The Way of Kings

  “I would win an inquest over that. Besides, as a surgeon, I am immune to most demands you could make.” It was true; men and their apprentices who served an essential function in towns were afforded special protection, even from lighteyes. The Vorin legal code of citizenship was complex enough that Kaladin still had difficulty understanding it.

  “Yes, you would win an inquest,” Roshone said. “You were so meticulous, preparing the exact right documents. You were the only one with Wistiow when he stamped them. Odd, that none of his clerks were there.”

  “Those clerks read him the documents.”

  “And then left the room.”

  “Because they were ordered to leave by Brightlord Wistiow. They have admitted this, I believe.”

  Roshone shrugged. “I don’t need to prove that you stole the spheres, surgeon. I simply have to continue doing as I have been. I know that your family eats scraps. How long will you continue to make them suffer for your pride?”

  “They won’t be intimidated. And neither will I.”

  “I’m not asking if you’re intimidated. I’m asking if you’re starving.”

  “Not by any means,” Lirin said, voice growing dry. “If we lack for something to eat, we can feast upon the attention you lavish upon us, Brightlord. We feel your eyes watching, hear your whispers to the townspeople. Judging from the degree of your concern with us, it would seem that you are the one who is intimidated.”

  Roshone fell still, skewer held limply in his hand, brilliant green eyes narrowed, lips pursed tight. In the dark, those eyes almost seemed to glow. Kal had to stop himself from cringing under the weight of that disapproving gaze. There was an air of command about lighteyes like Roshone.

  He’s not a real lighteyes! He’s a reject. I’ll see real ones eventually. Men of honor.

  Lirin held the gaze evenly. “Every month we resist is a blow to your authority. You can’t have me arrested, since I would win an inquest. You’ve tried to turn the other people against me, but they know—deep down—that they need me.”

  Roshone leaned forward. “I do not like your little town.”

  Lirin frowned at the odd response.

  “I do not like being treated like an exile,” Roshone continued. “I do not like living so far from anything—everything—important. And most of all, I do not like darkeyes who think themselves above their stations.”

  “I have trouble feeling sympathy for you.”

  Roshone sneered. He looked down at his meal, as if it had lost any flavor. “Very well. Let us make an…accommodation. I will take nine-tenths of the spheres. You can have the rest.”

  Kal stood up indignantly. “My father will never—”

  “Kal,” Lirin cut in. “I can speak for myself.”

  “Surely you won’t make a deal, though.”

  Lirin didn’t reply immediately. Finally, he said, “Go to the kitchens, Kal. Ask them if they have some food more to your tastes.”

  “Father, no—”

  “Go, son.” Lirin’s voice was firm.

  Was it true? After all of this, would his father simply capitulate? Kal felt his face grow red, and he fled the dining room. He knew the way to the kitchens. During his childhood, he’d often dined there with Laral.

  He left not because he was told to, but because he didn’t want his father or Roshone to see his emotions: chagrin at having stood to denounce Roshone when his father planned to make a deal, humiliation that his father would consider a deal, frustration at being banished. Kal was mortified to find himself crying. He passed a couple of Roshone’s house soldiers standing at the doorway, lit only by a very low-trimmed oil lamp on the wall. Their rough features were highlighted in amber hues.

  Kal hastened past them, turning a corner before pausing beside a plant stand, struggling with his emotions. The stand displayed an indoor vine-bud, one bred to remain open; a few conelike flowers climbed up from its vestigial shell. The lamp on the wall above it burned with a tiny, strangled light. These were the back rooms of the mansion, near the servant quarters, and spheres were not used for light here.

  Kal leaned back, breathing in and out. He felt like one of the ten fools—specifically Cabine, who acted like a child though he was adult. But what was he to think of Lirin’s actions?

  He wiped his eyes, then pushed his way through the swinging doors into the kitchens. Roshone still employed Wistiow’s chef. Barm was a tall, slender man with dark hair that he wore braided. He walked down the line of his kitchen counter, giving instructions to his various subchefs as a couple of parshmen walked in and out through the mansion’s back doors, carrying in crates of food. Barm carried a long metal spoon, which banged on a pot or pan hanging from the ceiling each time he gave an order.

