Words of Radiance

A smile cracked Dalinar’s face. “So I see. Calm yourself, soldier. If I’d ordered you to guard a room for a week, would you have done it?”

“Yes.”

“Then consider this your duty. Guard this room.”

“I’ll make sure nobody unauthorized runs off with the chamber pot, sir.”

“Elhokar is coming around. He’s finished cooling off, and now only worries that releasing you too quickly will make him look weak. I’ll need you to stay here a few more days, then we’ll draft a formal pardon for your crime and have you reinstated to your position.”

“I don’t see that I have any choice, sir.”

Dalinar stepped closer to the bars. “This is hard for you.”

Kaladin nodded.

“You are well cared for, as are your men. Two of your bridgemen guard the way into the building at all times. There is nothing to worry you, soldier. If it’s your reputation with me—”

“Sir,” Kaladin said. “I guess I’m just not convinced that the king will ever let me go. He has a history of letting inconvenient people rot in dungeons until they die.”

As soon as he said the words, Kaladin couldn’t believe they’d come from his lips. They sounded insubordinate, even treasonous. But they’d been sitting there, in his mouth, demanding to be spoken.

Dalinar remained in his posture with hands clasped behind his back. “You speak of the silversmiths back in Kholinar?”

So he did know. Stormfather… had Dalinar been involved? Kaladin nodded.

“How did you hear of that incident?”

“From one of my men,” Kaladin said. “He knew the imprisoned people.”

“I had hoped we could escape those rumors,” Dalinar said. “But of course, rumor grows like lichen, crusted on and impossible to completely scrub free. What happened with those people was a mistake, soldier. I’ll admit that freely. The same won’t happen to you.”

“Are the rumors about them true, then?”

“I would really rather not speak of the Roshone affair.”

Roshone.

Kaladin remembered screams. Blood on the floor of his father’s surgery room. A dying boy.

A day in the rain. A day when one man tried to steal away Kaladin’s light. He eventually succeeded.

“Roshone?” Kaladin whispered.

“Yes, a minor lighteyes,” Dalinar said, sighing.

“Sir, it’s important that I know of this. For my own peace of mind.”

Dalinar looked him up and down. Kaladin just stared straight ahead, mind… numb. Roshone. Everything had started to go wrong when Roshone had arrived in Hearthstone to be the new citylord. Before then, Kaladin’s father had been respected.

When that horrid man had arrived, dragging petty jealousy behind him like a cloak, the world had twisted upon itself. Roshone had infected Hearthstone like rotspren on an unclean wound. He was the reason Tien had gone to war. He was the reason Kaladin had followed.

“I suppose I owe you this,” Dalinar said. “But it is not to be spread around. Roshone was a petty man who gained Elhokar’s ear. Elhokar was crown prince then, commanded to rule over Kholinar and watch the kingdom while his father organized our first camps here in the Shattered Plains. I was… away at the time.

“Anyway, do not blame Elhokar. He was taking the advice of someone he trusted. Roshone, however, sought his own interests instead of those of the Throne. He owned several silversmith shops… well, the details are not important. Suffice it to say that Roshone led the prince to make some errors. I cleared it up when I returned.”

“You saw this Roshone punished?” Kaladin asked, voice soft, feeling numb.

“Exiled,” Dalinar said, nodding. “Elhokar moved the man to a place where he couldn’t do any more harm.”

A place he couldn’t do any more harm. Kaladin almost laughed.

“You have something to say?”

“You don’t want to know what I think, sir.”

“Perhaps I don’t. I probably need to hear it anyway.”

Dalinar was a good man. Blinded in some ways, but a good man. “Well, sir,” Kaladin said, controlling his emotions with difficulty, “I find it… troubling that a man like this Roshone could be responsible for the deaths of innocent people, yet escape prison.”

“It was complicated, soldier. Roshone was one of Highprince Sadeas’s sworn liegemen, cousin to important men whose support we needed. I originally argued that Roshone should be stripped of station and made a tenner, forced to live his life in squalor. But this would have alienated allies, and could have undermined the kingdom. Elhokar argued for leniency toward Roshone, and his father agreed via spanreed. I relented, figuring that mercy was not an attribute I should discourage in Elhokar.”

“Of course not,” Kaladin said, clenching his teeth. “Though it seems that such mercy often ends up serving the cousins of powerful lighteyes, and rarely someone lowly.” He stared through the bars between himself and Dalinar.

“Soldier,” Dalinar asked, voice cool. “Do you think I’ve been unfair toward you or your men?”

“You. No, sir. But this isn’t about you.”