The Way of Kings

Lirin set the cup down, and the deep purple liquid-the color of cremling blood-shivered and trembled. It refracted Stormlight from a couple of spheres sitting on the counter.

“Father?”

“When you get to Kharbranth, stay there.” His voice was slurred. “Don’t get sucked back to this tiny, backward, foolish town. Don’t force your beautiful wife to live away from everyone else she’s ever known or loved.”

Kal’s father didn’t often get drunk; this was a rare night of indulgence. Perhaps because Mother had gone to sleep early, exhausted from her work.

“You’ve always said I should come back,” Kal said softly.

“I’m an idiot.” His back to Kal, he stared at the wall splashed with white light from the spheres. “They don’t want me here. They never wanted me here.”

Kal looked down at his folio. It contained drawings of dissected bodies, the muscles splayed and pulled out. The drawings were so detailed. Each had glyphpairs to designate every part, and he’d committed those to memory. Now he studied the procedures, delving into the bodies of men long dead.

Once, Laral had told him that men weren’t supposed to see beneath the skin. These folios, with their pictures, were part of what made everyone so mistrustful of Lirin. Seeing beneath was like seeing beneath the clothing, only worse.

Lirin poured himself more wine. How much the world could change in a short time. Kal pulled his coat close against the chill. A season of winter had come, but they couldn’t afford charcoal for the brazier, for patients no longer gave offerings. Lirin hadn’t stopped healing or surgery. The townspeople had simply stopped their donations, all at a word from Roshone.

“He shouldn’t be able to do this,” Kal whispered.

“But he can,” Lirin said. He wore a white shirt and black vest atop tan trousers. The vest was unbuttoned, the front flaps hanging down by his sides, like the skin pulled back from the torsos of the men in Kal’s drawings.

“We could spend the spheres,” Kal said hesitantly.

“Those are for your education,” Lirin snapped. “If I could send you now, I would.”

Kal’s father and mother had sent a letter to the surgeons in Kharbranth, asking them to let Kal take the entry tests early. They’d responded in the negative.

“He wants us to spend them,” Lirin said, words slurred. “That’s why he said what he did. He’s trying to bully us into needing those spheres.”

Roshone’s words to the townspeople hadn’t exactly been a command. He’d just implied that if Kal’s father was too foolish to charge, then he shouldn’t be paid. The next day, people had stopped donating.

The townsfolk regarded Roshone with a confusing mixture of adoration and fear. In Kal’s opinion, he didn’t deserve either. Obviously, the man had been banished to Hearthstone because he was so bitter and flawed. He clearly didn’t deserve to be among the real lighteyes, who fought for vengeance on the Shattered Plains.

“Why do the people try so hard to please him?” Kal asked of his father’s back. “They never reacted this way around Brightlord Wistiow.”

“They do it because Roshone is unappeasable.”

Kal frowned. Was that the wine talking?

Kal’s father turned, his eyes reflecting pure Stormlight. In those eyes, Kal saw a surprising lucidity. He wasn’t so drunk after all. “Brightlord Wistiow let men do as they wished. And so they ignored him. Roshone lets them know he finds them contemptible. And so they scramble to please him.”

“That makes no sense,” Kal said.

“It is the way of things,” Lirin said, playing with one of the spheres on the table, rolling it beneath his finger. “You’ll have to learn this, Kal. When men perceive the world as being right, we are content. But if we see a hole-a deficiency-we scramble to fill it.”

“You make it sound noble, what they do.”

“It is in a way,” Lirin said. He sighed. “I shouldn’t be so hard on our neighbors. They’re petty, yes, but it’s the pettiness of the ignorant. I’m not disgusted by them. I’m disgusted by the one who manipulates them. A man like Roshone can take what is honest and true in men and twist it into a mess of sludge to walk on.” He took a sip, finishing the wine.

“We should just spend the spheres,” Kal said. “Or send them somewhere, to a moneylender or something. If they were gone, he’d leave us alone.”

“No,” Lirin said softly. “Roshone is not the kind to spare a man once he is beaten. He’s the type who keeps kicking. I don’t know what political mistake landed him in this place, but he obviously can’t get revenge on his rivals. So we’re all he has.” Lirin paused. “Poor fool.”

Poor fool? Kal thought. He’s trying to destroy our lives, and that’s all Father can say?

What of the stories men sang at the hearths? Tales of clever herdsmen outwitting and overthrowing a foolish lighteyed man. There were dozens of variations, and Kal had heard them all. Shouldn’t Lirin fight back somehow? Do something other than sit and wait?

But he didn’t say anything; he knew exactly what Lirin would say. Let me worry about it. Get back to your studies.

Sighing, Kal settled back in his chair, opening his folio again. The surgery room was dim, lit by the four spheres on the table and a single one Kal used for reading. Lirin kept most of the spheres closed up in their cupboard, hidden away. Kal held up his own sphere, lighting the page. There were longer explanations of procedures in the back that his mother could read to him. She was the only woman in the town who could read, though Lirin said it wasn’t uncommon among wellborn darkeyed women in the cities.

As he studied, Kal idly pulled something from his pocket. A rock that had been sitting on his chair for him when he’d come in to study. He recognized it as a favorite one that Tien had been carrying around recently. Now he’d left it for Kaladin; he often did that, hoping that his older brother would be able to see the beauty in it too, though they all just looked like ordinary rocks. He’d have to ask Tien what he found so special about this particular one. There was always something.

Tien spent his days now learning carpentry from Ral, one of the men in the town. Lirin had set him to it reluctantly; he’d been hoping for another surgery assistant, but Tien couldn’t stand the sight of blood. He froze every time, and hadn’t gotten used to it. That was troubling. Kal had hoped that his father would have Tien as an assistant when he left. And Kal was leaving, one way or another. He hadn’t decided between the army or Kharbranth, though in recent months, he’d begun leaning toward becoming a spearman.

If he took that route, he’d have to do it stealthily, once he was old enough that the recruiters would take him over his parents’ objections. Fifteen would probably be old enough. Five more months. For now, he figured that knowing the muscles-and vital parts of a body-would be pretty useful for either a surgeon or a spearman.

A thump came at the door. Kal jumped. It hadn’t been a knock, but a thump. It came again. It sounded like something heavy pushing or slamming against the wood.

“What in the stormwinds?” Lirin said, rising from his stool. He crossed the small room; his undone vest brushed the operating table, button scraping the wood.

Another thump. Kal scrambled out of his chair, closing the folio. At fourteen and a half, he was nearly as tall as his father now. A scraping came at the door, like nails or claws. Kal raised a hand toward his father, suddenly terrified. It was late at night, dark in the room, and the town was silent.

There was something outside. It sounded like a beast. Inhuman. A den of whitespines were said to be making trouble nearby, striking at travelers on the roadway. Kal had an image in his head of the reptilian creatures, as big as horses but with carapace across their backs. Was one of them sniffing at the door? Brushing it, trying to force its way in?

“Father!” Kal yelped.

Lirin pulled open the door. The dim light of the spheres revealed not a monster, but a man wearing black clothing. He had a long metal bar in his hands, and he wore a black wool mask with holes cut for the eyes. Kal felt his heart race in panic as the would-be intruder leapt backward.