Chapter Text
When Roshar and his sisters were young, they used to play a game.
It unfailingly started the same way: Inisha, leaning against one of the nearly-translucent marble doors or walls in the palace, her slender arms folded over her chest. “Would you rather,” his twin would begin, and what followed would be two horrible choices.
Would you rather eat every moment you were awake or never eat again?
Would you rather never see the sun or burn yourself every time you did?
And one day, the question that looped in Roshar’s mind even now, years later. The one he and Risha had never been able to agree on. The one Inisha had refused to let go until they did:
“Would you rather lose your eyes or your ears?”
Roshar and Risha would take turns trying to come up with the better answer.
“Eyes,” Roshar would say. Or sometimes, “Ears.”
Inisha would wait patiently for the explanation—and there always was an explanation—her black eyes wary and bright, poised on the brink of amusement.
“Without my eyes,” Roshar would say, thinking of their overbearing tutor, “I’d finally be free of Hema’s stupid face.”
Or: “Without my ears, I wouldn’t have to hear people tell me that I’m wrong.”
Or, with a shrug: “Does it matter? I’d still be twice as smart as you either way.”
The truth was that Roshar hadn’t wanted to lose either. He quite liked his eyes. He quite liked his ears. He liked the way it felt to walk among the canalled streets of Dacra’s capital and to see the boats skimming the water like insects, to hear the joyful sway of Dacran, and to know he belonged there. That he could watch with his eyes and listen with his ears and be welcomed by his people.
Risha, who was still little then, who still trusted her siblings, had always laughed. In those days, Risha gave her love away like a street performer handing out flowers during the feast of Amalay, scattering them on the street before her. But Inisha had hoarded her love, kept it close to her chest, a prized jewel only to be unveiled on special occasions. And because it was so hard to obtain, it was her joy he loved best.
Now, of course, Inisha’s love was a sharp, thorned thing. Risha’s was gone entirely. Risha was gone entirely: captured in Valoria from a suicide mission Roshar had been foolish enough to convince her into. And as for the question of eyes and ears, well. Roshar played his own version of his sister’s game every time he caught sight of his reflection, every time someone’s gaze lingered too long on the remains of his face.
Would you rather . . . lose your sight or your beauty?
His face had been ruined, mutilated by the knife of a Valorian slaver, so there was that choice made for him. Still, he wondered: would being sightless actually be better? If he could have his features back today in exchange for the ability to see, would he make the trade?
It was a useless question, he knew. The Valorians had little use for a blind slave and plenty of use for a disfigured one. After all, a man with no nose or ears could still lay brick. He could still set a road. He could still serve as warning for other slaves.
But Roshar was no longer a slave—he was a prince of Dacra. And it turned out, Dacra had plenty of use for a mutilated face, too. The perfect recruiting tool for the war effort.
Look at our prince, Roshar imagined his people saying to one another, look at how he has suffered. Look at what those Valorian savages have done to even him. See why we must fight.
There was so much use in his face, in fact, that Roshar no longer haunted himself with the question of Would you rather. No, he knew what he wanted and did not want. And he had had more than enough pity to know he did not want it. Would you rather now transfigured each time he considered it into something new and stronger, a snake raising its hooded head: What would you give?
What would you give to have your wounds undone?
Your wit? Your country?
Your sisters?
It was a good thing the gods didn’t work that way.
The Herrani had stories that claimed they did, of course, but the Herrani had stories about everything. The other slaves had used to tell each other them at night. Roshar, who had found the stories dull and improbable, was usually too exhausted and too furious to do anything but listen, wishing himself asleep: tales of the god of souls and his cloak spun of starlight, or the god of music who had created the birds. Roshar had seen no evidence any of them were real. And no one was offering him a trade.
“Roshar,” Inisha said now, as Roshar drew a thick green slash across his eyelids. His wrist wobbled slightly, and he swore at his reflection.
“Now you’ve done it,” he said. “My face is ruined. Hordes of admirers will weep at the loss.”
