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….”

The door swung closed. Kal set down the tubers and charged through the streets of Hearthstone, passing men chopping wood, women throwing out dishwater, and a group of grandfathers sitting on steps and looking at the sunset. He dunked his hands into a rain barrel, but didn’t stop as he shook the water free. He ran around Mabrow Pigherder’s house, up past the commonwater—the large hole cut into the rock at the center of the town to catch rain—and along the breakwall, the steep hillside against which the town was built to shield it from storms.

Here, he found a small stand of stumpweight trees. Knobby and about as tall as a man, they grew leaves only on their leeward sides, running down the length of the tree like rungs on a ladder, waving in the cool breeze. As Kal got close, the large, bannerlike leaves snapped up close to the trunks, making a series of whipping sounds.

Kal’s father stood on the other side, hands clasped behind his back. He was waiting where the road from the manor turned past Hearthstone. Lirin turned with a start, noticing Kal. He wore his finest clothing: a blue coat, buttoning up the sides, like a lighteyes’s coat. But it was over a pair of white trousers that showed wear. He studied Kal through his spectacles.

“I’m going with you,” Kal blurted. “Up to the mansion.”

“How did you know?

“Everyone knows,” Kal said. “You think they wouldn’t talk if Brightlord Roshone invited you to dinner? You, of all people?”

Lirin looked away. “I told your mother to keep you busy.”

“She tried.” Kal grimaced. “I’ll probably hear a storm of it when she finds those longroots sitting outside the front door.”

Lirin said nothing. The carriage rolled to a stop nearby, wheels grinding against the stone.

“This will not be a pleasant, idle meal, Kal,” Lirin said.

“I’m not a fool, Father.” When Hesina had been told there was no more need for her to work in the town…Well, there was a reason they’d been reduced to eating longroots. “If you’re going to confront him, then you should have someone to support you.”

“And that someone is you?”

“I’m pretty much all you have.”

The coachman cleared his throat. He didn’t get down and open the door, the way he did for Brightlord Roshone.

Lirin eyed Kal.

“If you send me back, I’ll go,” Kal said.

“No. Come along if you must.” Lirin walked up to the carriage and pulled open the door. It wasn’t the fancy, gold-trimmed vehicle that Roshone used. This was the second carriage, the older brown one. Kal climbed in, feeling a surge of excitement at the small victory—and an equal measure of panic.

They were going to face Roshone. Finally.

The benches inside were amazing, the red cloth covering them softer than anything Kal had ever felt. He sat down, and the seat was surprisingly springy. Lirin sat across from Kal, pulling the door closed, and the coachman snapped his whip at the horses. The vehicle turned around and rattled back up the road. As soft as the seat was, the ride was terribly bumpy, and it rattled Kal’s teeth against one another. It was worse than riding in a wagon, though that was probably because they were going faster.

“Why didn’t you want us to know about this?” Kal asked.

“I wasn’t certain I’d go.”

“What else would you do?”

“Move away,” Lirin said. “Take you to Kharbranth and escape this town, this kingdom, and Roshone’s petty grudges.”

Kal blinked in shock. He’d never thought of that. Suddenly everything seemed to expand. His future changed, wrapping upon itself, folding into a new form entirely. Father, Mother, Tien…with him. “Really?”

Lirin nodded absently. “Even if we didn’t go to Kharbranth, I’m sure many Alethi towns would welcome us. Most have never had a surgeon to care for them. They do the best they can with local men who learned most of what they know from superstition or working on the occasional wounded chull. We could even move to Kholinar; I’m skilled enough to get work as a physician’s assistant there.”

“Why don’t we go, then? Why haven’t we gone?”

Lirin watched out the window. “I don’t know. We should leave. It makes sense. We have the money. We aren’t wanted here. The citylord hates us, the people mistrust us, the Stormfather himself seems inclined to knock us down.” There was something in Lirin’s voice. Regret?

“I tried very hard to leave once,” Lirin said, more softly. “But there’s a tie between a man’s home and his heart. I’ve cared for these people, Kal. Delivered their children, set their bones, healed their scrapes. You’ve seen the worst of them, these last few years, but there was a time before that, a good time.” He turned to Kal, clasping his hands in front of him, the carriage rattling. “They’re mine, son. And I’m theirs. They’re my responsibility, now that Wistiow has gone. I can’t leave them to Roshone.”

“Even if they like what he’s doing?”

“Particularly because of that.” Lirin raised a hand to his head. “Stormfather. It sounds more foolish now that I say it.”

“No. I understand. I think.” Kal shrugged. “I guess, well, they still come to us when they’re hurt. They complain about how unnatural it is to cut into a person, but they still come. I used to wonder why.”

“And did you come to a conclusion?”

“Kind of. I decided that in the end, they’d rather be alive to curse at you a few more days. It’s what they do. Just like healing them is what you do. And they used to give you money. A man can say all kinds of things, but where he sets his spheres, that’s where his heart is.” Kal frowned. “I guess they did appreciate you.”