  He barely spared Kal a brown-eyed glance, then told one of his servants to go fetch some flatbread and fruited tallew rice. A child’s meal. Kal felt even more embarrassed that Barm had known instantly why he had been sent to the kitchens.

  Kal walked to the dining nook to wait for the food. It was a whitewashed alcove with a slate-topped table. He sat down, elbows on the stone, head on his hands.

  Why did it make him so angry to think that his father might bargain away most of the spheres in exchange for safety? True, if that happened, there wouldn’t be enough to send Kal to Kharbranth. But he’d already decided to become a soldier. So it didn’t matter. Did it?

  I am going to join the army, Kal thought. I’ll run away, I’ll…

  Suddenly, that dream—that plan—seemed incredibly childish. It belonged to a boy who ought to eat fruited meals and deserved to be sent away when the men talked of important topics. For the first time, the thought of not training with the surgeons filled him with regret.

  The door into the kitchens banged open. Roshone’s son, Rillir, sauntered in, chatting with the person behind him. “…don’t know why Father insists on keeping everything so dreary around here all the time. Oil lamps in the hallways? Could he be any more provincial? It would do him some real good if I could get him out on a hunt or two. We might as well get some use out of being in this remote place.”

  Rillir noticed Kal sitting there, but passed over him as one might register the presence of a stool or a shelf for wine: noting it, but otherwise ignoring it.

  Kal’s own eyes were on the person who followed Rillir. Laral. Wistiow’s daughter.

  So much had changed. It had been so long, and seeing her brought up old emotions. Shame, excitement. Did she know that his parents had been hoping to marry him to her? Merely seeing her again almost flustered him completely. But no. His father could look Roshone in the eyes. He could do the same with her.

  Kal stood up and nodded to her. She glanced at him, and blushed faintly, walking in with an old nurse in tow—a chaperone.

  What had happened to the Laral he’d known, the girl with the loose yellow and black hair who liked climbing on rocks and running through fields? Now she was wrapped up in sleek yellow silk, a stylish lighteyed woman’s dress, her neatly coiffed hair dyed black to hide the blond. Her left hand was hidden modestly in her sleeve. Laral looked like a lighteyes.

  Wistiow’s wealth—what was left of it—had gone to her. And when Roshone had been given authority over Hearthstone and granted the mansion and surrounding lands, Highprince Sadeas had given Laral a dowry in compensation.

  “You,” Rillir said, nodding to Kal and speaking in a smooth, city accent. “Be a good lad and fetch us some supper. We’ll take it here in the nook.”

  “I’m not a kitchen servant.”

  “So?”

  Kal flushed.

  “If you’re expecting some kind of tip or reward for just fetching me a meal…”

  “I’m not—I mean—” Kal looked to Laral. “Tell him, Laral.”

  She looked away. “Well, go on, boy,” she said. “Do as you’re told. We’re hungry.”

  Kal gaped at her, then felt his face redden even more. “I’m…I’m not going to fetch you anything!” he managed to say. “I w
ouldn’t do it no matter how many spheres you offer me. I’m not an errand boy, I’m a surgeon.”

  “Oh, you’re that one’s son.”

  “I am,” Kal said, surprised at how proudly he felt those words. “I’m not going to be bullied by you, Rillir Roshone. Just like my father isn’t bullied by yours.”

  Except, they are making a deal right now….

  “Father didn’t mention how amusing you were,” Rillir said, leaning back against the wall. He seemed a decade older than Kal, not a mere two years. “So you find it shameful to fetch a man his meal? Being a surgeon makes you that much better than the kitchen staff?”

  “Well, no. It’s just not my Calling.”

  “Then what is your Calling?”

  “Making sick people well.”

  “And if I don’t eat, won’t I be sick? So couldn’t you call it your duty to see me fed?”

  Kal frowned. “It’s…well, it’s not the same thing at all.”

  “I see it as being very similar.”