“Roshar,” Inisha repeated, ignoring him. “What do you think of the Herrani? Of Arin?”
Arin, the Herrani slave who had had to be restrained while Roshar’s nose and ears had been cut off. Arin, whose face had been the last thing Roshar saw before the knife came down. Arin, who had still had enough fight in him after ten years of slavery to protest Roshar’s punishment. Long and loud and furied.
Yes, Roshar had thought of him.
But he thought Inisha was asking in a military sense. Roshar knew Herran wouldn’t stand a chance against Valoria without Dacra’s aid, and he also knew that Arin couldn’t be trusted to act intelligently without someone to hold him back from some bout of foolish self-sacrifice. That was how he had come to be in Dacra, after all. So he said: “I think he is lucky to be on our side.”
But then Roshar thought of the tiger attack Arin had saved him from and Arin’s sooty, belching invention, which Arin had just promised to Dacra in exchange for their support, and he added, “And I think I am glad to be on his.”
Roshar leaned into the mirror to redraw the line on his left eye. The ink came on chalky, dusting off on his hands. Green against brown.
Inisha said, “Herran and Dacra could be powerful together. I want him.”
It wasn’t often that Roshar wished he was speaking Herrani, but now he wished it. In Dacran, both countries and men were gendered male, and “him” could be either Herran or Arin. Dacran did not differentiate between all the different types of wanting; Herrani did. Roshar both desperately wanted and did not at all want to know which type of wanting his sister meant.
“Tell Arin that, not me,” he said, taking the low road because it was expected of him and because he suspected it was what Inisha had had in mind. “Don’t poison my mind. I am young and innocent, and as my older sister by four minutes, you are supposed to protect me from the sins of the world, which, last I heard, include bodily wanting .”
Inisha wasn’t fooled. She sat on the stool by Roshar’s, looking hard at him. “Do you object?”
He knew what she was asking. She had promised him Arin’s life, that first day. Arin didn’t know it of course, didn’t know that he lived or died on Roshar’s orders and Roshar’s alone. Though he had thought a few times about trying to explain to Arin, he did not see a route to that explanation that did not make it sound like a new form of slavery.
He thought of Arin’s face and its scar tearing through one side from eyebrow to cheek. He thought of the freshness of the wound, the way Arin’s soul was still raw. He thought of how their injured parts seemed to match up, creating either one whole person, or one very damaged one. He thought of Arin’s love for an enemy girl who would never love him back, and whom Arin could not even speak about.
“No,” he said lightly, meeting his twin’s eyes in the mirror. “Why would I object?”
Roshar walked for a very long time.
He did not want to think about Inisha approaching Arin. He did not want to think about Arin accepting her. He did not want to think about Arin rejecting Inisha, either, though Roshar didn’t know if that particular desire was more sympathetic toward his sister or his friend. He wanted to get furiously drunk and try to see Inisha as the sister he had so admired and Arin as the foreign slave he didn’t know. Caring about people was so much harder than hating them.
The drinking went better than expected, which made the walking worse.
“My apologies,” he said, nodding towards what at first glance had been a woman, but at second was looking more and more like the support column of a bridge. He staggered, feet clumsy.
“Steady, friend,” said a voice. Roshar didn’t recognize it, could barely make out the face it belonged to. But he felt the hands grasp his arms, holding him in place.
That was not supposed to happen. You were not supposed to touch a royal.
“I believe you mean, ‘Steady, my prince.' Or did you not recognize my face?” He bared his teeth as if to imitate a skull.
The man who had caught him stepped back at once. “My apologies, my prince, I didn’t see—I did not know—”
The steam went right out of him at that. His mind still felt slow and muddled, stuffed with cotton, but even so he knew he’d witnessed too many terrified apologies to people with power from those with none. “No harm done, except to my ego, and everyone who knows me says I can afford some damage there.”
A bow, a smile.
“Of course, my prince.”
Roshar clicked his teeth. “You’re not supposed to agree with me.”
