Kaladin stepped forward and began to outline a plan.
FIVE YEARS AGO
Kaladin hated the Weeping. It marked the end of an old year and the coming of a new one, four solid weeks of rain in a ceaseless cascade of sullen drops. Never furious, never passionate like a highstorm. Slow, steady. Like the blood of a dying year that was taking its last few shambling steps toward the cairn. While other seasons of weather came and went unpredictably, the Weeping never failed to return at the same time each year. Unfortunately.
Kaladin lay on the sloped roof of his house in Hearthstone. A small pail of pitch sat next to him, covered by a piece of wood. It was almost empty now that he’d finished patching the roof. The Weeping was a miserable time to do this work, but it was also when a persistent leak could be most irritating. They’d repatch when the Weeping ended, but at least this way they wouldn’t have to suffer a steady stream of drips onto their dining table for the next weeks.
He lay on his back, staring up at the sky. Perhaps he should have climbed down and gone inside, but he was already soaked through. So he stayed. Watching, thinking.
Another army was passing through the town. One of many these days—they often came during the Weeping, resupplying and moving to new battlefields. Roshone had made a rare appearance to welcome the warlord: Highmarshal Amaram himself, apparently a distant cousin as well as head of Alethi defense in this area. He was of the most renowned soldiers still in Alethkar; most had left for the Shattered Plains.
The small raindrops misted Kaladin. Many of the others liked these weeks—there were no highstorms, save for one right in the middle. To the townspeople, it was a cherished time to rest from farming and relax. But Kaladin longed for the sun and the wind. He actually missed the highstorms, with their rage and vitality. These days were dreary, and he found it difficult to get anything productive done. As if the lack of storms left him without strength.
Few people had seen much of Roshone since the ill-fated whitespine hunt and the death of his son. He hid in his mansion, increasingly reclusive. The people of Hearthstone trod very lightly, as if they expected that any moment he could explode and turn his rage against them. Kaladin wasn’t worried about that. A storm—whether from a person or the sky—was something you could react to. But this suffocation, this slow and steady dousing of life…That was far, far worse.
“Kaladin?” Tien’s voice called. “Are you still up there?”
“Yeah,” he called back, not moving. The clouds were so bland during the Weeping. Could anything be more lifeless than that miserable grey?
Tien rounded to the back of the building, where the roof sloped down to touch the ground. He had his hands in the pockets of his long raincoat, a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Both looked too large for him, but clothing always seemed too large for Tien. Even when it fit him properly.
Kaladin’s brother climbed up onto the roof and walked up beside him, then lay down, staring upward. Someone else might have tried to cheer Kaladin up, and they would have failed. But somehow Tien knew the right thing to do. For the moment, that was keeping silent.
“You like the rain, don’t you?” Kaladin finally asked him.
“Yeah,” Tien said. Of course, Tien liked pretty much everything. “Hard to stare up at like this, though. I keep blinking.”
For some reason, that made Kaladin smile.
“I made you something,” Tien said. “At the shop today.”
Kaladin’s parents were worried; Ral the carpenter had taken Tien, though he didn’t really need another apprentice, and was reportedly dissatisfied with the boy’s work. Tien got distracted easily, Ral complained.
Kaladin sat up as Tien fished something out of his pocket. It was a small wooden horse, intricately carved.
“Don’t worry about the water,” Tien said, handing it over. “I sealed it already.”
“Tien,” Kaladin said, amazed. “This is beautiful.” The details were amazing—the eyes, the hooves, the lines in the tail. It looked just like the majestic animals that pulled Roshone’s carriage. “Did you show this to Ral?”
“He said it was good,” Tien said, smiling beneath his oversized hat. “But he told me I should have been making a chair instead. I kind of got into trouble.”
“But how…I mean, Tien, he’s got to see this is amazing!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Tien said, still smiling. “It’s just a horse. Master Ral likes things you can use. Things to sit on, things to put clothes in. But I think I can make a good chair tomorrow, something that will make him proud.”
Kaladin looked at his brother, with his innocent face and affable nature. He hadn’t lost either, though he was now into his teenage years. How is it you can always smile? Kaladin thought. It’s dreadful outside, your master treats you like crem, and your family is slowly being strangled by the citylord. And yet you smile. How, Tien?
And why is it that you make me want to smile too?
“Father spent another of the spheres, Tien,” Kaladin found himself saying. Each time their father was forced to do that, he seemed to grow a little more wan, stand a little less tall. Those spheres were dun these days, no light in them. You couldn’t infuse spheres during the Weeping. They all ran out, eventually.
“There are plenty more,” Tien said.
“Roshone is trying to wear us down,” Kaladin said. “Bit by bit, smother us.”
