The Way of Kings (106 page)

Few people had seen much of Roshone since the ill-fated whitespine hunt and the death of his son. He hid in his mansion, increasingly reclusive. The people of Hearthstone trod very lightly, as if they expected that any moment he could explode and turn his rage against them. Kaladin wasn’t worried about that. A storm—whether from a person or the sky—was something you could react to. But this suffocation, this slow and steady dousing of life…That was far, far worse.

“Kaladin?” Tien’s voice called. “Are you still up there?”

“Yeah,” he called back, not moving. The clouds were so
bland
during the Weeping. Could anything be more lifeless than that miserable grey?

Tien rounded to the back of the building, where the roof sloped down to touch the ground. He had his hands in the pockets of his long raincoat, a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Both looked too large for him, but clothing always seemed too large for Tien. Even when it fit him properly.

Kaladin’s brother climbed up onto the roof and walked up beside him, then lay down, staring upward. Someone else might have tried to cheer Kaladin up, and they would have failed. But somehow Tien knew the right thing to do. For the moment, that was keeping silent.

“You like the rain, don’t you?” Kaladin finally asked him.

“Yeah,” Tien said. Of course, Tien liked pretty much everything. “Hard to stare up at like this, though. I keep blinking.”

For some reason, that made Kaladin smile.

“I made you something,” Tien said. “At the shop today.”

Kaladin’s parents were worried; Ral the carpenter had taken Tien, though he didn’t really need another apprentice, and was reportedly dissatisfied with the boy’s work. Tien got distracted easily, Ral complained.

Kaladin sat up as Tien fished something out of his pocket. It was a small wooden horse, intricately carved.

“Don’t worry about the water,” Tien said, handing it over. “I sealed it already.”

“Tien,” Kaladin said, amazed. “This is
beautiful
.” The details were amazing—the eyes, the hooves, the lines in the tail. It looked just like the majestic animals that pulled Roshone’s carriage. “Did you show this to Ral?”

“He said it was good,” Tien said, smiling beneath his oversized hat. “But he told me I should have been making a chair instead. I kind of got into trouble.”

“But how…I mean, Tien, he’s got to see this is amazing!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Tien said, still smiling. “It’s just a horse. Master Ral likes things you can use. Things to sit on, things to put clothes in. But I think I can make a good chair tomorrow, something that will make him proud.”

Kaladin looked at his brother, with his innocent face and affable nature. He hadn’t lost either, though he was now into his teenage years.
How is it you can always smile?
Kaladin thought.
It’s dreadful outside, your master treats you like crem, and your family is slowly being strangled by the citylord. And yet you smile. How, Tien?

And why is it that you make me want to smile too?

“Father spent another of the spheres, Tien,” Kaladin found himself saying. Each time their father was forced to do that, he seemed to grow a little more wan, stand a little less tall. Those spheres were dun these days, no light in them. You couldn’t infuse spheres during the Weeping. They all ran out, eventually.

“There are plenty more,” Tien said.

“Roshone is trying to wear us down,” Kaladin said. “Bit by bit, smother us.”

“It’s not as bad as it seems, Kaladin,” his brother said, reaching up to hold his arm. “Things are never as bad as they seem. You’ll see.”

So many objections rose in his mind, but Tien’s smile banished them. There, in the midst of the dreariest part of the year, Kaladin felt for a moment as if he had glimpsed sunshine. He could swear he felt things grow brighter around them, the storm retreating a shade, the sky lightening.

Their mother rounded the back of the building. She looked up at them, as if amused to find them both sitting on the roof in the rain. She stepped onto the lower portion. A small group of haspers clung to the stone there; the small two-shelled creatures proliferated during the Weeping. They seemed to grow out of nowhere, much like their cousins the tiny snails, scattered all across the stone.

“What are you two talking about?” she asked, walking up and sitting down with them. Hesina rarely acted like the other mothers in town. Sometimes, that bothered Kaladin. Shouldn’t she have sent them into the house or something, complaining that they’d catch a cold? No, she just sat down with them, wearing a brown leather raincoat.

“Kaladin’s worried about Father spending the spheres,” Tien said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she replied. “We’ll get you to Kharbranth. You’ll be old enough to leave in two more months.”

