8
Nearer the Flame
“Victory! We stand atop the mount! We scatter them before us! Their homes become our dens, their lands are now our farms! And they shall burn, as we once did, in a place that is hollow and forlorn.”
— Collected on Ishashan, 1172, 18 seconds pre-death. Subject was a lighteyed spinster of the eighth dahn.
Shallan’s fears were confirmed as Jasnah looked straight at her, then lowered her safehand to her side in a mark of frustration. “So you are here.”
Shallan cringed. “The servants told you, then?”
“You didn’t think that they would leave someone in my alcove and not warn me?” Behind Jasnah, a small group of parshmen hesitated in the hallway, each carrying an armload of books.
“Brightness Kholin,” Shallan said. “I just-”
“I have wasted enough time on you already,” Jasnah said, eyes furious. “You will withdraw, Miss Davar. And I will not see you again during my time here. Am I understood?”
Shallan’s hopes crumbled. She shrank back. There was a gravity to Jasnah Kholin. One did not disobey her. One need only look into those eyes to understand.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Shallan whispered, clutching her satchel and leaving with as much dignity as she could manage. She barely kept the tears of embarrassment and disappointment from her eyes as she hastened down the hallway, feeling like a complete fool.
She reached the porter’s shaft, though they had already returned below after bringing up Jasnah. Shallan didn’t pull the bell to summon them. Instead she placed her back to the wall and sank down to the floor, knees up against her chest, satchel in her lap. She wrapped her arms around her legs, freehand clasping her safehand through the fabric of her cuff, breathing quietly.
Angry people unsettled her. She couldn’t help but think of her father in one of his tirades, couldn’t help but hear screams, bellows, and whimpers. Was she weak because confrontation unsettled her so? She felt that she was.
Foolish, idiot girl, she thought, a few painspren crawling out of the wall near her head. What made you think you could do this? You’ve only set foot off your family grounds a half-dozen times during your life. Idiot, idiot, idiot!
She had persuaded her brothers to trust her, to put hope in her ridiculous plan. And now what had she done? Wasted six months during which their enemies circled closer.
“Brightness Davar?” asked a hesitant voice.
Shallan looked up, realizing she’d been so wrapped in her misery that she hadn’t seen the servant approach. He was a younger man, wearing an all black uniform, no emblem on the breast. Not a master-servant, but perhaps one in training.
“Brightness Kholin would like to speak with you.” The young man gestured back down the hallway.
To berate me further? Shallan thought with a grimace. But a highlady like Jasnah got what she wanted. Shallan forced herself to stop shaking, then stood. At least she’d been able to keep the tears away; she hadn’t ruined her makeup. She followed the servant back to the lit alcove, satchel clutched before her like a shield on the battlefield.
Jasnah Kholin sat in the chair Shallan had been using, stacks of books on the table. Jasnah was rubbing her forehead with her freehand. The Soulcaster rested against the back of her skin, the smokestone dark and cracked. Though Jasnah looked fatigued, she sat with perfect posture, her fine silk dress covering her feet, her safehand held across her lap.
Jasnah focused on Shallan, lowering her freehand. “I should not have treated you with such anger, Miss Davar,” she said in a tired voice. “You were simply showing persistence, a trait I normally encourage. Storms alight, I’ve oft been guilty of stubbornness myself. Sometimes we find it hardest to accept in others that which we cling to in ourselves. My only excuse can be that I have put myself under an unusual amount of strain lately.”
Shallan nodded in gratitude, though she felt terribly awkward.
Jasnah turned to look out of the balcony into the dark space of the Veil. “I know what people say of me. I should hope that I am not as harsh as some say, though a woman could have far worse than a reputation for sternness. It can serve one well.”
Shallan had to forcibly keep herself from fidgeting. Should she withdraw?
Jasnah shook her head to herself, though Shallan could not guess what thoughts had caused the unconscious gesture. Finally, she turned back to Shallan and waved toward the large, gobletlike bowl on the desk. It held a dozen of Shallan’s spheres.
