He didn’t like to talk about his habit. He didn’t even speak of it to Eylita. It was just something he did. You had to keep your sanity somehow.
He finished with the legs, then stood up, leaning on his cane, looking out over the Davar gardens, which were made up of stonework walls covered with different kinds of vines. They were beautiful, though Shallan had been the only one who truly appreciated them. This area of Jah Keved—to the west and south of Alethkar, of higher elevation and broken by mountains such as the Horneater Peaks—had a profusion of vines. They grew on everything, covering the mansion, growing over the steps. Out in the wilds, they hung from trees, grew over rocky expanses, as ubiquitous as grass was in other areas of Roshar.
Balat walked to the edge of the porch. Some wild songlings began to sing in the distance, scraping their ridged shells. They each played a different beat and notes, though they couldn’t really be called melodies. Melodies were things of humans, not animals. But each one was a song, and at times they seemed to sing back and forth to one another.
Balat walked down the steps one at a time, the vines shaking and pulling away before his feet fell. It had been nearly six months since Shallan’s departure. This morning, they’d had word from her via spanreed that she’d succeeded in the first part of her plan, becoming Jasnah Kholin’s ward. And so, his baby sister—who before this had never left their estates—was preparing to rob the most important woman in the world.
Walking down the steps was depressingly hard work for him. Twenty-three years old, he thought, and already a cripple. He still felt a constant, latent ache. The break had been bad, and the surgeon had nearly decided to cut off the entire leg. Perhaps he could be thankful that hadn’t proven necessary, though he would always walk with a cane.
Scrak was playing with something in the sitting green, a place where cultivated grass was grown and kept free of vines. The large axehound rolled about, gnawing at the object, antennae pulled back flat against her skull.
“Scrak,” Balat said, hobbling forward, “what have you got there, girl?”
The axehound looked up at her master, antennae cocking upward. The hound trumped with two echoing voices overlapping one another, then went back to playing.
Blasted creature, Balat thought fondly, never would obey properly. He’d been breeding axehounds since his youth, and had discovered—as had many before him—that the smarter an animal was, the more likely it was to disobey. Oh, Scrak was loyal, but she’d ignore you on the little things. Like a young child trying to prove her independence.
As he got closer, he saw that Scrak had managed to catch a songling. The fist-sized creature was shaped like a peaked disc with four arms that reached out from the sides and scraped rhythms along the top. Four squat legs underneath normally held it to a rock wall, though Scrak had chewed those off. She had two of the arms off too, and had managed to crack the shell. Balat almost took it away to pull the other two arms off, but decided it was best to let Scrak have her fun.
Scrak set the songling down and looked up at Balat, her antennae rising inquisitively. She was sleek and lean, six legs extending before her as she sat on her haunches. Axehounds didn’t have shells or skin; instead, their body was covered with some fusion of the two, smooth to the touch and more pliable than true carapace, but harder than skin and made of interlocking sections. The axehound’s angular face seemed curious, her deep black eyes regarding Balat. She trumped softly.
Balat smiled, reaching down and scratching behind the axehound’s ear holes. The animal leaned against him—she probably weighed as much as he did. The bigger axehounds came up to a man’s waist, though Scrak was of a smaller, quicker breed.
The songling quivered and Scrak pounced on it eagerly, crunching at its shell with her strong outer mandibles.
“Am I a coward, Scrak?” Balat asked, sitting down on a bench. He set his cane aside and snatched a small crab that had been hiding on the side of the bench, its shell having turned white to match the stone.
He held up the squirming animal. The green’s grass had been bred to be less timid, and it poked out of its holes only a few moments after he passed. Other exotic plants bloomed, poking out of shells or holes in the ground, and soon patches of red, orange, and blue waved in the wind around him. The area around the axehound remained bare, of course. Scrak was having far too much fun with her prey, and she kept even the cultivated plants hidden in their burrows.