“It’s not as bad as it seems, Kaladin,” his brother said, reaching up to hold his arm. “Things are never as bad as they seem. You’ll see.”
So many objections rose in his mind, but Tien’s smile banished them. There, in the midst of the dreariest part of the year, Kaladin felt for a moment as if he had glimpsed sunshine. He could swear he felt things grow brighter around them, the storm retreating a shade, the sky lightening.
Their mother rounded the back of the building. She looked up at them, as if amused to find them both sitting on the roof in the rain. She stepped onto the lower portion. A small group of haspers clung to the stone there; the small two-shelled creatures proliferated during the Weeping. They seemed to grow out of nowhere, much like their cousins the tiny snails, scattered all across the stone.
“What are you two talking about?” she asked, walking up and sitting down with them. Hesina rarely acted like the other mothers in town. Sometimes, that bothered Kaladin. Shouldn’t she have sent them into the house or something, complaining that they’d catch a cold? No, she just sat down with them, wearing a brown leather raincoat.
“Kaladin’s worried about Father spending the spheres,” Tien said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she replied. “We’ll get you to Kharbranth. You’ll be old enough to leave in two more months.”
“You two should come with me,” Kal said. “And Father too.”
“And leave the town?” Tien said, as if he’d never considered that possibility. “But I like it here.”
Hesina smiled.
“What?” Kaladin said.
“Most young men your age are trying everything they can to be rid of their parents.”
“I can’t go off and leave you here. We’re a family.”
“He’s trying to strangle us,” Kaladin said, glancing at Tien. Talking with his brother had made him feel a lot better, but his objections were still there. “Nobody pays for healing, and I know nobody will pay you for work anymore. What kind of value does Father get for those spheres he spends anyway? Vegetables at ten times the regular price, moldy grain at double?”
Hesina smiled. “Observant.”
“Father taught me to notice details. The eyes of a surgeon.”
“Well,” she said, eyes twinkling, “did your surgeon’s eyes notice the first time we spent one of the spheres?”
“Sure,” Kaladin said. “It was the day after the hunting accident. Father had to buy new cloth to make bandages.”
“And did we need new bandages?”
“Well, no. But you know how Father is. He doesn’t like it when we start to run even a little low.”
“And so he spent one of those spheres,” Hesina said. “That he’d hoarded for months and months, butting heads with the citylord over them.”
Not to mention going to such lengths to steal them in the first place, Kaladin thought. But you know all about that. He glanced at Tien, who was watching the sky again. So far as Kal knew, his brother hadn’t discovered the truth yet.
“So your father resisted so long,” Hesina said, “only to finally break and spend a sphere on some cloth bandages we wouldn’t need for months.”
She had a point. Why had his father suddenly decided to…“He’s letting Roshone think he’s winning,” Kaladin said with surprise, looking back at her.
Hesina smiled slyly. “Roshone would have found a way to get retribution eventually. It wouldn’t have been easy. Your father ranks high as a citizen, and has the right of inquest. He did save Roshone’s life, and many could testify to the severity of Rillir’s wounds. But Roshone would have found a way. Unless he felt he’d broken us.”
Kaladin turned toward the mansion. Though it was hidden by the shroud of rain, he could just make out the tents of the army camped on the field below. What would it be like to live as a soldier, often exposed to storms and rain, to winds and tempests? Once Kaladin would have been intrigued, but the life of a spearman had no call for him now. His mind was filled with diagrams of muscles and memorized lists of symptoms and diseases.
“We’ll keep spending the spheres,” Hesina said. “One every few weeks. Partially to live, though my family has offered supplies. More to keep Roshone thinking that we’re bending. And then, we send you away. Unexpectedly. You’ll be gone, the spheres safely in the hands of the ardents to use as a stipend during your years of study.”
Kaladin blinked in realization. They weren’t losing. They were winning.
“Think of it, Kaladin,” Tien said. “You’ll live in one of the grandest cities in the world! It will be so exciting. You’ll be a man of learning, like Father. You’ll have clerks to read to you from any book you want.”
Kaladin pushed wet hair off his forehead. Tien made it sound a lot grander than he’d been thinking. Of course, Tien could make a crem-filled puddle sound grand.
“That’s true,” his mother said, still staring upward. “You could learn mathematics, history, politics, tactics, the sciences…”
“Aren’t those things women learn?” Kaladin said, frowning.
“Lighteyed women study them. But there are male scholars as well. If not as many.”
“All this to become a surgeon.”
“You wouldn’t have to become a surgeon. Your life is your own, son. If you take the path of a surgeon, we will be proud. But don’t feel that you need to live your father’s life for him.” She looked down at Kaladin, blinking rainwater from her eyes.
“What else would I do?” Kaladin said, stupefied.