The Way of Kings (91 page)

Shallan stopped beside the bench. The pouch holding the Soulcaster was open, the drawstrings loose. She could see the precious artifact curled up inside. The swap would be easy. She had used a large chunk of her money to buy gemstones that matched Jasnah’s, and had put them into the broken Soulcaster. The two were now exactly identical.

She still hadn’t learned anything about using the fabrial; she’d tried to find a way to ask, but Jasnah avoided speaking of the Soulcaster. Pushing harder would be suspicious. Shallan would have to get information elsewhere. Perhaps from Kabsal, or maybe from a book in the Palanaeum.

Regardless, the time was upon her. Shallan found her hand going to her safepouch, and she felt inside of it, running her fingers along the chains of her broken fabrial. Her heart beat faster. She glanced at Jasnah, but the woman was just lying there, floating, eyes closed. What if she opened her eyes?

Don’t think of that!
Shallan told herself.
Just do it. Make the swap. It’s so close….

“You are progressing more quickly than I had assumed you would,” Jasnah said suddenly.

Shallan spun, but Jasnah’s eyes were still closed. “I was wrong to judge you so harshly because of your prior education. I myself have often said that passion outperforms upbringing. You have the determination and the capacity to become a respected scholar, Shallan. I realize that the answers seem slow in coming, but continue your research. You will have them eventually.”

Shallan stood for a moment, hand in her pouch, heart thumping uncontrollably. She felt sick.
I can’t do it,
she realized.
Stormfather, but I’m a fool. I came all of this way…and now I can’t do it!

She pulled her hand from her pouch and stalked back across the bathing chamber to her chair. What was she going to tell her brothers? Had she just doomed her family? She sat down, setting her book aside and sighing, prompting Jasnah to open her eyes. Jasnah watched her, then righted herself in the water and gestured for the hairsoap.

Gritting her teeth, Shallan stood up and fetched the soap tray for Jasnah, bringing it over and squatting down to proffer it. Jasnah took the powdery hairsoap and mashed it in her hand, lathering it before putting it into her sleek black hair with both hands. Even naked, Jasnah Kholin was composed and in control.

“Perhaps we have spent too much time indoors of late,” the princess said. “You look penned up, Shallan. Anxious.”

“I’m fine,” Shallan said brusquely.

“Hum, yes. As evidenced by your perfectly reasonable, relaxed tone. Perhaps we need to shift some of your training from history to something more hands-on, more visceral.”

“Like natural science?” Shallan asked, perking up.

Jasnah tilted her head back. Shallan knelt down on a towel beside the pool, then reached down with her freehand, massaging the soap into her mistress’s lush tresses.

“I was thinking philosophy,” Jasnah said.

Shallan blinked. “Philosophy? What good is that?”
Isn’t it the art of saying nothing with as many words as possible?

“Philosophy is an important field of study,” Jasnah said sternly. “Particularly if you’re going to be involved in court politics. The nature of morality must be considered, and preferably before one is exposed to situations where a moral decision is required.”

“Yes, Brightness. Though I fail to see how philosophy is more ‘hands-on’ than history.”

“History, by definition, cannot be experienced directly. As it is happening, it is the present, and that is philosophy’s realm.”

“That’s just a matter of definition.”

“Yes,” Jasnah said, “all words have a tendency to be subject to how they are defined.”

“I suppose,” Shallan said, leaning back, letting Jasnah dunk her hair to clean off the soap.

The princess began scrubbing her skin with mildly abrasive soap. “That was a particularly bland response, Shallan. What happened to your wit?”

Shallan glanced at the bench and its precious fabrial. After all this time, she had proven too weak to do what needed to be done. “My wit is on temporary hiatus, Brightness,” she said. “Pending review by its colleagues, sincerity and temerity.”

Jasnah raised an eyebrow at her.

Shallan sat back on her heels, still kneeling on the towel. “How
do
you know what is right, Jasnah? If you don’t listen to the devotaries, how do you decide?”

