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But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.
“No, really,” she admitted. “I think they’re quite captivating. But if you were to give me a bouquet, you’d soon find me in a fit so energetic that it would have you searching the walls for stray freckles I might have blown free with the force of my sneezes.”
I like her!! Is Shallan me!?
Like all Vorin women, she kept her left hand—her safehand—covered, exposing only her freehand. Common darkeyed women would wear a glove, but a woman of her rank was expected to show more modesty than that. In her case, she kept her safehand covered by the oversized cuff of her left sleeve, which was buttoned closed.
Dont understand the need to cover your left hand? Is this some way of implying women are not equal?
“You want me to lead the caravan?” “Instructions will be acceptable.” “All right. First, find a cliff.” “That, it will give you a vantage to see the area?” “No,” Kaladin said. “It will give me something to throw you off of.”
LOL
“Congratulations,” Jasnah said. “Should I need someone to write a treatise on their stuffed pony or give an account of an interesting pebble they discovered, I shall send for you. Is there nothing you can offer that shows you have true skill?”
So. Much. Great. Writing.
“Reasonable? Your demands are about as reasonable as the ones made of the Ten Heralds on Proving Day! With all due respect, Brightness, you seem to want potential wards to be master scholars already. I may be able to find a pair of eighty-year-old ardents in the city who might fit your requirements. They could interview for the position, though they may have trouble hearing well enough to answer your questions.”
She would apprentice herself to Jasnah Kholin, scholar, heretic. Not for the education. Not for the prestige. But in order to learn where she kept her Soulcaster. And then Shallan would steal it.
With the fabrial, they’d be able to make new quarries and restore their wealth. They’d be able to make food to feed their house soldiers. With enough wealth in hand to pay off debts and make bribes, they could announce their father’s death and not suffer destruction.
When she drew, she didn’t feel as if she worked with only charcoal and paper. In drawing a portrait, her medium was the soul itself. There were plants from which one could remove a tiny cutting—a leaf, or a bit of stem—then plant it and grow a duplicate. When she collected a Memory of a person, she was snipping free a bud of their soul, and she cultivated and grew it on the page. Charcoal for sinew, paper pulp for bone, ink for blood, the paper’s texture for skin. She fell into a rhythm, a cadence, the scratching of her pencil like the sound of breathing from those she depicted.
Why is this an argument that you should accept me? Because everything I have learned has come by way of great personal struggle. What others were handed, I had to hunt. I believe that because of this, my education—limited though it is—has extra worth and merit. I respect your decisions, but I do ask you to reconsider. Which would you rather have? A ward who is able to repeat the correct answers because an overpriced tutor drilled them into her, or a ward who had to struggle and fight for everything she has learned?
What did you do, as a son, when the father you loved—the greatest man alive—started to lose his wits?
“Authority doesn’t come from a rank,” Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket. “Where does it come from?” “From the men who give it to you. That’s the only way to get it.”
The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”
