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“You don’t know that. I sincerely wanted those men gone. A careless barmaid walking home the wrong way cannot protect herself, but I can. And I will.”
“You have no authority to do so, not in someone else’s city.”
“True,” Jasnah said. “Another point to consider, I suppose.” She raised the brush to her hair, pointedly turning away from Shallan. She closed her eyes, as if to shut Shallan out.
The Soulcaster sat on the dressing table beside Jasnah’s earrings. Shallan gritted her teeth, holding the soft, silken robe. Jasnah sat in her white underdress, brushing her hair.
There will be times when you must make decisions that churn your stomach, Shallan Davar….
I’ve faced them already.
I’m facing one now.
How dare Jasnah do this? How dare she make Shallan a part of it? How dare she use something beautiful and holy as a device for destruction?
Jasnah didn’t deserve to own the Soulcaster.
With a swift move of her hand, Shallan tucked the folded robe under her safearm, then shoved her hand into her safepouch and popped out the intact smokestone from her father’s Soulcaster. She stepped up to the dressing table, and—using the motion of placing the robe onto the table as a cover—made the exchange. She slid the working Soulcaster into her safehand within its sleeve, stepping back as Jasnah opened her eyes and glanced at the robe, which now sat innocently beside the nonfunctional Soulcaster.
Shallan’s breath caught in her throat.
Jasnah closed her eyes again, handing the brush toward Shallan. “Fifty strokes tonight, Shallan. It has been a fatiguing day.”
Shallan moved by rote, brushing her mistress’s hair while clutching the stolen Soulcaster in her hidden safehand, panicked that Jasnah would notice the swap at any moment.
She didn’t. Not when she put on her robe. Not when she tucked the broken Soulcaster away in her jewelry case and locked it with a key she wore around her neck as she slept.
Shallan walked from the room stunned, in turmoil. Exhausted, sickened, confused.
But undiscovered.
FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
“Kaladin, look at this rock,” Tien said. “It changes colors when you look at it from different sides.”
Kal looked away from the window, glancing at his brother. Now thirteen years of age, Tien had turned from an eager boy into an eager adolescent. Though he’d grown, he was still small for his age, and his mop of black and brown hair still refused all attempts at order. He was squatting beside the lacquered cobwood dinner table, eyes level with the glossy surface, looking at a small, lumpish rock.
Kal sat on a stool peeling longroots with a short knife. The brown roots were dirty on the outside and sticky when he sliced into them, so working on them coated his fingers with a thick layer of crem. He finished a root and handed it up to his mother, who washed it off and sliced it into the stew pot.
“Mother, look at this,” Tien said. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the leeside window, bathing the table. “From this side, the rock sparkles red, but from the other side, it’s green.”
“Perhaps it’s magical,” Hesina said. Chunk after chunk of longroot plunked into the water, each splash with a slightly different note.
“I think it must be,” Tien said. “Or it has a spren. Do spren live in rocks?”
“Spren live in everything,” Hesina replied.
“They can’t live in everything,” Kal said, dropping a peel into the pail at his feet. He glanced out the window, watching the road that led from the town to the citylord’s mansion.
“They do,” Hesina said. “Spren appear when something changes—when fear appears, or when it begins to rain. They are the heart of change, and therefore the heart of all things.”
“This longroot,” Kal said, holding it up skeptically.
“Has a spren.”
“And if you slice it up?”
“Each bit has a spren. Only smaller.”
Kal frowned, looking over the long tuber. They grew in cracks in the stone where water collected. They tasted faintly of minerals, but were easy to grow. His family needed food that didn’t cost much, these days.
“So we eat spren,” Kal said flatly.
“No,” she said, “we eat the roots.”
“When we have to,” Tien added with a grimace.
“And the spren?” Kal pressed.
“They are freed. To return to wherever it is that spren live.”
“Do I have a spren?” Tien said, looking down at his chest.
“You have a soul, dear. You’re a person. But the pieces of your body may very well have spren living in them. Very small ones.”
Tien pinched at his skin, as if trying to pry the tiny spren out.
“Dung,” Kal said suddenly.
“Kal!” Hesina snapped. “That’s not talk for mealtime.”
“Dung,” Kal said stubbornly. “It has spren?”
“I suppose it does.”
“Dungspren,” Tien said, then snickered.
His mother continued to chop. “Why all of these questions, suddenly?”
Kal shrugged. “I just—I don’t know. Because.”
He’d been thinking recently about the way the world worked, about what he was to do with his place in it. The other boys his age, they didn’t wonder about their place. Most knew what their future held. Working in the fields.
Kal had a choice, though. Over the last several months, he’d finally made that choice. He would become a soldier. He was fifteen now, and could volunteer when the next recruiter came through town. He planned to do just that. No more wavering. He would learn to fight. That was the end of it. Wasn’t it?
“I want to understand,” he said. “I just want everything to make sense.”
His mother smiled at that, standing in her brown work dress, hair pulled back in a tail, the top hidden beneath her yellow kerchief.
“What?” he demanded. “Why are you smiling?”
“You just want everything to make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Well next time the ardents come through the town to burn prayers and Elevate people’s Callings, I’ll pass the message along.” She smiled. “Until then, keep peeling roots.”
Kal sighed, but did as she told him. He checked out the window again, and nearly dropped the root in shock. The carriage. It was coming down the roadway from the mansion. He felt a flutter of nervous hesitation. He’d planned, he’d thought, but now that the time was upon him, he wanted to sit and keep peeling. There would be another opportunity, surely….
No. He stood, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. “I’m going to go rinse off.” He held up crem-covered fingers.
“You should have washed the roots off first as I told you,” his mother noted.
“I know,” Kal said. Did his sigh of regret sound fake? “Maybe I’ll just wash them all off now.”
Hesina said nothing as he gathered up the remaining roots, crossed to the door, heart thumping, and stepped out into the evening light.
“See,” Tien said from behind, “from this side it’s green. I don’t think it’s a spren, Mother. It’s the light. It makes the rock change….”
