Words of Radiance

“I can tell you the details,” Adolin said. “Maybe at the winehouse later tonight? Bring Inkima? You can tell me how stupid I’m being, give me some perspective.”

Jakamav stared at his wine.

“What?” Adolin asked.

“Being seen with you isn’t good for one’s reputation these days, Adolin,” Jakamav said. “Your father and the king aren’t particularly popular.”

“It will all blow over.”

“I’m sure it will,” Jakamav said. “So let’s… wait until then, shall we?”

Adolin blinked, the words hitting him harder than any blow on the battlefield. “Sure,” Adolin forced himself to say.

“Good man.” Jakamav actually had the audacity to smile at him and lift his cup of wine.

Adolin set aside his own cup untouched and stalked off.

Sureblood was ready and waiting for him when he reached his men. Adolin moved to swing into the saddle, stewing, but the white Ryshadium nudged him with a butt of the head. Adolin sighed, scratching at the horse’s ears. “Sorry,” he said. “Haven’t been paying much attention to you lately, have I?”

He gave the horse a good scratch, and felt somewhat better after climbing into the saddle. Adolin patted Sureblood’s neck, and the horse pranced a bit as they started moving. He often did that when Adolin was feeling annoyed, as if trying to improve his master’s mood.

His four guards for the day followed behind him. They’d obligingly brought their old bridge from Sadeas’s army to get Adolin’s team where they needed to go. They seemed to find it very amusing that Adolin had his soldiers take shifts carrying the thing.

Storming Jakamav. This has been coming, Adolin admitted to himself. The more you defend Father, the more they’ll pull away. They were like children. Father really was right.

Did Adolin have any

true friends? Anyone who would actually stand by him when things were difficult? He knew practically everyone of note in the warcamps. Everyone knew him.

How many of them actually cared?

“I didn’t have a fit,” Renarin said softly.

Adolin shook out of his brooding. They rode side by side, though Adolin’s mount was several hands taller. With Adolin astride a Ryshadium, Renarin looked like a child on a pony by comparison, even in his Plate.

Clouds had rolled across the sun, giving some relief from the glare, though the air had turned cold lately and it looked like winter was here for a season. The empty plateaus stretched ahead, barren and broken.

“I just stood there,” Renarin said. “I wasn’t frozen because of my… ailment. I’m just a coward.”

“You’re no coward,” Adolin said. “I’ve seen you act as brave as any man. Remember the chasmfiend hunt?”

Renarin shrugged.

“You don’t know how to fight, Renarin,” Adolin said. “It’s a good thing you froze. You’re too new at this to go into battle right now.”

“I shouldn’t be. You started training when you were six.”

“That’s different.”

“You’re different, you mean,” Renarin said, eyes forward. He wasn’t wearing his spectacles. Why was that? Didn’t he need them?

Trying to act like he doesn’t, Adolin thought. Renarin so desperately wanted to be useful on a battlefield. He’d resisted all suggestions that he should become an ardent and pursue scholarship, as might have better suited him.

“You just need more training,” Adolin said. “Zahel will whip you into shape. Just give it time. You’ll see.”

“I need to be ready,” Renarin said. “Something is coming.”

The way he said it gave Adolin a shiver. “You’re talking about the numbers on the walls.”

Renarin nodded. They’d found another scratched set of them, after the recent highstorm, outside Father’s room. Forty-nine days. A new storm comes.

According to the guards, nobody had gone in or out—different men from last time, which made it unlikely it had been one of them. Storms. That had been scratched on the wall while Adolin had been sleeping just one room away. Who, or what, had done it?

“Need to be ready,” Renarin said. “For the coming storm. So little time…”

27. Fabrications to Distract

FIVE YEARS AGO

Shallan longed to stay outside. Here in the gardens, people didn’t scream at each other. Here there was peace.

Unfortunately, it was a fake peace—a peace of carefully planted shalebark and cultivated vines. A fabrication, designed to amuse and distract. More and more she longed to escape and visit places where the plants weren’t carefully trimmed into shapes, where people didn’t step lightly, as if afraid of causing a rockslide. A place away from the shouting.

A cool mountain breeze came down from the heights and swept through the gardens, making vines shy backward. She sat away from the flowerbeds, and the sneezing they would bring her, instead studying a section of sturdy shalebark. The cremling she sketched turned at the wind, its enormous feelers twitching, before leaning back down to chew on the shalebark. There were so many kinds of cremlings. Had anyone tried to count them all?