“You two should come with me,” Kal said. “And Father too.”

“And leave the town?” Tien said, as if he’d never considered that possibility. “But I like it here.”

Hesina smiled.

“What?” Kaladin said.

“Most young men your age are trying everything they can to be
rid
of their parents.”

“I can’t go off and leave you here. We’re a family.”

“He’s trying to strangle us,” Kaladin said, glancing at Tien. Talking with his brother had made him feel a lot better, but his objections were still there. “Nobody pays for healing, and I know nobody will pay you for work anymore. What kind of value does Father get for those spheres he spends anyway? Vegetables at ten times the regular price, moldy grain at double?”

Hesina smiled. “Observant.”

“Father taught me to notice details. The eyes of a surgeon.”

“Well,” she said, eyes twinkling, “did your surgeon’s eyes notice the first time we spent one of the spheres?”

“Sure,” Kaladin said. “It was the day after the hunting accident. Father had to buy new cloth to make bandages.”

“And did we
need
new bandages?”

“Well, no. But you know how Father is. He doesn’t like it when we start to run even a little low.”

“And so he spent one of those spheres,” Hesina said. “That he’d hoarded for months and months, butting heads with the citylord over them.”

Not to mention going to such lengths to steal them in the first place,
Kaladin thought.
But you know all about that.
He glanced at Tien, who was watching the sky again. So far as Kal knew, his brother hadn’t discovered the truth yet.

“So your father resisted so long,” Hesina said, “only to finally break and spend a sphere on some cloth bandages we wouldn’t need for months.”

She had a point. Why
had
his father suddenly decided to…“He’s letting Roshone think he’s winning,” Kaladin said with surprise, looking back at her.

Hesina smiled slyly. “Roshone would have found a way to get retribution eventually. It wouldn’t have been easy. Your father ranks high as a citizen, and has the right of inquest. He
did
save Roshone’s life, and many could testify to the severity of Rillir’s wounds. But Roshone would have found a way. Unless he felt he’d broken us.”

Kaladin turned toward the mansion. Though it was hidden by the shroud of rain, he could just make out the tents of the army camped on the field below. What would it be like to live as a soldier, often exposed to storms and rain, to winds and tempests? Once Kaladin would have been intrigued, but the life of a spearman had no call for him now. His mind was filled with diagrams of muscles and memorized lists of symptoms and diseases.

“We’ll keep spending the spheres,” Hesina said. “One every few weeks. Partially to live, though my family has offered supplies. More to keep Roshone thinking that we’re bending. And then, we send you away. Unexpectedly. You’ll be gone, the spheres safely in the hands of the ardents to use as a stipend during your years of study.”

Kaladin blinked in realization. They weren’t losing. They were
winning
.

“Think of it, Kaladin,” Tien said. “You’ll live in one of the grandest cities in the world! It will be so exciting. You’ll be a man of learning, like Father. You’ll have clerks to read to you from any book you want.”

Kaladin pushed wet hair off his forehead. Tien made it sound a lot grander than he’d been thinking. Of course, Tien could make a crem-filled puddle sound grand.

“That’s true,” his mother said, still staring upward. “You could learn mathematics, history, politics, tactics, the sciences…”

“Aren’t those things women learn?” Kaladin said, frowning.

“Lighteyed women study them. But there are male scholars as well. If not as many.”

“All this to become a surgeon.”

“You wouldn’t have to become a surgeon. Your life is your own, son. If you take the path of a surgeon, we will be proud. But don’t feel that you need to live your father’s life for him.” She looked down at Kaladin, blinking rainwater from her eyes.

“What else would I do?” Kaladin said, stupefied.

“There are many professions open to men with a good mind and training. If you really wished to study all the arts, you could become an ardent. Or perhaps a stormwarden.”

Stormwarden. He reached by reflex for the prayer sewn to his left sleeve, waiting for the day he’d need to burn it for aid. “They seek to predict the future.”

“It’s not the same thing. You’ll see. There are so many things to explore, so many places your mind could go. The world is changing. My family’s most recent letter describes amazing fabrials, like pens that can write across great distances. It might not be long before men are taught to read.”