Shallan raised her freehand to her lips in shock. She’d completely forgotten the money. She bowed to Jasnah in thanks, then hurriedly collected the spheres. “Brightness, lest I forget, I should mention that an ardent-Brother Kabsal-came to see you while I waited here. He wished me to pass on his desire to speak with you.”
“Not surprising,” Jasnah said. “You seem surprised about the spheres, Miss Davar. I assumed that you were waiting outside to recover them. Is that not why you were so close?”
“No, Brightness. I was just settling my nerves.”
“Ah.”
Shallan bit her lip. The princess appeared to have gotten past her initial tirade. Perhaps…“Brightness,” Shallan said, cringing at her brashness, “what did you think of my letter?”
“Letter?”
“I…” Shallan glanced at the desk. “Beneath that stack of books, Brightness.”
A servant quickly moved aside the stack of books; the parshman must have set it on the paper without noticing. Jasnah picked up the letter, raising an eyebrow, and Shallan hurriedly undid her satchel and placed the spheres in her money pouch. Then she cursed herself for being so quick, as now she had nothing to do but stand and wait for Jasnah to finish reading.
“This is true?” Jasnah looking up from the paper. “You are self-trained?”
“Yes, Brightness.”
“That is remarkable.”
“Thank you, Brightness.”
“And this letter was a clever maneuver. You correctly assumed that I would respond to a written plea. This shows me your skill with words, and the rhetoric of the letter gives proof that you can think logically and make a good argument.”
“Thank you, Brightness,” Shallan said, feeling another surge of hope, mixed with fatigue. Her emotions had been jerked back and forth like a rope being used for a tugging contest.
“You should have left the note for me, and withdrawn before I returned.”
“But then the note would have been lost beneath that stack of books.”
Jasnah raised an eyebrow at her, as if to show that she did not appreciate being corrected. “Very well. The context of a person’s life is important. Your circumstances do not excuse your lack of education in history and philosophy, but leniency is in order. I will allow you to petition me again at a later date, a privilege I have never given any aspiring ward. Once you have a sufficient groundwork in those two subjects, come to me again. If you have improved suitably, I will accept you.”
Shallan’s emotions sank. Jasnah’s offer was kindly, but it would take years of study to accomplish what she asked. House Davar would have fallen by then, her family’s lands divided among its creditors, her brothers and herself stripped of title and perhaps enslaved.
“Thank you, Brightness,” Shallan said, bowing her head.
Jasnah nodded, as if considering the matter closed. Shallan withdrew, walking quietly down the hallway and pulling the cord to ring for the porters.
Jasnah had all but promised to accept her at a later date. For most, that would be a great victory. Being trained by Jasnah Kholin-thought by some to be the finest living scholar-would have ensured a bright future. Shallan would have married extremely well, likely to the son of a highprince, and would have found new social circles open to her. Indeed, if Shallan had possessed the time to train under Jasnah, the sheer prestige of a Kholin affiliation might have been enough to save her house.
If only.
Eventually, Shallan made her way out of the Conclave
; there were no gates on the front, just pillars set before the open maw. She was surprised to discover how dim it was outside. She trailed down the large steps, then took a smaller, more cultivated side path where she would be out of the way. Small shelves of ornamental shalebark had been grown along this walkway, and several species had let out fanlike tendrils to wave in the evening breeze. A few lazy lifespren-like specks of glowing green dust-flitted from one frond to the next.
Shallan leaned back against the stonelike plant, the tendrils pulling in and hiding. From this vantage, she could look down at Kharbranth, lights glowing beneath her like a cascade of fire streaming down the cliff face. The only other option for her and her brothers was to run. To abandon the family estates in Jah Keved and seek asylum. But where? Were there old allies her father hadn’t alienated?
There was that matter of the strange collection of maps they’d found in his study. What did they mean? He’d rarely spoken of his plans to his children. Even her father’s advisors knew very little. Helaran-her eldest brother-had known more, but he had vanished over a year ago, and her father had proclaimed him dead.
