still shaping his current pot. When he was on a pot, nothing could shake him. He kept sculpting, wetting his fingers absently.
“What do you think?” Master Liganor asked.
“A good idea,” Adin’s father replied. “Put out the glyph for lunch, and maybe we can reopen later.”
“Good, good,” the master said, bustling out of the workshop into the attached showroom. “I think … I think I’ll head to my room for a while. You’ll keep working? We’re low on water pots. As always.”
Master Liganor closed and latched the wooden windows at the front of the small shop, then locked the door. Then he went upstairs to his rooms.
As soon as he was gone, Adin’s father stood up, leaving a pot half-finished on the wheel. “Watch the shop, son,” he said, washing his hands, then walked toward the back door.
Short, with curly hair and a quiet way about him, he was not the type someone would pick out of a crowd as a hero. Yet Adin knew exactly where he was going. Adin stood up, hands coated in crem. “You’re going to go see what’s happening, aren’t you? In the atrium?”
His father hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. “Stay here and watch the shop.”
“You’re going to paint your head with the glyph,” Adin said, “and go watch over the Radiants. Just in case. I want to go with you.”
“Your ankle—”
“Is fine now,” Adin said. “If something does go wrong, you’ll need me to run home and tell Mother. Plus, if there’s trouble, there could be looting here in the market. I’ll be safer with you.”
Adin’s father debated, then sighed and waved him forward. Adin felt his heart thundering in his chest as he hurried to obey. He could feel it, an energy in the air. It would happen today.
Today, he’d pick up a spear and earn his spren.
Taravangian had given up on being smart.
It seemed that the longer he lived, the less his intelligence varied each day. And when it did vary, it seemed to move steadily downward. Toward stupidity. Toward sentimentality. His “smart” days lately would have been average just months ago.
He needed to act anyway.
He could not afford to wait upon intelligence. The world could not afford to wait upon the whims of his situation. Unfortunately, Taravangian had no idea how to proceed. He’d failed to recruit Szeth; Taravangian was too stupid to manipulate that man now. He’d started a dozen letters to Dalinar, and ripped them all up.
The right words. Dalinar would only respond to the right words. Plus, whatever Taravangian wrote seemed too much a risk to Kharbranth. He couldn’t sacrifice his home. He couldn’t.
Worse, each day he found time slipping away faster and faster. He’d wake from a nap in his chair and the entire day had passed. Usually it was the pain that woke him.
He wasn’t simply old. He wasn’t simply feeble. This was worse.
Today, Taravangian forced himself to move to keep from drifting off again. He hobbled through his prison of a house. Trying so hard to think. There had to be a solution!
Go to Dalinar, a part of him urged. Don’t write him. Talk to him. Was Taravangian actually waiting on the right words, or was there another reason he delayed? A willing disregard for the truth. The slightly smarter version of him didn’t want to give this up to the Blackthorn.
He shuffled toward the small bathroom on the main floor, leafing through his notebook, looking over hundreds of crossed-out notes and ideas. The answer was here. He felt it. It was so frustrating, knowing how smart he could be, yet living below that capacity so much of the time. Other people didn’t understand intelligence and stupidity. They assumed people who were stupid were somehow less human—less capable of making decisions or plans.
That wasn’t it at all. He could plan, he merely needed time. He could remember things, given a chance to drill them into his brain. Part of being smart, in his experience, was about speed more than capacity. That and the ability to memorize. When he’d created problems to test his daily intelligence, they had taken these dynamics into account, measuring how quickly he could do problems and how well he could remember the equations and principles needed to do so.
He had none of that ability now, but he needed none of it. The answer was here, in the notebook. He settled down on the stool in his bathroom—too tired to move the seat elsewhere—as he flipped through the pages.
Taravangian had a huge