“I couldn’t have gone to chase Jasnah,” Balat said, starting to pull the crab’s legs off. “Only a woman could get close enough to her to steal the Soulcaster. We decided that. Besides, someone needs to stay back and care for the needs of the house.”
The excuses were hollow. He did feel like a coward. He pulled off a few more legs, but it was unsatisfying. The crab was too small, and the legs came off too easily.
“This plan probably won’t even work,” he said, taking off the last of the legs. Odd, looking at a creature like this when it had no legs. The crab was still alive. Yet how could you know it? Without the legs to wiggle, the creature seemed as dead as a stone.
The arms, he thought, we wave them about to make us seem alive. That’s what they’re good for. He put his fingers between the halves of the crab’s shell and began to pry them apart. This, at least, had a nice feeling of resistance to it.
They were a broken family. Years of suffering their father’s brutal temper had driven Asha Jushu to vice and Tet Wikim to despair. Only Balat had escaped unscathed. Balat and Shallan. She’d been left alone, never touched. At times, Balat had hated her for that, but how could you truly hate someone like Shallan? Shy, quiet, delicate.
I should never have let her go, he thought. There should have been another way. She’d never manage on her own; she was probably terrified. It was a wonder she’d done as much as she had.
He tossed the pieces of crab over his shoulder. If only Helaran had survived. Their eldest brother—then known as Nan Helaran, as he’d been the first son—had stood up to their father repeatedly. Well, he was dead now, and so was their father. They’d left behind a family of cripples.
“Balat!” a voice cried. Wikim appeared on the porch. The younger man was past his recent bout of melancholy, it appeared.
“What?” Balat said, standing.
Wikim rushed down the steps, hurrying up to him, vines—then grass—pulling back before him. “We have a problem.”
“How large a problem?”
“Pretty big, I’d say. Come on.”
Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, sat on the wooden tavern floor, lavis beer slowly soaking through his brown trousers.
Grimy, worn, and fraying, his clothing was far different from the simple—yet elegant—whites he had worn over five years before when he’d assassinated the king of Alethkar.
Head bowed, hands in his lap, he carried no weapons. He hadn’t summoned his Shardblade in years, and it felt equally long since he’d had a bath. He did not complain. If he looked like a wretch, people treated him as a wretch. One did not ask a wretch to assassinate people.
“So he’ll do whatever you say?” asked one of the mine workers sitting at the table. The man’s clothing was little better than Szeth’s, covered with so much dirt and dust that it was difficult to tell grimy skin from grimy cloth. There were four of them, holding ceramic cups. The room smelled of mud and sweat. The ceiling was low, the windows—on the leeward side only—mere slots. The table was precariously held together with several leather straps, as the wood was cracked down the middle.
Took—Szeth’s current master—set his cup down on the table’s tilted side. It sagged under the weight of his arm. “Yeah, he sure will. Hey, kurp, look at me.”
Szeth looked up. “Kurp” meant child in the local Bav dialect. Szeth was accustomed to such pejorative labels. Though he was in his thirty-fifth year—and his seventh year since being named Truthless—his people’s large, round eyes, shorter stature, and tendency toward baldness led Easterners to claim they loo
ked like children.
“Stand up,” Took said.
Szeth did so.
“Jump up and down.”
Szeth complied.
“Pour Ton’s beer on your head.”
Szeth reached for it.
“Hey!” Ton said, pulling the cup away. “None of that, now! Oi ain’t done with this yet!”
“If you were,” said Took, “he couldn’t right pour it on his head, could he?”
“Get ’im to do something else, Took,” Ton griped.
“All right.” Took pulled out his boot knife and tossed it to Szeth. “Kurp, cut your arm up.”
“Took…” said one of the other men, a sniffly man named Amark. “That ain’t right, you know it.”
Took didn’t rescind the order, so Szeth complied, taking the knife and cutting at the flesh of his arm. Blood seeped out around the dirty blade.
“Cut your throat,” Took said.
“Now, Took!” Amark said, standing. “Oi won’t—”
“Oh hush, you,” Took said. Several groups of men from other tables were watching now. “You’ll see. Kurp, cut your throat.”