As always, thinking of her father made her feel ill, and the pain started to constrict her chest. She raised her freehand to her head, suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of House Davar’s situation, her part in it, and the secret she now carried, hidden ten heartbeats away.
“Ho, young miss!” a voice called. She turned, shocked to see Yalb standing up on a rocky shelf a short distance from the Conclave entrance. A group of men in guard uniforms sat on the rock around him.
“Yalb?” she said, aghast. He should have returned to his ship hours ago. She hurried over to stand below the short stone outcropping. “Why are you still here?”
“Oh,” he said, grinning, “I found myself a game of kabers here with these fine, upstanding gentlemen of the city guard. Figured officers of the law were right unlikely to cheat me, so we entered into a friendly-type game while I waited.”
“But you didn’t need to wait.”
“Didn’t need to win eighty chips off these fellows neither,” Yalb said with a laugh. “But I did both!”
The men sitting around him looked far less enthusiastic. Their uniforms were orange tabards tied about the middle with white sashes.
“Well, I suppose I should be leading you back to the ship, then,” Yalb said, reluctantly gathering up the spheres in the pile at his feet. They glowed with a variety of hues. Their light was small-each was only a chip-but it was impressive winnings.
Shallan stepped back as Yalb hopped off the rock shelf. His companions protested his departure, but he gestured to Shallan. “You’d have me leave a lighteyed woman of her stature to walk back to the ship on her own? I figured you for men of honor!”
That quieted their protests.
Yalb chuckled to himself, bowing to Shallan and leading her away down the path. He had a twinkle to his eyes. “Stormfather, but it’s fun to win against lawmen. I’ll have free drinks at the docks once this gets around.”
“You shouldn’t gamble,” Shallan said. “You shouldn’t try to guess the future. I didn’t give you that sphere so you could waste it on such practices.”
Yalb laughed. “It ain’t gambling if you know you’re going to win, young miss.”
“You cheated?” she hissed, horrified. She glanced back at the guardsmen, who had settled down to continue their game, lit by the spheres on the stones before them.
“Not so loud!” Yalb said in a low voice. However, he seemed very pleased with himself. “Cheating four guardsmen, now that’s a trick. Hardly believe I managed it!”
“I’m disappointed in you. This is not proper behavior.”
“It is if you’re a sailor, young miss.” He shrugged. “It’s what they right expected from me. Watched me like handlers of poisonous skyeels, they did. The game wasn’t about the cards-it was about them trying to figure how I was cheating and me trying to figure how to keep them from hauling me off. I think I might not have managed to walk away with my skin if you hadn’t arrived!” That didn’t seem to worry him much.
The roadway down to the docks was not nearly as busy as it had been earlier, but there were still a surprisingly large number of people about. The street was lit by oil lanterns-spheres would just have ended up in someone’s pouch-but many of the people about carried sphere lanterns, casting a rainbow of colored light on the roadway. The people were almost like spren, each a different hue, moving this way or that.
“So, young miss,” Yalb said, leading her carefully through the traffic. “You really want to go back? I just said what I did so I could extract myself from that game there.”
“Yes, I do want to go back, please.”
“And your princess?”
Shallan grimaced. “The meeting was…unproductive.”
“She didn’t take you? What’s wrong with her?”
“Chronic competence, I should guess. She’s been so successful in life that she has unrealistic expectations of others.”
Yalb frowned, guiding Shallan around a group of revelers stumbling drunkenly up the roadway. Wasn’t it a little early for that sort of thing? Yalb got a few steps ahead, turning and walking backward, looking at her. “That doesn’t make sense, young miss. What more could she want than you?”
“Much more, apparently.”
“But you’re perfect! Pardon my forwardness.”
“You’re walking backward.”
“Pardon my backwardness, then. You look good from any side, young miss, that you do.”
