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The seedy taproom in Sebarial was near the bottom of Kaladinʼs list of places he would ever wish to visit. It figured above cages, slave-pits and its seedier counterparts in Sadeas, but firmly below Damnation. He had felt as out of sorts asking after it as he must have looked out of place, in his Kholin-captainʼs uniform and boots worth half the neighbourhood. A few thugs had sized him up on the way, but one look at his sash brand had sent them running. It did nothing to lighten his mood.
He now stood in front of the wretched place, regarding it with resignation. It was a half-wooden, half-stone one-storey with no windows and just the one visible door, which hung crooked and leaning slightly forward as if scowling back. This was a common enough sight in these poorer sections of the warcamps; his unease stemmed rather from the oppressive silence emanating from within, the palpable aura of despair where heʼd expected drunkenness and boisterous revelry.
No, Kaladin wanted nothing to do with this place, and neither should Adolin Kholin. Alas, Kaladin had it on good authority that the princeling was here, getting drunker by the minute. Being a fair portion of the why, Kaladin felt obliged to at least try and keep him safe — and maybe spare those height-of-fashion boots of his a sudden change of ownership, though that was past obligations and stemmed from somewhere uncomfortably close to guilt.
No, Kaladin wanted nothing to do with Adolin Kholin either, certainly not today, but he owed him an explanation.
“I believe it opens by pull,” Syl put in from her customary place on his shoulder. She was kicking her legs, not at all impatient, her tiny blue arms crossed over her tiny blue chest. The whole thing had, of course, been her idea. “What’s the big deal?”
Kaladin cut her a sideways look. “You donʼt have a sense of smell, do you, spren?”
She puckered her lips, as if in deep thought. “I could, I think, if I tried.”
“Donʼt,” he said, and pulled the door open.
earlier that day
King Elhokar slammed the door shut behind him with enough force to rattle Kaladinʼs teeth. Dalinar and Adolin Kholin, left behind in the meeting room, exchanged long-suffering glances.
“You go after him,” said the Blackthorn, already turning to the window as if the matter was thus resolved. From anyone else it might have come across as arrogant, but an aura of command like Dalinarʼs couldnʼt be bluffed into existence. Heʼd earned it, grown so used to the world doing his bidding that it continued to obey him out of sheer force of habit.
It worked on nearly anyone, but not Adolin. The younger Kholin lifted his chin in defiance. “What for?” he challenged. “Heʼs made himself quite clear.”
Kaladin braced himself for more teeth-rattling.
“Heʼs made himself a fool!” Dalinar thundered, turning on his heel. Then he sighed, massaged his brow, and visibly forced himself to calm down. The window he stood by opened sidewise to the storm, overlooking other warcamps, which did little to promote calmness.
Slowly, he continued: “He disobeys me for disobedienceʼs sake. But if you could talk to him, maybe—”
“Or maybe we could let him make his own decisions?”
“Adolin.”
Adolin was having none of it. Their wills met and clashed briefly over a growing pool of angerspren. It kept happening of late, these confrontations. Kaladin had already had the questionable pleasure of witnessing half a dozen.
They all ended the same, so far: with Adolin throwing up his arms in surrender. “Fine, I’ll go,” he said, pushing himself up out of his chair.
He only got as far as onto his feet, though, before his gaze snagged on Kaladin.
Adolin hesitated. His eyes cut to his father, then back again, narrowing. Kaladin stared right back, refusing to back down — not that he had much room for it, standing watch by the door.
“Adolin,” Dalinar repeated with more force.
With one last snarl, the princeling broke off eye contact. “Going.”
He, at least, spared the door a slam, though his heavy steps echoed for a while. Two pairs of lighter footsteps, Torfin and Natam, followed at his barked order.
Kaladin hoped it didn’t show, but he breathed easier once Adolin left. The tension between them was becoming unbearable, and there was little Kaladin himself could do about it.
Dalinar noticed nothing. He, too, had deflated in the absence of his son, the weight of his worries becoming apparent. He brought his hand up as if to touch the glass, but promptly let it drop and curled it into a fist instead — a gesture of a man whoʼd broken too many things in his time. “Sometimes I miss problems I could solve with a blade,” he said.
What answer could there be to that?
Kaladin took a tentative step forwards. He was welcome to, he knew, now that they were alone, but there were still some steps from there to it being a good idea.
“Sir...”
Dalinar exhaled and forced his hand to open. “Youʼre right, thatʼs not your weight to bear. I apologise. I donʼt know what got into him—”
“Dalinar.”
At that, the older man turned to look at him, a glimpse of terror in his eyes. “You think he knows.”
“No, not that.” Almighty, that would be a scene of another scale altogether. Kaladin took a deep breath. “I donʼt think he knows just yet, but at this rate it wonʼt be long.”