“That depends upon one’s philosophy. What is most important to you?”

“I don’t know. Can’t you tell me?”

“No,” Jasnah replied. “If I gave you the answers, I’d be no better than the devotaries, prescribing beliefs.”

“They aren’t evil, Jasnah.”

“Except when they try to rule the world.”

Shallan drew her lips into a thin line. The War of Loss had destroyed the Hierocracy, shattering Vorinism into the devotaries. That was the inevitable result of a religion trying to rule. The devotaries were to teach morals, not enforce them. Enforcement was for the lighteyes.

“You say you can’t give me answers,” Shallan said. “But can’t I ask for the advice of someone wise? Someone who’s gone before? Why write our philosophies, draw our conclusions, if not to influence others? You yourself told me that information is worthless unless we use it to make judgments.”

Jasnah smiled, dunking her arms and washing off the soap. Shallan caught a victorious glimmer in her eye. She wasn’t necessarily advocating ideas because she believed them; she just wanted to push Shallan. It was infuriating. How was Shallan to know what Jasnah really thought if she adopted conflicting points of view like this?

“You act as if there were one answer,” Jasnah said, gesturing to Shallan to fetch a towel and climbing from the pool. “A single, eternally perfect response.”

Shallan hastily complied, bearing a large, fluffy towel. “Isn’t that what philosophy is about? Finding the answers? Seeking the truth, the real meaning of things?”

Toweling off, Jasnah raised an eyebrow at her.

“What?” Shallan asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“I believe it is time for a field exercise,” Jasnah said. “Outside of the Palanaeum.”

“Now?” Shallan asked. “It’s so late!”

“I told you philosophy was a hands-on art,” Jasnah said, wrapping the towel around herself, then reaching down and taking the Soulcaster out of its pouch. She slipped the chains around her fingers, securing the gemstones to the back of her hand. “I’ll prove it to you. Come, help me dress.”

As a child, Shallan had relished those evenings when she’d been able to slip away into the gardens. When the blanket of darkness rested atop the grounds, they had seemed a different place entirely. In those shadows, she’d been able to imagine that the rockbuds, shalebark, and trees were some foreign fauna. The scrapings of cremlings climbing out of cracks had become the footsteps of mysterious people from far-off lands. Large-eyed traders from Shinovar, a greatshell rider from Kadrix, or a narrowboat sailor from the Purelake.

She didn’t have those same imaginings when walking Kharbranth at night. Imagining dark wanderers in the night had once been an intriguing game—but here, dark wanderers were likely to be real. Instead of becoming a mysterious, intriguing place at night, Kharbranth seemed much the same to her—just more dangerous.

Jasnah ignored the calls of rickshaw pullers and palanquin porters. She walked slowly in a beautiful dress of violet and gold, Shallan following in blue silk. Jasnah hadn’t taken time to have her hair done following her bath, and she wore it loose, cascading across her shoulders, almost scandalous in its freedom.

They walked the Ralinsa—the main thoroughfare that led down the hillside in switchbacks, connecting Conclave and port. Despite the late hour, the roadway was crowded, and many of the men who walked here seemed to bear the night inside of them. They were gruff er, more shadowed of face. Shouts still rang through the city, but those carried the night in them too, measured by the roughness of their words and the sharpness of their tones. The steep, slanted hillside that formed the city was no less crowded with buildings than always, yet these too seemed to draw in the night. Blackened, like stones burned by a fire. Hollow remains.

The bells still rang. In the darkness, each ring was a tiny scream. They made the wind more present, a living thing that caused a chiming cacophony each time it passed. A breeze rose, and an avalanche of sound came tumbling across the Ralinsa. Shallan nearly found herself ducking before it.

“Brightness,” Shallan said. “Shouldn’t we call for a palanquin?”

“A palanquin might inhibit the lesson.”