She found herself smiling. Tozbek’s sailors had far too high an opinion of her.
“You’d make an ideal ward,” he continued. “Genteel, pretty, refined and such. Don’t much like your opinion on gambling, but that’s to be expected. Wouldn’t be right for a proper woman not to scold a fellow for gambling. It’d be like the sun refusing to rise or the sea turning white.”
“Or Jasnah Kholin smiling.”
“Exactly! Anyway, you’re perfect.”
“It’s kind of you to say so.”
“Well, it’s true,” he said, putting hands on hips, stopping. “So that’s it? You’re going to give up?”
She gave him a perplexed stare. He stood there on the busy roadway, lit from above by a lantern burning yellow-orange, hands on his hips, white Thaylen eyebrows drooping along the sides of his face, bare-chested under his open vest. That was a posture no citizen, no matter how high ranked, had ever taken at her father’s mansion.
“I did try to persuade her,” Shallan said, blushing. “I went to her a second time, and she rejected me again.”
“Two times, eh? In cards, you always got to try a third hand. It wins the most often.”
Shallan frowned. “But that’s not really true. The laws of probability and statistics-”
“Don’t know much blustering math,” Yalb said, folding his arms. “But I do know the Passions. You win when you need it most, you see.”
The Passions. Pagan superstition. Of course, Jasnah had referred to glyphwards as superstition too, so perhaps it all came down to perspective.
Try a third time…Shallan shivered to consider Jasnah’s wrath if Shallan bothered her yet again. She’d surely withdraw the offer to come study with her in the future.
But Shallan would never get to take that offer. It was like a glass sphere with no gemstone at the center. Pretty, but worthless. Was it not better to take one last chance at getting the position she needed now?
It wouldn’t work. Jasnah had made it quite clear that Shallan was not yet educated enough.
Not yet educated enough…
An idea sparked in Shallan’s head. She raised her safehand to her breast, standing on that roadway, considering the audacity of it. She’d likely get herself thrown from the city at Jasnah’s demand.
Yet if she returned home without trying every avenue, could she face her brothers? They depended on her. For once in her life, someone needed Shallan. That responsibility excited
her. And terrified her.
“I need a book merchant,” she found herself saying, voice wavering slightly.
Yalb raised an eyebrow at her.
“Third hand wins the most. Do you think you can find me a book merchant who is open at this hour?”
“Kharbranth is a major port, young miss,” he said with a laugh. “Stores stay open late. Just wait here.” He dashed off into the evening crowd, leaving her with an anxious protest on her lips.
She sighed, then seated herself in a demure posture on the stone base of a lantern pole. It should be safe. She saw other lighteyed women passing on the street, though they were often carried in palanquins or those small, hand-pulled vehicles. She even saw the occasional real carriage, though only the very wealthy could afford to keep horses.
A few minutes later, Yalb popped out of the crowd as if from nowhere and waved for her to follow. She rose and hurried to him.
“Should we get a porter?” she asked as he led her to a large side street that ran laterally across the city’s hill. She stepped carefully; her skirt was long enough that she worried about tearing the hem on the stone. The strip at the bottom was designed to be easily replaced, but Shallan could hardly afford to waste spheres on such things.
“Nah,” Yalb said. “It’s right here.” He pointed along another cross street. This one had a row of shops climbing up the steep slope, each with a sign hanging out front bearing the glyphpair for book, and those glyphs were often styled into the shape of a book. Illiterate servants who might be sent to a shop had to be able to recognize them.
“Merchants of the same type like to clump together,” Yalb said, rubbing his chin. “Seems dumb to me, but I guess merchants are like fish. Where you find one, you’ll find others.”
“The same could be said of ideas,” Shallan said, counting. Six different shops. All were lit with Stormlight in the windows, cool and even.
“Third one on the left,” Yalb said, pointing. “Merchant’s name is Artmyrn. My sources say he’s the best.” It was a Thaylen name. Likely Yalb had asked others from his homeland, and they had pointed him here.
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