ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
What is a woman’s place in this modern world? Jasnah Kholin’s words read. I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past.
They ignore the greater assumption—that a “place” for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be—by nature—a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood.
I say that there is no role for women—there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither.
Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman’s role above another. My point is not to stratify our society—we have done that far too well already—my point is to diversify our discourse.
A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation.
Shallan closed the book. Not two hours had passed since Father had ordered Helaran’s assassination. After Shallan had retreated to her room, a pair of Father’s guards had appeared in the hallway outside. Probably not to watch her—she doubted that Father knew that she’d overheard his order for Helaran to be killed. The guards were to see that Malise, Shallan’s stepmother, did not try to flee.
That could be a mistaken assumption. Shallan didn’t even know if Malise was still alive, following her screaming and Father’s cold, angry ranting.
Shallan wanted to hide, to hunker down in her closet with blankets wrapped around her, eyes squeezed shut. The words in Jasnah Kholin’s book strengthened her, though in some ways it seemed laughable for Shallan to even be reading it. Highlady Kholin talked about the nobility of choice, as if every woman had such opportunity. The decision between being a mother or a scholar seemed a difficult decision in Jasnah’s estimation. That wasn’t a difficult choice at all! That seemed like a grand place to be! Either would be delightful when compared to a life of fear in a house seething with anger, depression, and hopelessness.
She imagined what Highlady Kholin must be, a capable woman who did not do as others insisted she must. A woman with power, authority. A woman who had the luxury of seeking her dreams.
What would that be like?
Shallan stood up. She walked to the door, then cracked it open. Though the evening had grown late, the two guards still stood at the other end of the hallway. Shallan’s heart thumped, and she cursed her timidity. Why couldn’t she be like women who acted, instead of being someone who hid in her room with a pillow around her head?
Shaking, she slipped from the room. She padded toward the soldiers, feeling their eyes on her. One raised his hand. She didn’t know the man’s name. Once, she’d known all of the guards’ names. Those men, whom she’d grown up with, had been replaced now.
“My father will need me,” she said, not stopping at the guard’s gesture. Though he was lighteyed, she did not need to obey him. She might spend most of every day in her rooms, but she was still of a much higher rank than he.
She walked by the men, trembling hands clenched tight. They let her go. When she passed her father’s door, she heard soft weeping inside. Malise still lived, thankfully.
She found Father in the feast hall, sitting alone with both firepits roaring, full of flames. He slumped at the high table, lit by harsh light, staring at the tabletop.
Shallan slipped into the kitchen before he noticed her, and mixed his favorite. Deep violet wine, spiced with cinnamon and warmed against the chill day. He looked up as she walked back into the feast hall. She set the cup before him, looking into his eyes. No darkness there today. Just him. That was very rare, these days.
“They won’t listen, Shallan,” he whispered. “Nobody will listen. I hate that I have to fight my own house. They should support me.” He took the drink. “Wikim just stares at the wall half the time. Jushu is worthless, and Balat fights me every step. Now Malise too.”
“I will speak to them,” Shallan said.
He drank the wine, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, that would be good. Balat is still out with those cursed axehound corpses. I’m glad they’re dead. That litter was full of runts. He didn’t need them anyway. . . .”
Shallan stepped into the chill air. The sun had set, but lanterns hung on the eaves of the manor house. She had rarely seen the gardens at night, and they took on a mysterious cast in the darkness. Vines looked like fingers reaching from the void, seeking something to grab and pull away into the night.
Balat lay on one of the benches. Shallan’s feet crunched on something as she stepped up to him. Claws from cremlings, pulled free of their bodies one after another, then tossed to the ground. She shivered.
“You should go,” she said to Balat.
He sat up. “What?”
“Father can no longer control himself,” Shallan said softly. “You need to leave, while you can. I want you to take Malise with you.”
Balat ran his hand through his mess of curly dark hair. “Malise? Father will never let her go. He’d hunt us down.”
“He’ll hunt you anyway,” Shallan said. “He hunts Helaran. Earlier today, he ordered one of his men to find our brother and assassinate him.”
“What!” Balat stood. “That bastard! I’ll . . . I . . .” He looked to Shallan in the darkness, face lit by starlight. Then he crumpled, sitting back down, holding his head in his hands. “I’m a coward, Shallan,” he whispered. “Oh, Stormfather, I’m a coward. I won’t face him. I can’t.”
“Go to Helaran,” Shallan said. “Could you find him, if you needed to?”
“He . . . Yes, he left me the name of a contact in Valath who could put me in touch with him.”
“Take Malise and Eylita. Go to Helaran.”
“I won’t have time to find Helaran before Father catches up.”