Lirin smiled. “Wise words. I keep forgetting that you’re nearly a man, Kal. When did you go and grow up on me?”

That night when we were nearly robbed, Kal thought immediately. That night when you shone light on the men outside, and showed that bravery had nothing to do with a spear held in battle.

“You’re wrong about one thing, though,” Lirin said. “You told me that they did appreciate me. But they still do. Oh, they grumble—they’ve always done that. But they also leave food for us.”

Kal started. “They do?”

“How do you think we’ve been eating these last four months?”

“But—”

“They’re frightened of Roshone, so they’re quiet about it. They left it for your mother when she went to clean or put it in the rain barrel when it’s empty.”

“They tried to rob us.”

“And those very men were among the ones who gave us food as well.”

Kal pondered that as the carriage arrived at the manor house. It had been a long time since he’d visited the large, two-story building. It was constructed with a standard roof that sloped toward the stormward side, but was much larger. The walls were of thick white stones, and it had majestic square pillars on the leeward side.

Would he see Laral here? He was embarrassed by how infrequently he thought about her these days.

The mansion’s front grounds had a low stone wall covered with all kinds of exotic plants. Rockbuds lined the top, their vines draping down the outside. Clusters of a bulbous variety of shalebark grew along the inside, bursting with a variety of bright colors. Oranges, reds, yellows, and blues. Some outcroppings looked like heaps of clothing, with folds spread like fans. Others grew out like horns. Most had tendrils like threads that waved in the wind. Brightlord Roshone paid much more attention to his grounds than Wistiow had.

They walked up past the whitewashed pillars and entered between the thick wooden stormdoors. The vestibule inside had a low ceiling and was decorated with ceramics; zircon spheres gave them a pale blue cast.

A tall servant in a long black coat and a bright purple cravat greeted them. He was Natir, the steward now that Miliv had died. He’d been brought in from Dalilak, a large coastal city to the north.

Natir led them to a dining room where Roshone sat at a long darkwood table. He’d gained weight, though not enough to be called fat. He still had that grey-flecked beard, and his hair was greased back down to his collar. He wore white trousers and a tight red vest over a white shirt.

He’d already begun his meal, and the spicy scents made Kal’s stomach rumble. How long had it been since he’d had pork? There were five different dipping sauces on the table, and Roshone’s wine was a deep, crystalline orange. He ate alone, no sign of Laral or his son.

The servant gestured toward a side table set up in a room next to the dining hall. Kal’s father took one look at it, then walked to Roshone’s table and sat down. Roshone paused, skewer halfway to his lips, spicy brown sauce dripping to the table before him.

“I’m of the second nahn,” Lirin said, “and I have a personal invitation to dine with you. Surely you follow the precepts of rank closely enough to give me a place at your table.”

Roshone clenched his teeth, but did not object. Taking a deep breath, Kal sat down beside his father. Before he left to join the war on the Shattered Plains, he had to know. Was his father a coward or a man of courage?

By the light of spheres at home, Lirin had always seemed weak. He worked in his surgery room, ignoring what the townspeople said about him. He told his son he couldn’t practice with the spear and forbade him to think of going to war. Weren’t those the actions of a coward? But five months ago, Kal had seen courage in him that he’d never expected.

And in the calm blue light of Roshone’s palace, Lirin met the eyes of a man far above him in rank, wealth, and power. And did not flinch. How did he do it? Kal’s heart thumped uncontrollably. He had to put his hands in his lap to keep them from betraying his nervousness.

Roshone waved to a serving man, and within a short time, new places had been set. The periphery of the room was dark. Roshone’s table was an illuminated island amid a vast black expanse.

There were bowls of water for dipping one’s fingers and stiff white cloth napkins beside them. A lighteyes’ meal. Kal had rarely eaten such fine food; he tried not to make a fool of himself as he hesitantly took a skewer and imitated Roshone, using his knife to slide down the bottommost chunk of meat, then raising it and biting. The meat was savory and tender, though the spices were much hotter than he was accustomed to.

Lirin did not eat. He rested his elbows on the table, watching the Brightlord dine.

“I wished to offer you the chance to eat in peace,” Roshone said eventually, “before we talked of serious matters. But you don’t seem inclined to partake of my generosity.”

“No.”

“Very well,” Roshone said, taking a piece of flatbread from the basket and wrapping it around his skewer, pulling off several vegetable chunks at once and eating them with the bread. “Then tell me. How long do you think you can defy me? Your family is destitute.”

“We do just fine,” Kal cut in.

Lirin glanced at him, but did not chastise him for speaking. “My son is correct. We can live. And if that doesn’t work, we can leave. I will not bend to your will, Roshone.”

“If you left,” Roshone said, holding up a finger, “I would contact your new citylord and tell him of the spheres stolen from me.”

“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 wouldn’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 leave 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.”