Chapter Text
Elhokar held a sphere closer to his book. He was starting to have to squint. Did he need spectacles? No, it was just … wait, what time was it? With all the stress of studying, he had somehow lost track.
He looked out the library window. The sun had definitely set; the first moon had risen, and the others would be hot on their heels. He was having to strain to read his book, A Grammar of Shin, and thinking this late at night was more effort than it was worth. His spheres, too, were starting to flicker and fade, and it was only thanks to Salas that he had enough light to see at all.
Damnation. He yawned, blinking spots of darkness out of his vision. He should have realised that pretending to be a girl wouldn’t be as easy as putting on a dress. He wasn’t stupid—even chullheaded men knew that women, or at least lighteyed women, were expected to be educated in everything under the sun, and then a few other things besides. And Jasnah had thought to teach him some rudimentary Veden and Azish before they changed places; those were the languages of literature and diplomacy, at least when Alethi was taken out of the equation. But she had neglected to tell him that she knew half a myriad languages besides.
He was fairly sure that wasn’t usual. Most lighteyed girls knew—what? Alethi, Veden, Azish. Maybe some Thaylen or Iriali, if the mood struck them. Certainly not Herdazian, and Natan, and Riran, and storming Shin, an arcane mess of aspect and mood which was torturing him with the subjunctive. Who had written A Grammar of Shin again? Oh, right—Ruri-son-Szuneth, a writer who was clear, detailed, precise, and so boring that he made suicide look riveting. To think—a male scholar! Proof that not only were the Shin absurd isolationists, they were also heathen idiots. Well, that was what you got for making a nation out of farmers.
Elhokar sighed, closing the book. He wasn’t going to get anything done like this. His notes were a mess. Kelek, his hair was probably a mess too, with the amount he’d been fiddling with it.
He was a mess. And an idiot. How could he have thought he’d be able to imitate Jasnah? How could he ever have imagined that he, illiterate almost his whole life, could come close to Jasnah’s knowledge and expertise? Even if she hated art, she at least had practice—nearly a decade of it. All he’d ever practiced was swords.
He was good, but he wasn’t good enough.
Then again, he reminded himself, the only reason he’d been able to get away with his scrawling handwriting in the first place was that Jasnah’s was even worse. The ardents actually said he’d improved in that department. Fancy that!
There was a voice in his head, annoying and incessant, which said, You have to focus on the good things. You can do this. You have to. It sounded suspiciously like his own.
There was also a voice in his head that said, You’ll never be good enough.
That one, he thought bitterly, sounded like his father.
It should have hurt to admit. I’ll never be good enough for my father. But it didn’t feel like that. It was just true, like the highstorm was. It was simply a rule of nature: The highstorm hits every few days. Water is wet. I will never live up to my father’s standards.
No one could live up to Gavilar’s standards.
He stood up to shelve A Grammar of Shin, even though it would have been far more satisfying to hit Gavilar over the head with it, to the sound of quiet rustling.
When he returned to his alcove to pick up his spheres, someone else was there.
“Good evening, Jasnah,” Evi said.
Elhokar yelped. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Should not you?” she said, amused. “I was looking for you, the servants said you were last seen in the library.” She nodded to his notes. “Is it the subjunctive?”
“Yes,” he sighed. Azish conjugations were torture, Thaylen consonant mutations baffled the mind, but at least they made some kind of sense. Shin … it was so different from Alethi that he almost couldn’t understand it. “Did you want me?”
“No,” she said, “but Renarin did.”
He looked down, and saw, in the dim light, a little boy clutching at Evi’s skirts, sucking his thumb.
Renarin.
Elhokar had always spent his time with Adolin. It was only natural—they were close in age, so they learnt to fight (and break the rules) together. Adolin needed a reliable and sensible role model, after all—someone to look up to. Renarin, though … who even was he? He must’ve been four, or maybe it was five or six, by now, and he had … some kind of blood sickness which meant he couldn’t fight like all the other boys, or he’d fall over and start crying. Something like that. Oh, and he never spoke. With Renarin’s wide eyes on him, he really felt the overwhelming silence.
