The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,59

dust—flitted from one frond to the next.

Shallan leaned back against the stonelike plant, the tendrils pulling in and hiding. From this vantage, she could look down at Kharbranth, lights glowing beneath her like a cascade of fire streaming down the cliff face. The only other option for her and her brothers was to run. To abandon the family estates in Jah Keved and seek asylum. But where? Were there old allies her father hadn’t alienated?

There was that matter of the strange collection of maps they’d found in his study. What did they mean? He’d rarely spoken of his plans to his children. Even her father’s advisors knew very little. Helaran—her eldest brother—had known more, but he had vanished over a year ago, and her father had proclaimed him dead.

As always, thinking of her father made her feel ill, and the pain started to constrict her chest. She raised her freehand to her head, suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of House Davar’s situation, her part in it, and the secret she now carried, hidden ten heartbeats away.

“Ho, young miss!” a voice called. She turned, shocked to see Yalb standing up on a rocky shelf a short distance from the Conclave entrance. A group of men in guard uniforms sat on the rock around him.

“Yalb?” she said, aghast. He should have returned to his ship hours ago. She hurried over to stand below the short stone outcropping. “Why are you still here?”

“Oh,” he said, grinning, “I found myself a game of kabers here with these fine, upstanding gentlemen of the city guard. Figured officers of the law were right unlikely to cheat me, so we entered into a friendly-type game while I waited.”

“But you didn’t need to wait.”

“Didn’t need to win eighty chips off these fellows neither,” Yalb said with a laugh. “But I did both!”

The men sitting around him looked far less enthusiastic. Their uniforms were orange tabards tied about the middle with white sashes.

“Well, I suppose I should be leading you back to the ship, then,” Yalb said, reluctantly gathering up the spheres in the pile at his feet. They glowed with a variety of hues. Their light was small—each was only a chip—but it was impressive winnings.

Shallan stepped back as Yalb hopped off the rock shelf. His companions protested his departure, but he gestured to Shallan. “You’d have me leave a lighteyed woman of her stature to walk back to the ship on her own? I figured you for men of honor!”

That quieted their protests.

Yalb chuckled to himself, bowing to Shallan and leading her away down the path. He had a twinkle to his eyes. “Stormfather, but it’s fun to win against lawmen. I’ll have free drinks at the docks once this gets around.”

“You shouldn’t gamble,” Shallan said. “You shouldn’t try to guess the future. I didn’t give you that sphere so you could waste it on such practices.”

Yalb laughed. “It ain’t gambling if you know you’re going to win, young miss.”

“You cheated?” she hissed, horrified. She glanced back at the guardsmen, who had settled down to continue their game, lit by the spheres on the stones before them.

“Not so loud!” Yalb said in a low voice. However, he seemed very pleased with himself. “Cheating four guardsmen, now that’s a trick. Hardly believe I managed it!”

“I’m disappointed in you. This is not proper behavior.”

“It is if you’re a sailor, young miss.” He shrugged. “It’s what they right expected from me. Watched me like handlers of poisonous skyeels, they did. The game wasn’t about the cards—it was about them trying to figure how I was cheating and me trying to figure how to keep them from hauling me off. I think I might not have managed to walk away with my skin if you hadn’t arrived!” That didn’t seem to worry him much.

The roadway down to the docks was not nearly as busy as it had been earlier, but there were still a surprisingly large number of people about. The street was lit by oil lanterns—spheres would just have ended up in someone’s pouch—but many of the people about carried sphere lanterns, casting a rainbow of colored light on the roadway. The people were almost like spren, each a different hue, moving this way or that.

“So, young miss,” Yalb said, leading her carefully through the traffic. “You really want to go back? I just said what I did so I could extract myself from that game there.”

“Yes, I do want to go back, please.”

“And your princess?”

Shallan grimaced. “The meeting was…unproductive.”

“She