There, heʼd said it.
Dalinar frowned, clearly missing the connection, and Kaladin was forced to conclude that obliviousness ran in the family. He gestured vaguely at the room, which they now had to themselves, then at the door, which stood unguarded. Hardly for the first time too, and as usual achieved by Dalinar kicking everyone out.
Everyone but Kaladin.
“Sir, youʼre hardly subtle.”
Following at last, Dalinar assumed a slightly embarrassed, slightly amused look, accompanied by a single shamespren. He shook his head, chasing it away. “You think Adolin noticed?”
“Yes. Heʼs made it clear to me that he suspects—” How to phrase it? “—ulterior motives, on my part.”
There was a pause.
Then Dalinar snorted with laughter, and the tension abated, both from his frame and the room. Not today, then. For all that it was Kaladin who would probably bear the brunt of things coming to light, Adolin was Dalinarʼs problem to handle.
“Ulterior motives?” the Blackthorn teased instead. “I rather think you’ve achieved those already, soldier.”
Adolin had never had the slightest intention to plead his fatherʼs case with Elhokar. He didnʼt want to accidentally succeed, for one, as that would be twice in a row and then Dalinar would be expecting it always. He knew firsthand the weight of Dalinarʼs expectations, and that, too, urged him to cut his cousin some slack, given how Elhokar had to carry the expectations of a kingdom on top of it all.
Thatʼs why he only followed Elhokar around the turn of the corridor, and sent the bridgemen guards after him from there onwards. The reason why he turned back, though, was by far more important.
On as silent feet as he could manage, Adolin began to creep back towards the now unguarded meeting room. His reservations walked right behind him. Youʼre being paranoid, they told him. Your father has always preferred to brief his officers in private.
Youʼre acting like a child.
Except this was, like, the sixth time in the past ten days, and it was always behind closed doors. Adolin might be slow on the uptake, but he wasnʼt blind.
It had been going on pretty much from the beginning. The strange informality. The secrecy. Kaladinʼs inflated rank. The long glances Adolinʼs father always cast Kaladinʼs way that went unanswered, the way Dalinar gravitated towards that damned bridgeman as if afraid to let him out of sight.
Adolin had spent a good while wondering, sleepless in the solitude of his rooms, what terrible secrets could an ex-slave possibly possess that could bind a highprince so, but ultimately it didnʼt matter. Adolin knew where his loyalties lay.
He admired Kaladin, and under different circumstances would gladly call him a friend, but if the bridgeboy was a threat... Ten heartbeats, and he would worry about the consequences later.
Adolin laid his fingers on the door, surreptitiously left ajar in the wake of his petulant exit, and pushed it open an inch further to better see the room beyond. There wasnʼt much in the narrow-angle sector visible to him: two armchairs around a low table, the fireplace beyond— and there, a hint of a silhouette at the very edge of his vision. Kaladin.
And if Adolin paused in that moment to admire the fit of that long-tailed uniform on him, well, there wasnʼt much happening anyway. Yet.
Then suddenly Dalinar laughed, short but genuinely mirthful. “Ulterior motives?” he chuckled. “I rather think youʼve achieved those already, soldier.”
Adolin watched, shocked still, as Kaladin drew back towards the cluster of armchairs, in slow, careful motions. An evening-long shadow that must have been Dalinarʼs followed.
He heard, as though through mist, as his father, in a tone Adolin had never ever wished to hear his father use, added, “Youʼve conquered me thoroughly, Kal.”
And then it all came crashing down on him with the force of a stormwall when Dalinar stepped into sight and kissed Kaladin on the lips.
Adolin choked on his breath.
He averted his eyes, but not before seeing too much. Not before he noticed how Kaladin had stiffened at the very last moment. How heʼd tried to stave Dalinar off with his arm—
It burned itself on the inside of Adolinʼs eyelids, a brand he doubted could ever fade. That stunted, helpless gesture— Adolin ran.
He ran as Dalinar and Kaladin both called after him, his name and title intermixed with curses. He ran, cursing himself for a coward, because he was running in the wrong direction. Away.
He should have been running into that damned room, whipping up a storm, demanding explanation. He should have been there, putting himself between his father and Kaladin if need be.
He should have done something.
Instead he kept running, ignoring questions and calls, until he was out of the building and out of the camp and out of everyoneʼs sight.
There he folded to his knees and was violently sick.
At the end of the day, the fallout was Kaladinʼs to handle. Dalinar, more miffed by Adolin’s reaction than he cared to admit, had washed his hands of the entire sorry affair, but Kaladin couldn’t just let a Kholin prince sulk in the warcamps unguarded. He could send other men to guard him, discreetly, and had fully intended to, until the reports came in of what exactly Adolin was getting up to. And where.
