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Chapter Text

For nearly ten years now the king and queen of Alethkar had been married, but no child had ever been born of the union. With the king’s younger brother now safely married to a foreign princess—at least they thought that was what she was—there was no reason to fear for the future of the Kholin dynasty; King Gavilar might have no son, but there was no reason to think he could not be succeeded by a nephew.

Nonetheless, Navani fretted. There were a thousand and one reasons, said the ardents, that she might not have conceived a child; the king, after all, only had so much time in his long days of warmongering, and when the night was young he would rather feast with his lords than slip away to bed with his wife. And besides, they were not so young as when they first met. They were still youthful, yes; but perhaps passion had passed over into trust. Nothing lasted forever, least of all love.

But still a fear lingered on in her heart: that she was, in truth, barren. Ialai Sadeas, too, had no children; but she loved her husband, and for all their influence, he was but a highprince. No highprince bore the burden of an entire kingdom on his shoulders; no highprince sought to sire such a legacy. Alethkar was not a unified country. It was nowhere near the stability of Jah Keved. It was a state in its infancy, one wrong step away from fracturing at any moment. And though no one liked to admit it, least of all to his face, the king needed a son. Not even a son—simply a child, some sign of the Almighty’s blessing. Sadees the Sunmaker had had ten sons; Gavilar Kholin did not even have a daughter. And the king might well pass his throne onto the Blackthorn—but Dalinar, for all his strengths, was no lawmaker.

No. Gavilar Kholin needed a son of his own. Navani knew it. Gavilar knew it. The whole of Alethkar knew it, if the hushed murmurings of the court were anything to go on. And though he was regal before the highprinces, he could turn stormy in close quarters. Gavilar Kholin got what he wanted. His wife, his crown, his legacy—he had everything he had ever dreamt of, except a child. Each night Navani burnt a prayer to the Almighty, that He might gift her a child; each night she begged it would go ignored. There was a certain modicum of safety to their childless marriage. So long as Gavilar had no son, he would never be satisfied; but so long as Gavilar had no son, he needed his wife. It wasn’t like the old days, when they were young and bright, and every scheme they wrought as equals. His affection, his kindness, had to be earnt.

Still, she hoped. They both did. They were ageing, yes, but they were still young: there was always more time.

What broke her, she would never learn. Perhaps she had borne the brunt of Gavilar’s frustration one too many times. Perhaps her brother-in-law’s marriage reminded her of her own mortality. Perhaps, selfishly, she wished for a child of her own—a daughter, a son, it didn’t matter, just a child, a child, a child to call her own. It was a strange kind of agony, to be drowning in riches, and yet denied her one heart’s desire. Whatever it was, it drove her from the shores of Alethkar, into a rickety boat sailing west.

There was a saying amongst her people: if even the ardents had no advice left to give, then only the Old Magic could save you. Thus it was that the queen of Alethkar walked barefoot through the Valley and visited the Nightwatcher.

What she had asked for, she could not remember. What she had seen, she did not know. The whole thing stirred in her memory like a waking dream, thick with dust and confusion. She could make a very good guess; but to all eyes the Old Magic had done … nothing. No gift, no curse. The ardents made a point of it: that the Old Magic was weak, ephemeral, if it was even real at all; that Vorinism was the true faith. Navani made no argument; she had no desire to fight her friends on a matter they broadly agreed on.

Still, she held out hope. All of Roshar understood, or rather did not understand, the ways of the Nightwatcher. The Old Magic wasn’t like the order and discipline of the Radiants of yore; it was ancient, primal, and defied logic. Some gifts were less obvious than others. Some curses were more troublesome than others.

When she did at last return to her husband’s side, he swung between furious and delighted. On the one hand, she had defied her lord husband’s wishes; on the other hand, there might now be some secret tactical advantage he could wield, some strange power that would unify Alethkar. As it happened, the only strength he found was the courage to share her bed again.

Three short weeks later, Navani fainted in front of the gathered highprinces of Alethkar.

It was unflattering, to say the least, and sent the court awash with rumours, but she knew then that her boon had been granted. The Nightwatcher had listened. What, then, was to be her curse?

Seven months later, more or less, the answer presented itself. She had wanted a daughter, a son, more than anything: thus she had both.

Twins. A boy and a girl who looked almost identical. The same tufts of curly black-brown hair; the same Alethi tan; the same vivid purple eyes. She’d have said they took after her, only her own eyes weren’t nearly so bright.

Still, Gavilar was pleased. Oh, she doubted he cared that he had a daughter; he only cared that he had an heir of his own. And Navani knew now that she had outlived her own usefulness.

But at least she had lived to do her duty.

The boy would be called Elhokar, a fine and noble name. The girl, Jasnah—a pretty name, befitting of a princess. And though she had no doubt she would lose her son to her husband’s schemes, she would love them both as best she could.

There was just one problem.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not tell them apart.

Chapter Text

“Did it work, Jasnah?” Adolin said, eagerly leaning over the banister.

Elhokar grinned. “Well, first of all, I’m not Jasnah.”

A shout echoed down the hall. “Come back here this instant, Your Highness!”

“And second of all, yes.”

Adolin beamed. “So did you get it?”

“Get what?” he said innocently.

“The book, stupid.”

Elhokar climbed up the stairs and into the shadows, so that he was hidden from Jasnah’s furious tutor. “Of course I did.”

“Mama won’t let me have it read,” Adolin said petulantly. “She says it’s too scary for me.”

“Why didn’t you ask your father? He’d let you, and then I wouldn’t have to come up with schemes like these.” He unbuttoned the safehand of Jasnah’s havah, and took a beautifully illuminated edition of Nearer the Flame out of it. It was embossed all over with gold, in letters that he was sure would have been insightful if only he could read. That was the one problem with pretending to be his sister: the farce only lasted so long as he didn’t do anything, and generally her tutors expected him to do things. “Here, enjoy Vedelin of Shinor’s descent into madness.”

“Thanks. And I did ask Father,” Adolin said, snatching the book out of his hands. “He told me to storm off and ask Mama.”

“Oh. Well, adults are stupid,” he said. “Never forget that.”

“They are.” Adolin frowned, cocking his head. “Wait. If you’re being Jasnah, where’s Jasnah?”

“Being Elhokar,” he said smugly. “She’s making Zahel teach her sword fighting.”

Adolin blinked. “And Zahel hasn’t noticed?”

“He has, he just doesn’t care. He lets us do what we like, so long as we learn. Not like Jasnah’s tutors, who keep hitting me whenever they realise it’s me, even though I’m really clever and if I could read, I’d be way better at it than Jasnah. See, I could write properly, whereas she’s always holding things in her safehand, even though that’s not how it’s supposed to work. And she can’t draw! I can draw. I have maps.”

“If you like it that much,” Adolin said, “why don’t you just be her? Mashala wouldn’t realise, Father wouldn’t notice, and Mama … wouldn’t care. I think.”

Elhokar snorted. “She’d say it’s important that we all—”

“—experience as many different things as possible, for the day we become the One,” Adolin chorused, in the tone of a boy who had heard it all before. “I know.”

“It’s an idea,” Elhokar said. “A really stupid one. But Father wouldn’t notice either, if we were careful about it. Cousin,” he knocked on Adolin’s forehead, “maybe you have got a mind after all. There’s just one problem.”

“Which is?” said Adolin, flicking through Nearer the Flame to find the goriest illustration. Maybe getting him that book hadn’t been Elhokar’s smartest idea.

“What would Jasnah think?”

Jasnah feinted as Zahel lunged at her. His strikes bore the illusion of wildness, but then so did his eyes. She might be young, but that did not make her foolish.

“Decent,” Zahel grunted, “but your footwork’s gone to crem.”

“Maybe my feet hurt,” she said, in the most pathetic voice she could muster. That was roughly what Elhokar sounded like, wasn’t it?

“Nice try,” Zahel said, “but you’re not fooling me.” His blade struck hers and she winced, struggling to parry with her freehand. It was considerably easier than writing with her freehand, even though she had far less practice, but she still lacked the simple strength and instinct that most people had. “Better. I still don’t understand why you bother with this, but it’s not my place to question the crown prince of Alethkar.”

“I want to learn,” she said firmly, careful not to sound too enthusiastic. Zahel knew, of course, that she was not her brother; he had an uncanny knack for telling the two of them apart. Fortunately, though she had no idea why, he didn’t seem to care.

“It’s a pity you were born a prince,” Zahel said. He was strange, even for an ardent; but he wouldn’t sell her out, and he certainly wasn’t stupid enough to admit to duelling the king’s daughter out here in the open. The courtyard wasn’t precisely public, but it was always possible that some idiot would decide to eavesdrop. “Princess Jasnah would be far happier in your place.”

She wondered if he was trying to make a point. For a brief moment her mind wandered, and Zahel caught her with a blow to the stomach. She was winded, not wounded; but it was enough to knock her backwards, her sword clattering to the ground as she hit the sand. Jasnah cursed her inexperience; the brightlords’ duels always made them look so much easier than they really were. She so hated being bad at this, but when her only opportunities to practice were in the dead of night or in disguise as someone else, it was difficult to hone her skills.

“Distracted again,” Zahel said, looming over her. “Get up.” Out of breath, muscles aching, she staggered to her feet. “And for the love of all that is holy, use your left hand. Your footwork leaves something to be desired, but your grip is appalling.”

“And what if I injure my left hand?” she retorted. “You’re always lecturing me about the practical applications of swordsmanship. On the battlefield, most, if not all, men will be fighting with their right hand. Surely it’s to my advantage to be able to fight equally well with both hands, so that I can match my opponents. And since my grip is far less natural with my right hand—”

She got a sword to the face for her efforts.

“Enough chatter, boy,” Zahel said, his gaze steely. She glowed with irrational pride. She always did, when he treated her like Elhokar. When he called her a boy. Why? It wasn’t as if she’d done anything especially clever today. “This isn’t a classroom, nor is it a debate. When you’re up against a soldier twice your size, he won’t have time for witty comments about the statistical advantages of knowing how to fight with both hands. He’ll just run you through, and with a mouth like yours, I wouldn’t blame him. Case in point—”

And he knocked her to the ground.

Floor time again.

Jasnah had long ago got used to falling over. It didn’t hurt any more; on the exceedingly rare occasions that she did fall, her ladies always seemed surprised by her lack of reaction. Now, having taken a battering, she was glad for it; her arms hurt from hauling a sword around, her ankles felt at risk of giving way, and her mouth tasted of sand and grit, but it was no worse than endless hours of handwriting exercises which failed to smooth her shaky script. Swordplay was oddly simple. Unlike in academia, all that she had to defend was herself.

“Elhokar Kholin!” someone shouted from the floor above. “What on Roshar do you think you’re doing?”

In an instant Zahel knocked the sword out of Jasnah’s hands. “Away with you,” he grunted, and she dashed off to change back into her havah. “Ridiculous children and their ridiculous games … wish they’d just hurry up and commit to it.”

She ignored his muttering, but hours later, stuck copying passages from The Arguments, she wondered if there might be wisdom to his words. He was a strange one, Zahel, who spoke plainly but wrongly. A little like Mashala Evi, now that she thought about it: he said the right things, but in the wrong way. His accent was almost perfect, but his words were coloured by some unknown lilt. Perhaps he had spent time amongst the Shin—but she had met a Shin ambassador, once, and he hadn’t sounded anything like that.

Whatever he was, she at least respected him. Certainly she respected him more than The Arguments, which any idiot could see committed a number of logical fallacies—and serious ones at that. She was starting to doubt if there was such thing as a god after all, never mind the Almighty.

It’s a pity you were born a prince. Princess Jasnah would be far happier in your place.

She mulled over the words in her head, writing by rote. Zahel was right: she would have been happier in Elhokar’s place. And frankly, he might well have been happier in hers. He hated all the complications of warfare, the bloodiness of battle and the brawl of axehounds which passed for Alethi politics. He was dreadful at dealing with the highprinces, worse even than their uncle, and could be relied upon to turn an awkward situation into a disaster. He was far more content listening to a reading of his favourite adventure tale, sketching all over his maps until the intended pathway from Savalashi to Dumadari bore a suspicious resemblance to Adolin instead.

As for herself, she loathed all the restrictions piled upon her, the dresses and the safehands and the manners, the rules on what was appropriate for a girl to do, and worst of all the assumptions of her tutors that she wasn’t ready to proceed on to certain topics, just because of her youth. Two bitter years it had taken to persuade them to let her learn Riran, by which point she had already mastered its basic grammar from a handful of dusty books, and perfected her pronunciation with help from Mashala Evi. The Riran scholar her mother had finally sent in had despaired that her vocabulary was wider than his. Of course all that scholarship would be lost if she were a man—but at least then she would have the comfort of sword fighting. It was work she could actually relax into, work where she could stop thinking and just do—unlike her lessons, where every time she lapsed into using her safehand, her tutors would tie it behind her back, or insist she wear a havah without any buttons on the sleeve. And she was certain that, given the chance, she could balance the squabbling of the highprinces far better than her uncle or her brother.

She looked down and saw that the passage she’d been copying had collapsed into a scrawl, indistinguishable from Elhokar’s miserable attempts at writing.

She’d pay for that, yet again.

Maybe Zahel was right. Maybe they should switch places.

Chapter Text

“This can’t go on any longer,” Elhokar said. “It has to stop.”

Jasnah turned to him. Her face was drawn; he struggled to remember the last time he had seen her smile. It must have been … before. Before all this began. She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes; she seemed to look past him when she did. And when she spoke, she said but one trembling word: “How?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But this isn’t working, is it?”

“But what can we do?” When had she become so despondent? What had he missed, whilst she was gone from him? The Jasnah he knew would have risen to the challenge, then beaten it at its own game. “Mother … Father…”

“There has to be another way,” Elhokar said. “There must be.”

“Another way to do what?” she said. “Father won’t live forever. Someday he’ll die, and you’ll succeed him. That day might well be soon.” Elhokar shuddered. “And we won’t be children forever. Someday—not so far in the future—he’ll start pressing me to marry. I expect he’s already begun the search.” This time it was Jasnah’s turn to shudder. “Face it, brother. We’re trapped.”

“I can’t think of anything worse than being king,” he said, drawn in by her gloom. “They’ll make me deal with laws and petitions all day, and I’ll have to oversee all the border raids.”

“At least you’d be in charge,” Jasnah said, “and you wouldn’t have to do everything your husband says.”

“But you’d have your books—”

“And my tutors breathing down my neck for my handwriting—”

“—and I hate diplomacy—”

“But that’s the simple part, it’s just talking!”

Their eyes met. In the midst of their outbursts, the same thought seemed to have struck them both. It was a terrible idea. If it failed they would both be punished, and harshly. If they succeeded—then what? They’d both have to pretend to be something they weren’t for years.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “I mean, we’ve been doing it for years already. All we have to do is not change back.”

“And not get caught,” Jasnah added, “which might prove more difficult. You’ll have to learn to read and write.”

“Easy,” he said. “I think I’ve picked it up already from your lessons.”

Jasnah glared at him. She didn’t smile, not any more. “And to write. And how to hold a safehand, and how to argue for yourself, and how to hold yourself—”

“And you’ll have to learn how to fight, properly,” Elhokar countered, “and how to lead an army, and some other stuff that I can’t think of right now. Books! There we go, you won’t be able to read any more.”

