"Wind and Truth" by Brandon Sanderson

[tirepanted3]

Surprisingly detailed USB scene for a mainstream novel - in this case, the newest book in Sanderson's popular Stormlight Archive series. In this scene, the main heroine infiltrates a villains' hideout by mugging a guard for her uniform.

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Chapter 23: Compromise

The drizzle had fully committed to rain by the time Radiant’s team moved into position. If those last few Ghostbloods were coming to the meeting, they would arrive soon. And if there weren’t more coming… well, an enemy conference was likely underway, making it even more important that Radiant get into that hideout.

So, she helped Red wheel a small tool cart down the roadway, past rainspren like candles, each with a single eye on the top. They reached an intersection right in front of the Ghostblood hideout. She found the Ghostbloods setting up here to be impressively blatant. When others made hideouts in grimy corners of the worst parts of a city, they chose the middle of a storming military camp. Some people higher in the Alethi military must be in Mraize’s pocket. She’d have work to do uncovering them all.

Once in position, she and Red began to set up a small pavilion in the rain. They’d dropped their Lightweavings, relying on hooded cloaks to mask their faces, in case that sand could reveal them. Soon someone from the Ghostbloods—as expected—came to check on them.

It wasn’t the masked guard. Damnation. Radiant kept calm and allowed Red to handle it while she hung back, fiddling with their tools. The guard she wanted—the one with the mask—emerged from the shadowed porch but did not approach.

“Hey,” the other Ghostblood said as he arrived. “What’s this?” His name was Shade, a man with Horneater blood, though he looked more Alethi despite the forked beard. She thought the masked woman had fetched him as they were setting up.

“We’re supposed to level this intersection,” Red said. He noted Shade’s Alethi uniform. “I have the orders somewhere, Sergeant.”

“You’re supposed to work in the rain?” Shade demanded.

“Yeah. Storming unfair.” Red thumbed at the little pavilion. “At least we’ve got that. If you want to take it up with the camp operations commander, I wouldn’t mind a little time off.”

Shade picked through the tools, then poked around in the pavilion—while the masked guard lurked by the building. Adolin’s sessions with Radiant let her spot the readiness of a trained soldier: the stance, the alert attention.

Calm, careful, Radiant rearranged the tools after Shade finished poking through them. He was built like a boulder, so it would be easy to assume he was the more dangerous, but he didn’t have the casual grace the masked woman did. Shade stepped back in thought, rain dripping down his beard. He wouldn’t want to draw attention, but he also wouldn’t want random workers so close to their base, maybe hearing things they shouldn’t.

“Pack up and work somewhere else,” he told Red. “For at least a couple more hours. You don’t need authorization; just tell them I gave the orders.”

Red glanced at Radiant, and—hood pulled tight—she nodded.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Red said with a sigh.

The two of them slowly began disassembling the pavilion. Shade returned to the masked guard and they exchanged whispers. Then the guard fell into position by the door while Shade slipped inside, passing a large jar of the black sand that had been tied hanging outside.

“That’s a problem,” Red whispered over the sound of beating rain. “Did you catch their exchange?”

“Mmm…” Pattern said from Radiant’s coat. “He said, ‘I want them gone by the time Aika and Jezinor get here.’ And the woman said, ‘Ya.’ ”

“We were supposed to lure out the short one,” Red said. “We need that mask.”

“I’ll go in close and deal with her,” Radiant said.

“You sure?” Red asked. “What if she makes noise?”

“I’ll be quick,” she replied, noting Gaz as he came trotting up to them.

“My part’s done,” Gaz said. “Why are we taking the pavilion down?”

“Get angry about it,” Radiant said, with a nudge from Veil. “Demand to know who gave these orders. Pretend you’re our foreman.”

Gaz launched into it with gusto, complaining loudly that they didn’t have authorization to set up anywhere else. He did well enough he even drew a few angerspren. Perfect. Shallan and Red set up the pavilion again—they’d barely started disassembling it—while Gaz demanded to speak to the sergeant who had changed their orders. With that as an excuse, Radiant told Pattern to wait behind, then walked over to the building. She stepped out of the rain into the covered porch, and hesitated by the door.