A tense half and hour later, he banished his misgivings and entered the taproom, eager to get the difficult conversation done and over with. Then, maybe, he could catch some sleep before his next watch.
The inside of the taproom looked marginally better than the outside. It fancied itself a tavern, probably, for all that it was a single hall with a counter and a thiefʼs hoard of mismatched benches and tables.
He looked around him with a mix of disgust and reproach, then headed for the bright patch of blue in the far corner. Adolin lay slouched over the table, a cup of strong wine in his hand and a handful of empty ones strewn around.
He took an uncomfortably long moment to notice Kaladin, and then another to recognise him — or at least to recognise the uniform, because the first words out of his mouth were: “Did my father send you?”
It came out closer to D’ ma fahher senn ya? with a miserable hiccup at the end, which very nearly made Kaladin give up on him then and there.
Patience, he reminded himself. If their situations were reversed— The very thought of Adolin and his parents made Kaladin want to disinfect his brain with the strongest alcohol he could find. And Adolin had seen them.
If Syl hadnʼt alerted him when she had… “He was in favour of leaving you alone. Iʼm here in case you want an explanation instead.”
Adolinʼs head bobbed, all the consent Kaladin was likely to get. He sat, then immediately winced at the feeling of something wet beneath. Spilled wine, he hoped. He had known his share of misery, but this place was making him feel filthy.
Adolin looked up sharply. “You okay?” He even managed to focus his eyes, apparently not as sloshed as he pretended to be.
Kaladin still didnʼt know what to make of him. “What gives? This isnʼt about me.”
Adolinʼs expression, inexplicably, softened. “How is it not?”
“I am not the one running away and getting drunk in disreputable establishments.”
Adolin scoffed and pointedly drank from his cup again.
Kaladin reminded himself that he wasnʼt there for a confrontation. “I wonʼt apologise for Dalinar and me, but I do apologise that you had to find out this way.”
Adolinʼs fingers gripped his cup so hard it crunched. He stood up, swaying. “You— Donʼt act as if thereʼs any Dalinar and you.”
Ah, so it was going to go this way. Kaladin understood that Adolin would rather erase the entire incident from his mind, but now that the cremlings were out of the sack, there was no putting them back. Dalinar wouldn’t pretend anymore, not in front of Adolin.
In the end, Dalinar wasnʼt married anymore and long past the mourning period. He could sleep with whomever he pleased.
Adolinʼs disapproval, while bound to make things awkward, would not break them up. Kaladin shrugged. “There is and thereʼs nothing you can do about it.”
Adolinʼs eyes lit up like flint in the night. “Thereʼs a lot I can do, believe me. I can ruin him with this, Kal. This whole holier-than-thou attitude of his, do you think it can survive this?”
Storms, this was far worse than denial. Kaladin met Adolinʼs belligerent gaze with a glower of his own, refusing to give ground.
Adolin folded first. Something seemed to crack within him, and he dropped back onto the bench like a puppet with strings cut, his hands floundering in search of a cup that wasnʼt yet completely empty. Kaladin left him to it, busying himself with glaring down the patrons who displayed excessive interest in their conversion. Bisig, watching surreptitiously from the other side of the hall, gave him a nod.
Adolin, meanwhile, had gone through the rest of his drink, and was twirling an empty cup in his hands, opening his mouth as if to speak, then closing it again. He didnʼt seem angry anymore. He seemed — cracked. And then, just as Kaladin returned his attention to him, he shattered.
“I— Storms, Kal, I’m so sorry. I should have noticed earlier. I should have done something when I did. I just left you there and— Iʼm sorry.” Then he bowed his head, and repeated “I’m sorry” at the sodden wood of the table a few more times.
Kaladin once again reassessed just how drunk the princeling was. “What are you apologising for, all of a sudden?”
Adolin hiccuped miserably. Storms, was he crying? “I thought he was better than that,” he said.
Kaladin felt his temper flare. His eyelid twitched. That Adolin Kholin was a classist asshole was no news, and Kaladin knew this was to be expected, but—
But in his head there was a not-so-quiet voice that agreed, the voice of a slave that knew he could never deserve someone like Dalinar Kholin.
Unaware, Adolin went on. “I thought, you know, with all his precious codes—”
“The codes donʼt say a word about any of this.”
Adolin flailed his arms, very nearly knocking a glass off the table. “Because itʼs supposed to be obvious!”
He was crying, Kaladin saw. Of all the possible manifestations of his disgust — rage, ridicule, even fear — tears were somehow the worst. Abruptly Kaladin could not take it anymore. He stood, grabbed Adolin by the collar, and drug him out of the tavern. Nobody blocked his way; establishments such as this knew to take payment before serving anything.
