Storms, did she dare try to double-cross him? Did she really have the experience, or the training, to attempt something like that?
“Hey, Veil,” Vathah said as they prepped for another game. “What do you think? Has the brightness already forgotten about us again?”
Veil shook herself out of her thoughts. “Maybe. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with you lot.”
“She’s not the first,” Red said—he was the next mink, and carefully arranged his tiles in a specific order, facedown. “I mean, it’s not like we’re real soldiers.”
“Our crimes are forgiven,” Gaz said with a grunt, squinting his single eye at the seed tile that Red turned over. “But forgiven ain’t forgotten. No military will take us on, and I don’t blame them. I’m just glad those storming bridgemen haven’t strung me up by my toes.”
“Bridgemen?” Veil asked.
“He’s got a history with them,” Vathah noted.
“I used to be their storming sergeant,” Gaz said. “Did everything I could to get them to run those bridges faster. Nobody likes their sergeant though.”
“I’m sure you were the perfect sergeant,” Red said with a grin. “I’ll bet you really looked out for them, Gaz.”
“Shut your cremhole,” Gaz grumbled. “Though I do wonder. If I’d been a little less hard on them, do you think maybe I’d be out on that plateau right now, practicing like the lot of them do? Learning to fly…”
“You think you could be a Knight Radiant, Gaz?” Vathah said, chuckling.
“No. No, I guess I don’t.” He eyed Veil. “Veil, you tell the brightness. We ain’t good men. Good men, they’ll find something useful to do with their time. We, on the other hand, might do the opposite.”
“The opposite?” Zendid said from the next table over, where a few of the others continued to drink. “Opposite of useful? I think we’re already there, Gaz. And we’ve been there forever.”
“Not me,” Glurv said. “I’ve got a medal.”
“I mean,” Gaz said, “we might get into trouble. I liked being useful. Reminded me of back when I first joined up. You tell her, Veil. Tell her to give us something to do other than gambling and drinking. Because to be honest, I ain’t very good at either one.”
Veil nodded slowly. A washwoman idled by, messing with a sack of laundry. Veil tapped her finger on her cup. Then she stood and seized the washwoman by the dress and hauled her backward. The woman shouted, dropping her pile of clothing as she stumbled, nearly falling.
Veil shoved her hand into the woman’s hair, pushing away the wig of mottled brown and black. Underneath, the woman’s hair was pure Alethi black, and she wore ashes on her cheeks, as if she’d been doing hard labor.
“You!” Veil said. This was the woman from the tavern at All’s Alley. What had her name been? Ishnah?
Several nearby soldiers had leapt up with alarmed expressions at the woman’s outcry. Every one of those is a soldier from Dalinar’s army, Veil noted, suppressing a roll of her eyes. Kholin troops did have a habit of assuming that nobody could take care of themselves.
“Sit,” Veil said, pointing at the table. Red hastily pulled up another chair.
Ishnah settled herself, holding the wig to her chest. She blushed deeply, but maintained some measure of poise, meeting the eyes of Vathah and his men.
“You are getting to be an annoyance, woman,” Veil said, sitting.
“Why do you assume I’m here because of you?” Ishnah said. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“You showed an unhealthy fascination with my associates. Now I find you in disguise, eavesdropping on my conversations?”
Ishnah raised her chin. “Maybe I’m just trying to prove myself to you.”
“With a disguise I saw through the moment I glanced at you?”
“You didn’t catch me last time,” Ishnah said.
Last time?
“You talked about where to get Horneater lager,” Ishnah said. “Red insisted it was nasty. Gaz loves it.”
“Storms. How long have you been spying on me?”
“Not long,” Ishnah said quickly, in direct contradiction to what she’d just said. “But I can assure you, promise it, that I’ll be more valuable to you than these rancid buffoons. Please, at least let me try.”
“Buffoons?” Gaz said.
“Rancid?” Shob said. “Oh, that’s just moi boils, miss.”
“Walk with me,” Veil said, standing up. She strode away from the table.
Ishnah scrambled to her feet and followed. “I wasn’t really trying to spy on you. But how else was I—”
“Quiet,” Veil said. She stopped at the doorway to the barracks, far enough from her men that they couldn’t hear. She folded her arms, leaning against the wall by the door and looking back at them.
Shallan had trouble with follow-through. She had good intentions and grand plans, but she got diverted too easily by new problems, new adventures. Fortunately, Veil could pick up a few of those loose threads.
These men had proven that they were loyal, and they wanted to be useful. A woman could be given much less than that to work with.
“The disguise was well done,” she said to Ishnah. “Next time, rough up your freehand some more. The fingers gave you away; they aren’t the fingers of a laborer.”
Ishnah blushed, balling her freehand into a fist.
“Tell me what you can do, and why I should care,” Veil said. “You have two minutes.”
“I…” Ishnah took a deep breath. “I was trained as a spy for House Hamaradin. In Vamah’s court? I know information gathering, message coding, observation techniques, and how to search a room without revealing what I’ve done.”
“So? If you’re so useful, what happened?”
“Your people happened. The Ghostbloods. I’d heard of them, whispered of by Brightlady Hamaradin. She crossed them somehow, and then…” She shrugged. “She ended up dead, and everyone thought it might have been one of us who did it. I fled and ended up in the underground, working for a petty gang of thieves. But I could be so much more. Let me prove it to you.”
Veil crossed her arms. A spy. That could be useful. Truth was, Veil herself didn’t have much actual training—only what Tyn had showed her and what she’d learned on her own. If she was going to dance with the Ghostbloods, she’d need to be better. Right now, she didn’t even know what it was she didn’t know.
Could she get some of that from Ishnah? Somehow get some training without revealing that Veil wasn’t as skilled as she pretended to be?
An idea began to take form. She didn’t trust this woman, but then she didn’t need to. And if her former brightlady really had been killed by the Ghostbloods, perhaps there was a secret to learn there.
“I have some important infiltrations planned,” Veil said. “Missions where I need to gather information of a sensitive nature.”
“I can help!” Ishnah said.
“What I really need is a support team, so I don’t have to go in alone.”
“I can find people for you! Experts.”