“Then we will contact Helaran,” Shallan said. “We will make plans for you to meet him, and you can schedule your flight for a time when Father is away. He is planning another trip to Vedenar a few months from now. Leave when he’s gone, get a head start.”
Balat nodded. “Yes . . . Yes, that is good.”
“I will draft a letter to Helaran,” Shallan said. “We need to warn him about Father’s assassins, and we can ask him to take the three of you in.”
“You shouldn’t have to do this, small one,” Balat said, head down. “I’m the eldest after Helaran. I should have been able to stop Father by now. Somehow.”
“Take Malise away,” Shallan said. “That will be doing enough.”
He nodded.
Shallan returned to the house, passing Father mulling over his disobedient family, and fetched some things from the kitchen. Then she returned to the steps and looked upward. Taking a few deep breaths, she went over what she would say to the guards if they stopped her. Then she raced up them and opened the door into her father’s sitting room.
“Wait,” the hallway guard said. “He left orders. Nobody in or out.”
Shallan’s throat tightened, and even with her practice, she stammered as she spoke. “I just talked to him. He wants me to speak with her.”
The guard inspected her, chewing on something. Shallan felt her confidence wilt, heart racing. Confrontation. She was as much a coward as Balat.
He gestured to the other guard, who went downstairs to check. He eventually returned, nodding, and the first man reluctantly waved for her to continue. Shallan entered.
Into the Place.
She had not entered this room in years. Not since . . .
Not since . . .
She raised a hand, shading her eyes against the light coming from behind the painting. How could Father sleep in here? How was it that nobody else looked, nobody else cared? That light was blinding.
Fortunately, Malise was curled in an easy chair facing that wall, so Shallan could put her back to the painting and obstruct the light. She rested a hand on her stepmother’s arm.
She didn’t feel that she knew Malise, despite years living together. Who was this woman who would marry a man everyone whispered had killed his previous wife? Malise oversaw Shallan’s education—meaning she searched for new tutors each time the women fled—but Malise herself couldn’t do much to teach Shallan. One could not teach what one did not know.
“Mother?” Shallan asked. She used the word.
Malise looked. Despite the blazing light of the room, Shallan saw the woman’s lip was split and bleeding. She cradled her left arm. Yes, it was broken.
Shallan took out the gauze and cloth she had fetched from the kitchen, then began to wipe down the wounds. She would have to find something to use as a splint for that arm.
“Why doesn’t he hate you?” Malise said harshly. “He hates everyone else but you.”
Shallan dabbed at the woman’s lip.
“Stormfather, why did I come to this cursed household?” Malise shuddered. “He’ll kill us all. One by one, he’ll break us and kill us. There’s a darkness inside of him. I’ve seen it, behind his eyes. A beast . . .”
“You’re going to leave,” Shallan said softly.
Malise barked a laugh. “He’ll never let me go. He never lets go of anything.”
“You’re not going to ask,” Shallan whispered. “Balat is going to run and join Helaran, who has powerful friends. He’s a Shardbearer. He’ll protect the both of you.”
“We’ll never reach him,” Malise said. “And if we do, why would Helaran take us in? We have nothing.”
“Helaran is a good man.”
Malise twisted in her seat, staring away from Shallan, who continued her ministrations. The woman whimpered when Shallan bound her arm, but wouldn’t respond to questions. Finally, Shallan gathered up the bloodied cloths to throw away.
“If I go,” Malise whispered, “and Balat with me, who will he hate? Who will he hit? Maybe you, finally? The one who actually deserves it?”
“Maybe,” Shallan whispered, then left.
Is not the destruction we have wrought enough? The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Our interference so far has brought nothing but pain.
Feet scraped on the stone outside of Kaladin’s cage. One of the jailers checking on him again. Kaladin continued to lie motionless with closed eyes, and did not look.
In order to keep the darkness at bay, he had begun planning. What would he do when he got out? When he got out. He had to tell himself that forcibly. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dalinar. His mind, though . . . his mind betrayed him, and whispered things that were not true.
Distortions. In his state, he could believe that Dalinar lied. He could believe that the highprince secretly wanted Kaladin in prison. Kaladin was a terrible guard, after all. He’d failed to do anything about the mysterious countdowns scrawled on walls, and he’d failed to stop the Assassin in White.
With his mind whispering lies, Kaladin could believe that Bridge Four was happy to be rid of him—that they pretended they wanted to be guards, just to make him happy. They secretly wanted to go on with their lives, lives they’d enjoy, without Kaladin spoiling them.
These untruths should have seemed ridiculous to him. They didn’t.
Clink.