“I am forbidden to take my own life,” Szeth said softly in the Bav language. “As Truthless, it is the nature of my suffering to be forbidden the taste of death by my own hand.”
Amark settled back down, looking sheepish.
“Dustmother,” Ton said, “he always talks like that?”
“Like what?” Took asked, taking a gulp from his mug.
“Smooth words, so soft and proper. Like a lighteyes.”
“Yeah,” Took said. “He’s like a slave, only better ’cuz he’s a Shin. He don’t run or talk back or anything. Don’t have to pay him, neither. He’s like a parshman, but smarter. Worth a right many spheres, Oi’d say.” He eyed the other men. “Could take him to the mines with you to work, and collect his pay. He’d do things you don’t wanna. Muck out the privy, whitewash the home. All kinds of useful stuff.”
“Well, how’d you come by him, then?” one of the other men asked, scratching his chin. Took was a transient worker, moving from town to town. Displaying Szeth was one of the ways he made quick friends.
“Oh, now, that’s a story,” Took said. “Oi was traveling in the mountains down south, you know, and Oi heard this weird howling noise. It wasn’t joust the wind, you know, and…”
The tale was a complete fabrication; Szeth’s previous master—a farmer in a nearby village—had traded Szeth to Took for a sack of seeds. The farmer had gotten him from a traveling merchant, who had gotten him from a cobbler who’d won him in an illegal game of chance. There had been dozens before him.
At first, the darkeyed commoners enjoyed the novelty of owning him.
Slaves were far too expensive for most, and parshmen were even more valuable. So having someone like Szeth to order around was quite the novelty. He cleaned floors, sawed wood, helped in the fields, and carried burdens. Some treated him well, some did not.
But they always got rid of him.
Perhaps they could sense the truth, that he was capable of so much more than they dared use him for. It was one thing to have a slave of your own. But when that slave talked like a lighteyes and knew more than you did? It made them uncomfortable.
Szeth tried to play the part, tried to make himself act less refined. It was very difficult for him. Perhaps impossible. What would these men say if they knew that the man who emptied their chamber pot was a Shardbearer and a Surgebinder? A Windrunner, like the Radiants of old? The moment he summoned his Blade, his eyes would turn from dark green to pale—almost glowing—sapphire, a unique effect of his particular weapon.
Best that they never discovered. Szeth gloried in being wasted; each day he was made to clean or dig instead of kill was a victory. That evening five years ago still haunted him. Before then, he had been ordered to kill—but always in secret, silently. Never before had he been given such deliberately terrible instructions.
Kill, destroy, and cut your way to the king. Be seen doing it. Leave witnesses. Wounded but alive….
“…and that is when he swore to serve me my entire life,” Took finished. “He’s been with me ever since.”
The listening men turned to Szeth. “It is true,” he said, as he’d been ordered earlier. “Every word of it.”
Took smiled. Szeth didn’t make him uncomfortable; he apparently considered it natural that Szeth obeyed him. Perhaps as a result he would remain Szeth’s master longer than the others.
“Well,” Took said, “Oi should be going. Need to get an early start tomorrow. More places to see, more unseen roads to dare…”
He liked to think of himself as a seasoned traveler, though as far as Szeth could tell, he just moved around in a wide circle. There were many small mines—and therefore small villages—in this part of Bavland. Took had probably been to this same village years back, but the mines made for a lot of transient workers. It was unlikely he’d be remembered, unless someone had noted his terribly exaggerated stories.
Terrible or not, the other miners seemed to thirst for more. They urged him on, offering him another drink, and he modestly agreed.
Szeth sat quietly, legs folded, hands in his lap, blood trickling down his arm. Had the Parshendi known what they were consigning him to by tossing his Oathstone away as they fled Kholinar that night? Szeth had been required to recover it, then stand there beside the road, wondering if he would be discovered and executed—hoping he’d be discovered and executed—until a passing merchant had cared enough to inquire. By then, Szeth had stood only in a loincloth. His honor had forced him to discard the white clothing, as it would have made him easier to recognize. He had to preserve himself so that he could suffer.
