and Shallan counted ten beats of her thumping heart before Balat broke the stare and looked away.
Father sat down, looking exhausted as Balat stalked out of the room. The hall fell completely silent, Shallan too frightened to speak. Father eventually stood up, shoving his chair back and leaving. Luesh trailed soon after.
That left Shallan alone with the servants. Timidly she stood up, then went after Balat.
He was in the kennel. The guard had worked swiftly. Balat’s new pod of pups lay dead in a pool of violet blood on the stone floor.
She’d encouraged Balat to breed these. He’d been making progress with his demons, over the years. He rarely hurt anything larger than a cremling. Now he sat on a box, looking down at the small corpses, horrified. Painspren cluttered the ground near him.
The metal gate into the kennel rattled as Shallan pushed it open. She raised her safehand to her mouth as she drew closer to the pitiful remains.
“Father’s guards,” Balat said. “It’s like they were waiting for a chance to do something like this. I don’t like the new group he has. That Levrin, with the angry eyes, and Rin . . . that one frightens me. What ever happened to Ten and Beal? Soldiers that you could joke with. Almost friends . . .”
She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Balat. Did you really see Helaran?”
“Yes. He said I wasn’t to tell anyone. He warned me that this time when he left, he might not be coming back for a long time. He told me . . . told me to watch over the family.” Balat buried his head in his hands. “I can’t be him, Shallan.”
“You don’t need to be.”
“He’s brave. He’s strong.”
“He abandoned us.”
Balat looked up, tears running down his cheeks. “Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s the only way, Shallan.”
“Leave our house?”
“What of it?” Balat asked. “You spend every day locked away, brought out only for Father to display. Jushu has gone back to his gambling—you know he has, even if he’s smarter about it. Wikim talks about becoming an ardent, but I don’t know if Father will ever let go of him. He’s insurance.”
It was, unfortunately, a good argument. “Where would we go?” Shallan asked. “We have nothing.”
“I have nothing here either,” Balat said. “I’m not going to give up on Eylita, Shallan. She’s the only beautiful thing that has happened in my life. If she and I have to go live in Vedenar as tenth dahn, with me working as a house guard or something like that, we’ll do it. Doesn’t that seem a better life than this?” He gestured toward the dead pups.
“Perhaps.”
“Would you go with me? If I took Eylita and left? You could be a scribe. Earn your own way, be free of Father.”
“I . . . No. I need to stay.”
“Why?”
“Something has hold of Father, something awful. If we all leave, we give him to it. Someone has to help him.”
“Why do you defend him so? You know what he did.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“You can’t remember,” Balat said. “You’ve told me over and over that your mind blanks. You saw him kill her, but you don’t want to admit that you witnessed it. Storms, Shallan. You’re as broken as Wikim and Jushu. As . . . as I am sometimes . . .”
She shook off her numbness.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you go, are you going to take Wikim and Jushu with you?”
“I couldn’t afford to,” Balat said. “Jushu in particular. We’d have to live lean, and I couldn’t trust that he’d . . . you know. But if you came, it might be easier for one of us to find work. You’re better at writing and art than Eylita.”
“No, Balat,” Shallan said, frightened of how eager a part of her was to say yes to him. “I can’t. Particularly if Jushu and Wikim remain here.”
“I see,” he said. “Maybe . . . maybe there’s another way out. I’ll think.”
She left him in the kennel, worried that Father would find her there and that it would upset him. She entered the manor, but couldn’t help feeling that she was trying to hold together a carpet as dozens of people pulled out threads from the sides.
What would happen if Balat left? He backed down from fights with Father, but at least he resisted. Wikim merely did what he was told, and Jushu was still a mess. We have to just weather this, Shallan thought. Stop provoking Father, let