Words of Radiance

“Uh, that’s right,” Sebarial said, leaning back. “She’s a distant family relation. Couldn’t possibly live with myself if I didn’t give her a place to stay.”

“His offer was quite generous,” Shallan said. “Three full broams a week support.”

Sebarial’s eyes bugged out.

“I wasn’t aware of this,” Dalinar said, looking from Sebarial to her.

“I’m sorry, Brightlord,” Shallan said. “I should have told you. I didn’t find it appropriate to be staying in the house of someone who was courting me. Surely you understand.”

He frowned. “What I’m having trouble understanding is why anyone would want to be closer to Sebarial than they need to be.”

“Oh, Uncle Sebarial is quite tolerable, once you get used to him,” Shallan said. “Like a very annoying noise that you eventually learn to ignore.”

Most seemed horrified at her comment, though Aladar smiled. Sebarial—as she’d hoped—laughed out loud.

“I guess that is settled,” Ruthar said, dissatisfied. “I do hope you’ll at least be willing to come brief me.”

“Give it up, Ruthar,” Sebarial said. “She’s too young for you. Though with you involved, I’m sure it would be brief.”

Ruthar sputtered. “I wasn’t implying… You moldy old… Bah!”

Shallan was glad that attention then turned from her back to the topics at hand, because that last comment had her blushing. Sebarial was

inappropriate. Still, he seemed to be making an effort to leave himself out of these political discussions, and that seemed like the place where Shallan wanted to be. The position with the most freedom. She would still work with Dalinar and Navani on Jasnah’s notes, but she didn’t want to be beholden to them.

Who is to say being beholden to this man is any different? Shallan thought, rounding the room to approach where Sebarial sat, without wife or family members to attend him. He was unmarried.

“Almost threw you out on your ear, girl,” Sebarial said quietly, sipping his wine and not looking at her. “Stupid move, putting yourself in my hands. Everyone knows I like to set things on fire and watch them burn.”

“And yet you didn’t throw me out,” she said. “So it wasn’t a stupid move. Merely a risk that paid rewards.”

“Still might drop you. I’m certainly not paying that three broams. That’s almost as much as my mistress costs, and at least I get something from that arrangement.”

“You’ll pay,” Shallan said. “It’s a matter of public record now. But don’t worry. I will earn my keep.”

“You have information about Kholin?” Sebarial asked, studying his wine.

So he did care.

“Information, yes,” Shallan said. “Less about Kholin, and more about the world itself. Trust me, Sebarial. You’ve just entered into a very profitable arrangement.”

She’d have to figure out why that was.

The others continued arguing about the Assassin in White, and she gathered that he had attacked here but had been fought off. As Aladar steered the conversation to a complaint that his gemstones were being taken by the Crown—Shallan didn’t know the reason they’d been seized—Dalinar Kholin slowly stood up. He moved like a rolling boulder. Inevitable, implacable.

Aladar trailed off.

“I passed a curious pile of stones along my path,” Dalinar said. “Of a type I found remarkable. The fractured shale had been weathered by highstorms, blown up against stone of a more durable nature. This pile of thin wafers lay as if stacked by some mortal hand.”

The others looked at Dalinar as if he were mad. Something about the words tugged at Shallan’s memory. They were a quotation from something she’d once read.

Dalinar turned, walking toward the open windows on the leeward side of the room. “But no man had stacked these stones. Precarious though they looked, they were actually quite solid, a formation from once-buried strata now exposed to open air. I wondered how it was possible they remained in such a neat stack, with the fury of the tempests blowing against them.

“I soon ascertained their true nature. I found that force from one direction pushed them back against one another and the rock behind. No amount of pressure I could produce in that manner caused them to shift. And yet, when I removed one stone from the bottom—pulling it out instead of pushing it in—the entire formation collapsed in a miniature avalanche.”

The room’s occupants stared at him until Sebarial finally spoke for all of them. “Dalinar,” the plump man said, “what in Damnation’s eleventh name are you on about?”

“Our methods aren’t working,” Dalinar said, looking back at the lot of them. “Years at war, and we find ourselves in the same position as before. We can no more fight this assassin now than on the night he killed my brother. The king of Jah Keved put three Shardbearers and half an army up against the creature, then died with a Blade through the chest, his Shards left to be scavenged by opportunists.