After a short explanation that left out incriminating details, Szeth had found himself riding in the back of the merchant’s cart. The merchant—a man named Avado—had been clever enough to realize that in the wake of the king’s death, foreigners might be treated poorly. He’d made his way to Jah Keved, never knowing that he harbored Gavilar’s murderer as his serving man.
The Alethi didn’t search for him. They assumed that he, the infamous “Assassin in White,” had retreated with the Parshendi. They probably expected to discover him in the middle of the Shattered Plains.
The miners eventually tired of Took’s increasingly slurred stories. They bid him farewell, ignoring his broad hints that another cup of beer would prompt him to tell his greatest tale: that of the time when he’d seen the Nightwatcher herself and stolen a sphere that glowed black at night. That tale always discomforted Szeth, as it reminded him of the strange black sphere Gavilar had given him. He’d hidden that carefully in Jah Keved. He didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t want to risk a master taking it from him.
When nobody offered Took another drink, he reluctantly stumbled from his chair and waved Szeth to follow him from the tavern. The street was dark outside. This town, Ironsway, had a proper town square, several hundred homes, and three different taverns. That made it practically a metropolis for Bavland—the small, mostly-ignored stretch of land just south of the Horneater Peaks. The area was technically part of Jah Keved, but even its highprince tended to stay away from it.
Szeth followed his master through the streets toward the poorer district. Took was too cheap to pay for a room in the nice, or even modest, areas of a town. Szeth looked over his shoulder, wishing that the Second Sister—known as Nomon to these Easterners—had risen to give a little more light.
Took stumbled drunkenly, then fell over in the street. Szeth sighed. It would not be the first night he carried his master home to his bed. He knelt to lift Took.
He froze. A warm liquid was pooling beneath his master’s body. Only then did he notice the knife in Took’s neck.
Szeth instantly came alert as a group of footpads slipped out of the alleyway. One raised a hand, the knife in it reflecting starlight, preparing to throw at Szeth. He tensed. There were infused spheres he could draw upon in Too
k’s pouch.
“Wait,” hissed one of the footpads.
The man with the knife paused. Another man came closer, inspecting Szeth. “He’s Shin. Won’t hurt a cremling.”
Others pulled the corpse into the alleyway. The one with the knife raised his weapon again. “He could still yell.”
“Then why hasn’t he? Oi’m telling you, they’re harmless. Almost like parshmen. We can sell him.”
“Maybe,” the second said. “He’s terrified. Look at ’im.”
“Come ’ere,” the first footpad said, waving Szeth forward.
He obeyed, walking into the alley, which was suddenly illuminated as the other footpads pulled open Took’s pouch.
“Kelek,” one of them said, “hardly worth the effort. A handful of chips and two marks, not a single broam in the lot.”
“Oi’m telling you,” the first man said. “We can sell this fellow as a slave. People like Shin servants.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“Nah. They all look like that. Hey, whacha got there?” The man plucked a twinkling, sphere-sized chunk of rock from the hand of the man counting the spheres. It was fairly ordinary, a simple piece of rock with a few quartz crystals set into it and a rusty vein of iron on one side. “What is this?”
“Worthless,” one of the men said.
“I am required to tell you,” Szeth said quietly, “that you are holding my Oathstone. So long as you possess it, you are my master.”
“What’s that?” one of the footpads said, standing.
The first one closed his hand around the stone, shooting a wary glance at the others. He looked back at Szeth. “Your master? What does that mean exactly, in precise terms and all?”
“I must obey you,” Szeth said. “In all things, though I will not follow an order to kill myself.” He also couldn’t be ordered to give up his Blade, but there was no need to mention that at the moment.
“You’ll obey me?” the footpad said. “You mean, you’ll do what Oi say?”
“Yes.”
“Anything Oi say?”