“You’re right, that is dire. But you,” she said, very seriously, “will have to deal with Mother.”

“It seems like a fair trade,” Elhokar shrugged. “Father wants me to come with him to a border skirmish with Jah Keved in a few months, so I can see some more fighting firsthand. If you went with him instead of me, no one would notice the difference, and better yet, it’d give us time to prepare. What do you say?”

“How badly do you want this?” she said. “If it goes wrong, you’ll be punished, and I … I don’t want to know what might happen to me. If it goes right—you may never become king. Are you prepared to give that up?”

“In a heartbeat,” he declared, and meant it. “I’ve never wanted to be king anyway. I’d much rather study art, and music, and … whatever it is that they write in books.”

“Words.”

“Yeah, those.”

“Then let’s do it.” She seemed in better spirits now. Not precisely confident, nor even happy, but at least a little surer in what she was doing. He hated seeing her so scared, so lost. He was supposed to be the scared one, the weak one, not Jasnah. “I have full confidence that, under my tutelage, you could make at the very least an acceptable me.”

“And you’ll be an excellent me, even without training,” Elhokar said. “We look about the same, don’t we?”

It was a stroke of good fortune that they shared their mother’s bright indigo eyes. The only difference between them—as far as anyone could tell—was the length of their hair, and even then the only real difference was that Elhokar’s fell to his shoulders, like their lord father, whereas Jasnah’s reached down to her back. Dressed alike, they would have looked alike.

“Close enough to pass muster,” Jasnah said. “Here—let me put your hair up, and you can discover for yourself the horrors of safehands.”

He obligingly pulled the pins out of her hair, so that it tumbled in waves down her shoulders. Jasnah drew some of his hair up into topknot, then brutally stabbed it into place with two gold pins. In return he pulled off his doublet, swapping it for her havah. Getting the wretched thing on was a pain, what with all the layers, and she looked very silly sat there with her tousled hair coming down to her back, his doublet pulled tight over a white shift, but it wasn’t as if he looked any more sensible with a tunic peeking out from below his havah.

“This is stupid,” Elhokar declared. “I can’t do anything with my hand! How do you live like this?”

“From now on,” Jasnah said, “I won’t have to. Safehands are your problem now, brother. I cannot wait for the day I never have to cover up my left hand again.”

He let her cross the room, picking up a pen, an inkwell, and a map from one of the shelves. There was a strange lightness to her stride, one he hadn’t seen before. Jasnah turned the map over, laid it out on Elhokar’s desk, and began to write.

“What does it say?” Elhokar said eagerly.

“That’s what I’m here to teach you,” she replied. “And careful, remember that your safehand should not be used whenever possible.”

Elhokar nodded, and moved over to sit next to her. “It’s hard to remember, it feels—wrong. Unnatural.”

“I know,” she said wryly. “Now, this first letter is j, and I have used it in the feminine form to write the word ‘I’, which in written Alethi is spelt jishu.”

“But that’s not how it’s said!”

“Yes, because unlike, say, Veden, spoken Alethi has mostly lost its grammatical gender. Women’s script, however, has not changed to reflect this.”

“So you’ve written ‘I’,” he said. “I what? I am much less fun and interesting than Elhokar?”

“Read on, little brother, and you will see.”

“I was born first!”

This Jasnah ignored.

Two bitter hours later, he realised that all she’d written was ‘I am left-handed’.

“I feel cheated,” Elhokar said.

“That is not my problem,” Jasnah said. “Now, go to bed. We’ve stayed up far too late already.”

“Yes, Mother,” he sniffed, but there was no anger to it.

For the first time in a long time, he felt hope.

In the dead of night, with only the moons to guide them, Elhokar and Jasnah crept away to their childhood hiding place. Admittedly, it was the same old sparring room they’d always hidden away in, but if it worked it worked.

“Last chance to back out,” Elhokar said. “If you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Jasnah said stubbornly. “You, on the other hand—”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, taking off his doublet and tossing it over to Jasnah. Over the past few weeks, they’d carefully made a few modifications to their clothing. He knew he hadn’t done a very good job, but then he’d only had a few months to learn to sew. Was it any wonder his stitches were messy? “Let’s just get changed.”

Together they managed to exchange clothes, with a few difficulties on the way. Elhokar had grown his hair out, citing the ancient rulers of Alethela as inspiration; today—tonight—he would have to cut Jasnah’s hair. As it was, she put his up in a topknot, and helped do up her havah. By the time they were done, it was almost impossible to see they had ever been any other way.

“Sit down, and be still,” Elhokar said, pulling out his knife. “This is an ancient rite of passage, a gift from father to son, a—”

“Stop being dramatic,” Jasnah said, “and get on with it. We only have so long.”

“Alright,” he muttered, “spoilsport.”

He cut her hair until it fell only to her shoulders, and shoved the mess into the sleeve of her—his—havah. No one would think to look there, and when he finally found some alone time, he could toss it … somewhere. The privy, maybe? Not a fireplace. He’d smelt burning hair, and it wasn’t pretty.

“There,” Elhokar said at last, “you’re like me now. Well, I’m like you, so perhaps we’re both like each other, or neither of us…” He trailed off. There was no way to make this make sense.

Jasnah felt at the frayed edges of her curls with her left hand. “It looks … good.”

“And me?” he said. “Do I impress?”

She considered it. “No. But you’ll pass muster, Jasnah.”

Oh. Right. He was Jasnah now.

This was going to take some getting used to.

“I think you could be a very good Elhokar,” Elhokar said, “Elhokar.”

It was strange to call someone else his name; it was strange to be called something other than Elhokar. He wasn’t terribly attached to being crown prince, and could pass that by easily enough—but he was attached to his name. It had been his all his life, and no one else’s.

But now his name, like everything else, would be passed on to another. Jasnah was a worthy inheritor of his legacy—more worthy than he was, if he were being honest with himself—but for a brief, lingering moment, he didn’t want to let go.

The feeling passed, and a weight was lifted. Still, he worried.

“I hope so,” Jasnah said.

“What will we do when we grow up?” he said suddenly. “I mean, when you get your monthly bleedings, when everyone expects us to be adults—a man and a woman. What am I supposed to tell my future husband?”

“Subterfuge.” Elhokar nearly jumped a foot. Jasnah didn’t. But whoever had spoken, it wasn’t her.

They’d been found out.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s just me—Zahel. The two of you aren’t nearly as subtle as you like to think.”

“Zahel—” Jasnah began.

“I’m not here to rat you out,” Zahel said. “Just thought you two kids might want some advice, if you’re going to go ahead with this chullbrained scheme of yours.”

“Like what?” Elhokar said.

“Deal with each challenge as you come to it,” he grunted. “Deal with binding your breasts when you have breasts to bind. Deal with seducing your husband when you have a husband to seduce. Don’t torture yourself with a future that hasn’t come to pass, or you’ll catch yourselves out. You should plan, yes—but not too far in advance, or else you’ll walk yourselves into circles. Got it?”

Jasnah nodded. “Thank you, Zahel.”

“And remember, you have a few months’ grace. Give it too long, and you won’t be able to swap back; but for now, you might be able to manage it, if it all gets too much. I’m coming with you to the Veden border,” he nodded to Jasnah, “so we’ll be seeing more of each other. You’re crazy kids, but you’re stubborn, I’ll give you that. Just don’t lose sight of whatever the colours it is you’re searching for.”

“Can you go now?” Elhokar said. “We were having a moment.”

“As long as I never have to teach you again,” said Zahel, “I’m happy.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“You’re good kids,” Zahel said. “But you’re just kids. You two are the future of this kingdom. You’re going to hold an awful lot of lives in your hands, someday. Don’t forget you have a duty.”

“To our people?” Elhokar said.

“No. To damned common decency. Your people are an abstract behemoth that you’ll never grasp if you spend all your time surrounded by the highest dahns of the richest lighteyes out there. You kids have a great capacity to hurt. You have to heal as well. I can’t beat compassion into you, but do me a favour, and remember that. Remember your humanity.”

Elhokar rolled his eyes; since when had Zahel given a solitary flying cremling about moral philosophy? Wasn’t he a swordmaster? But Jasnah looked thoughtful, as though Zahel had actually said something worth holding onto.

“You speak wisely, Zahel,” Jasnah said. Sometimes Elhokar wondered if she was secretly one of the Heralds in disguise, or something silly like that; she always spoke with a seriousness beyond her years. She didn’t seem to realise it just made her sound arrogant. “Until next time.”

“What she said,” Elhokar muttered.

“No,” Zahel said, “what he said.”

Elhokar glanced at Jasnah. Their eyes met.

It seemed they were in agreement. And, in a strange way, they had Zahel’s blessing.

It was time.

Chapter Text

Jasnah choked on her food. It was overwhelming. A dish of tallew rice was a welcome breakfast—when it wasn’t setting her mouth on fire.

“Elhokar,” sighed her father, “what have I told you about playing with your food?”

As far as she was concerned, he’d never told her anything of the sort. But it didn’t surprise her to learn that Elhokar was known for messing around.

She swallowed as best she could, and said, when she remembered how to speak: “I’m sorry, my lord father. It won’t happen again.”

Contrition was important in these situations, so she bowed her head, and did not raise it until Gavilar said—“Enough, Elhokar. If you will behave like a child, so be it; there is no need to mock me further with your insolence.” He shook his head. “Someday, you’ll have to grow up. You’re nearly of an age to bond a shardblade—that is not an honour to be taken on lightly. Elhokar, are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, Father,” Jasnah said, pitching her voice downwards. It did to be prepared.

“Good,” he said, getting to his feet.

He set his bowl down on the floor and walked, barefoot, to the opening of the tent, looking out into the distance as if in search of salvation. What could he possibly hope to learn from the rocky plains of central Alethkar?

It struck her that she did not really know her father, not as Elhokar did. He called her insolent when all she had done was show him respect. In fairness, he couldn’t possibly guess why she was acting as she did; nonetheless, Gavilar rushed to a negative conclusion without adequately considering the evidence. Like so many people, he saw not what there was, but what he wanted to see.

Human nature. But not a particularly admirable side of it.

Besides, he was hard to read. Jasnah had never had any innate talent for understanding others; they could be as inscrutable as a lait in a highstorm. But those she knew were easier to understand than those she did not, and it occurred to her that her father was a stranger to her. It was no surprise: a king could not be expected to waste his time fussing over a princess, when she had an education to pursue and he had a kingdom to rule. And she saw him often enough, at his many feasts. But when was the last time they had talked, face to face? When was the last time he had put down his sword and thought of his daughter? Even now he did not think of her; he thought only of Elhokar, and his failures.

Was this what Elhokar had had to contend with, his whole life? Unwavering disappointment? No wonder he’d been miserable. Her father read impudence into filial respect; what, then, would he read into her sloppy swordplay, her unfamiliarity with men’s food? How would he judge her diplomacy? What would he think when she saw war? She had assumed—foolishly—that taking Elhokar’s place would be far easier than what he had in store. Yet a prince still required an education. Not scholarship—never scholarship—but the masculine arts were not called that without reason. They simply required a different kind of training.

She was in trouble. Deep trouble. And now she could not even tell Elhokar—because she was no longer allowed to write.

She heard the padding of feet, the telltale sign her father was coming back. But when she looked up he was still staring at the horizon, saddened by something unknown. What did he see? Whatever it was, at least he could rely on its truth.

From this distance, he had a nobility about him: it lingered in his upright bearing, in the confident set of his jaw. He had become royalty; now royalty became him. His curls—for she certainly hadn’t inherited that from her mother—fell down to his shoulders, like Jasnah, like the ancients. He even wore a plain blue takama, barely embellished by a white shirt, so distinct from the sharp Kholin uniforms that surrounded him. He could have stepped out of one of her manuscripts, perfectly formed.

But he was a modern man despite it all, well-versed in battle tactics of the day. And even Nohadon had not ruled through wisdom alone.

“A duel this evening,” he said at last, turning around to stand before her. “Let’s see how far you’ve come, my son. But first, we ride.”

Jasnah cautiously ate her breakfast—to no avail; it just made her mouth hurt even more than it already had. And to think—this was what men ate every day. She’d never had any particular affection for sweet women’s foods, but she was starting to miss the subtlety of a dish of fruited tallew rice. Children’s food, yes; but least that didn’t burn her tongue off. Still, there was nothing for it but to keep going. This was her life now, and shying away from it would only hurt her in the long run.

She glared at the man who had lain out her clothes, in the absence of her father. He cringed and rushed away. He was of the lower dahn—seventh, if she wasn’t mistaken—wealthy, but not landed. She didn’t bear him any ill will, but she simply couldn’t afford to let a servant dress her any longer. If anyone saw—

Enough. She wrapped bands of plain cloth around her chest, mostly unnecessary right now, but someday essential. Over that she pulled on a white shirt, woven from rough lavis flax, and was struck as always by the immense disparity between the worlds of men and women. A woman’s shift, or at least a brightlady’s shift, was a tedious affair which went down to the ankles and was so soft that it almost seemed to slide against the skin. A man’s shirt, on the other hand, only went down to the thighs—or the knees, if it were particularly oversized—and though it could hardly be called scratchy, it was certainly tougher and less finely spun than a woman’s garments. The shirt was tucked into loose knee-length breeches, which matched her tunic in its deep Kholin blue. Men’s clothes were more complex than she had expected, given just how fiddly women’s clothes were—though they still didn’t have quite so many layers.

Never mind that. She admired her profile, what she could see of it at least; there were no mirrors in these camps. With some effort, she lifted up a sword and buckled it, then at last put on her boots. Elhokar’s clothes didn’t entirely fit her—if she was limber, then he was lanky—but they were the same height, so she wasn’t drowning in fabric. She cut a fine enough figure, dressed for war: a masculine figure, an echo of her father.

Handsome. Somehow right, in a way a havah never could be.

Jasnah held her head high, and strode out to face the world. If Elhokar could do it, then she could do it better.

Jasnah collapsed in her tent, every muscle aching. Hours of riding had worn her out, hurting her in places she hadn’t realised it was possible to hurt. Even with rests, she was starving, her clothes soaked in sweat from the midday sun and the endless ride.

And her father wanted to duel her, after all that.

She groaned, lying on her back in the relative darkness of this evening’s tent. It would be gone by morning, for another day of hard riding. After a lunch of spiced flatbread, she was beginning to accept the inevitability of a burning mouth; surely the crown prince, though, should’ve earnt more sympathy than sleeping on a soulcast mattress.

But then, perhaps her father wanted Elhokar to learn some hard lessons. If he did, he was failing miserably, not that he knew that.

She sat up, her skin crawling. It was too soft, this mattress. Even with every bone in her body complaining—it was too soft. It felt like—like—

Jasnah stripped her clothes off, and changed as quickly as she could into the duelling clothes that a nameless servant had laid out for her. They were looser than her riding clothes, lighter, more flowing. The breeches were longer, and she’d been left some protective leather armour. She felt more alive that way, less—not so—

She swallowed, breathing in through her mouth, deeply, then out again. It didn’t do much to help; the room was dark, she was adrift from the outside world—no, no, she was here, this was real, sunlight was only a few paces away.

No restraints. No ardents. Safe.

She was calm. She was rational.

She was fine.

If she was going to face her father, she had to be.