There was more he wanted to say, but the road was bucking beneath him now, waving like a furious ocean. He felt his knees bend to keep his balance, but then the road gave a tremendous shake, and Roshar staggered one step, two step, three steps back, until the world disappeared from beneath him.
He fell.
That was how it went: earth, air, and finally, water, erupting with an enormous splash around him. He gasped from the shock, drawing in a mouthful of water. Roshar had fallen into the canal.
He was enveloped by the cold of it, his body springing to life. If his head was clearer, finding the surface might have been a simpler task. As it was, he kicked desperately towards what he thought was up. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. His lungs burned worse than they did when they were full of smoked leaf.
The tiny, furious side of Roshar’s mind that always lay in wait for moments like these seemed triumphant: Of course this is how you die. A drowned, mutilated corpse, entombed forever in the palace walls. A drunk fool of a prince in all your bloated glory. That will be a story for the grand-nieces and -nephews.
He kicked again, harder. Then a hand reached down, curled around his arm, and pulled him toward the light.
Roshar fell into a narrow boat, coughing, his shin cracking against the wooden hull. He swore once, coughed up more water, and swore again.
“You swallowed half the canal,” said the voice that belonged to the hand that had saved him, in the tones of one man judging another and trying very hard not to laugh. “You’re not supposed to drink that water. Aren’t you the prince? You’re supposed to be smart.”
“And you’re supposed to be more respectful,” Roshar said, squeezing out the bottom of his tunic. There was no point to it, really, other than a half-hearted attempt to preserve his dignity. He peered up. “At least I’m fantastically drunk. What’s your excuse?”
Now that Roshar’s eyes had adjusted, he could see that the man who was sharing his boat with him was much younger than Roshar had initially thought, and much more beautiful. He had curling black hair and golden-brown skin, with a sharp nose that could have graced a Herrani temple carving. There were thick patterns of gold ink lining his black eyes.
The man shrugged. “Chronically irreverent.”
Interesting.
“If you’re going to lodge a complaint,” the man continued, “you’ll have to do it from the water. I don’t transport ingrates.”
“No ingrate here. Very grate. The grate-est. That didn’t make sense. In my defense, as I already said, I am very drunk.” Roshar met the man’s laughing eyes and felt something in his stomach leap when the man didn’t look away. He had the strange sensation of floating, or falling, maybe—he wasn’t sure. There were words he was supposed to say now, but he couldn’t think of any worthwhile. A rare sensation for him. At last, he grasped some. “I’m Roshar.”
“I know who you are.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Sai,” said the man, not extending a hand in greeting. Both of his were curled now around the massive oar that was being used to navigate the chilly waters of the canal.
“Sai,” Roshar repeated. “I’ll have to repay you for rescuing me. How do you feel about gold?”
“Quite positively. You shouldn’t give me any, though.”
Roshar’s eyebrows lifted.
“Your sister already paid me to keep an eye on you,” Sai admitted. “I’ve been following you for hours.”
The thing that had been building in Roshar’s stomach crumpled, deflating into a low disappointment. Mostly, he was embarrassed he was so predictable. And furious that his sister had claimed his safety as her right.
“Foolish,” he tsked evenly, shaking his head and sending water droplets flying. “You could have gotten double payment.”
Sai didn’t look away, even as he dragged the oar through the water, his muscles tensing with the motion. “I’d have fished you out of there for free.”
The thing in Roshar’s stomach rose slightly, a flower unfurling. “Of course you would. Who would want to live in a world without me?”
When Sai only smiled, Roshar took inventory of his body. His shin ached, and his head was beginning to feel stabbing rather than foggy. But mostly his eyes stung. He propped up his legs on the bench Sai was sitting on and lifted a hand to wipe at his eyes. His wrist came away streaked with green—a mystery, quickly solved. The eye paint. The eye paint he had labored over.
Roshar let loose a torrent of swearing, cursing the river, the boat, the paint on his arm that should have been on his eyes, even Sai.
Sai only laughed.