The guard emerged from the shadows, mask peeking from the front of her hood. As on Iyatil, it made the woman seem… inhuman. Painted wood, without carvings of facial features—hiding all except those eyes. Locked on to her.

“Oh!” Radiant said. “Sorry. But, um, our foreman wants to talk to you. Um. It’s… um. Sorry…”

The guard took her by the arm. Radiant twisted and whipped up her other hand—pushing a small stiletto toward the guard’s throat. The enemy caught it, her eyes narrowing, then grunted and shoved Radiant backward, trying to trip her.

A year training with Adolin gave Radiant some unexpected grit. She resisted the shove and kept her stance, locking eyes with the masked creature.

Now, she ordered her armor.

In a blink, the armor formed. Not around her, but around the guard, freezing her in place as it had Red earlier. Radiant caught a glimpse of a pair of shocked eyes as the helmet encased the woman’s face.

Shallan! the creationspren said, eager.

“Just keep her mouth closed,” she said. “Like the drawing Shallan did for you. Right?”

Shallan! they replied in a chorus. The only sound from the guard was muffled exertion, so hopefully the helmet plan was working. Radiant thought they’d explained it well enough to the creationspren: a mechanism that held the jaw shut by making the helmet tighter at the bottom, below the mask.

She checked the sand in the hanging jar. Still black, as she’d hoped. They’d said that it took an intelligent spren to activate the stuff—which made sense, otherwise it would be useless, turning white in warning whenever someone got anxious. Her Plate spren hadn’t affected it even when forming.

Red and Gaz came jogging up. “It worked,” Radiant whispered, her heart thumping from the exchange.

Gaz nodded toward the woman’s motionless left hand, raising a knife toward Radiant—the gauntlet had simply formed around it, letting the blade peek out. She’d missed that entirely. A good warning. A year of practice had given her some skill, but it was a weak substitute for a lifetime of battle experience.

“Eh,” Red whispered, wheeling over the cart, “she could have healed from it.”

“And what would that have done to the sand?” Gaz whispered, gesturing toward the glass jar. “We’re not sure if a healing will activate it or not. If so, the first person who stepped through that door would have known a Radiant had been here.” He inspected the armor closer, locked down as it was. “Yet this did work. I can barely hear her.”

The captive woman didn’t even tremble from struggling to escape. Together, they managed to tip her into the two-wheeled cart, throw a tarp over her, then wheel it into their small pavilion. Had any guards on the walls seen? Darcira and the strike team were poised to intercept any who came running, but still she worried.

Move quickly, Shallan thought, taking over from Radiant. She didn’t want the last few Ghostbloods to arrive at the door and find the guard missing.

Gaz put his arms around the head of the armored woman to be in position. He nodded.

Shallan touched the armor. Could you dismiss just the helmet please? she asked.

Shallan! the armor said. The helmet vanished in a puff of Stormlight. Gaz snapped his arms around the woman’s neck, executing a perfect choke hold. Shallan needed Radiant again for a moment while watching the struggling woman be strangled, her eyes bulging, her skin going a deep red around the mask.

Gaz didn’t kill her, though he held on longer than Radiant thought necessary. He’d explained earlier: assuming your attacker didn’t want to kill you, the best way to escape a choke hold was to pretend to fall unconscious early. So Gaz ignored the struggles, the painspren, the frantic eyes, the sudden limpness and counted to himself softly.

She’d never asked how he knew this so well.

Gaz nodded, and Shallan dismissed the armor, then began stripping to her undergarments while the two other Lightweavers efficiently undressed the guard, then bound and gagged her. Gaz had warned Shallan that people usually didn’t stay unconscious for long after being choked out. Indeed, the guard was stirring as Shallan finished re-dressing, wearing the woman’s clothing. Utilitarian brown leathers that weren’t particularly formfitting, along with a hooded cloak and a frightening number of knives strapped across her person.