Travelling as they were, there was no duelling arena. Instead, someone—probably an ardent, or a parshman—had drawn a wide oval into the crem. Nobody was there, except a few servants and ardents; perhaps Gavilar had warned against watching. Out of the corner of her eye, Jasnah caught Zahel polishing a sword, scowling fiercely. Then again, when wasn’t he?

The king himself cut a fierce figure in the dark, his long hair tied back into a topknot, barefoot and dressed only in a takama and shirt. He nodded to her when she stepped into the ring, and settled into Vinestance. Elhokar and Zahel had both drummed them into her head, but she was still learning to recognise the ten stances.

“Well, son,” he said, sword touching the ground, held in both hands. “Shall we begin?”

Jasnah nodded, and her father struck.

It was vital—so said most tacticians—to stay alert. Elhokar did not say this; he insisted on the importance of naps. But Elhokar was also only twelve years old, and had never dictated a book. On this occasion, she took the advice of the tacticians, and wisely: her father moved faster than a starving skyeel, an unnerving break from his normal stately calm. He never aimed to kill; but he did aim to take her down, which was almost as tiring.

The world dissolved into a rote of parries, thrusts, and lunges, shifting from foot to foot to dodge her father’s attacks. Zahel, from the edges, scowled harder; she shut him out and focused on holding off the endless barrage of sweeping blows. Block. Dodge. Thrust. The resounding clang of steel on steel. Had Zahel trained her well? Would her father be disappointed? She had no idea. Her mind had no space for anything but duelling. All the while her father’s face remained impassive; he never smiled, never frowned, only watched, watched, watched.

At last Gavilar caught her off guard, and she fell back, clutching at her sword even as she hit the floor. He stood back, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, back to leaning on his sword with a crooked sort of smile. Amusement? Mockery? Disappointment? Jasnah had met many men in her time, but none so unflinchingly impassive as her father. He was soft-spoken, yet his voice could move a thousand men. He was a warmonger who hungered for ancient philosophies. Brightlord, highprince, king—he contained multitudes.

And he had bested her.

No surprise, Jasnah told herself, stumbling to her feet. She was twelve years old; he was a grown man, conqueror of an entire kingdom. And she had far less practice than most twelve-year-old boys.

“Well done, Elhokar,” her father said, handing his sword over to a watching ardent. “Hardly perfect, but better than last time. We’ll make a swordsman out of you after all. No—next time, we practice with shardblades. I know you’ve had some practice already, but it’s high time you bonded your own.” He nodded to Zahel. “What say you, Zahel?”

“As you say, Your Majesty,” Zahel grunted. “The prince fights well.”

Gavilar, remarkably, smiled. “There you have it, Elhokar. Maybe you won’t be such a disappointment after all.”

And with those heartwarming words, he sent her off for a delicious supper of spiced lavis grain.

She was so sick of men’s food.

Jasnah stared at her mattress. It was, in theory, comfortable. Fit for a king, one might have said. And indeed it was soft against her skin, pleasant to lie down on. Except—except lying on it made her skin crawl. Resting her head on its downy pillows made old memories come clawing back, memories best left forgotten. A few fearspren wriggled up her arm; she took a deep breath and let them slip away, back to their home.

No fearspren, no fear. She could try sleeping like this. It would be the sensible thing to do; she would hurt her back lying on the cold stone floor, comforted only by the fabric of the tent. Thus she begrudgingly lay on her back, staring up at the canvas ceiling, thinking of how endlessly strange the men in her life were.

She had not seen her uncle so far, but then he was off putting down rebellion in some other part of the country. Vamah’s princedom was relatively settled these days; the highprince had agreed to join Gavilar for some of the border fighting, but he was by no means at war with the Alethi princedoms that bordered him, just Jah Keved.

How, she wondered, was Elhokar? What did he make of his strange new world?

Sleepless as always, she resigned herself to the knowledge that she would simply have to wait.

Chapter Text

Elhokar sat in a small classroom, lamenting just how much he didn’t know. Girls had to learn so much! He’d never realised the complications of geometry and geology, of fabrials and physics, of music and mathematics. To a prince it all seemed arbitrary. Simple, even. What did it matter to a man? It wasn’t as if a king needed to know how to play a lute. But it was storming complicated. And no one had ever told him books had their own secret undertext, where women would write judgemental comments in the margins!

He sighed, fighting the urge to doodle on the tome in front of him. At least the interminable history lesson was over. His tutor had seemed bemused at times by his boredom, but he’d more or less got away with it by blaming the eye-rolling on a headache. Next time, he made a note to himself, he’d have to look at least a little curious. Jasnah, after all, was known for her interest in the past. In theory, if he gradually showed less and less interest in history, his tutors would chalk it up to him growing up. Or, as Jasnah had suggested, he could simply try enjoying history.

This was a terrible suggestion. History was awful.

A voice carried into the room from down the corridor, and he perked up. “…that storming child corrects me one more time,” Elhokar overheard, “I might just—” Might just what? The door opened, and Elhokar did his best to look attentive. “Good morning, Brightness,” an old woman in a paint-spattered havah said. “I hope you aren’t too excited for today’s art lesson.” Art? Finally! “As you well know, a princess requires a good education, and a good education requires a wide array of subjects. Just as history and languages are necessary to sharpen the mind, so too is art necessary to broaden it. That is presumably why your mother still employs me, in the face of your resolute dismissal of the arts.”

Many times in his life, Elhokar had ruined a man’s day by making it a living Damnation. For the first time in his twelve years, he was going to ruin someone’s day by making it enjoyable.

“In the past,” he said, in his best Jasnah voice, “I have voiced disapproval of the arts as something frivolous.” The old woman groaned, looking somewhere between annoyed and suicidal. “However, I must concede that a princess should have a full education, even in the subjects that she cannot personally appreciate. Thus, I apologise for my foolishness, and, um, I will do art as you say.”

He’d lost the plot a little bit there, but he’d got the point across. And he sounded suitably stuck up.

His art tutor looked at him as if in a dream. “Well then,” she said, “I suppose we should get started.”

Elhokar grinned. This was the best day of his life.

By the end of his lesson with Vedah—a very famous artist who, if he hadn’t spent twelve years being a prince, he might have heard of—Elhokar was starting to think that his role in life should be making people feel better. Or at least, making people who had been forced to teach Jasnah feel better. Even his history tutor had seemed relieved to talk to a child who spoke in full sentences, and not essay-length paragraphs. And Vedah especially seemed delighted by his curiosity. It couldn’t be called fascination; he had held that back, in the knowledge that it would be a bit suspicious for Jasnah to suddenly take an interest in the arts. But he hoped she would be happier, now that she actually had a willing student.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Elhokar frowned. Who could possibly want to see his portrait of Kelek? Alright, it was a solid likeness for a first attempt, but it lacked proper depth, and the eyes were slanted at a weird angle. If Jasnah had done it, he would have called it—politely—a decent attempt. As it was, he was vaguely unsatisfied with the whole thing.

“Good afternoon, Jasnah.” Elhokar looked up from his art to see his mother, standing quietly in the doorway. “It is Jasnah, isn’t it? You aren’t playing another of your silly games, I hope.”

“So far as we can tell, Brightness, yes,” Vedah said. “Unless your son has suddenly developed the ability to traverse hundreds of miles in a day.”

Elhokar decided that he really liked Vedah.

“I thought as much,” Mother said. She looked—sad, yes, but more than that: confused. She often did, when she talked to her children, as if she wasn’t quite sure of who they were. But she seemed more subdued now than when she spoke to him normally.

She thinks you’re Jasnah, remember. And Jasnah hates Mother.

“Would you like to walk with me, Jasnah—she is finished with her lessons, yes?”

“For the next hour,” Vedah said.

“Well, Jasnah?”

Elhokar schooled his face into something like distaste. “Yes, Mother.”

“I’m glad to see you enjoying your art lessons,” Mother said. “I know that you had some … frustrations with your previous tutor.”

Renishu, wasn’t it? He remembered Jasnah saying that she’d met more talkative parshmen.

“She wasn’t the most interesting of tutors,” Elhokar said, which he thought was fairly neutral.

“No, but that was no reason drive her to tears over the relative asymmetry of her sketches,” Mother said.

That was fair enough. He’d had no idea Jasnah could get so vicious, but thinking about it, he shouldn’t have been surprised. She had no patience for fools. That was something else he was going to have to rectify.

“I realise that now,” Elhokar said, “and I wish I hadn’t upset her so badly. It was an overreaction; symmetry is subjective, as is all art. Is there some way I could apologise?”

“You could practice your letter writing, and draft an apology,” Mother said. “I must say, Jasnah … I’m impressed. I never thought I’d see the day that you acknowledged the arts.”

“Only a fool closes her eyes to a whole subject of study,” Elhokar said. He was rather enjoying pretentiousness. “That does not mean history and philosophy are without merit, or that engineering and physics are faultless; only that one cannot have true knowledge without understanding each part of the world.”

Crem, the lot of it, but well-structured crem, which so far as he could tell was what mattered in essays. You could get away with saying pretty much whatever you wanted about art and literature and philosophy, so long as you said it with the right words.

Girls were weird.

“Very wise.” His mother almost smiled. “Perhaps you are maturing, after all. And thank you, Jasnah, for coming with me. I know you don’t like … well, I’m only glad you can forgive me.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Mother,” he said, head bowed. Which was true, more or less. It was important to respect one’s mother, and one’s father, no matter how stupid the things they said were—and his father said some really stupid things sometimes, especially about his mother. “And I apologise if I have.”

“We’ll simply have to agree to forgive each other,” Mother said. Her freehand settled on his shoulder. “My little Jasnah is finally growing up.”

Elhokar had a sinking feeling that things were only going to get weirder from hereon out. Still, if he had to be stuck making bizarre small talk with one of his parents, he would definitely rather his mother than his father.

“Literally, too,” he said. “Soon I’ll be taller than Mashala Evi.”

“Yes, speaking of her…” Mother sighed deeply. “I believe she wanted to talk to you.”

“About … what?” Elhokar said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “She’s strange, that woman. Even after all these years—” Mother shook her head. “I have no doubt you’re wiser than she is, but still; don’t take her advice too close to heart.”

“I would never value one perspective to the point of exclusion.” Actually, he would, but saying that would come off as suspicious.

“Spoken like a true philosopher. Still … it does to be kind. She doesn’t know our ways.”

Now to guess what Jasnah would say. “But that doesn’t mean she’s always wrong.”

“It’s a kind of innocence she has,” Mother said. “Like a little child, who doesn’t yet grasp the cruelties of this world. But what do I know? I’m only the storming queen of Alethkar…”

Elhokar turned her words over in his head for hours, but still couldn’t decide what he thought of them. What was Evi to him, anyway? He barely knew her. But it looked like he might be about to find out.

“Good afternoon, Jasnah,” Evi said, ushering Elhokar into one of the many palace rooms, the sort where ambassadors were greeted.

It was lavishly decorated, the walls taken over by bookshelves and a thick rug covering the floor. The rug was covered in strands of blue and gold, showing the Kholin glyphpair: khokh and linil. It wasn’t quite the Kholin colours, which he could only guess was an attempt at incorporating Evi into the heraldry—did Rirans even have glyphs and heraldry? He’d have to look it up.

Oh, storms. He really was turning into his sister.

Elhokar bowed his head briefly, then met Evi’s gaze. He desperately struggled to think of what she knew about Evi. She was from another country; she was married to his uncle; she was storming strange sometimes. That was about all he had.

Useless.

“Good afternoon, Mashala Evi,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

The room, though richly decorated, was sparsely furnished, but for a low table at the centre; the sort without chairs, then. Evi sat down, cross-legged, and gestured for him to follow her, so he sat, nearly tripping over his own skirts in the process. Weeks had gone by, and he still hadn’t got the hang of all these layers. What did women even need them for? How did they not burn up on hot days?

“You, too,” Evi said, smiling warmly. Wasn’t that rude? Shouldn’t she be calling him Brightness? Or was he supposed to defer to her? Etiquette had never been his strong suit, and that was before he had started pretending to be his sister. “How are you? I hope your lessons are going better than before.”

“Well enough,” he said, unsure of what to say. Was he missing something? Since when had Evi been close to Jasnah?

She would be back from the border soon. Then he could ask her himself.

“I see you are no longer made to wear that awful havah,” Evi said.

“What? Oh, yes—that stopped a few weeks ago.”

He’d forgotten all about that, because unlike Jasnah, it had never bothered him. The whole safehand thing was just one of many ridiculous practices presumably designed to torture lighteyed girls, and he still missed using his safehand—no, left hand! He wasn’t a girl, so it wasn’t a safehand. But not using his left hand made little difference to Elhokar. It scarcely bothered him that he’d been made to wear a havah where the left sleeve was sewn shut, instead of buttoned up, because he had absolutely no inclination to pick up a pen with his left hand. But it made him worry for Jasnah. Just what exactly had her tutors done to her?

“Good,” Evi said. “I … I hate the things this country expects from you. From me. It is unfair, yes? Unkind. Just because of how we are, your people thinks us dirty. They hurt us. It is not right.”

“I’ve learnt to cope,” Elhokar said, which was sort of true, if you squinted.

She closed her eyes, saddened. “That is what hurts me.”

He couldn’t think what to say. “I’m dealing with it better now,” he said. “The ardents don’t pressure me so much. It could be worse.”

“It could be worse? By the Brightcaller’s rays…” She shook her head. “You are not the same, Jasnah, not as you were when you were little. I remember. I always dreamt you would be different, different from all the rest, like my little Renarin. But the Alethi break everything they touch.” She seemed to forget what she was saying, as if each thought were dissolving into nothing. “I fear they crushed even your spirit.”

“I really am happier now,” he said, though he wondered if it was true. He knew he was happier; but was Jasnah happier? Evi was right—she wasn’t the same. Something had changed, nearly a year ago now, in that dreadful time when she wouldn’t leave her room for months. But she said nothing of it.

“Do you still … hear?” Evi said. She wrung her hands. “See, where you should not?”

He frowned at her. “No, of course not.”

What in Damnation did she mean by that? What in the Almighty’s tenth name had happened to Jasnah?

“Good,” she said. “You have your mind, then, at least.”

“I do,” he said. “The Almighty be praised.”

“And may you be safe,” she said.

His mother was right: Evi was a strange woman. But unlike his father she cared, and she listened, and for that, he could only thank her.

Chapter Text

Jasnah woke up to find the sheets stained in blood.

Not a significant amount. Little enough that she could, in all likelihood, pass it off as a nosebleed, or something like that. But blood, nonetheless—a rusty smear that offended the eyes. For a moment she wondered if she really had had a nosebleed—except what nosebleed would end up in the middle of a mattress? And it wasn’t just the sheets that were covered in blood; her nightgown was too.

Now what? She couldn’t let any servants in, or they would immediately fret for her health—and if they sent for an ardent, or a surgeon, then she was done for. That could not be allowed to happen.

She stood there for a moment, frozen, spiralling. Her mind was trapped in the nightmare of discovery. What would they do to her? To Elhokar? And all over a little blood. Her parents could lock her up again, she knew. Lock her up and never come back—the restraints—the darkness—

Calm yourself, she told herself, as terrorspren crawled up around her feet, drawn to her fear. Calm yourself. Calm yourself! Deep breaths, that was the only thing which would make the spren go away. The things you see are not real. The Almighty sends them to test you. Deep breaths, in, out, until her racing heart slowed, until the urge to retch receded. Calm yourself, child, and all will be well. The ardents could not see this—they would hurt her again—

No, that wasn’t true. There was one ardent who could see this. She took another deep breath, and one by one the terrorspren slipped away, leaving her alone.

