The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,300

middle. To the townspeople, it was a cherished time to rest from farming and relax. But Kaladin longed for the sun and the wind. He actually missed the highstorms, with their rage and vitality. These days were dreary, and he found it difficult to get anything productive done. As if the lack of storms left him without strength.

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