“That’s the way everyone does it,” Kal said, scratching his head. “The other boys don’t mind becoming farmers because their fathers were farmers, and Ral just became the new town carpenter. He didn’t mind that it was what his father did. Why should I mind being a surgeon?”
“I just—” Laral looked angry. “Kal, if you go to war and find a Shardblade, then you’d be a lighteyes…. I mean…Oh, this is useless.” She settled back, folding her arms even more tightly.
Kal scratched his head. She really was acting oddly. “I wouldn’t mind going to war, winning honor and all that. Mostly, I’d like to travel. See what other lands are like.” He’d heard tales of exotic animals, like enormous crustaceans or eels that sang. Of Rall Elorim, City of Shadows, or Kurth, City of Lightning.
He’d spent a lot of time studying these last few years. Kal’s mother said he should be allowed to have a childhood, rather than focusing so much on his future. Lirin argued that the tests to be admitted by the Kharbranthian surgeons were very rigorous. If Kal wanted a chance with them, he’d have to begin learning early.
And yet, to become a soldier…The other boys dreamed of joining the army, of fighting with King Gavilar. There was talk of going to war with Jah Keved, once and for all. What would it be like, to finally see some of the heroes from stories? To fight with Highprince Sadeas, or Dalinar the Blackthorn?
Eventually, the lurg realized that it had been tricked. It settled down on a rock to spin its cocoon again. Kal grabbed a small, weathered stone off the ground, then laid a hand on Tien’s shoulder, stopping the boy from prodding the tired amphibian. Kal moved forward and nudged the lurg with two fingers, making it hop off the boulder and onto his stone. He handed this to Tien, who watched with wide eyes as the lurg spun its cocoon, spitting out the wet silk and using tiny hands to shape it. That cocoon would be watertight from the inside, sealed by dried mucus, but rainwater outside would dissolve the sack.
Kal smiled, then lifted the flask and drank. This was cool, clean water, which had already had the crem settled out. Crem—the sludgy brown material that fell with rainwater—could make a man sick. Everybody knew that, not just surgeons. You always let water sit for a day, then poured off the fresh water on top and used the crem to make pottery.
The lurg eventually finished its cocoon. Tien immediately reached for the flask.
Kal held the flask high. “It’ll be tired, Tien. It won’t jump around anymore.”
“Oh.”
Kal lowered the flask, patting his brother’s shoulder. “I put it on that stone so you could carry it around. You can get it out later.” He smiled. “Or you could drop it in Father’s bathwater through the window.”
Tien grinned at that prospect. Kal ruffled the boy’s dark hair. “Go see if you can find another cocoon. If we catch two, you’ll have one to play with and one to slip into the bathwater.”
Tien carefully set the rock aside, then scampered up over the boulders. The hillside here had broken during a highstorm several months back. Shattered, as if it had been hit by the fist of some enormous creature. People said that it could have been a home that got destroyed. They burned prayers of thanks to the Almighty while at the same time whispering of dangerous things that moved in the darkness at full storm. Were the Voidbringers behind the destruction, or had it been the shades of the Lost Radiants?
Laral was looking toward the mansion again. She smoothed her dress nervously—lately she took far more care, not getting her clothes dirty as she once had.
“You still thinking about war?” Kal asked.
“Um. Yes. I am.”
“Make sense,” he said. An army had come through recruiting just a few weeks back and had picked up a few of the older boys, though only after Citylord Wistiow had given permission. “What do you think broke the rocks here, during the highstorm?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Kal looked eastward. What sent the storms? His father said no ship had ever sailed for the Origin of Storms and returned safely. Few ships ever even left the coast. Being caught on the open seas during a storm meant death, so the stories said.
He took another sip from his flask, then capped it, saving the rest in case Tien found another lurg. Distant men worked the fields, wearing overalls, laced brown shirts, and sturdy boots. It was worming season. A single worm could ruin an entire polyp’s worth of grain. It would incubate inside, slowly eating as the grain grew. When you finally opened up the polyp in the fall, all you’d find was a big fat slug the size of two men’s hands. And so they searched in the spring, going over each polyp. Where they found a burrow, they’d stick in a reed tipped with sugar, which the worm would latch on to. You pulled it out and squished it under your heel, then patched the hole with crem.
It could take weeks to properly worm a field, and farmers usually went over their hills three or four times, fertilizing as they went. Kal had heard the process described a hundred times over. You didn’t live in a town like Hearthstone without listening to men gripe about worms.
Oddly, he noticed a group older boys gathering at the foot of one of the hills. He recognized all of them, of course. Jost and Jest, brothers. Mord, Tift, Naget, Khav, and others. They each had solid, Alethi darkeyes names. Not like Kaladin’s own name. It was different.
“Why aren’t they worming?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Laral said, shifting her attention to the boys. She got an odd look in her eyes. “Let’s go see.” She started down the hillside before Kal had a chance to object.
He scratched his head, looking toward Tien. “We’re going down to the hillside there.”
A youthful head popped up behind a boulder. Tien nodded energetically, then turned back to his searching. Kal slipped off the boulder and walked down the slope after Laral. She reached the boys, and they regarded her with uncomfortable expressions. She’d never spent much time with them, not like she had with Kal and Tien. Her father and his were pretty good friends, for all that one was lighteyed and the other dark.
Laral took a perch on a nearby rock, waiting and saying nothing. Kal walked up. Why had she wanted to come down here, if she wasn’t going to talk to the other boys?
“Ho, Jost,” Kal said. Senior among the boys at fourteen, Jost was nearly a man—and he looked it too. His chest was broad beyond his years, his legs thick and stocky, like those of his father. He was holding a length of wood from a sapling that had been shaved into a rough approximation of a quarterstaff. “Why aren’t you worming?”
It was the wrong thing to say, and Kal knew it immediately. Several of the boys’ expressions darkened. It was a sore point to them that Kal never had to work the hills. His protests—that he spent hours upon hours memorizing muscles, bones, and cures—fell on uncaring ears. All they saw was a boy who got to spend his days in the shade while they toiled in the burning sun.
“Old Tarn found a patch of polyps that ain’t growing right,” Jost finally said, shooting a glance at Laral. “Let us go for the day while they talked over whether to try another planting there, or just let them grow and see what comes of it.”
Kal nodded, feeling awkward as he stood before the nine boys. They were sweaty, the knees of their trousers stained with crem and patched from rubbing stone. But Kal was clean, wearing a fine pair of trousers his mother had purchased just a few weeks before. His father had sent him and Tien out for the day while he tended to something at the citylord’s manor. Kal would pay for the break with late-night studying by Stormlight, but no use explaining that to the other boys.