So her body was betraying her, yet again. She should have seen it coming; she had known from the start that she would have to hide her monthly bleedings from the outside world. But so soon…

Jasnah searched for a set of clean breeches, and stripped the bed, in a fit of movement. If anyone asked, she would claim she had cut herself, and they would put her silence down to embarrassment. She’d have to find some clean cloth to stem the bleeding—but that shouldn’t be too hard. She had an idea.

She just hoped the idea wouldn’t be too cranky today.

“Zahel! I challenge you to a duel.”

“Go challenge someone else to a duel,” Zahel grumbled. “Why do you always chase after me, princeling?”

“If you won’t duel me,” Jasnah said, “then at least listen to me. Might I confess to you?”

“Like I say,” he said, sharpening his sword, “there’s others who’ll do that better.”

“No,” Jasnah said. “I wish to talk to you, specifically. I feel we have an understanding. The Almighty prefers honesty.”

If indeed the Almighty was listening. Somehow she doubted it.

Zahel glared at her. “Colours-cursed children, always asking me for ridiculous things like duels and advice. What am I, a monk-slave? Oh, wait. That’s exactly what I am.”

Jasnah frowned. “Is a monk a sort of ardent?”

“Yes, it’s a far-off word for it. Come on, I’ll talk to you at the far end of the courtyard. No one will be listening there.”

“How far off?” Jasnah said, as he dragged her away from Adolin, who was wrestling with a young brightlord. “Is it Shin?”

“Close enough,” Zahel grunted. “Right. What was it you wanted to confess?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I came to ask you for help.”

“No.”

“You said to worry about monthly bleedings when they came,” she said quietly. “Well, they’ve come. Do you have any spare bandages on hand?”

“Alright! Alright, I’ll get you some,” Zahel said, as if he were being harassed. “But don’t expect me to get you out of trouble next time, son. You’ll have to learn to bind your chest on your own.”

“Oh, I already know how I’ll do that,” she said. “For now I’m using bands. In the future, I think I’ll use a woman’s stays. Ordinarily they’re designed to support the chest; it shouldn’t be too hard to turn them to a slightly different purpose. Combine that with decently layered clothing, and the court will be none the wiser.”

“You’re clever, I’ll give you that,” Zahel said. “Almost clever enough that I can forget you’re insane.”

“I’m not insane.”

The ardents had made very sure of that.

“You know what I mean,” he grunted. “Now go away and stop bothering me.”

“Bandages first.” It was important in this life to know how to extort.

“Fine! Fine!” he said, getting up from the ground with a low groan. “I’m too old for this by far.”

He couldn’t be older than his forties—but he liked to complain in the same way that the highstorm liked to tear down buildings, so she let him.

“Why do you keep talking to Zahel?” Adolin said, stomping over from a duel with the same young brightlord he’d been wrestling earlier. The poor man must have been tired half to death. Trained soldiers were strong, but they were no match for a nine-year-old’s relentless energy.

“He has interesting things to say.” Don’t throw up. Especially don’t throw up all over your cousin’s boots. She didn’t feel like she was going to throw up, but she did feel utterly sick, almost too nauseous to think. She was certainly too nauseous to stand.

“I guess,” Adolin said. “I haven’t talked to him much.”

“He doesn’t talk much.”

“Are you alright?” Adolin said loudly, cutting through the fuzz that had replaced her train of thought. “You look like Damnation itself.” Even in this state, Jasnah could recognise that he still hadn’t mastered controlling his voice.

Well, he was nine.

“Ill,” Jasnah forced out. If it was anything then it was her monthly bleedings, but she could hardly tell Adolin that. Her mother had complained of similar things before. “I … ate something bad, I think.”

Sitting down helped. If she stood up she thought she wouldn’t be able to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Adolin said. “Bad food is stupid. And being sick is even more stupid.”

“You think a lot of things are stupid, cousin.”

He stuck out his tongue, then sat down next to her, resting his arms on his knees. “That’s because they are.”

A streak of exhaustionspren briefly fluttered into existence next to her, before Jasnah tamped down on the tiredness within and banished it. Adolin blinked at the air where the spren had been, but said nothing of it.

For a moment he was quiet, and she heard only the clash and clang of steel on steel. Then Adolin said, breaking the silence: “Do you want a hug? Mama says hugs and kisses can cure sickness.”

Ah, the good Highprincess Evi and her words of wisdom. If there were any downsides to being a crown prince—and there were remarkably few, for she was second only to her father in importance—then her enforced distance from Evi was one of them. Evi was a good woman, a kind woman. Adolin was lucky to have her for a mother.

But Crown Prince Elhokar barely knew her.

“Very well,” Jasnah said stiffly, for Elhokar would never turn down a hug.

Adolin threw himself at her, more of a tackle than an embrace, nearly knocking them both to the floor. He almost shocked her into feeling better; she’d not been touched in so longer, never mind hugged … the sudden warmth unnerved her, like treading water, fearing at any minute your legs might give out. Adolin clung to her, burying his head in her shoulder. Evidently he’d done this before with Elhokar. But for her it brought back memories of her mother, withdrawing as the years went by. Strange child. That was what she had said, what she had always said.

It was almost a relief that Adolin was so … well, so normal. It struck her, though, that this was pure assumption on her part. She hardly knew Adolin. There was plenty he might be hiding from the world.

“Do you feel better now?” Adolin said, muffled. “You should do, hugs are like magic.”

Jasnah swallowed. Tear pricked at her vision, hot and angry. He was so small—just a child—no one had ever told this boy to stop crying. No one had ever shouted at him to stop being so emotional, that he was just trying to pretend he’d done nothing wrong—that he always did this when he was told off, that he was just begging for attention, that he could never storming learn how to behave. At least that she knew…

Good. He didn’t deserve that. No one did. Still, it hurt to see him so free.

“Better,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. It was a bare hint of a word, but she knew if she spoke any louder she would cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. The ardents had always hated it when she cried. “Thank you.”

“Father yelled at me today,” Adolin said. “I asked him … it doesn’t matter. He said I should just go away.” He sniffed. “He didn’t actually say that. What he said was much ruder.” She didn’t speak, waiting for the urge to cry to ebb away into nothing. “I’m nearly ten now. I’ll have to choose a master soon. How did you know to choose Zahel?”

A trick question: she hadn’t. But it snapped her out of dwelling on her own misery, and forced her to think. Why would anyone choose to study under Zahel, misanthropic bastard that he was? What was there to be gained from learning from him, rather than any of the other ardents, who would do as they were told and never speak out?

Easy: he was the best swordsman for miles around, and would happily correct poor form, no matter how high-ranking his student. That, and not endless flattery, was what a soldier needed.

“He is a hard master,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “He will push you to your limit. But if you are never challenged, you will never win. It is better to come prepared than coddled.”

“I like Neshur more,” Adolin hummed, with a little of his usual cheer. “He’s funny. But he’s terrible with a sword.” He pulled back. “Thanks, Elhokar. Normally you’re really annoying, but today you actually said something useful.”

Ah, so she had overestimated his closeness to Elhokar. But there was no reason they had to remain distant.

“You’re welcome,” Jasnah said. “Truly, cousin, it was the least I could do.”

He seemed satisfied with that, which was good. The deception was working, Adolin was happy, and Zahel had been forced into benevolence.

And best of all, she didn’t throw up once.

Chapter Text

Everyone knew about shardblades, but few ever got the chance to hold one. Jasnah had never expected to see one this close; it was a good six feet long, the ten fundamental glyphs etched into its being. Death, calcified.

“Sunraiser,” her father said softly, “was won by your uncle from Highprince Kalanor, in the year of our Almighty 1145.” He held the blade forth. “He gifted both shardblade and shardplate to me, in the expectation that they would be given to my son upon his thirteenth birthday. Now that you are thirteen, both blade and plate are yours. Zahel here will train you in how to wield them—they are very different to a normal sword and armour. Do you understand, Elhokar, the responsibility you are being given here?”

“Yes, Father,” Jasnah said.

“Good. A shardblade burns men’s souls; it can kill hundreds in a single swing. You would do well to remember the destruction a full shardbearer can wreak. For now, though, what you must do is keep the blade and plate on you, until they are bonded to you. Are you ready to accept this burden?”

“I am, Father.”

Gavilar pressed the shardblade into her hands, the gemstone on the pommel flashing. It was far lighter than any sword she’d used before, yet swift in motion, as though it cut the air itself when it moved. “Use it wisely. It is no toy.”

She bowed her head, not that he ever seemed to notice. She could have told him outright that she was actually his daughter, and he wouldn’t have batted an eye. “You may rely on it.”

“Good.” He turned to Zahel. “If you could explain shardplate to my son. I am wanted by the Natan ambassador.”

“Absolutely,” Zahel said. “It’s very simple. First, go put on that suit of armour.” He pointed to the shardplate stacked up to his side.

“And then?” Jasnah said.

“And then, go jump off the roof.”

“For once, you chose your master wisely,” Gavilar said, and strode off.

Jasnah was starting to doubt whether she should be trusting Zahel so much.

Zahel wasn’t joking. He actually wanted her to jump off the roof.

“Hurry up and get on with it!” he shouted. “I haven’t got all day!”

She neglected to point out that he was a slave and an ardent, and was duty-bound to do whatever she told him. If she wanted to take all day, she was fully entitled to take all day.

Never mind that. Jasnah stared down at the courtyard below. Everyone looked so small from up here, servants and ardents scuttling about like cremlings. And in shardplate, she felt she could crush them all. Not even on purpose, with the cruelty of a child picking the carapace off a cremling, but with the blundering brutality of a parshman in a mine. Shardplate gave the wearer a great deal of power, but for the inexperienced it came at the cost of control of the body. Any movement sent her far further than she intended; it took all her effort to stay balanced.

“Elhokar, are you listening to me?”

She had to jump. She had to. It went against every instinct in her body. Every instinct in her mind, too. It wasn’t even the heights; the heights she could handle. It was the idea of crashing through the air. Hitting the ground. Falling, flailing, out of control.

“I said jump!” Zahel yelled. “Or are you a coward, Prince Elhokar?”

No. No coward. She fell, letting the sheer momentum created by only a small movement drive her off the roof and into the training grounds below. With a terrible crash, she hit the ground, the exhilarating rush through the air lasting barely more than a moment. It was a strange feeling; her skin seemed almost to buzz, the world brighter than it had been before, and there was Zahel, standing over her, looking, just for change, incredibly cranky.

“I expected better from you,” Zahel said. “Up. I said up.”

Jasnah stood up with great difficulty, nearly falling over with the strength that getting to her feet gave her. “How am I supposed to balance in this?”

“By throwing yourself around until you intuitively learn your limitations,” he said. “Not by standing around looking like an idiot. The only way you’ll ever learn to use shards is through practice. It’s not the sort of thing you can learn from a book. Don’t think I’m disappointed, son—no one takes their first time in shardplate well. But you’re going to have to get used to it. Now, go throw yourself off the roof again.”

So she did.

“Right,” Zahel said, “now that you’ve got the basics of moving in shardplate down without falling flat on your face, you’re ready to study the blade.”

Shards were infinitely more dangerous than normal weapons. Thus it followed that they were also infinitely more difficult to master. Even having thrown herself off the roof repeatedly—a deeply unpleasant experience that Jasnah suspected would happen again, if only for Zahel’s amusement—she still found herself one wrong move from falling over.

You can’t expect to be good at everything. You have years of practice with rhetoric, and only a few months with duelling.

Then again, she’d spent her whole life learning to write, and she’d never even approached mastering that.

“How does a shardblade differ from a normal blade, in terms of action and reaction?” Jasnah said. It was the obvious thing to ask.

“Less fancy words,” Zahel said. She opened her mouth to point out that it was fewer fancy words, then shut it again. Elhokar did not care for such distinctions. “It’s a good question, though. Shardblades, as you can probably tell, are far lighter.” He drew an unbonded shardblade, the king’s own. “No point in practicing with a metal blade, a shardblade’ll cut right through it without a guard. Shardblades will move faster, give you more momentum, and there’s very little that can stand up to them. If you fight another shardbearer, though, the blades will bounce right off each other. Shardblades are a whole different style of fighting. You’ll see. Go on—attack me. Make it count.”

He was just standing there, blade hanging by his side—all five feet of it. Terrible stance, that she knew. But knowing Zahel, that was on purpose.

She aimed for the knees, and he jumped expertly out of the way, almost too quickly to be human, settling into a stance she didn’t recognise. He rarely used any of the ten stances, instead going for whatever fit best at the time. Then, quick as a mink, he lunged forwards, and struck at the heart, sending her flying backwards onto the floor.

Again.

“Dead,” Zahel said, standing above her. “Do better.”

So she did. It went on like that for hours, endless katas and duels and jumping off the roof until the world boiled down to where to move next. Nothing was ever good enough for Zahel. He always had some criticism, some point on how to improve. It rankled—she had always taken to studying so easily, but fighting was not an art that could be learnt from a book. Why could she not master duelling straight away? Why could she not excel, as with languages?

You forget, she told herself. You always hated art.

She had always thought that being a man must be easier than being a woman. Fewer expectations. Fewer insensible rules. And in some ways she was right: there were no tedious skirts, she didn’t have to cover her left hand, no one ever called her weak or emotional just for being a woman. That was a blessing; she was more free now, disguised as her brother, than she ever had been as herself. But it was pure assumption that men lived boorish, uncomplicated lives. They had their own rules, their own ways of judging. And they could be even less permissive of weakness.

Assumptions were dangerous. Those above assumed they were safe, and walked happily to their own defeats. Those below assumed they were trapped that way, that the laws that bound them were divined from nature. But in truth, any law could be undone.

Her assumptions were the most dangerous of all, she thought, dodging a well-placed strike from Zahel. Even at this punishing rate he was going soft on her. How much self-control did it take to defeat a man without killing him? She wanted to know. She always wanted to know. She wanted to fight as well as any man.

But her mind … it was not like most. When others assumed, they formed their beliefs without interrogating the underlying prejudices that governed them. Hers…

The shadows do not move. The walls do not speak.

That blade didn’t come from that angle.

Still. That never stopped the voices.

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.

Chapter Text

The tunic, Jasnah realised with dismay, no longer fit.

The doublet, too, came up short.

And the breeches gave up halfway down the shin.

If they had been knee-length breeches, perhaps the problem might have been ignorable. And the shirts she could have dealt with, if not for the fact that the cuffs stopped long before her arms did. But the doublet was obviously too small, and even her boots were starting to get ideas.

All in all, the situation was dire.

“You can’t go out to a feast dressed like that!” Adolin said, when she came out of her bedroom to consult his wisdom. Apparently it was one of his rituals with Elhokar: to show off to each other, like chickens conducting a courtship, before an event. She couldn’t see the point. “I’ll die of shame!”

It was laughterspren that were darting round his face, not shamespren, but she was forced to accept that he was right. There was simply no world in which these clothes could be described as fitting her. She was aware that she was growing, of course, but she hadn’t realised quite how quickly until now.