Though Shallan was accustomed to being short compared to the Alethi, she was a tad taller than this offworlder. Close enough, hopefully. She already had her hair under a wig, but her options had been limited, so she was distressed to notice that the guard had closer-cropped hair than the pictures had depicted. Storms. She’d cut her hair, which meant Shallan would have to leave the hood up indoors. Would that seem odd?

Red knelt beside the figure, then—appearing more unnerved by this than stripping a captive—tried to figure out how to remove the mask. Turned out it was bound in place by two cords, which he undid, and pulled the red-orange mask free. Shallan had expected it to stick—she’d always felt that Iyatil had worn hers so long that the skin had grown over it. That proved an incorrect assumption; the mask was obviously removed and cleaned often, but it was also worn so continuously that it left imprints on the guard’s face.

Her skin was as pale as Shallan’s, and without the mask she seemed far less dangerous. Though she was probably in her middle years, her face was smooth, almost childlike.

Stop that, Shallan thought, taking the mask from Red. You need to stop comparing all Shin people to children. It was a bad habit. Besides, this woman wasn’t even Shin—she was an offworlder who just happened to look Shin.

Shallan tied on the mask and pulled up her hood. The mask covered her full face, and was peaked slightly at the center, sloped at the sides. It was wide enough that her ears would barely be visible. Aside from the eyeholes, it had two holes near the nose for breathing, and a small portion was missing for the mouth—like a bite had been taken out of it at the chin.

Red nodded. “Looks pretty good.”

“I don’t know,” Gaz replied, scratching his cheek. “It would fool a casual passerby. But Ghostbloods?”

Shallan fell into an imitation of the woman’s stance. Dangerous, ready. Stepping with the kind of casual grace that took years to perfect. She narrowed her eyes behind the mask, mimicking the woman’s expression—conveying it through posture.

Well done, Veil thought.

Red glanced at Gaz, cocking an eyebrow.

“All right, fine,” Gaz said. “I still find it creepy how she can do things like that. Just don’t take the hood off. The hair is wrong.”

A moment later, Darcira ducked into the pavilion. “You’re not in place yet?”

“Going now,” Shallan said in a whisper, as it was easier to mask her voice that way.

“Did you find your watchpost?” Darcira said to Gaz.

“Yeah,” he said. “Neutralized them fast enough to show up here and help. What took you so long?”

“Had to go and position the strike team, if you forgot,” Darcira said. “What do we do if there were more than two observation posts watching the base?”

None of them could answer that, but they’d spotted only two in their sweep of the area. They had to trust in their skills. Shallan slipped one of her team’s spanreeds into her sleeve, glanced at Pattern—dimpling the wood of the cart, humming to himself nervously—then waved goodbye. She left them, instead falling into place by the alcove. She maintained the same posture and stance as before. Sticking to shadows. Not speaking.

You can do this, Veil whispered.

Her heart still thrummed like listener war drums. She was going to enter the enemy stronghold alone—and could not use her powers. But it was the only way. What did you do when there was a guard watching for you?

You became the guard.

Not five minutes later, Shallan spotted two people trotting up to the safehouse. Aika and Jezinor, a pair of Thaylen traders. They’d arrived with Queen Fen’s retinue, which explained why they were some of the last. They’d needed to find an excuse to come to the Shattered Plains.

Shallan’s nervousness faded as she made a good show of checking their features with her hands, then holding the glass jar of sand up to each one. Neither seemed to notice anything off. She knocked on the door, as she’d seen done before. Shade opened it and waved the other two in. Shallan slipped in herself, and he held the door open for her. They’d be trusting their watchposts to send spanreed warnings if anything approached the safehouse. Posting a guard outside for too long risked drawing attention.

This was it. Veil was right, she could do this. Unless they asked her to say too much. Unless there was a third watchpost they hadn’t found. Unless her disguise failed.

It was too late now. She had walked confidently straight into the den. Now she either proved to be a predator herself, or she got eaten.

[rufusluciusivan]

Quite detailed indeed, thanks for sharing. Only read the first two books of Stormlight Archives, but I really enjoyed the Mistborn trilogy. It's always a pleasure to discover a USB-related scenes in mainstream works I have some knowledge of.