  “Look, why don’t you just go get yourself some food?”

  “It’s not my Calling.”

  “Then what is your Calling?” Kal returned, throwing the man’s own words back at him.

  “I’m cityheir,” Rillir said. “My duty is to lead—to see that jobs get done and that people are occupied in productive work. And as such, I give important tasks to idling darkeyes to make them useful.”

  Kal hesitated, growing angry.

  “You see how his little mind works,” Rillir said to Laral. “Like a dying fire, burning what little fuel it has, pumping out smoke. Ah, and look, his face grows red from the heat of it.”

  “Rillir, please,” Laral said, laying her hand on his arm.

  Rillir glanced at her, then rolled his eyes. “You’re as provincial as my father sometimes, dear.” He stood up straight and—with a look of resignation—led her past the nook and into the kitchen proper.

  Kal sat back down hard, nearly bruising his legs on the bench with the force of it. A serving boy brought him his food and set it on the table, but that only reminded Kal of his childishness. So he didn’t eat it; he just stared at it until, eventually, his father walked into the kitchen. Rillir and Laral were gone by then.

  Lirin walked to the alcove and surveyed Kal. “You didn’t eat.”

  Kal shook his head.

  “You should have. It was free. Come on.”

  They walked in silence from the mansion into the dark night. The carriage awaited them, and soon Kal again sat facing his father. The driver climbed into place, making the vehicle quiver, and a snap of his whip set the horses in motion.

  “I want to be a surgeon,” Kal said suddenly.

  His father’s face—hidden in shadow—was unreadable. But when he spoke, he sounded confused. “I know that, son.”

  “No. I want to be a surgeon. I don’t want to run away to join the war.”

  Silence in the darkness.

  “You were considering that?” Lirin asked.

  “Yes,” Kal admitted. “It was childish. But I’ve decided for myself that I want to learn surgery instead.”

  “Why? What made you change?”

  “I need to know how they think,” Kal said, nodding back toward the mansion. “They’re trained to speak their sentences in knots, and I have to be able to face them and talk back at them. Not fold like…” He hesitated.

  “Like I did?” Lirin asked with a sigh.

  Kal bit his lip, but had to ask. “How many spheres did you agree to give him? Will I still have enough to go to Kharbranth?”

  “I didn’t give him a thing.”

  “But—”

  “Roshone and I talked for a time, arguing over amounts. I pretended to grow hotheaded and left.”

  “Pretended?” Kal asked, confused.

  His father leaned forward, whispering to make certain the driver couldn’t hear. With the bouncing and the noise of the wheels on the stone, there was little danger of that. “He has to think that I’m willing to bend. Today’s meeting was about giving the appearance of desperation. A strong front at first, followed by frustration, letting him think that he’d gotten to me. Finally a retreat. He’ll invite me again in a few months, after letting me ‘sweat.’”

  “But you won’t bend then, either?” Kal whispered.

  “No. Giving him any of the spheres would make him greedy for the rest. These lands don’t produce as they used to, and Roshone is nearly broke from losing political battles. I still don’t know which highlord was behind sending him here to torment us, though I wish I had him for a few moments in a dark room….”

  The ferocity with which Lirin said that shocked Kal. It was the closest he’d ever heard his father come to threatening real violence.

  “But why go through this in the first place?” Kal whispered. “You said that we can keep resisting him. Mother thinks so too. We won’t eat well, but we won’t starve.”

  His father didn’t reply, though he looked troubled.

  “You need to make him think that we’re capitulating,” Kal said. “Or that we’re close to doing so. So that he’ll stop looking for ways to undermine us? So he’ll focus his attention on making a deal and not—”

  Kal froze. He saw something unfamiliar in his father’s eyes. Something like guilt. Suddenly it made sense. Cold, terrible sense.

  “Stormfather,” Kal whispered. “You did steal the spheres, didn’t you?”

  His father remained silent, riding in the old carriage, shadowed and black.

  “That’s why you’ve been so tense since Wistiow died,” Kal whispered. “The drinking, the worrying…You’re a thief! We’re a family of thieves.”