Damnation. She would have to go to the royal tailor. Not an unfamiliar experience; not something she would ordinarily be worried about, even if she had never enjoyed clothes fittings. And it wasn’t as if she would be asked to strip naked. Still, a shiver of fear went down her spine: what if the tailor could tell, beneath a flimsy shirt, the truth? What if this was it?

“The rest of my clothes will be just as bad,” she sighed. “You’ll have to live with me for the time being.”

“You mean I’ll have to die with it,” Adolin said, wiping his brow with his handkerchief as though he were some fainting romance heroine. “I shan’t live to see another dawn! I’m done for! The prince my cousin has killed me, with his crimes against fashion.”

“Your mother would be very upset if you died,” Jasnah said. She was sure she hadn’t been so dramatic when she was ten. “So don’t, if you know what’s good for you.”

“She’ll be even more upset when she discovers that Prince Elhokar brutally murdered her beloved son,” Adolin said. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

Jasnah picked up a spare shirt. “Here, close your eyes. There is one thing I can do.”

“What is it?” Adolin said, foolishly obeying.

“Sit still, and you’ll see.” She wrapped the shirt around his head, tying it in place with the sleeves. “There we go.”

“Hey!” Adolin said. “Not fair!”

She scooped up his favourite doublet and raced away, before he could notice, flitting through the corridors of the palace until she was far out of Adolin’s reach. Short of breath, she paused in an alcove next to some soulcast statue of an ardent who had no doubt been very important on life. This was something she hadn’t done in years. The sort of thing that was entirely unbecoming of a princess. And yet she felt gleeful, exhilarated, suddenly alive. She hadn’t felt real in so long. She laughed, giddy with the thrill of childishness. That was what this was, after all. Deeply immature pranking. And yet she didn’t regret it for a moment.

Jasnah heard a distant clattering, and then a yell, and then:

“Elhokar Kholin is evil!”

That got the whole palace’s attention. It didn’t take long for their mothers to find them, with deserved annoyance—Mother, after all, was the one who planned these feasts.

“For Kelek’s sake, Elhokar!” Mother said, looking both annoyed and distracted. “If you’ve grown out of your clothes again, why don’t you just say so? Better that than going around stealing sweet Adolin’s, when you know they won’t fit you—” She shook her head. “I’ll see to it that you go to Relamav tomorrow. Talat’s crooked nails … well, at least I can be sure this isn’t Jasnah’s work.” Jasnah nearly fell over from laughter. She was feeling very unlike herself. All the stress of lying to her friends and family, she decided, had somehow come out as a moment of reckless behaviour. Otherwise she wouldn’t find any of this nearly so funny. “On the night of a feast, as well—oh, Chana save my soul…”

Mother led Jasnah back to a shamefaced Adolin, who had crossed his arms and was glowering at the floor.

“What do you have to say to Elhokar, Adolin?” Evi said lightly.

“Sorry for saying you should be disinherited, and blinded, and flayed alive, and sold into slavery, and fed to chulls,” Adolin said. “I didn’t really mean it.”

“And?” Evi said.

“And strung up in a highstorm, and run through with a shardblade, and exiled to Bavland,” Adolin muttered.

“And what do you have to say to Adolin, Elhokar?” Mother said.

“I’m sorry for stealing your clothes, Adolin,” Jasnah said. “It won’t happen again.”

This much was true. Mother and Evi gave each other a despairing look, the sort which all parents recognised as commiseration and which all parents assumed their children did not. Then Mother sighed and said, “I must go now, the amosztha won’t transport itself. Don’t kill each other whilst I’m gone, boys.”

“We won’t, Mashala,” Adolin said, truculent. When Mother was gone, he added: “Probably.”

“Come, Adolin,” Evi said, smiling serenely. “Renarin will want to see you before the feast, won’t he?”

“Yes, Mama,” he sighed, dragging his feet.

It was a shame that she wouldn’t get to see Renarin for herself. But Adolin wasn’t so bad as she had thought. He was of a very different nature to his brother—endlessly energetic, talkative, a born fighter—but that didn’t making him stupid or unkind. In fact in some ways he had a sharp mind than most of the court.

Unfortunately, he was still only ten years old.

“Stand up straight,” Relamav said. “Hands in the air … Kelek’s own truth, Your Grace, but you grow so fast! How a man’s supposed to keep up with you, I don’t know…”

Jasnah said nothing, silently willing the examination to be over as quickly as possible and for the tape measure to be soulcast into flames. Thankfully the tailor hasn’t asked her to undress beyond her shirt, but it still accentuated her chest and hips in ways that she would prefer not to think about. Standing here, in only her undergarments, she was bare in front of the world in a way she hadn’t been since…

Stop it. Relamav was not an ardent, only a tailor. Two years had passed since she had been—sequestered away. This was nothing like that. Most things were nothing like that, despite what her mind tried to tell her. This was a simple visit to a tailor to arrange some new clothes. Then she could go back to her breeches and doublets and not have to think about new clothes for at least another month.

It was curious how quickly she’d adjusted. Men’s food still burnt her mouth, she was no genius with the sword, but she was managing. She was surely managing. On the occasions that she had talked to ambassadors or generals, they’d seemed pleasantly surprised by her head for strategy. And even forgetting all that … it was comfortable, pleasantly so. Slipping on a shirt and not a shift, a doublet and not a havah, felt in a strange way like coming home.

This, she knew, was pure feeling, and not grounded in logic. The Almighty had created all things, so said the ardents, and in each thing He had created an equal opposite. First He had created men; and secondly He had created women, each bound in their place, so that they might know true completion in the other. Which implied, of course, that women were secondary in all ways; and perhaps that was why the safehand was to be covered up, to mar the perfect symmetry of the body, for symmetry was the holiest of things.

It was entirely possible that this was all nonsense. If the Almighty was all-loving, how could He have let her languish away in a cell for months? If the Almighty was all-powerful, why could He not have done something to protect her? Or perhaps the Almighty was not all-knowing, and could not have foreseen her isolation. Who could say? The Almighty certainly hadn’t.

For that matter, if the Almighty was all-seeing, why had He not had the foresight to craft her as a man? That would have saved everyone a lot of time.

But she had a sinking feeling that He had not done any of this. Some days she wondered if He even existed at all. Why curse a child? Her madness was no divine curse, no punishment from above; it was simply bad luck and a faulty mind. This, at any rate, was what she told the annoying apparition of a cremling crawling up her arm.

Not real. They rarely were.

Maybe, one of these days, her own reassurances would stick.

Chapter Text

Elhokar stared himself in the mirror. He twisted from side to side, watching the heavy skirts of his havah shift. “What do you think?” he said to the servant to his left.

She blushed and ducked her head. Typical. Would no one answer him honestly? He was used to bootlicking from the men in his life, but at least they’d give him a storming answer. Women seemed to like to dance around everything instead, turning every conversation into a game.

Then again, half the men he’d met seemed to know no other solution than hitting the problem until it fell over and died—which, while satisfying, wasn’t very effective in the long run.

“I asked you a question, you know,” he said. “An answer would be nice.”

“I-it suits you perfectly, Brightness,” the girl said. “It’s very—”

“A proper answer, not flattery. Do the colours suit me? Or was the red havah better?”

“Er … this one suits you better, Brightness,” she squeaked out.

Well, it’d have to do. Oh, to have Adolin’s judgement right now…

“Thank you,” he said. “What’s your name, again?”

“Palani,” she mumbled.

“It’s a pretty name,” he said. She blinked, looking at him oddly. Whoops. Had he said something un-Jasnah? Well, she’d just have to put up with it. As long as he didn’t go around insulting historians by the hundreds, he’d probably be fine. No one was ever perfectly static, least of all children.

No need to overthink things. A few compliments wouldn’t get him caught any more than he already had been.

“Th-thank you, Brightness,” Palani said, ducking her head again. “But I’m not supposed to…”

“Talk to me?”

“Y-yes, Brightness.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going to cart you off to the dungeons. Does the palace even have dungeons?”

“I don’t know, Brightness.”

Maybe he should investigate. Later, though. For now, lifting his skirts just for the fun of seeing them fall, he looked himself in the mirror again.

And screamed.

“Brightness!” Palani cried. “What’s wrong? Should I call for a surgeon?”

“No,” Elhokar said. “I thought I saw…”

Strange patterns. Robed men, with pyramids for heads. Lurking behind him, their hands on his shoulders.

But he looked back, and it was just him: a boy in a havah. A man who could read. A strange mess of contradictions. A thing impossible, a paradox of nature.

He liked it that way.

“It’s nothing,” Elhokar said. “I was just tired.”

She didn’t look like she believed him. Evi’s words came to mind again: Do you still hear? See, where you should not?

“And you,” he added, “will say nothing of this.”

“Yes, Brightness,” Palani said.

But he had no doubt word would spread.

Elhokar paced his bedroom, unsure of what to do. Seeing things in mirrors was fine when it was a one-off. But when it kept happening? Well, that was concerning. This was the third time, and they showed up outside of mirrors, too. His physics tutor had not been happy when she caught him sketching bizarre geometric shapes all over his book. Best kept to art lessons, and not sacred scientific tomes.

Physics was the least of his problems, though. Ever since that first time, when he’d screamed in front of the mirror, he’d heard … whispers. Rumours that the court must have thought he didn’t hear. Or perhaps they simply didn’t care what he heard. Either way, he knew what they said.

That the princess was mad. Mad? It was just one time. How could they have leapt to that conclusion so quickly? Yes, there had been that unfortunate … incident a few years ago, where Jasnah had refused to leave her rooms for months, but, well, he had assumed…

He had assumed…

What had he assumed? Very little, in fact. He’d just taken the ardents at their word, when they said Jasnah was of a melancholy disposition and would not cooperate. Oh, she’d seemed shaken, when she finally returned to the land of the living. Whatever had happened to her, it hadn’t been innocent. But he’d never thought…

Lunacy. Madness. Insanity. The words circled him like skyeels, waiting to strip the flesh from his bones. Had she lost her mind? Had Jasnah actually … gone insane? It just seemed so implausible. Jasnah and madness went about as well together as men and literacy. How could he not have noticed his own sister going mad? How could he have been so stupid, so gullible—so selfish—as to have believed what he was told?

It rankled. More than that, it angered him. He wasn’t responsible for his sister—but then she would never let him be. Not any more. Not since … well, not since those months she’d refused to leave her rooms. Still, he had a duty to make sure she was safe. Somehow, he’d failed utterly. Worse than that: his sister had suffered right under his nose. Even now, he still didn’t know what had happened to her.

And then there was the ardents. Every time he went near them—which was fairly often, given some of them taught him—they were always ready to chastise him. To warn him not to be too extreme, not to get too emotional. Always ready to shut him up, especially if he dared chastise them back. It was uncomfortably like talking to his father.

Were they acting from experience? he wondered. Looking back on it, they did treat him like a caged animal, as if they were waiting for a whitespine to attack them—even when he wasn’t angry.

Elhokar kicked the bed, and yelped in pain, clutching his foot. “Vev’s storming tits!” he yelled, hopping backwards. Why was stubbing his toe, of all things, so painful? More painful than getting stabbed, even. Why had the Almighty made men this way?

And then, as if today hadn’t been bad enough, every sphere in the room went dun.

If he’d been less alarmed, he might have noticed that the pain in his foot was completely gone. But as it was, he was frightened out of his mind.

With his usual grace, Elhokar fainted dead away.

Chapter Text

The first time, Elhokar might have believed he was just stressed. Lying to the world every day took a lot of effort. And the second time, too. Maybe even the third time. But by the ninth or tenth time he saw those strange creatures behind him, he figured he should probably do something about it. So he went to the one person who knew anything in this world: Jasnah.

“I’m going insane,” Elhokar said, having lured her out onto a balcony to watch the feast below.

Jasnah froze. “What do you mean, insane?”

“I keep seeing things,” he said, “in mirrors.”

“Could you be less specific?”

“Strange shapes,” he said. “Like ardents, only … with symbols for heads. They look sort of like people, except—not. They follow me around. And it’s not just mirrors, I keep drawing them when I’m not focusing. It’s unnerving.”

“That … doesn’t sound like insanity,” she said. “It sounds like you’re distracted, which would not surprise me.”

“It’s more than that,” he said. “It’s not just visions. When I … this is going to sound ridiculous. When I injure myself, the lights go out.”

“So you’re suffering from stupidity, not insanity,” Jasnah said, relaxing. “It’s a terminal affliction.”

“No, I mean it,” he said. “Let me prove it.”

“Shall I throw you off this balcony? Tempting as it sounds, Mother wouldn’t approve.”

“You’re not taking this seriously!” Elhokar said. “I’m not making this up, I am actually seeing these—these things! I don’t know what they are, but I’m not so sure they’re hallucinations.”

“Of course they aren’t,” Jasnah said, colder than he had ever heard her before.

“Well, what’s your idea, then?”

“I can’t say for sure what you’re experiencing. Certainly nothing I’ve heard of. But I can tell you this much. Hallucinations aren’t real. Hallucinations don’t make spheres go dun. They certainly don’t interact with the physical world. You wouldn’t know a hallucination if it hit you in the face.”

“What, and you would?”

“Yes!” She stopped, taking a deep breath. Her hands were trembling. Elhokar felt as though the whole world had been turned on its head. He was seeing things in mirrors. His sister was shouting at him. Had he made a wrong turn round a palace corridor and got trapped in a horrible nightmare? “Never mind that.” After what she’d just said? How could she just dismiss it like that? “You say you wanted to prove these … visions are real?”

Was it … true? Were the rumours right?

Was his sister truly mad?

He hadn’t believed it, the first time he’d heard the rumours. Jasnah wasn’t like the lunatics that the ardents kept away from the world for their own good. Madmen ranted and raved, they were a danger to themselves and other people, they needed to be watched over. They saw things that weren’t there, they tried to take their own lives. How could Jasnah be mad? Madmen weren’t cold and logical. They couldn’t control themselves.

Madmen were someone else’s problem. They weren’t supposed to be his sister.

“Stab me,” he said. “There’s some spheres out here, if I’m right, they should go out.”

She looked at him flatly. “Are you sure?”

“At least then someone else will know,” Elhokar said.

“Yes,” she said bitterly, unsheathing her knife. “Yes, at least you’ll have evidence. Hold out your right hand.” He put his hand flat on the balcony. Jasnah looked around, just to see if anyone was watching. It wouldn’t do to be caught stabbing a princess, even if you were a prince. It was the sort of thing that tended to start wars. “Are you ready?”

“Oh, just get on with it.”

“As you wish.”

For some stupid reason, he’d expected her to actually stab him. But, far more sensibly, Jasnah merely nicked his skin. A drop of blood welled up—he felt a tinge of pain—but, almost as soon as it had begun, the wound began to heal, the skin sewing up, the blood disappearing.

And, as with the other times, several of the spheres on the wall went dun.

Jasnah pocketed the knife. “You weren’t lying.”

“Why would I lie about something like this?”

“It would be a rather strange thing to make up,” she admitted.

“So, do you know what this is?”

“No,” she said. “But it’s not insanity. Your judgement is no worse than usual. I’ve never seen anything like it, but perhaps … there might be something on it in the library. Somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” Jasnah said. “That will be your responsibility. I can’t exactly go to the library myself, much as I would like to. I can give you advice…” She trailed off. “But first, I have an errand for you.”

“Which is?”

