The Way of Kings

“Not for the first time,” Lirin said, “and certainly not for the last. I’m proud of you. I expected to find you here crying, as you usually do when we lose a patient. You’re learning.”

“When I said I saw inside a man,” Kaladin said, “I wasn’t talking about the wounds.”

Lirin didn’t respond for a moment. “I see.”

“You would have let him die if I hadn’t been there, wouldn’t you?”

Silence.

“Why didn’t you?” Kaladin said. “It would have solved so much!”

“It wouldn’t have been letting him die. It would have been murdering him.”

“You could have just let him bleed, then claimed you couldn’t save him. Nobody would have questioned you. You could have done it.”

“No,” Lirin said, staring at the sunset. “No, I couldn’t have.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m not a killer, son.”

Kaladin frowned.

Lirin had a distant look in his eyes. “Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right. If nobody starts, then others cannot follow. The lighteyes do their best to kill themselves, and to kill us. The others still haven’t brought back Alds and Milp. Roshone just left them there.”

Alds and Milp, two townsmen, had been on the hunt but hadn’t returned with the party bearing the two wounded lighteyes. Roshone had been so worried about Rillir that he’d left them behind so he could travel quickly.

“The lighteyes don’t care about life,” Lirin said. “So I must. That’s another reason why I wouldn’t have let Roshone die, even if you hadn’t been there. Though looking at you did strengthen me.”

“I wish it hadn’t,” Kaladin said.

“You mustn’t say such things.”

“Why not?”

“Because, son. We have to be better than they are.” He sighed, standing. “You should sleep. I may need you when the others return with Alds and Milp.”

That wasn’t likely; the two townsmen were probably dead by now. Their wounds were said to be pretty bad. Plus, the whitespines were still out there.

Lirin went inside, but didn’t compel Kaladin to follow.

Would I have let him die? Kaladin wondered. Maybe even flicked that knife to hasten him on his way? Roshone had been nothing but a blight since his arrival, but did that justify killing him?

No. Cutting that artery wouldn’t have been justified. But what obligation had Kaladin to help? Withholding his aid wasn’t the same thing as killing. It just wasn’t.

Kaladin thought it through a dozen different ways, pondering his father’s words. What he found shocked him. He honestly would have let Roshone die on that table. It would have been better for Kaladin’s family; it would have been better for the entire town.

Kaladin’s father had once laughed at his son’s desire to go to war. Indeed, now that Kaladin had decided he would become a surgeon on his own terms, his thoughts and actions of earlier years felt childish to him. But Lirin thought Kaladin incapable of killing. You can hardly step on a cremling without feeling guilty, son, he’d said. Ramming your spear into a man would be nowhere near as easy as you seem to think.

But his father was wrong. It was a stunning, frightening revelation. This wasn’t idle fancy or daydreaming about the glory of battle. This was real.

At that moment, Kaladin knew he could kill, if he needed to. Some people – like a festering finger or a leg shattered beyond repair – just needed to be removed.

42 Beggars and Barmaids

“Like a highstorm, regular in their coming, yet always unexpected.”

– The word Desolation is used twice in reference to their appearances. See pages 57, 59, and 64 of Tales by Hearthlight.

“I’ve made my decision,” Shallan declared.

Jasnah looked up from her research. In an unusual moment of deference, she put aside her books and sat with her back to the Veil, regarding Shallan. “Very well.”

“What you did was both legal and right, in the strict sense of the words,” Shallan said. “But it was not moral, and it certainly wasn’t ethical.”

“So morality and legality are distinct?”

“Nearly all of the philosophies agree they are.”

“But what do you think?”

Shallan hesitated. “Yes. You can be moral without following the law, and you can be immoral while following the law.”

“But you also said what I did was ‘right’ but not ‘moral.’ The distinction between those two seems less easy to define.”

“An action can be right,” Shallan said. “It is simply something done, viewed without considering intent. Killing four men in self-defense is right.”

“But not moral?”

“Morality applies to your intent and the greater context of the situation. Seeking out men to kill is an immoral act, Jasnah, regardless of the eventual outcome.”