him relax. Then he’ll come back. . . .
She climbed the steps and passed Father’s door. It was open a crack; she could hear him inside.
“. . . find him in Valath,” Father said. “Nan Balat claims to have met him in the city, and that is what he must have meant.”
“It will be done, Brightlord.” That voice. It was Rin, captain of Father’s new guards. Shallan backed up, peeking into the room. Father’s strongbox shone behind the picture on the back wall, bright light bursting through the canvas. To her it was almost blinding, though the men in the room didn’t seem able to see it.
Rin bowed before Father, hand on sword.
“Bring me his head, Rin,” Father said. “I want to see it with my own eyes. He is the one who could ruin all of this. Surprise him, kill him before he can summon his Shardblade. That weapon will be yours in payment so long as you serve House Davar.”
Shallan stumbled back from the door before Father could look up and see her. Helaran. Father had just ordered Helaran’s assassination.
I have to do something. I have to warn him. How? Could Balat contact him again? Shallan—
“How dare you,” said a feminine voice within.
Stunned silence followed. Shallan edged back to look into the room. Malise, her stepmother, stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting room. The small, plump woman had never seemed threatening to Shallan before. But the storm on her face today could have frightened a whitespine.
“Your own son,” Malise said. “Have you no morals left? Have you no compassion?”
“He is no longer my son,” Father growled.
“I believed your story about the woman before me,” Malise said. “I’ve supported you. I’ve lived with this cloud over the house. Now I hear this? It is one thing to beat the servants, but to kill your son?”
Father whispered something to Rin. Shallan jumped, and barely got down the hallway to her room before the man slipped out of the room, then closed Father’s door with a click.
Shallan shut herself in her room as the shouting started, a violent, angry back-and-forth between Malise and her father. Shallan huddled up beside the bed, tried to use a pillow to keep out the sounds. When she thought it was over, she removed the pillow.
Her father stormed out into the hallway. “Why will nobody in this house obey?” he shouted, thumping down the stairs. “This wouldn’t happen if you all just obeyed.”
This is, I suspect, a little like a skunk naming itself for its stench.
Life continued in Kaladin’s cell. Though the accommodations were nice for a dungeon, he found himself wishing he were back in the slave wagon. At least then he’d been able to watch the scenery. Fresh air, wind, an occasional rinse in the highstorm’s last rains. Life certainly hadn’t been good, but it had been better than being locked away and forgotten.
They took the spheres away at night, abandoning him to blackness. In the dark, he found himself imagining that he was someplace deep, with miles of stone above him and no pathway out, no hope of rescue. He could not conceive a worse death. Better to be gutted on the battlefield, looking up at the open sky as your life leaked away.
* * *
Light awoke him. He sighed, watching the ceiling as the guards—lighteyed soldiers he didn’t know—replaced the lamp spheres. Day after day, everything was the storming same in here. Waking to the frail light of spheres, which only made him wish for the sun. The servant arrived to give him his breakfast. He’d placed his chamber pot in reach of the opening at the bottom of the bars, and it scraped stone as she pulled it out and replaced it with a fresh one.
She scurried away. He frightened her. With a groan at stiff muscles, Kaladin sat up and regarded his meal. Flatbread stuffed with bean paste. He stood, waving away some strange spren like taut wires crossing before him, then forced himself to do a set of push-ups. Keeping his strength up would be difficult if the imprisonment continued too long. Perhaps he could ask for some stones to use for training.
Was this what happened to Moash’s grandparents? Kaladin wondered, taking the food. Waiting for a trial until they died in prison?
Kaladin sat back on his bench, nibbling on the flatbread. There’d been a highstorm yesterday, but he’d barely been able to hear it, locked away in this room.
He heard Syl humming nearby, but