“We need some way to communicate in private,” she said. “Hiding away in dark corners isn’t good enough. We need something less obvious.”

“And that is?”

“Brother,” she said, “I need you to steal a spanreed.”

“It’s good that you’re showing an interest in fabrials,” Mother said. “And about time, too.”

Hah! Instead of the usual one mistake, this time it was two. Elhokar was not Jasnah, and he would rather bang his head against a wall than learn the exact mechanics of fabrials. That bit he probably had in common with Jasnah, who would freely admit that she knew nothing about fabrials at all.

“My understanding of them is … rather lacking,” Elhokar admitted. “And there are few people alive with a better understanding of fabrials than you, Mother.”

He hated this strange distance. Something … he didn’t know what, but Mother was never as warm with Jasnah—or at least, whoever she thought was Jasnah—than she was with Elhokar. But that, he thought, had been going on for years.

Mother shook her head. “I’m no scholar. Merely an overseer.”

He wanted to protest. To point out that he couldn’t have understood fabrials for the life of him. To shout at her that, no, she was worth something after all, no matter what certain kings of Alethkar might say.

Father was rarely right about anything, and when he was, it was never about anything useful.

But a princess did not shout. And Jasnah certainly didn’t. So he only said: “Nonetheless, I would prefer to learn from you.”

At that she smiled, softly, the kindling of a warmth he’d seen a thousand times before: kindness starting to thaw. “What would you like to learn about first?”

Best not to make his intentions too obvious. He was used to smuggling books already, for Adolin. Surely it shouldn’t be much harder to steal a prized bit of technology that women used every day. “Timekeeping fabrials, I think.”

“Very well. The mechanism is powered by logicspren…”

He listened dutifully, occupying his right hand with a sketch. Just to test his suspicions. The strange figures—whatever they were—didn’t seem to be something he could look at up front. Rather, they only ever appeared when he was distracted, or distorted through another medium, like a reflection, or a drawing.

It was like they weren’t of this world.

He looked down to see that the familiar pattern-headed shape had emerged where his notes would otherwise be. He hastily dashed out some actual notes on how fabrials worked, just in case Mother thought to look at what he was writing.

“But then,” Elhokar said, when she was finished speaking, “how do fabrials in two parts work?”

“A good question,” Mother smiled. “Perhaps we’ll make an artifabrian of you yet, my dear.”

“That might be stretching credibility.” He quite liked talking like Jasnah. There was something charming about pretentiousness.

“Nonetheless, at least you’re trying. That’s what matters. Back to your question, two-part fabrials, as you call them, are known as pairing fabrials—conjoiners and reversers. The fundamental principles are akin to normal fabrials, and work along similar lines to magnets.”

“So a spanreed would be a pairing fabrial?”

“The most well-known type, certainly.”

Finally. He was getting somewhere. Amazing, the things politeness could do for you.

Chapter Text

“It’s not a heist,” Jasnah said, frowning viciously. “It’s a good old-fashioned robbery, which is a completely different thing.”

“Yes, but that makes it sound so boring,” Elhokar said. “Heists are dramatic. Heists have flair. Robbery is just rude.”

“Why are you like this?” she despaired. “We are doing this out of necessity, not malice. We need some way to communicate without talking face to face. We risk—”

“Evi knows,” he blurted out.

“She what?” Jasnah said.

“Evi knows,” Elhokar said. “She figured it out a while ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I was losing my mind.”

Jasnah sighed. “I take it she promised not to tell anyone.”

“I didn’t let her,” Elhokar lied. “She’s not saying anything, you don’t need to worry.”

“I didn’t think she would,” she said. “Still, you should have told me sooner.”

“I didn’t have the time,” Elhokar said. “I’m not lying about that. I’ve been so busy that I completely forgot about it.”

“Understandable,” she said. “But if anything, that makes obtaining a spanreed even more urgent. If I am away on a campaign or you find yourself in trouble, it is essential that we have a way of communicating to each other which is neither overt nor suspicious.”

“We are siblings,” Elhokar pointed out. “Is it really that unlikely that we would want to spend time with each other?”

Damnation. He really was starting to talk like Jasnah.

“Perhaps not, but that will never pass muster at court. The nobles are a pit of skyeels who would sooner see us skinned alive than lose favour with the highprinces. Do you never consider the consequences of your actions?”

“Not in that kind of detail,” he said. “I don’t need to.”

“You do now,” she said. “Any mistake, any sign of weakness, will be noticed. Especially now that the court thinks you are me. The brightlords have been whispering about your ‘episodes’ for months—even in front of me.”

“You faint one time,” Elhokar grumbled.

“Precisely. You faint one time; the court never lets you forget it. I’m not telling you this to punish you; I’m telling you this for your own safety. And that is why we need a spanreed.”

“But where would you keep it?” Elhokar said. “You’re not allowed to write.”

“I have my ways.”

“Hang on,” he said, a plan forming in his head. “Do we really need to steal a spanreed?”

“I don’t know how else you plan to get one. It would look very odd to march up to Mother and ask her for a spare spanreed with no explanation, and you are a dreadful liar.”

“You’re right,” Elhokar said, “it would. But who says we have to ask Mother?”

Jasnah pinched the bridge of her nose. “Dare I ask what you’re planning?”

“The obvious. Evi said if I ever needed her help, she’d be there. Now seems as good a time as any.”

This time she considered him seriously. “For once, you might be onto something.”

“Mashala,” Elhokar said, bowing his head. He had arranged a private meeting with Evi, which had been surprisingly easy. He would never have guessed that she was close to Jasnah.

He was learning the hard way that they didn’t know each other as well as they thought. Weren’t siblings supposed to understand each other? Especially twins. The legends always spoke of twins as a gift from the Almighty, and whatnot. It was supposed to be a sign of His blessing. But Father and Uncle Dalinar were rarely in the same place for long, and Adolin and Renarin were … different, to put it lightly.

As for himself…

He felt they should have understood each other, but somehow did not. He’d known his sister for as long as he could remember, and though they lived in different worlds, they were still friends. They still talked to each other. Only now he was nearing his fourteenth year, and he worried he understood Jasnah less than ever. She’d hidden her lunacy, or whatever it was, from him for years. Something serious—and he didn’t even know what had happened. And he hadn’t even thought to tell her about Evi.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Damnation, they were supposed to talk to each other.

“Jasnah,” Evi nodded, with a knowing smile. Even in this closed-off room, you never knew who was listening. “What is it that you wanted?”

“I need to ask you a favour, Mashala,” he said. “If you can … I need a spanreed. Well, a pair, actually.”

“Ah. To talk to your brother?” She grinned. “Yes, I can do that. I was worried that you would ask me something … something…” He paused to let her think. He’d learnt to give her space. Contrary to what the court—and his mother—whispered, Evi was perfectly intelligent. She just struggled to speak Alethi sometimes. “Difficult! That is the word. But this, I can do.”

“Thank you,” Elhokar said, an unusual sentiment coming from him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You would live, I think,” she said. “Why did you not ask your mother?”

He sighed. “Have you met my mother? She would ask me all about who I’m talking to and what it’s for and is it a boy or have I made a new friend, and I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of lying. Besides … I want as few people knowing about this as possible.”

“I see,” Evi said. “I will do this for you, cards face up.”

“Cards … what?”

She shook her head. “Another Riran saying. I will do it just to help you. No other reason.”

“Oh, right,” Elhokar said. “Unconditionally, you mean.”

“Is there an Alethi expression for it?”

“Er, it’s ‘no sword to the neck’, I think? In the Kholin princedom, anyway.”

Evi shook her head. “I know not what I expected. But so long as you are happy, I have done what I should.”

“And you really don’t want anything from me? That’s a relief, because I don’t think I’d be much use.”

She shrugged. “You are a child, I am your aunt. You should not have to give me anything. It is my duty to look after you.”

He tried to imagine his father saying that, and was at a loss. Mother would do the same—care for him, protect him, unconditionally—but Gavilar…

It was just such a foreign idea. Literally. Children obeyed their parents, and in turn their parents taught them proper Alethi values, that was the way of things. Loyalty mattered, and trust, but that wasn’t the same as kindness. You did something for another man, and he did something for you. An eye for an eye. Blood for blood.

It had worked for centuries. But when had his father ever done anything for him?

Never mind that.

“Thank you, Mashala,” Elhokar bowed, “for all you’ve done.”

“You are welcome,” she said, and smiled. “Would you like to play a game of cards? We have a spare hour. Kabers, maybe. Or … yes, I show you a Riran game.”

“Ah, storm it,” he said. “Why not?”

Chapter Text

In the dead of night, Jasnah got out of bed, her illicit spanreed flashing. Locating paper was itself a problem—communicating this way was risky, and not ideal—but she needed to at least know it would work. Then she would have a contingency plan, in the event that they were separated for long periods of time. It wouldn’t work for regular communication—but, if something went terribly wrong, it was there.

She set the pen down on a notebook, awkwardly concealed under her bed, and made a note to burn this page when she was done. It would do her no good to get caught because of her notes, of all things.

Can you read this? Elhokar wrote.

Yes, she responded.

Good. A pause. I’m not sure what to write now.

Write nothing, she wrote. This should be a last resort. If you find out anything useful about your “visions”, contact me AT NIGHT.

I don’t know where to start.

She sighed. It wasn’t an unreasonable point. The problem was that she was as clueless as he was. Your best bets are histories or folk tales. Look for similar experiences—mysterious dun spheres or robed creatures—particularly in ancient history. They may be described in euphemistic terms.

What does that last bit say? It’s too smudged to read.

Jasnah took one look at her hand, and sighed. It was streaked with ink down the side. They may be described in euphemistic terms, she repeated.

Thanks. A pause. What if they are hallucinations? What if I’m wrong?

Jasnah gritted her teeth. It was too late to be dealing with her brother’s self-doubt. I don’t think they are. You were right to point out the dun spheres: if you were seeing things, other people would not react to them.

Another pause, a long one.

What did you mean when you said you knew what hallucinations are like?

Jasnah stared at the page. Did he … he couldn’t. He surely didn’t know. None of the boys did. They had all been considered too young. Apparently eleven was too young to tell a boy that his sister had been locked away to treat her lunacy—but not too young to lock a child away. But then, if he’d thought he was seeing things … well, the old rumours were being stirred up again—if indeed they had ever gone away. She’d certainly heard whispers.

Princess Jasnah is mad. She learnt something terrible about her family and her mind broke. She was always like that; good riddance, frankly, a girl that outspoken needed to be taught how to behave. Her tutors beat her until she lost her mind. Or maybe you were thinking of her father…

She’d heard most of the stories. None were true. But they all agreed on this: she was mad.

They’d got that much right, at least.

I have studied them in detail, she wrote. If you wish, we can further discuss this face to face. I am tired, and I want to sleep.

Fair, the spanreed wrote. Goodnight.

Goodnight.

She put both spanreed and paper away quickly, and went to bed, resolving to go to sleep. Naturally, sleep did not come. She lay in bed, still as a soulcast king, staring at the ceiling. It was beautiful, painted with all the constellations of the night sky: Raya’s Tear, Talat’s Scar, Ishi’s Robe, each star represented by a chip of diamond. Whoever had designed this place had excellent taste. But the opulence did nothing to settle her restless mind. What was happening to Elhokar? Was her brother succumbing to the same affliction she bore? Did it run in the family? Even if he wasn’t mad, which seemed likely, it was still stirring up memories best left forgotten. And if he wasn’t…

What was he seeing? It didn’t make any sense. Strange, hooded figures? It sounded a little like some of the things she had seen, but her visions were not real as she understood the term. She had never made a sphere go dun like Elhokar had shown her. Nor did he have her occasional … convictions, of things that were evidently not true. None of it made any sense—and, worse, they couldn’t tell anyone. Even if they kept their deception quiet, Elhokar risked the ardents.

She could not let her brother suffer that fate.

It rankled, too, that Jasnah couldn’t go to the library herself. It sounded like a dream come true to her—combing through dusty old tomes in search of the past, digging up and putting together the pieces of a mosaic long ago torn apart. But that was women’s work. She was no longer a scholar.

Part of her resented that. Resented Elhokar, for stealing what was rightfully hers. Part of her desperately missed her studies, the excitement of a particularly well-constructed essay or an unusually challenging maths problem. Some days she longed for her old word puzzles, for the freedom to read at her leisure rather than sitting there as another woman droned on and on about something she could have read herself—and in half the time.

Yet she knew she was being unfair: she remembered what she enjoyed and forgot what she hated, and there was plenty she had loathed about her studies. Writing, for one. The endless humiliation of having her left hand tied behind her back, or hit, or being shouted at for using it. The shakiness of her writing with one hand; the smudging—as Elhokar had seen—with the other. And she had so hated music, and art: the only creativity her tutors had ever forced out of her was how best to torment them into submission. A fun game, admittedly—at least until her mother lectured her on propriety and the inappropriacy of psychologically torturing the unwary. The sciences she had survived, with varying degrees of interest, but some of it she was perfectly happy to leave in the past.

Perhaps her error had been to think that switching places with Elhokar would fix all her problems. In truth it had solved maybe half of them, then given her a series of new problems. Was she better off? Who could say? Living as a prince had solved the problem of writing, but introduced the problem of feigning illiteracy. And it could hardly heal her madness. Life, she was beginning to realise, could not adequately be summarised as an equation where introducing one element meant subtracting another element to keep the maths balanced. Instead it was a messy pile of threads, tangled and mixed so that pulling at one would remove another, but tie a third into knots.

There was one thing, though, that she had unquestionably fixed. In her fourteenth year, the fear of discovery had begun to abate. It still lurked in the shadows, but it was no longer a constant anxiety. After all, she was still here, and at a certain point inexperience stopped being an excuse. She had lived as a boy for more than a year. No more havahs, no more safehands. No more Brightness this and young lady that. No more Princess Jasnah. It was an unspeakable freedom.

She could not have said why. There were no words for the strange thrill that being called a prince gave her. Yet for all that her life was a lie, she could think of nothing worse than abandoning this disguise. Her life would have been a great deal easier if she could have just taken the cruelty lying down. If she had only known how to be a proper Vorin woman. But she had never been much good at being a girl.

Despite the risk, despite the danger, for the first time in her life she felt alive.

Chapter Text

Jasnah lifted her sword: plain steel, hefty but mundane. No matter how hard she tried, she could never stop that initial spike of fear when opposite her father. He was a duellist quite unlike any other. Adolin she could best. Not immediately, not automatically, but he was prone to overconfidence and impulsiveness at times. It came with being eleven. Likewise, though Zahel was a swordmaster, that did not make him infallible, and she had managed to best him before. Admittedly only once, and she suspected he had let her win to prove a point, but it had happened.

Her father, though…

He was an almost impossible opponent. Perhaps not the greatest fighter in the land—that would be Zahel—or the most savage, like her uncle, but certainly one of the most skilled. He never fought on the battlefield, not now; Alethkar was stable enough that his life was not worth losing. Not when his heir was just a boy, and a regency might mean civil war. So it was that he confined himself mostly to scuffles with ardents, when time permitted—which was not very often. He had long ago sold his soul to petitions and ambassadors.