“I’d never want to learn something like that,” Kaladin said, aghast, glancing at Tien. Was their own
mother
really saying these things? But then, she’d always been like this. Free, both with her mind and her tongue.

Yet, to become a stormwarden…They studied the highstorms, predicted them—yes—but learned about them and their mysteries. They studied the winds themselves.

“No,” Kaladin said. “I want to be a surgeon. Like my father.”

Hesina smiled. “If that’s what you choose, then—as I said—we will be proud of you. But father and I just want you to know that you
can
choose.”

They sat like that for some time, letting rainwater soak them. Kaladin kept searching those grey clouds, wondering what it was that Tien found so interesting in them. Eventually, he heard splashing below, and Lirin’s face appeared at the side of the house.

“What in the…” he said. “All
three
of you? What are you doing up here?”

“Feasting,” Kaladin’s mother said nonchalantly.

“On what?”

“On irregularity, dear,” she said.

Lirin sighed. “Dear, you can be very odd, you know.”

“And didn’t I just say that?”

“Point. Well, come on. There’s a gathering in the square.”

Hesina frowned. She rose and walked down the slope of the roof. Kaladin glanced at Tien, and the two of them stood. Kaladin stuffed the wooden horse in his pocket and picked his way down, careful on the slick rock, his shoes squishing. Cool water ran down Kaladin’s cheeks as he stepped off onto the ground.

They followed Lirin toward the square. Kaladin’s father looked worried, and he walked with the beaten-down slouch he was prone to lately. Maybe it was an affectation to fool Roshone, but Kaladin suspected there was some truth to it. His father didn’t like having to give up those spheres, even if it was part of a ruse. It was too much like giving in.

Ahead, a crowd was gathering at the town square, everyone holding umbrellas or wearing cloaks.

“What is it, Lirin?” Hesina asked, sounding anxious.

“Roshone is going to put in an appearance,” Lirin said. “He asked Waber to gather everyone. Full town meeting.”

“In the
rain
?” Kaladin asked. “Couldn’t he have waited for Lightday?”

Lirin didn’t reply. The family walked in silence, even Tien growing solemn. They passed some rainspren standing in puddles, glowing with a faint blue light, shaped like ankle-high melting candles with no flame. They rarely appeared except during the Weeping. They were said to be the souls of raindrops, glowing blue rods, seeming to melt but never growing smaller, a single blue eye at their tops.

The townspeople were mostly assembled, gossiping in the rain, by the time Kaladin’s family arrived. Jost and Naget were there, though neither waved to Kaladin; it had been years since they’d been anything resembling friends. Kaladin shivered. His parents called this town home, and his father refused to leave, but it felt less and less like “home” by the day.

I’ll be leaving it soon,
he thought, eager to walk out of Hearthstone and leave these small-minded people behind. To go to a place where lighteyes were men and women of honor and beauty, worthy of the high station given them by the Almighty.

Roshone’s carriage approached. It had lost much of its luster during his years in Hearthstone, the golden paint flaking off, the dark wood chipped by road gravel. As the carriage pulled into the square, Waber and his boys finally got a small canopy erected. The rain had strengthened, and drops hit the cloth with a hollow drumming sound.

The air smelled different with all of these people around. Up on the roof, it had been fresh and clean. Now it seemed muggy and humid. The carriage door opened. Roshone had gained more weight, and his lighteyes’s suit had been retailored to fit his increased girth. He wore a wooden peg on his right stump, hidden by the cuff of his trouser, and his gait was stiff as he climbed out of the carriage and ducked beneath the canopy, grumbling.

He hardly seemed the same person, with that beard and wet, stringy hair. But his eyes, they were the same. More beady now because of the fuller cheeks, but still seething as he studied the crowd. As if he had been hit with a rock when he wasn’t looking, and now searched for the culprit.

Was Laral inside the carriage? Someone else moved inside, climbing out, but it turned out to be a lean man with a clean-shaven face and light tan eyes. The dignified man wore a neatly pressed, green formal military uniform and had a sword at his hip. Highmarshal Amaram? He certainly looked impressive, with that strong figure and square face. The difference between him and Roshone was striking.