It occurred to him that he should’ve seen this coming. It was typical of Jasnah, really, to spend all her time with misfits.
“Hello, Renarin,” he said, since that seemed like the least rude thing to say. “What would you like?”
“He can’t sleep,” Evi said, “and so he was wondering if you could tell him a story.”
Renarin nodded, far too solemn. Storms, this kid was strange.
“Right,” Elhokar said. “Let me see…”
A Grammar of Shin. A Grammar of Azish. Nearer the Flame … probably not suitable for five-year-olds. A Grammar of Riran. Selay Grammar. Oh, this was hopeless. Elhokar flicked through title after boring title, on the verge of giving up, when he finally hit some fiction: Tales by Hearthlight, a collection of children’s folk tales. That was probably about right. He’d loved those stories growing up, curling up next to his mother to hear the next story of Ashah’s heroism.
He came back to the table and invited Renarin to sit down, then flicked through to a random page. And so Nunuhula’akai was devoured by cremlings…
Yeah, maybe not that one. He turned to a different page, and was hit in the face with, Then Tenen fell from the walls of Urithiru, screaming until he could scream no more.
Had they always been this violent? He shook his head, and turned to one of the stories about Ashah. Or Ashar. The myths weren’t consistent about her name, or her gender, or sometimes even her age. Usually she was a heroic darkeyed orphan from Alethela, but there was one version where she was a married man from Liafor. You really could be anything, he mused, if you weren’t real.
Elhokar turned to Ashah and the Greatshell, one of his favourites, and began to read.
“Thank you,” Evi said, when Renarin had finally dozed off. Storms, this was not how Elhokar had expected his night to go. Then again, it wasn’t how he’d expected his life to go. “Little Renarin is—he does not sleep well.”
“It was the least I could do,” Elhokar said.
“Indeed.” She met his eyes with a knowing look. “The two of you have changed places again, have you not?”
Elhokar froze, panic flooding through him. He’d been found out. It was all over. All that subjunctive, for nothing. His father would be furious, his mother would be baffled. The shame, the disgrace… “How—”
Evi raised a hand. “Peace. I will not say anything. I think the One would be delighted, for the Many to do such a … something unusual, like this. Besides, I think a … an adult, that is the word. I think it would help you if you had an adult to trust. Yes?”
He didn’t exactly have much of a choice here. “Yeah. But … how did you guess?”
She smiled. “You are far too nice, Elhokar.” It was almost strange to hear his own name, as though it was no longer his. But it was comforting, grounding, to be reminded of who he was. The problem with living a lie was sometimes he forgot the truth. “And your sister would never say ‘yeah’. I admit, I am surprised no one else noticed.”
So he hadn’t been hiding as well as he thought. “Thank you for not telling anyone. Please—don’t.”
“I would not want to hurt you,” she said, “either of you. Send my love to Jasnah. But if you need me … I will be there.”
He doubted he’d ever take the offer. But he thanked her anyway, and watched her go.
Evi had a point. How was she the only one to notice? Alright, so Uncle Dalinar was always away on campaigns, and when he wasn’t fighting he was usually drinking. And Mother couldn’t have told Elhokar apart from Jasnah if he’d walked right up to her and told her he was Elhokar. But surely Gavilar, with his harsh judgement, would have noticed if his son suddenly started acting all girlish…
Or maybe he wouldn’t. Not if he were too busy with matters of state. Not if Jasnah were good enough at pretending to be him. Not if he were too consumed by his own arrogance.
As for Adolin, well, he was easily distracted.
Maybe, Elhokar considered, he was being too harsh on himself, and he was actually doing fine. Yes, that sounded right.
Time to go to bed. There was nothing better than a good sleep.