But it was as much his duty to teach his successor as to reign his kingdom, for no man could live forever. Sometimes, that meant having Jasnah by his side whilst poor men begged for the king’s mercy. It was a horrific sight, to see some penniless farmer weep before his king. Other times, that meant duels. She wished she could figure out how to hold her own against Gavilar. She had no natural talent for fighting the way Adolin did, nor had she practiced since she was old enough to walk. Gavilar was not bitter the way her mother was, yet he had a permanent air of disappointment—as if every time he, a grown man, disarmed a fourteen-year-old girl, he somehow felt it was her fault for not being good enough.

She had once, if not adored, then at least respected her father. But perhaps that was because she never saw him. If Elhokar had spent twelve years of his life dealing with this, then it was no wonder he acted the way he did: impetuous, selfish, demanding … not just a spoilt prince’s temper tantrums, but a desperate bid for affection.

The truth hurt. It was so much easier to pretend that her mother hated her uniquely than to accept that neither of her parents had ever truly loved her.

“Your posture has improved,” Gavilar noted. “That ardent has trained you well.” He lunged at her knees and she dodged out the way. “Ah, and your reactions are quicker, too. Perhaps there’s hope for you after all.”

She didn’t reply, blocking his blade with a clang. Words, Zahel had taught her, were a waste of time in a fight. He had done this by making her train with a gag for a week.

He was right, but that didn’t make his methods any less strange.

“Nothing to say?” Gavilar said. “Sensible.”

Then he rushed at her, with such force that her blade was struck from her hands.

In that instant, every instinct—innate or taught—abandoned her completely. The sword clattered to the ground, forgotten, and she fell. Not with the usual practiced ease; not a proper fall, where she let herself collapse like a ragdoll, then got straight back up, smarting but unharmed. Instead, in a fright, she tried to brace herself—and felt a sickening crack of something as she hit the ground, arm first.

Pain flared through her arm. Left arm, she noted in a daze. The pain wasn’t going away, either. Jasnah breathed in through her mouth, held the breath. Still in pain.

“On your feet, Elhokar,” Gavilar said. She nodded, and struggled to her feet, unsteady. Waves of pain flared through her shoulder. She bit her tongue, reaching for her sword with her right hand. “Again.”

Jasnah tried to hold the sword properly, but her left arm wouldn’t obey. Pain again. She stepped back, woozy, and dared to glance at her side.

No. It must be a hallucination—not real—but the pain was real, yes, her arm was hanging at that odd angle—

“Don’t dally, Elhokar, you’ll only learn through practice.”

He hadn’t even looked. He hadn’t seen. She couldn’t get the words out, to protest, to argue back. She lifted the sword, one-handed—moved to defend herself, though she knew it would fail—

“Someone get a surgeon!” A servant’s voice, shot through with panic. “The prince is injured!”

At that Gavilar stopped, frowning, as if only now remembering she was there. “So he is. You should have told me; there’s no use fighting when you can’t hold a sword. Sit down, Elhokar, I doubt it’s too serious.”

Maybe it’s just a sprain. But no, that was a lie. From what little she recalled of her studies of anatomy, it was a dislocation, which qualified as at the very least agonisingly painful. She bit her lip, trembling, willing the painspren at her feet to go away.

For the first time in years, they remained. She could not clear her mind.

Surgeon. A surgeon was coming … her arm hurt … it would be over…

Delirious. She was delirious, wasn’t she?

And worst of all, her father was to blame.

The surgeon was blunt and hasty, but Jasnah could live with that. The walk to his room had passed in a drugged haze; she still felt the faint spark of firemoss, which had alleviated the worst of the pain. He cut off the sleeve of her shirt at the shoulder, exposing her ruined arm, and frowned.

“You’ve done a mighty fine job of injuring yourself,” Tskor said. Thaylen, but trained in Kharbranth: no doubt the best surgeon this side of Roshar. “Stormfather knows I’ve seen some terrible sights in my time, but this…” He was also exceedingly unhelpful. “Still, I don’t think we need to get out the saw.” His assistant grimaced. “Jasem, prepare some winterwort. The prince won’t want to be awake for this one.”

She sat there, dizzy and faintly pained, almost as if she were asleep. She tried not to look at her arm. Invariably she failed. This went on for some time, until at last Tskor turned back to her.

“Right,” he said, “a spoonful of this, and you’ll go out like a sphere. I’ll warn you, though, it doesn’t taste good.”

She ignored him, and took the spoon, cackhanded. She swallowed down the paste; it had a vile taste—

“Is he awake?”

“Coming around, Your Majesty.”

Jasnah opened her eyes. Her mouth was dry. She instinctively reached out with her left arm, only to find it in a cast. Right hand, then. Typical. So much for leaving the havahs in the past…

“Oh, Elhokar, my poor boy!” Jasnah blinked, to see her mother by her side. Did she really have to be so loud, now of all times? “I was told you were injured, are you alright? Are you feeling better? I can’t believe your father could let something like this happen…”

Storms. Not only had Elhokar had to put up with Gavilar, he’d also had to deal with this ridiculous babying all the time. Anyone would have lost their patience. She grimaced as her mother stroked her hair, in the foolish belief that it would be comforting.

“Is there anything you want?” Mother said gently. “Anything you need?”

She wanted her mother to storm off to Shinovar and never touch her again. But she wasn’t about to say that out loud.

“I would like,” she gritted out, “some food.”

“That can be arranged,” Mother said, and immediately set around hassling servants.

“Your Grace,” someone said, “the effects of winterwort usually take a few days to a week to wear off. You may be unusually tired, even during the day…”

That was a good point.

“I would also like to sleep.”

Preferably after having eaten.

“That can also be arranged,” Mother said. “I don’t believe any ambassadors will be interested in talks with an injured prince. And if they are, they will find themselves shortly out of a post, or indeed the country.”

Even completely out of it, some distant part of her recognised that this was odd. Or rather, it was not odd—for Elhokar. But for her…

Tears pricked dully at her eyes, anger fighting anaesthetics. She could not remember such warm, affectionate treatment from her mother. When had her mother ever tried to protect her? When had she ever gone to all the trouble of rearranging other people’s schedules just for the sake of her daughter? The woman couldn’t even protect her from a handful of ardents. Her tender embrace left Jasnah cold.

Where were you when I was scared? she wanted to ask. Where were you when I was hurt? Where were you when I couldn’t tell nightmares from reality?

Where were you my whole life?

The answer, of course, was on the other side of the palace. Her mother could have intervened at any time. Told Jasnah that there was nothing wrong with asking for help. Told her tutors to let her write with her left hand. Told the ardents that what a terrified child needed was proper love and care, not being tied up and locked away. Anything, anything other than standing by until it was too late. And then she expected Jasnah to trust her?

If only she hadn’t been so tired. It wouldn’t have taken long for someone to bring some food—but as it was she never found out, because she shortly fell asleep again.

Storming painkillers.

Chapter Text

Elhokar scowled, shoving yet another book in the library back into place. Jasnah’s advice was sound—in theory. In practice it had led to him haunting the library, spending all his free time surrounded by books, achieving exactly nothing. And whenever he got annoyed, the master-servants and the ardents glared at him for handling books roughly. It was like they thought the books had souls, or something. They were only books, they didn’t bite.

Then again, some of these books were old. Properly old—stretching back hundreds of years, some of them all the way back to the Hierocracy. Few of them were that old—and the ones that were had a habit of falling apart. But the library of Kholinar predated the palace by millennia—it had stood in one form or another in the ancient days of Alethela. The modern library owed its style to Rethir Shulin, one of the most famous architects of the eleventh century. But the books themselves? Many of them had been bought or commissioned by Sunadi Kholin, one of the old highprincesses of Kholin.

That was before the conquest of Alethkar, of course. Before Father had become a highprince, too. Modern biographies of his rise to power were smart enough not to insinuate Gavilar had poisoned all his cousins, at least not outside of the undertext.

Elhokar had discovered many such unsavoury details in his efforts to read the entire library.

At the moment, he was working his way through translated ancient texts. Half the time only fragments of them were available, and so far they’d been absolutely zero use. They all rambled on about superstitious nonsense—seeing the future, Voidbringers, that sort of thing. But one of them had caught his eye—a collection of historical accounts, all from anonymous authors. If A Collection of Anonymous Accounts Concerning Affairs of Classical Alethela was to be believed, then the Heralds had once walked Roshar—not as servants of the Almighty, but as real people, historical figures who meddled as much as any ardent. And more than that…

The chapter Elhokar kept coming back to was short, maybe twenty pages—a lot of the other chapters were complete accounts in their own right, or mere fragments which barely filled a page, but this one was an excerpt from a much older account, written only a few hundred years after the Recreance. The writing itself wasn’t so ancient—it was a translation of a translation, perhaps two or three hundred years old, though he’d have to ask Jasnah to make sure. His own literacy wasn’t quite that good yet, and the outdated grammar was giving him a headache. But there was one line…

It is said by divers writers that the Knights Radiant, before they disowned mankind, gained their powers from the highstorm itself: that is, to access each of the surges, it was necessary that they had on their person lit spheres, or else their powers would fail.

It was almost nothing. Just a reference, a suggestion. Yet the undertext added: No contemporary texts survive prior to the Recreance, but the few sources which do discuss the Radiants (and have not been subsequently censored) suggest that their ‘inhuman’ (see p. 56 of Eshedah Kusik’s Oretheba) abilities—not always consistent—were linked directly to the use of stormlight.

He wanted very badly to scream. What abilities? What did stormlight allow them to do? Neither the text nor the undertext elaborated. Was that what had made the Radiants so invincible? Incredible powers of healing? But then … did that mean he was a Radiant, or something like it? He’d never paid much attention to the ardents, but weren’t the Radiants supposed to be an organisation? The ardents had never said anything about the Knights Radiant hallucinating symbol-headed creatures! How could he be a Radiant if they’d turned their backs on mankind and disappeared for good? He wasn’t a traitor, was he?

Psst.

Elhokar dropped the book. There was a presence in the air, as if he were surrounded by people. And yet—nothing there.

You still there? the voice said. It didn’t sound human. It sounded fractal, scattered. What are you?

“I’m…” A passing noblewoman frowned at him, but ignored him. “I’m mad.”

Nuh uh.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be…

Tentatively, he whispered—

“I’m a Radiant.”

This is true.

And then, freefall. He screamed, arms and legs flailing, until he hit—what even was that? The whole world had disappeared, replaced all of a sudden with a black void, gaping, yawning, the maw of death itself. The library was gone, the carpet, the shelves, even the book in his hand; he was surrounded by spheres, the dark inverse of those in the real world. The infused glow of stormlight, too, was gone; there was only a tiny pinprick of light on the horizon, a white orb too small and too frail to be any use.

Drowning. He was drowning, his body sinking into the spheres, the air above him a constellation of bizarre flames. They looked like the candles Evi sometimes lit, except there was no wax, no wick, just pinpricks of fire. He was going to die like this, and no one would ever know. Not his father, not his mother, not Jasnah. No one. He couldn’t breathe—couldn’t swim—he was drowning on dry land—

I am the same. A strange, foreign voice in his hand, as he clutched at the beads—again distinctly inhuman, but not in the same way as that … that thing. It was old, wise—how did he even know that? He screamed and flailed again, as though it could possibly help him, his hands slipping through them as if there was nothing there. I will change … I can be different. Things are not always as they are. Give me what you have.

“Give—you—what?” Elhokar said. Almighty, Almighty, save my soul! I don’t want to die! Oh, Stormfather, I don’t want to die!

I will change, the voice said. Change.

A flood of cold filled him, the warmth drawn away. He screamed, just for good measure, as the bead flared so bright it hurt to touch. It slipped from his fingers, and a wave crested over him, right as he fell out of the shadow realm.

Suddenly he was in the library again, on his feet as though he had never been anywhere else, and the book—which he had been so sure he had dropped—was nowhere to be seen.

However, on the floor, there was a distinctly book-shaped block of glass.

And, sure enough, the diamond spheres on the wall were dun.

Well, that confirmed one thing for sure: he wasn’t going mad. It was the world around him that was losing its mind. He picked up the book, fascinated to find that its title was still etched onto it—each page perfectly clear and frozen, devoid of text except where it was embossed onto the cover.

Damnation. The book was no use to him any more; he would have to find Words of Radiance in its entirety. It might well be in here somewhere—the Kholinar library was hardly on par with the Palanaeum, but it wasn’t small by any means. He’d scoured but one wing of the histories; Words of Radiance was sure to be lurking somewhere in the shadows.

This, though … this wasn’t just strange healing. No, there was a word for this, and it was a dangerous one.

Soulcasting.

Chapter Text

Jasnah stared at the cards in front of her, wishing she could just go back to bed. Opposite her, her uncle was already drinking, though at least it was only auburn. Strong, but not strong enough to be entirely alarming.

She hadn’t spared a thought for her uncle these past few years, except when Adolin complained about him. Why would she? He was the Blackthorn. Brave, bold, bloody, but never bright. He was not known for his political acumen like her father, or her mother’s shrewd competence, nor even his wife’s gentle warmth. He was her father’s right hand man. He wasn’t there to think. What use was a sword which thought for itself? And so it had never even crossed her mind to worry that he might suspect her of not being the real Elhokar.

She tried not to yawn, but it was no good. The effects of the winterwort still hadn’t entirely worn off. She’d slept through the first few days, and barely made it through the first week without falling asleep in the afternoon. Even now, it was a struggle not to doze off. That anaesthetic was strong stuff.

It was also losing her this game. Objectively, she could acknowledge that the hand she’d been dealt was not ideal. She had never been properly taught the game; women weren’t taught such silly distractions when they could read the books themselves. But after a certain point of living as Elhokar she had to concede that she was no longer the clueless girl she’d begun as. Inexperience could not serve as a crutch. She’d been training with swords for well over a year now; she’d played towers before, and had picked up the basics easily enough. And whilst she might not have formal training in a card game, she had studied tactics.

No. It wasn’t inexperience. It was just that she was so storming tired. It was hard to think straight when all she wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep.

“It’s your turn, Elhokar,” Dalinar said. “So hurry up. Stormfather, I hate it when you strategise…”

She sensed that he wanted to be done with this as soon as possible. But towers, by its nature, was not a quick game. She sighed and deployed some troops on the left flank, hoping to catch him off guard with a manoeuvre that was either an unexpected stroke of tactical genius or suicide.

“There you go,” she said. “Better now?”

He stared at the board. “And I thought I was doing badly. Do you want to lose?”

“No,” she said. “This is my brilliantly planned gambit to go back to bed.”

He grunted. “Seems like a storming strange way to go about it.”

“Mother said if I can’t perform my usual duties, I should at least practice what I can,” she said. “She insisted.”

A strange look crossed Dalinar’s face. “She would. Right, I’ll destroy your army, then.” And he did, ending that particular game. “Don’t understand why she wanted me to play against you, though.”

“Uncle-nephew bonding?” Jasnah suggested. “I assume there are no campaigns going on right now.”

“Nothing,” he said. “Seems we’re at peace. An uneasy peace, but even Kala—Rama … Tanalan, that’s the one, has shut his mouth for now. Stormfather send it stays that way. Still, that leaves me with nothing to do. And you, too. How in the name of Kelek did you injure yourself that badly?”

“I fell over,” Jasnah said. “Nothing more.”

Nothing more than her father, that was.

“Well,” he said, seeming oddly disappointed by her answer. “Least it wasn’t your right arm.”

