“Does that make it right?” Jasnah said, leaning forward. “Do you condone what the men were planning to do?”
“Of course not. But that doesn’t make what you did right either!”
“And yet, those men are off the street. The people of this city are that much safer. The issue that Taravangian has been so worried about has been solved, and no more theatergoers will fall to those thugs. How many lives did I just save?”
“I know how many you just took,” Shallan said. “And through the power of something that should be holy!”
“Philosophy in action. An important lesson for you.”
“You did all this just to prove a point,” Shallan said softly. “You did this to prove to me that you could. Damnation, Jasnah, how could you do something like that?”
Jasnah didn’t reply. Shallan stared at the woman, searching for emotion in those expressionless eyes. Stormfather. Did I ever really know this woman? Who is she, really?
Jasnah leaned back, watching the city pass. “I did not do this just to prove a point, child. I have been feeling for some time that I took advantage of His Majesty’s hospitality. He doesn’t realize how much trouble he could face for allying himself with me. Besides, men like those…” There was something in her voice, an edge Shallan had never heard before.
What was done to you? Shallan wondered with horror. And who did it?
“Regardless,” Jasnah continued, “tonight’s actions came about because I chose this path, not because of anything I felt you needed to see. However, the opportunity also presented a chance for instruction, for questions. Am I a monster or am I a hero? Did I just slaughter four men, or did I stop four murderers from walking the streets? Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her? Did I have a right to defend myself? Or was I just looking for an excuse to end lives?”
“I don’t know,” Shallan whispered.
“You will spend the next week researching it and thinking on it. If you wish to be a scholar – a true scholar who changes the world – then you will need to face questions like this. There will be times when you must make decisions that churn your stomach, Shallan Davar. I’ll have you ready to make those decisions.”
Jasnah fell silent, looking out the side as the palanquin bearers marched them up to the Conclave. Too troubled to say more, Shallan suffered the rest of the trip in silence. She followed Jasnah through the hushed hallways to their rooms, passing scholars on their way to the Palanaeum for some midnight study.
Inside their rooms, Shallan helped Jasnah undress, though she hated touching the woman. She shouldn’t have felt that way. The men Jasnah had killed were terrible creatures, and she had little doubt that they would have killed her. But it wasn’t the act itself so much as the cold callousness of it that bothered her.
Still feeling numb, Shallan fetched Jasnah a sleeping robe as the woman removed her jewelry and set it on the dressing table. “You could have let the other three get away,” Shallan said, walking back toward Jasnah, who had sat down to brush her hair. “You only needed to kill one of them.”
“No, I didn’t,” Jasnah said.
“Why? They would have been too frightened to do something like that again.”
“You don’t know that. I sincerely wanted those men gone. A careless barmaid walking home the wrong way cannot protect herself, but I can. And I will.”
“You have no authority to do so, not in someone else’s city.”
“True,” Jasnah said. “Another point to consider, I suppose.” She raised the brush to her hair, pointedly turning away from Shallan. She closed her eyes, as if to shut Shallan out.
The Soulcaster sat on the dressing table beside Jasnah’s earrings. Shallan gritted her teeth, holding the soft, silken robe. Jasnah sat in her white underdress, brushing her hair.
There will be times when you must make decisions that churn your stomach, Shallan Davar…
I’ve faced them already.
I’m facing one now.
How dare Jasnah do this? How dare she make Shallan a part of it? How dare she use something beautiful and holy as a device for destruction?
Jasnah didn’t deserve to own the Soulcaster.
With a swift move of her hand, Shallan tucked the folded robe under her safearm, then shoved her hand into her safepouch and popped out the intact smokestone from her father’s Soulcaster. She stepped up to the dressing table, and – using the motion of placing the robe onto the table as a cover – made the exchange. She slid the working Soulcaster into her safehand within its sleeve, stepping back as Jasnah opened her eyes and glanced at the robe, which now sat innocently beside the nonfunctional Soulcaster.
Shallan’s breath caught in her throat.
Jasnah closed her eyes again, handing the brush toward Shallan. “Fifty strokes tonight, Shallan. It has been a fatiguing day.”
Shallan moved by rote, brushing her mistress’s hair while clutching the stolen Soulcaster in her hidden safehand, panicked that Jasnah would notice the swap at any moment.
She didn’t. Not when she put on her robe. Not when she tucked the broken Soulcaster away in her jewelry case and locked it with a key she wore around her neck as she slept.
Shallan walked from the room stunned, in turmoil. Exhausted, sickened, confused.
But undiscovered.
37
Sides
FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
“Kaladin, look at this rock,” Tien said. “It changes colors when you look at it from different sides.”
Kal looked away from the window, glancing at his brother. Now thirteen years of age, Tien had turned from an eager boy into an eager adolescent. Though he’d grown, he was still small for his age, and his mop of black and brown hair still refused all attempts at order. He was squatting beside the lacquered cobwood dinner table, eyes level with the glossy surface, looking at a small, lumpish rock.
Kal sat on a stool peeling longroots with a short knife. The brown roots were dirty on the outside and sticky when he sliced into them, so working on them coated his fingers with a thick layer of crem. He finished a root and handed it up to his mother, who washed it off and sliced it into the stew pot.
“Mother, look at this,” Tien said. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the leeside window, bathing the table. “From this side, the rock sparkles red, but from the other side, it’s green.”
“Perhaps it’s magical,” Hesina said. Chunk after chunk of longroot plunked into the water, each splash with a slightly different note.
“I think it must be,” Tien said. “Or it has a spren. Do spren live in rocks?”
“Spren live in everything,” Hesina replied.
“They can’t live in everything,” Kal said, dropping a peel into the pail at his feet. He glanced out the window, watching the road that led from the town to the citylord’s mansion.
“They do,” Hesina said. “Spren appear when something changes – when fear appears, or when it begins to rain. They are the heart of change, and therefore the heart of all things.”
“This longroot,” Kal said, holding it up skeptically.
“Has a spren.”
“And if you slice it up?”
“Each bit has a spren. Only smaller.”
Kal frowned, looking over the long tuber. They grew in cracks in the stone where water collected. They tasted faintly of minerals, but were easy to grow. His family needed food that didn’t cost much, these days.