Kaladin snapped his eyes open, growing tense. Had they come to take him, to execute him, as the king wished? He leaped to his feet, coming down in a battle stance, the empty bowl from his meal held to throw.
The jailer at the cell door stepped back, eyes widening. “Storms, man,” he said. “I thought you were asleep. Well, your time is served. King signed a pardon today. They didn’t even strip your rank or position.” The man rubbed his chin, then pulled the cell door open. “Guess you’re lucky.”
Lucky. People always said that about Kaladin. Still, the prospect of freedom forced away the darkness inside of him, and Kaladin approached the door. Wary. He stepped out, the guard backing away.
“You are a distrustful one, aren’t you?” the jailer said. A lighteyes of low rank. “Guess that makes you a good bodyguard.” The man gestured for Kaladin to leave the room first.
Kaladin waited.
Finally, the guard sighed. “Right, then.” He walked out the doorway into the hall beyond.
Kaladin followed, and with each step felt himself traveling back a few days in time. Shut the darkness away. He wasn’t a slave. He was a soldier. Captain Kaladin. He’d survived this . . . what had it been? Two, three weeks? This short time back in a cage.
He was free now. He could return to his life as a bodyguard. But one thing . . . one thing had changed.
Nobody will ever, ever, do this to me again. Not king or general, not brightlord or brightlady.
He would die first.
They passed a leeward window, and Kaladin stopped to breathe in the cool, fresh scent of open air. The window gave an ordinary, mundane view of the camp outside, but it seemed glorious. A small breeze stirred his hair, and he let himself smile, reaching a hand to his chin. Several weeks’ growth. He’d have to let Rock shave that.
“Here,” the jailer said. “He’s free. Can we finally be done with this farce, Your Highness?”
“Your Highness”? Kaladin turned down the hallway to where the guard had stopped at another cell—one of the larger ones set into the hallway itself. Kaladin had been put in the deepest cell, away from the windows.
The jailer twisted a key in the lock of the wooden door, then pulled it open. Adolin Kholin—wearing a simple tight uniform—stepped out. He also had several weeks of growth on his face, though the beard was blond, speckled black. The princeling took a deep breath, then turned toward Kaladin and nodded.
“He locked you away?” Kaladin said, baffled. “How . . . ? What . . . ?”
Adolin turned to the jailer. “Were my orders followed?”
“They wait in the room just beyond, Brightlord,” the jailer said, sounding nervous.
Adolin nodded, moving in that direction.
Kaladin reached the jailer, taking him by the arm. “What is happening? The king put Dalinar’s heir in here?”
“The king didn’t have anything to do with it,” the jailer said. “Brightlord Adolin insisted. So long as you were in here, he wouldn’t leave. We tried to stop him, but the man’s a prince. We can’t storming make him do anything, not even leave. He locked himself away in the cell and we just had to live with it.”
Impossible. Kaladin glanced at Adolin, who walked slowly down the hallway. The prince looked a lot better than Kaladin felt—Adolin had obviously seen a few baths, and his prison cell had been much larger, with more privacy.
It had still been a cell.
That was the disturbance I heard, Kaladin thought, on that day, early after I was imprisoned. Adolin came and shut himself in.
Kaladin jogged up to the man. “Why?”
“Didn’t seem right, you in here,” Adolin said, eyes forward.
“I ruined your chance to duel Sadeas.”
“I’d be crippled or dead without you,” Adolin said. “So I wouldn’t have had the chance to fight Sadeas anyway.” The prince stopped in the hallway, and looked at Kaladin. “Besides. You saved Renarin.”
“It’s my job,” Kaladin said.
“Then we need to pay you more, bridgeboy,” Adolin said. “Because I don’t know if I’ve ever met another man who would jump, unarmored, into a fight among six Shardbearers.”
Kaladin frowned. “Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?”
“Well, there was no need to be barbaric, just because I was incarcerated.”
“Storms, you’re spoiled,” Kaladin said, smiling.
“I’m refined, you insolent farmer,” Adolin said. Then he grinned. “Besides, I’ll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here.”
“Poor boy.”
“I know.” Adolin hesitated, then held out a hand.
Kaladin clasped it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For ruining the plan.”
“Bah, you didn’t ruin it,” Adolin said. “Elhokar did that. You think he couldn’t have simply ignored your request and proceeded, letting me expand on my challenge to Sadeas? He threw a tantrum instead of taking control of the crowd and pushing forward. Storming man.”
Kaladin blinked at the audacious tone, then glanced toward the jailer, who stood a distance behind, obviously trying to look inconspicuous.
“The things you said about Amaram,” Adolin said. “Were they true?”
“Every one.”