Yes. At least she hadn’t injured her right arm. The arm that mattered. Because the right arm was the dominant arm, the proper arm, a woman’s freehand and a man’s fighting arm. It wasn’t as if she’d gone and broken her good arm!

After all, why would anyone use their left hand?

Kelek and Ishi and Nalan above, if she had to hear that one more time, she’d break their arm. And then they’d see how they liked it, having their dominant arm broken and ruined.

No. Not broken. Dislocated. The surgeons had done the best they could, but…

It might never be the same again, I’m afraid. That had been old Tskor’s asssessment. It’ll heal, but you won’t have the same strength.

“It could be worse,” she said, staring without seeing at the game of towers. It wasn’t in her nature to self-sabotage. Not like that. But she just felt so awful. Exhausted no matter how often she slept, no respite, no relief. The physicians insisted it would wear off, but it was taking a while. It had been years since her mind had felt so muddled.

“I’ll drink to that,” Dalinar said, finishing off his auburn.

“Uncle,” she said, “you’ll drink to anything.”

“There’s worse habits to have,” he shrugged. He shouted for a servant. “Get me another glass of auburn. And some yellow, for Elhokar here.” The serving boy scurried off, looking glad to be gone. Dalinar, on the other hand, looked long and hard at her. “You’re not sick, are you? You’ve been acting strange lately.”

Storms. He might be an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. No, wait, that sentence made no sense. Double storms! Dalinar wasn’t supposed to notice things. But then, he had only said lately. It had been some time now since she’d switched places with Elhokar. Maybe he was just thinking of the anaesthetics.

“I really am just tired,” she yawned.

“Yeah, I can see that.” A servant came back with drinks. “Much better. Maybe a good drink’ll help.”

Alcohol is a depressant, her mind supplied. You might as well drink more winterwort. In fairness, Dalinar probably knew that. He just didn’t care.

It was odd, talking to her uncle now. She’d always rather liked him, for all his rough ways. He didn’t mind a child talking his ear off about how fascinating King Andetteren of Kharbranth’s numerous extramarital affairs were, or interrogating him on the exact details of how to destroy his enemies. (As a young child she had always liked to pretend she was torturing him, which was slightly odd in retrospect.) But she never saw much of him, and even now she didn’t talk to him much. Did he like her? More importantly, did he like Elhokar?

She didn’t know the answer to either of those questions. Instead she took a sip of the yellow wine, feeling less and less alert by the minute.

They made it about half an hour’s quiet conversation before she fell asleep there and then.

“Elhokar!” Jasnah groaned. “Elhokar, wake up! I wanna play towers with you!”

She was back in her bedroom, which was being besieged by an annoying blonde smudge that wouldn’t stop yelling. She blinked, and the blonde smudge coalesced into a blonde boy.

“El, you’re gonna miss food, wake up!”

Food? Yes, it was still light. Dinner. She must have slept through the afternoon—again. Damnation, that was getting old, fast.

“El?” she said.

Adolin crossed his arms. “I thought you bashed your arm, not your head. El. Like Elhokar. You know, your name.”

Yes. Of course. Not a nickname she heard often, but obvious nonetheless.

“I knew that,” she muttered, resisting the urge to throw the covers over her head and play dead.

“Can we play towers, then?” Adolin said. “After dinner? Father said you were playing with him and I want to play, he never plays with me. I bet I could beat you just as good as he did.”

“I’d like to see you try,” she said.

“After food. Come on, or we’re gonna be late!”

She was hungry. But… “How did I get here?”

Adolin shrugged. “I think Father took you back. I don’t know, I was destroying Jakamav. Wrestling, I mean.”

“Thank you for that,” she said drily. He tugged at her sleeve, as if he thought she’d disappear in the ten seconds between sitting up and getting out of bed. “Yes, Adolin, I’m coming.”

At least her mind felt clearer now. That was something. Now if only it would stay that way.

Chapter Text

Adolin ran up to the edge of the arena, where Jasnah was sitting, watching men train with displeasure. “Hey, Elhokar, watch this!”

Jasnah frowned. “What is it now, Adolin?”

“I’m going to fight Zahel!” he said gleefully. “Blindfolded!”

“Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a good idea,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Zahel said, stomping after Adolin. “But nor is your sulking. Get up, Elhokar. You won’t learn anything from the floor.”

“You can’t seriously expect me to fight,” she said. “I’m—”

“Injured, I know. Won’t stop you from holding a sword, will it?”

“But—”

“What have I told you about objections?” he said, glowering slightly more than usual.

“You won’t do anything to kill me, and if you do, I probably deserved it,” she sighed. “Very reassuring.”

“I train you for all situations,” he said. “In some situations, you’ll be badly injured. You still need to be able to fight when you’re injured, especially if one arm’s out of action.”

Jasnah thought back to some of the other ‘situations’ he had devised. “In what scenario will I ever find myself duelling in ice skates?”

He shrugged. “You never know. Anyway, consider it your punishment for running your mouth all the time.”

Well, at least he wasn’t cruel. Just very, very unconventional.

“Right,” Zahel said. “Let’s see who wins with one participant blindfolded and the other one-armed. This should be fun.”

And he stood back, with an expression which could, interpreted loosely, be described as amused. Adolin set down his sword, putting the blindfold on, then fumbled around for a moment for the sword.

“Ready?” Zahel said.

“No,” Jasnah said.

“Good. You’ll never be truly comfortable in a fight if you can’t handle the unexpected. Now, go. Whoever can actually hit something wins.”

Jasnah steadied herself, whilst Adolin thrust his blade wildly through the air. It was easy enough to sidestep his hits. After all, he had no idea where she was. On the other hand, with him so out of control, it was hard to get anywhere near him.

From the side, several men had stopped mid-wrestle in order to stare at whatever idiotic scheme Zahel was up to this time. Most men, she’d learnt, shied away from training with the man: because they thought him foolish; because they thought him demented; because they were worried he would subject them to something fatally humiliating. They were right to worry. His methods were more than just unusual. They were downright absurd. What idiot gave an excitable eleven-year-old a blindfold and a sword and called it a day? That was just asking for trouble. And yet there was a certain method to his madness. By forcing his students into the most outlandish situations, Zahel prepared them for anything. A duel against a grown man stopped being so terrifying; after all, no highlord would ever ask Jasnah to duel him with a candelabra, or for Adolin to fight him on a frozen-over lake. At least this way, if she was ever attacked by a clown, she wouldn’t stop to laugh.

And he taught more than that. Before he’d allowed Jasnah anywhere near a candelabra, he’d expected her to learn how to throw herself about; how to use shardplate without fear, how to trust in the weapon itself. Not unthinking superstition, but an instinctive understanding of how to move. Women called it physics. Men taught it too, but they tended not to go around asking children to jump off the roof.

Jasnah ignored the stares, and struck at Adolin’s shoulder. He whipped around at the sound, but not quickly enough; all his usual precision vanished and he nearly smacked her round the head with his sword. Fortunately, she remembered to duck.

Her sense of balance, however, was completely messed up by having one arm in a cast. The additional weight threw her off, and without the ability to move her left arm or hold a sword two-handed, she was at a permanent disadvantage. A different disadvantage to Adolin—but nonetheless, a disadvantage. She suppressed her frustration, and the unfamiliar presence of fear, as Adolin nearly threw himself to the floor. She thought she’d had the fear frightened out of her by Zahel, but her father…

She’d hesitated. He hadn’t.

She’d never much liked him, but she had never been so scared of him before. Now she wondered if that was where Elhokar’s bruises and scars had so often come from: if it was the normal accidents of boyhood, or if it was something more sinister.

She pushed that from her mind, focusing on her cousin. It took only a few minutes to disarm Adolin, who was shaking; as he ripped the blindfold off she realised that he was laughing. “That was terrible! I couldn’t see anything!”

“That was the idea,” Zahel said. “Elhokar—you go sit down again, if you haven’t got lessons. A bit of practice will do you some good, but you’re right; you are still healing, and I’m not interested in your mother’s wrath.”

“Alright,” Jasnah said, letting him take her sword. Standing at the edge of the training grounds, her left arm aching more than her right, she decided to observe the men fighting. Some were doing katas, shirtless in the hot sun; some were wrestling, some were duelling, some were talking with the swordmasters. Books could never replace practice, but a man could learn a lot from watching.

For his part, already Adolin had the makings of an expert fighter. He was ready to obey, but not without questioning; he learnt quickly from criticism, and he had a keen eye. His main problem, really, was that he was too impulsive—and he would soon grow out of that. He had an instinct for duels, and if anyone could hone his skills, it was Zahel.

She’d not spent much time with Adolin before switching places with Elhokar, for a whole host of reasons. Elhokar and Adolin were both boys, close in age, both able fighters and of a like disposition. And a princess had no reason to be running around with the heir to a princedom. Besides, she had naturally found herself more interested in Adolin’s younger shadow. Renarin didn’t talk much, instead choosing to tail his brother in silence or stay by his mother; but he had quickly come to like Jasnah, who had neither the time nor the space for the masculine arts. And so she had never really got to know her cousin the same way she did the rest of her family.

Yet it was impossible to dislike Adolin. He could be rude, brash, even aggressive when he thought someone was insulting his family. But he had an indomitable spirit, and even beating him into the dirt with a wooden staff failed to shut him up.

Even now he was arguing with Zahel, play-fighting to test his limits. “But if El gets a nickname, and Re gets a nickname,” he was saying, “why can’t I have a nickname?”

“Nobody calls your brother Re,” Zahel grunted. “Too foreign.”

And anyone who tried to call Jasnah Jas would swiftly find themself dead.

“You could call me…” Adolin paused. “Ado. For short.”

Zahel, if it was possible, glowered even harder. “Absolutely not. Colours, boy, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“But what’s wrong with—”

Zahel sighed. “It would take too long to explain. Go do a hundred katas. That’s your punishment for trying to give me a fright.”

“A fright?”

“Never mind that, son.”

“Well … alright,” Adolin said. “But a hundred?”

“Fine. Fifty.”

Adolin nodded, picking up his sword and throwing himself into practice again.

He was a good boy, kind at heart. She only hoped he would stay that way.

Chapter Text

Finding a copy of Words of Radiance had required combing what felt like the entire Kholinar library. Alright, so Elhokar hadn’t literally had to traverse the entire library—he suspected that would’ve taken years—but he wasn’t particularly familiar with the place, and there were tons of books hidden away in here, shoved into every available nook and cranny, as well as some places that shouldn’t rightfully have been able to hold books. Surprisingly, it hadn’t earnt him any strange looks—at least not more than he got in general.

The whispers hadn’t died down. If anything, they’d only got stranger. Randomly screaming at thin air apparently only encouraged rumours of insanity. Who knew? Still, he wasn’t particularly worried. He wasn’t losing his mind, for one thing. His ‘insanity’ had direct, provable causes. For another, madmen got locked away for being mad—not for being a little jumpy on occasion. His tutors, especially the ardents, still didn’t like him, but they couldn’t very well go around locking up a princess out of pettiness alone. Gavilar wouldn’t allow it.

He hoped.

Elhokar set the book on his desk, and flicked to a random page. And when they were spoken of by the common folk, the text said, the Releasers claimed to be misjudged because of the dreadful nature of their power; and when they dealt with others, always were they firm in their claim that other epithets, notably Dustbringers, often heard in the common speech, were unacceptable substitutions, in particular for their similarity to the word “Voidbringers.”

Well, that was a load of nonsense. The undertext seemed to confirm this: Voidbringers are frequently referred to in texts concerning the Knights Radiant, especially in relation to the orders of Dustbringers, Elsecallers, Willshapers, and more rarely Skybreakers (as in Ashnah Khenaram’s The Coming of Aharietiam). However, wider reading would suggest that they are purely mythological. Nothing about mysterious symbol-headed creatures, either.

He flipped to another page. But as for the Bondsmiths, they had members only three, which number was not uncommon for them; nor did they seek to increase this by great bounds, for during the times of Madasa, only one of their order was in continual accompaniment of Urithiru and its thrones. Their spren was understood to be specific, and to persuade them to grow to the magnitude of the other orders was seen as seditious.

Spren? What in Damnation did flamespren or angerspren have to do with the Knights Radiant? And was this book seriously talking about Urithiru like it was a real place? Again the undertext was disparaging: No other surviving text refers to a “Madasa”, though Ruthid-daughter-Ali has posited that they might be the same individual described in some Shin texts as “Madosz”. As for Urithiru, which he barely recognised, it noted: “Urithiru and its thrones” is likely a metaphor of some kind. Very helpful.

Elhokar sighed. He’d have to read it through in full, and probably check the texts referenced throughout the undertext; he knew nothing of the Knights Radiant except what the ardents taught. For the first time in his life, he saw the value in his mother’s interminable lectures on physics and religion and everything in between. As crown prince, he hadn’t seen why he would ever need to understand how fabrials functioned. Now, though, he was more than grateful for all the lectures on the Heralds and the Desolations.

The Knights Radiant, so the stories went, were traitors to humanity. At Aharietiam they had set down their swords and turned their backs on mankind: and ever since they had been forgotten, for their names did not deserve remembering.

And that was the problem. They were the Lost Radiants. They weren’t heroes; they were warped by the Voidbringers, by the evil in their hearts. They had abandoned their cause.

Yet the excerpt he’d read had described the very things he had experienced. And though the other parts were confusing, they referred to powers, of some kind. Powers to unite, powers to destroy. Powers gained through stormlight. There was nothing here about healing the body, nor mysterious hooded figure, but…

He turned to the start. It began with the usual drivel about the author’s anonymous identity, patronage, the lot—then quickly jumped into an explanation of what the Radiants were. A magical organisation, of which there were ten orders…

Elhokar blinked. Had he just seen movement out of the corner of his eye? He returned to the text—it was probably just a cremling, only…

There! A strange spiral shape, emerging from the hem of his skirts. It vanished as soon as he saw it, but he knew what he’d seen: a fluctuating mass of lines, fractal, almost hypnotising in its complexity. He returned to the book, pretending like a fraction hadn’t just crawled all over him. It returned again, in his peripheral vision; again, when he looked at it up front, it vanished.

How strange.

But as for Ishi’Elin, his was the part most important at their inception…

Stormfather, this text was drier than the plains of Tashikk. And trying to understand it, even in translation, was giving him a headache. He closed the book, making a note to come back to it later. It was close to nonsensical, but it was the closest he’d found to answers, so it would have to do.

“So,” he said quietly, though it was enough to carry. In the corner of his eye, the odd swirl of lines almost seemed to squirm. “I’m being followed, again.”

The strange creature—for it did seem to understand what he said, in the same way a mink or a songling might—shot across the room, screeching to a halt on his bed.

“What are you?” Elhokar said. “A very confused cremling? A spren? A…”

The thing suddenly expanded, as if ripping apart—forming into a narrow line, and then…

That was women’s script! And it said…

HAHAHAHAHA.

“What in Damnation?” he muttered, thumbing frantically through the pages of Words of Radiance in search of strange creatures that could mimic human writing. Predictably, there was nothing.

His life got weirder by the day.

“Really, what are you?” he said.

The creature reformed, and dashed off, insofar as a thing with no legs could dash, only to hit the wall with a silent thud. So it was constrained by physics, after all.

Elhokar sighed. He’d been hoping for answers, or at the very least some clues on where to look.

Instead, he only had more questions.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text