Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

Oh, storms, Kaladin thought, sitting back down. If they choose Adolin…

The thought should have made him sick. Instead, he found Syl’s revelation oddly comforting. Not being alone, even if it did turn out to be Adolin, made him feel better and drove away some small measure of his gloom.

As he was finishing his meal, a thump came from the hallway. The door opening? Only lighteyes could visit him, though so far none had. Unless you counted Wit.

The storm catches everyone, eventually…

Dalinar Kholin stepped into the room.

Despite his sour thoughts, Kaladin’s immediate reaction—drilled into him over the years—was to stand and salute, hand to breast. This was his commanding officer. He felt an idiot as soon as he did it. He stood behind bars and saluted the man who’d put him here?

“At ease,” Dalinar said with a nod. The wide-shouldered man stood with hands clasped behind his back. Something about Dalinar was imposing, even when he was relaxed.

He looks like the generals from the stories, Kaladin thought. Thick of face and greying of hair, solid in the same way that a brick was. He didn’t wear a uniform, the uniform wore him. Dalinar Kholin represented an ideal that Kaladin had long since decided was a mere fancy.

“How are your accommodations?” Dalinar asked.

“Sir? I’m in storming prison.”

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.”

Dalinar exhaled softly, as if in frustration. “Captain, you and your men are in a unique position. You spend your daily lives around the king. You don’t see the face that is presented to the world, you see the man. It has ever been so for close bodyguards.

“So your loyalty needs to be extra firm and generous. Yes, the man you guard has flaws. Every man does. He is still your king, and I will have your respect.”

“I can and do respect the Throne, sir,” Kaladin said. Not the man sitting in it, perhaps. But he did respect the office. Somebody needed to rule.

“Son,” Dalinar said after a moment’s thought, “do you know why I put you into the position that I did?”

“You said it was because you needed someone you could trust not to be a spy for Sadeas.”