Words of Radiance

“They won’t listen, Shallan,” he whispered. “Nobody will listen. I hate that I have to fight my own house. They should support me.” He took the drink. “Wikim just stares at the wall half the time. Jushu is worthless, and Balat fights me every step. Now Malise too.”

“I will speak to them,” Shallan said.

He drank the wine, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, that would be good. Balat is still out with those cursed axehound corpses. I’m glad they’re dead. That litter was full of runts. He didn’t need them anyway…”

Shallan stepped into the chill air. The sun had set, but lanterns hung on the eaves of the manor house. She had rarely seen the gardens at night, and they took on a mysterious cast in the darkness. Vines looked like fingers reaching from the void, seeking something to grab and pull away into the night.

Balat lay on one of the benches. Shallan’s feet crunched on something as she stepped up to him. Claws from cremlings, pulled free of their bodies one after another, then tossed to the ground. She shivered.

“You should go,” she said to Balat.

He sat up. “What?”

“Father can no longer control himself,” Shallan said softly. “You need to leave, while you can. I want you to take Malise with you.”

Balat ran his hand through his mess of curly dark hair. “Malise? Father will never let her go. He’d hunt us down.”

“He’ll hunt you anyway,” Shallan said. “He hunts Helaran. Earlier today, he ordered one of his men to find our brother and assassinate him.”

“What!” Balat stood. “That bastard! I’ll… I…” He looked to Shallan in the darkness, face lit by starlight. Then he crumpled, sitting back down, holding his head in his hands. “I’m a coward, Shallan,” he whispered. “Oh, Stormfather, I’m a coward. I won’t face him. I can’t.”

“Go to Helaran,” Shallan said. “Could you find him, if you needed to?”

“He… Yes, he left me the name of a contact in Valath who could put me in touch with him.”

“Take Malise and Eylita. Go to Helaran.”

“I won’t have time to find Helaran before Father catches up.”

“Then we will contact Helaran,” Shallan said. “We will make plans for you to meet him, and you can schedule your flight for a time when Father is away. He is planning another trip to Vedenar a few months from now. Leave when he’s gone, get a head start.”

Balat nodded. “Yes… Yes, that is good.”

“I will draft a letter to Helaran,” Shallan said. “We need to warn him about Father’s assassins, and we can ask him to take the three of you in.”

“You shouldn’t have to do this, small one,” Balat said, head down. “I’m the eldest after Helaran. I should have been able to stop Father by now. Somehow.”

“Take Malise away,” Shallan said. “That will be doing enough.”

He nodded.

Shallan returned to the house, passing Father mulling over his disobedient family, and fetched some things from the kitchen. Then she returned to the steps and looked upward. Taking a few deep breaths, she went over what she would say to the guards if they stopped her. Then she raced up them and opened the door into her father’s sitting room.

“Wait,” the hallway guard said. “He left orders. Nobody in or out.”

Shallan’s throat tightened, and even with her practice, she stammered as she spoke. “I just talked to him. He wants me to speak with her.”

The guard inspected her, chewing on something. Shallan felt her confidence wilt, heart racing. Confrontation. She was as much a coward as Balat.

He gestured to the other guard, who went downstairs to check. He eventually returned, nodding, and the first man reluctantly waved for her to continue. Shallan entered.

Into the Place.

She had not entered this room in years. Not since…

Not since…

She raised a hand, shading her eyes against the light coming from behind the painting. How could Father sleep in here? How was it that nobody else looked, nobody else cared? That light was blinding

.

Fortunately, Malise was curled in an easy chair facing that wall, so Shallan could put her back to the painting and obstruct the light. She rested a hand on her stepmother’s arm.

She didn’t feel that she knew Malise, despite years living together. Who was this woman who would marry a man everyone whispered had killed his previous wife? Malise oversaw Shallan’s education—meaning she searched for new tutors each time the women fled—but Malise herself couldn’t do much to teach Shallan. One could not teach what one did not know.

“Mother?” Shallan asked. She used the word.

Malise looked. Despite the blazing light of the room, Shallan saw the woman’s lip was split and bleeding. She cradled her left arm. Yes, it was broken.

Shallan took out the gauze and cloth she had fetched from the kitchen, then began to wipe down the wounds. She would have to find something to use as a splint for that arm.

“Why doesn’t he hate you?” Malise said harshly. “He hates everyone else but you.”

Shallan dabbed at the woman’s lip.