“I’ll be all right learning that lesson during the day, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Jasnah stopped, looking off the Ralinsa and toward a darker side street. “What do you think of that roadway, Shallan?”

“It doesn’t look particularly appealing to me.”

“And yet,” Jasnah said, “it is the most direct route from the Ralinsa to the theater district.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“We aren’t ‘going’ anywhere,” Jasnah said, taking off down the side street. “We are acting, pondering, and learning.”

Shallan followed nervously. The night swallowed them; only the occasional light from late-night taverns and shops offered illumination. Jasnah wore her black, fingerless glove over her Soulcaster, hiding the light of its gemstones.

Shallan found herself creeping. Her slippered feet could feel every change in the ground underfoot, each pebble and crack. She looked about nervously as they passed a group of workers gathered around a tavern doorway. They were darkeyes, of course. In the night, that distinction seemed more profound.

“Brightness?” Shallan asked in a hushed tone.

“When we are young,” Jasnah said, “we want simple answers. There is no greater indication of youth, perhaps, than the desire for everything to be
as it should
. As it has ever been.”

Shallan frowned, still watching the men by the tavern over her shoulder.

“The older we grow,” Jasnah said, “the more we question. We begin to ask why. And yet, we still want the answers to be simple. We assume that the people around us—adults, leaders—will have those answers. Whatever they give often satisfies us.”

“I was never satisfied,” Shallan said softly. “I wanted more.”

“You were mature,” Jasnah said. “What you describe happens to most of us, as we age. Indeed, it seems to me that aging, wisdom, and
wondering
are synonymous. The older we grow, the more likely we are to reject the simple answers. Unless someone gets in our way and demands they be accepted regardless.” Jasnah’s eyes narrowed. “You wonder why I reject the devotaries.”

“I do.”

“Most of them seek to stop the questions.” Jasnah halted. Then she briefly pulled back her glove, using the light beneath to reveal the street around her. The gemstones on her hand—larger than broams—blazed like torches, red, white, and grey.

“Is it wise to be showing your wealth like that, Brightness?” Shallan said, speaking very softly and glancing about her.

“No,” Jasnah said. “It is most certainly not. Particularly not here. You see, this street has gained a particular reputation lately. On three separate occasions during the last two months, theatergoers who chose this route to the main road were accosted by footpads. In each case, the people were murdered.”

Shallan felt herself grow pale.

“The city watch,” Jasnah said, “has done nothing. Taravangian has sent them several pointed reprimands, but the captain of the watch is cousin to a very influential lighteyes in the city, and Taravangian is not a terribly powerful king. Some suspect that there is more going on, that the footpads might be bribing the watch. The politics of it are irrelevant at the moment for, as you can see, no members of the watch are guarding the place, despite its reputation.”

Jasnah pulled her glove back on, plunging the roadway back into darkness. Shallan blinked, her eyes adjusting.

“How foolish,” Jasnah said, “would you say it is for us to come here, two undefended women wearing costly clothing and bearing riches?”

“
Very
foolish. Jasnah, can we go? Please. Whatever lesson you have in mind isn’t worth this.”

Jasnah drew her lips into a line, then looked toward a narrow, darker alleyway off the road they were on. It was almost completely black now that Jasnah had replaced her glove.

“You’re at an interesting place in your life, Shallan,” Jasnah said, flexing her hand. “You are old enough to wonder, to ask, to reject what is presented to you simply
because
it was presented to you. But you also cling to the idealism of youth. You feel there must be some single, all-defining Truth—and you think that once you find it, all that once confused you will suddenly make sense.”

“I…” Shallan wanted to argue, but Jasnah’s words were tellingly accurate. The terrible things Shallan had done, the terrible thing she had planned to do, haunted her. Was it possible to do something horrible in the name of accomplishing something wonderful?

Jasnah walked into the narrow alleyway.

“Jasnah!” Shallan said. “What are you doing?”