display riches Father didn’t actually possess. Shallan had begun helping with the accounts, her duty as daughter. She knew the truth of their finances.
The evening’s chill was offset by the crackling hearth; this room might have felt homey somewhere else. Not here.
The servants poured her wine. Yellow, mildly intoxicating. Father drank violet, prepared in its strength. He settled himself down at the high table, which ran the width of the room—the same room where Helaran had threatened to kill him a year and a half ago. They’d received a brief letter from Helaran six months back, along with a book by the famous Jasnah Kholin for Shallan to read.
Shallan had read his note to her father in a trembling whisper. It hadn’t said much. Mostly veiled threats. That night, Father had beaten one of the maids near to death. Isan still walked with a limp. The servants no longer gossiped about Father having killed his wife.
Nobody does anything at all to resist him, Shallan thought, glancing toward her father. We’re all too scared.
Shallan’s three other brothers sat in a huddled knot at their own table. They avoided looking at their father or interacting with the guests. Several small sphere goblets glowed on the tables, but the room as a whole could have used more light. Neither spheres nor hearthlight were enough to drive out the gloom. She thought that her father liked it that way.
The visiting lighteyes—Brightlord Tavinar—was a slender, well-dressed man with a deep red silk coat. He and his wife sat close together at the high table, their teenaged daughter between them. Shallan had not caught her name.
As the evening progressed, Father tried to speak to them a few times, but they gave only terse responses. For all that it was supposed to be a feast, nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves. The visitors looked as if they wished they’d never accepted the invitation, but Father was more politically important than they, and good relations with him would be valuable.
Shallan picked at her own food, listening to her father boast about his new axehound breeding stud. He spoke of their prosperity. Lies.
She did not want to contradict him. He had been good to her. He was always good to her. Yet, shouldn’t someone do something?
Helaran might have. He’d left them.
It’s growing worse and worse. Someone needs to do something, say something, to change Father. He shouldn’t be doing the things that he did, growing drunk, beating the darkeyes . . .
The first course passed. Then Shallan noticed something. Balat—whom Father had started calling Nan Balat, as if he were the oldest—kept glancing at the guests. That was surprising. He usually ignored them.
Tavinar’s daughter caught his eye, smiled, then looked back at her food. Shallan blinked. Balat . . . and a girl? How odd to consider.
Father didn’t seem to notice. He eventually stood and raised his cup to the room. “Tonight, we celebrate. Good neighbors, strong wine.”
Tavinar and his wife hesitantly raised their cups. Shallan had only just begun to study propriety—it was hard to do, as her tutors kept leaving—but she knew that a good Vorin brightlord was not supposed to celebrate drunkenness. Not that they wouldn’t get drunk, but it was the Vorin way not to talk about it. Such niceties were not her father’s strong point.
“It is an important night,” Father said after taking a sip of his wine. “I have just received word from Brightlord Gevelmar, whom I believe you know, Tavinar. I have been without a wife for too long. Brightlord Gevelmar is sending his youngest daughter along with writs of marriage. My ardents will perform the service at the end of the month, and I will have a wife.”
Shallan felt cold. She pulled her shawl closer. The aforementioned ardents sat at their own table, dining silently. The three men were greying in equal measure, and had served long enough to know Shallan’s grandfather as a youth. They treated her with kindness, however, and studying with them brought her pleasure when all other things seemed to be collapsing.
“Why does nobody speak?” Father demanded, turning around the room. “I have just become betrothed! You look like a bunch of storming Alethi. We’re Veden! Make some noise, you idiots.”
The visitors clapped politely, though they looked even more uncomfortable than they had before. Balat and the twins shared looks, and then lightly thumped the table.
“To the void with all of you.” Father slumped back into his chair as his parshmen approached the low table, each bearing