Adolin nodded. “I’ve always wondered what that man was hiding.” He continued walking.
“Wait,” Kaladin said, jogging to catch up, “you believe me?”
“My father,” Adolin said, “is the best man I know, perhaps the best man alive. Even he loses his temper, makes bad judgment calls, and has a troubled past. Amaram never seems to do anything wrong. If you listen to the stories about him, it’s like everyone expects him to glow in the dark and piss nectar. That stinks, to me, of someone who works too hard to maintain his reputation.”
“Your father says I shouldn’t have tried to duel him.”
“Yeah,” Adolin said, reaching the door at the end of the hallway. “Dueling is formalized in a way I suspect you just don’t get. A darkeyes can’t challenge a man like Amaram, and you certainly shouldn’t have done it like you did. It embarrassed the king, like spitting on a gift he’d given you.” Adolin hesitated. “Of course, that shouldn’t matter to you anymore. Not after today.”
Adolin pushed open the door. Beyond, most of the men of Bridge Four crowded into a small room where the jailers obviously spent their days. A table and chairs had been shoved to the corner to make room for the twenty-something men who saluted Kaladin as the door opened. Their salutes dissolved immediately as they started to cheer.
That sound . . . that sound quashed the darkness until it vanished completely. Kaladin found himself smiling as he stepped out to meet them, taking hands, listening to Rock make a wisecrack about his beard. Renarin was there in his Bridge Four uniform, and he immediately joined his brother, speaking to him quietly in a jovial way, though he had out his little box that he liked to fidget with.
Kaladin glanced to the side. Who were those men beside the wall? Members of Adolin’s retinue. Was that one of Adolin’s armorers? They carried some items draped with sheets. Adolin stepped into the room and loudly clapped his hands, quieting Bridge Four.
“It turns out,” Adolin said, “that I’m in possession of not one, but two new Shardblades and three sets of Plate. The Kholin princedom now owns a quarter of the Shards in all of Alethkar, and I’ve been named dueling champion. Not surprising, considering Relis was on a caravan back to Alethkar the night after our duel, sent by his father in an attempt to hide the shame of being beaten so soundly.
“One complete set of those Shards is going to General Khal, and I’ve ordered two of the sets of Plate given to appropriate lighteyes of rank in my father’s army.” Adolin nodded toward the sheets. “That leaves one full set. Personally, I’m curious to know if the stories are true. If a darkeyes bonds a Shardblade, will his eyes change color?”
Kaladin felt a moment of sheer panic. Again. It was happening again.
The armorers removed the sheets, revealing a shimmering silvery Blade. Edged on both sides, a pattern of twisting vines ran up its center. At their feet, the armorers uncovered a set of Plate, painted orange, taken from one of the men Kaladin had helped defeat.
Take these Shards, and everything changed. Kaladin immediately felt sick, almost cripplingly so. He turned back to Adolin. “I can do with these as I wish?”
“Take them,” Adolin said, nodding. “They are yours.”
“Not anymore,” Kaladin said, pointing toward one of the members of Bridge Four. “Moash. Take these. You’re now a Shardbearer.”
All of the color drained from Moash’s face. Kaladin prepared himself. Last time . . . He flinched as Adolin grabbed him by the shoulder, but the tragedy of Amaram’s army did not repeat. Instead, Adolin yanked Kaladin back into the hallway, holding up a hand to stop the bridgemen from talking.
“Just a second,” Adolin said. “Nobody move.” Then, in a quieter voice, he hissed to Kaladin. “I’m giving you a Shardblade and Shardplate.”
“Thank you,” Kaladin said. “Moash will use them well. He’s been training with Zahel.”
“I didn’t give them to him. I gave them to you.”
“If they’re really mine, then I can do with them as I wish. Or are they not really mine?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Adolin said. “This is the dream of every soldier, darkeyed or light. Is this out of spite? Or . . . is it . . .” Adolin seemed completely baffled.
“It’s not out of spite,” Kaladin said, speaking softly. “Adolin, those Blades have killed too many people I love. I can’t look at them, can’t touch them, without seeing blood.”
“You’d be lighteyed,” Adolin whispered. “Even if it didn’t change your eye color, you’d count as one. Shardbearers are immediately of the fourth dahn. You could challenge Amaram. Your whole life would change.”
“I don’t want my life to change because I’ve become a lighteyes,” Kaladin said. “I want the lives of people like me . . . like I am now . . . to change. This gift is not for me, Adolin. I’m not trying to spite you or anyone else. I just don’t want a Shardblade.”
“That assassin is going to come back,” Adolin said. “We both know it. I’d rather have you there with Shards to back me up.”
“I’ll be more useful without them.”