The Way of Kings

“You shouldn’t gamble,” Shallan said. “You shouldn’t try to guess the future. I didn’t give you that sphere so you could waste it on such practices.”

Yalb laughed. “It ain’t gambling if you know you’re going to win, young miss.”

“You cheated?” she hissed, horrified. She glanced back at the guardsmen, who had settled down to continue their game, lit by the spheres on the stones before them.

“Not so loud!” Yalb said in a low voice. However, he seemed very pleased with himself. “Cheating four guardsmen, now that’s a trick. Hardly believe I managed it!”

“I’m disappointed in you. This is not proper behavior.”

“It is if you’re a sailor, young miss.” He shrugged. “It’s what they right expected from me. Watched me like handlers of poisonous skyeels, they did. The game wasn’t about the cards – it was about them trying to figure how I was cheating and me trying to figure how to keep them from hauling me off. I think I might not have managed to walk away with my skin if you hadn’t arrived!” That didn’t seem to worry him much.

The roadway down to the docks was not nearly as busy as it had been earlier, but there were still a surprisingly large number of people about. The street was lit by oil lanterns – spheres would just have ended up in someone’s pouch – but many of the people about carried sphere lanterns, casting a rainbow of colored light on the roadway. The people were almost like spren, each a different hue, moving this way or that.

“So, young miss,” Yalb said, leading her carefully through the traffic. “You really want to go back? I just said what I did so I could extract myself from that game there.”

“Yes, I do want to go back, please.”

“And your princess?”

Shallan grimaced. “The meeting was… unproductive.”

“She didn’t take you? What’s wrong with her?”

“Chronic competence, I should guess. She’s been so successful in life that she has unrealistic expectations of others.”

Yalb frowned, guiding Shallan around a group of revelers stumbling drunkenly up the roadway. Wasn’t it a little early for that sort of thing? Yalb got a few steps ahead, turning and walking backward, looking at her. “That doesn’t make sense, young miss. What more could she want than you?”

“Much more, apparently.”

“But you’re perfect! Pardon my forwardness.”

“You’re walking backward.”

“Pardon my backwardness, then. You look good from any side, young miss, that you do.”

She found herself smiling. Tozbek’s sailors had far too high an opinion of her.

“You’d make an ideal ward,” he continued. “Genteel, pretty, refined and such. Don’t much like your opinion on gambling, but that’s to be expected. Wouldn’t be right for a proper woman not to scold a fellow for gambling. It’d be like the sun refusing to rise or the sea turning white.”

“Or Jasnah Kholin smiling.”

“Exactly! Anyway, you’re perfect.”

“It’s kind of you to say so.”

“Well, it’s true,” he said, putting hands on hips, stopping. “So that’s it? You’re going to give up?”

She gave him a perplexed stare. He stood there on the busy roadway, lit from above by a lantern burning yellow-orange, hands on his hips, white Thaylen eyebrows drooping along the sides of his face, bare-chested under his open vest. That was a posture no citizen, no matter how high ranked, had ever taken at her father’s mansion.

“I did try to persuade her,” Shallan said, blushing. “I went to her a second time, and she rejected me again.”

“Two times, eh? In cards, you always got to try a third hand. It wins the most often.”

Shallan frowned. “But that’s not really true. The laws of probability and statistics–”

“Don’t know much blustering math,” Yalb said, folding his arms. “But I do know the Passions. You win when you need it most, you see.”

The Passions. Pagan superstition. Of course, Jasnah had referred to glyphwards as superstition too, so perhaps it all came down to perspective.

Try a third time… Shallan shivered to consider Jasnah’s wrath if Shallan bothered her yet again. She’d surely withdraw the offer to come study with her in the future.

But Shallan would never get to take that offer. It was like a glass sphere with no gemstone at the center. Pretty, but worthless. Was it not better to take one last chance at getting the position she needed now?

It wouldn’t work. Jasnah had made it quite clear that Shallan was not yet educated enough.

Not yet educated enough…

An idea sparked in Shallan’s head. She raised her safehand to her breast, standing on that roadway, considering the audacity of it. She’d likely get herself thrown from the city at Jasnah’s demand.

Yet if she returned home without trying every avenue, could she face her brothers? They depended on her. For once in her life, someone needed Shallan. That responsibility excited her. And terrified her.

“I need a book merchant,” she found herself saying, voice wavering slightly.

Yalb raised an eyebrow at her.

“Third hand wins the most. Do you think you can find me a book merchant who is open at this hour?”