  The carriage turned, and the violet light of Salas illuminated Lirin’s face. He didn’t look half so ominous from that angle—in fact, he looked fragile. He clasped his hands before him, eyes reflecting moonlight. “Wistiow was not lucid during the final days, Kal,” he whispered. “I knew that, with his death, we would lose the promise of a union. Laral had not reached her day of majority, and the new citylord wouldn’t let a darkeyes take her inheritance through marriage.”

  “So you robbed him?” Kal felt himself shrinking.

  “I made certain that promises were kept. I had to do something. I couldn’t trust to the generosity of the new citylord. Wisely, as you can see.”

  All of this time, Kal had assumed that Roshone was persecuting them out of malice and spite. But it turned out he was justified. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Does it change so much?” Lirin whispered. His face looked haunted in the dim light. “What is different now?”

  “Everything.”

  “And yet nothing. Roshone still wants those spheres, and we still deserve them. Wistiow, if he’d been fully lucid, would have given us those spheres. I’m certain.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No.”

  Things were the same, yet different. One step, and the world flipped upside down. The villain became the hero, the hero the villain. “I—” Kal said. “I can’t decide if what you did was incredibly brave or incredibly wrong.”

  Lirin sighed. “I know how you feel.” He sat back. “Please, don’t tell Tien what we’ve done.” What we’ve done. Hesina had helped him. “When you are older, you’ll understand.”

  “Maybe,” Kal said, shaking his head. “But one thing hasn’t changed. I want to go to Kharbranth.”

  “Even on stolen spheres?”

  “I’ll find a way to pay them back. Not to Roshone. To Laral.”

  “She’ll be a Roshone before too long,” Lirin said. “We should expect an engagement between her and Rillir before the year is out. Roshone will not let her slip away, not now that he’s lost political favor in Kholinar. She represents one of the few chances his son has for an alliance with a good house.”

  Kal felt his stomach turn at the mention of Laral. “I have to learn. Perhaps I can…”

  Can what, he thought. Come back and convince her to l
eave Rillir for me? Ridiculous.

  He looked up suddenly at his father, who had bowed his head, looking sorrowful. He was a hero. A villain too. But a hero to his family. “I won’t tell Tien,” Kal whispered. “And I’m going to use the spheres to travel to Kholinar and study.”

  His father looked up.

  “I want to learn to face lighteyes, like you do,” Kal said. “Any of them can make a fool of me. I want to learn to talk like them, think like them.”

  “I want you to learn so that you can help people, son. Not so you can get back at the lighteyes.”

  “I think I can do both. If I can learn to be clever enough.”

  Lirin snorted. “You’re plenty clever, son. You’ve got enough of your mother in you to talk circles around a lighteyes. The university will show you how, Kal.”

  “I want to start going by my full name,” he replied, surprising himself. “Kaladin.” It was a man’s name. He’d always disliked how it sounded like the name of a lighteyes. Now it seemed to fit.

  He wasn’t a darkeyed farmer, but he wasn’t a lighteyed lord either. Something in between. Kal had been a child who wanted to join the army because it was what other boys dreamed of. Kaladin would be a man who learned surgery and all the ways of the lighteyes. And someday he would return to this town and prove to Roshone, Rillir, and Laral herself that they had been wrong to dismiss him.

  “Very well,” Lirin said. “Kaladin.”

  “Born from the darkness, they bear its taint still, marked upon their bodies much as the fire marks their souls.”

  —I consider Gashashson-Navammis a trustworthy source, though I’m not certain about this translation. Find the original quote in the fourteenth book of Seld and retranslate it myself, perhaps?

  Kaladin floated.

  Persistent fever, accompanied by cold sweats and hallucinations. Likely cause is infected wounds; clean with antiseptic to ward away rotspren. Keep the subject hydrated.

  He was back in Hearthstone with his family. Only he was a grown man. The soldier he had become. And he didn’t fit with them anymore. His father kept asking, How did this happen? You said you wanted to become a surgeon. A surgeon…