Adolin protested at every step. “Wait. Wait, please. Captain. Kaladin. Bridgeboy! Unhand me! Guards, guards!” Bisig did jump into action at that, but only to open the door for them. “Please—”
“I am the captain of your guards, princeling. And in my capacity as such, I am removing you from danger. Which you currently constitute to yourself, whether you’re willing to admit it or not.” Eventually he would, or so Kaladin hoped. Far from helping, the other patrons were now cheering his kidnapping. “And I have every confidence that your father will agree with my assessment.”
Unable to retaliate in any meaningful way, Adolin vomited on his boots.
Kaladin’s training kicked in. He got Adolin the last step out of the door, tore his too-tight collar open, and braced his shoulder lest he fall. Adoin retched again, spewing forth a gout of intensely violet vomit.
“Storms,” Bisig said.
“He’ll be a while. I’ll handle it. Make sure nobody back there gets any ideas.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alone, Kaladin turned his focus back on his patient. “Don’t hold back. The less of this rotgut you digest, the better for you.”
“Uhh—” This once, Adolin took his advice.
Much as he would rather not, Kaladin stayed with him throughout it. At this stage Adolin could pass out at any moment, and choking was a concern even if he didn’t. Kaladin made a point of talking to him — the list of complications that could arise from alcohol poisoning, nothing that required a reply — just to keep him anchored in the present moment.
Once the heaving subsided, Kaladin fished out his canteen, loosened its cap, and passed it to Adolin. “Wash your mouth. You can drink, but I recommend small sips.”
Adolin took a few attempts to grip it securely. His hands were shaking. “Why are you being so kind to me.”
“I’m being paid.”
Bisig returned while Adolin digested that. He gave Kaladin a reassuring nod, to which Kal replied in kind. Adolin would live, though it was doubtful he would appreciate the fact until the day after tomorrow.
But the princeling surprised them both by speaking up. “Thanks for looking out for me, Bisig.”
Never an effusive man, Bisig nodded curtly. “Itʼs what we do, Brightlord.” He then promptly absented himself to scout the way back, but Kaladin could tell he was pleased.
Adolin, meanwhile, had regained enough mental devices to locate a kerchief and wipe his mouth. He then pulled out another kerchief to wipe the lip of Kaladinʼs canteen.
“Well, now that you’re feeling better—”
“Stop that.” Adolin cut him off. “Kal. Kaladin. Captain. Whichever you prefer from me. I know I haven’t been the best of friends to you...”
Kaladin held back a sigh. “Barring today, you have been a perfectly adequate my-superiorʼs-son and charge. Friendship doesn’t come into it.”
“But it could. I could. I will.” Adolin’s voice took on an edge of determination characteristic of the deeply intoxicated. “I will protect you, I will. My own father. I’ll shield you from him…”
And then, at long last, the puzzle pieces fell into place in Kaladinʼs mind. He just didnʼt know whether to laugh at the picture they formed or to bash his head on the wall. Adolin spared him the dilemma by swaying.
“I mean it! I’ll swear it,” he insisted, but Kaladin was having none of it.
“Adolin, focus. I need you to understand this. I don’t know at which point you got into your head that itʼs somehow—” He trailed off; the how of somehow was pretty intuitive. “—that my relationship with Dalinar is against my will, but it’s not. There’s nothing unsavoury going on—well maybe except for the fact that heʼs my superior. And your father, you can be understandably upset about that—”
Adolin stopped him with an abortive gesture. “Wait. Wait. You mean to tell me you’re— you’re— blergh!”
Kaladin released him so that he could vomit again. “That’s one way to put it.”
“You’re—”
“There is no need to say it out loud.”
But Adolin did, and it wasnʼt what Kaladin expected. “You’re sleeping with my father of your own free will?!”
Kaladin lost it. “For a direct result of somebody doing just that, you sound remarkably surprised!”
Silence.
Adolin gawped at him. “Oh,” he said after a long pause. His head drooped, and for a time he gaped at the gross puddle at his feet instead. “Oh,” he said again. Then he looked back at Kaladin. “Are you even older than me?”
Kaladin decided then to take his chances with Adolin throwing up again, and slung his arm over his shoulder. “Does it matter?”
They set off towards the Kholin camp.
“He’s twice your age. He could be your father.”
Kaladin took a deep breath. “Princeling...” This was, at last, the conversation heʼd expected. It didnʼt mean he wanted to have it.
“Or what do I know, maybe you call him daddy.”
Kaladin stumbled.
Adolin stumbled with him. And gasped. “Storms, you do!”
“That’s none of your business!”
“Storms. Does that make us brothers?”
Kaladin fixed Adolinʼs arm over his shoulder and upped their pace. He could only hope that Adolin wouldn’t remember any of this by the time he sobered up.
And once Kaladin had dropped him off at the infirmary, he was going to do his damnedest to ensure that neither would he.