan nodded in thanks to the servant, who withdrew, then she pulled out a handful of spheres and dropped them into the bowl, lighting the alcove.
She sighed, sitting down in the chair and laying her satchel on the desk. She undid the laces on her satchel, busying herself as she tried to think of something – anything – that would persuade Jasnah.
First, she decided, I need to clear my mind.
From her satchel she removed a sheaf of thick drawing paper, a set of charcoal pencils of different widths, some brushes and steel pens, ink, and watercolors. Finally, she took out her smaller notebook, bound in codex form, which contained the nature sketches she’d done during her weeks aboard the Wind’s pleasure.
These were simple things, really, but worth more to her than a chest full of spheres. She took a sheet off the stack, then selected a fine-pointed charcoal pencil, rolling it between her fingers. She closed her eyes and fixed an image in her mind: Kharbranth as she’d memorized it in that moment soon after landing on the docks. Waves surging against the wooden posts, a salty scent to the air, men climbing rigging calling one another with excitement. And the city itself, rising up the hillside, homes stacked atop homes, not a speck of land wasted. Bells, distant, tinkling softly in the air.
She opened her eyes and began to draw. Her fingers moved on their own, sketching broad lines first. The cracklike valley the city was situated in. The port. Here, squares to be homes, there a slash to mark a switchback of the grand roadway that led up to the Conclave. Slowly, bit by bit, she added detail. Shadows as windows. Lines to fill out the roadways. Hints of people and carts to show the chaos of the thoroughfares.
She had read of how sculptors worked. Many would take a blank stone block and work it into a vague shape first. Then, they’d work it over again, carving more detail with each pass. It was the same for her in drawing. Broad lines first, then some details, then more, then down to the finest of lines. She had no formal training in pencils; she simply did what felt right.
The city took shape beneath her fingers. She coaxed it free, line by line, scratch by scratch. What would she do without this? Tension bled from her body, as if released from her fingertips into the pencil.