The Lesson
POV: shallan
Summary
Shallan reads aloud to Jasnah from Gavilar's memoir-fragment account of his first meeting with the Parshendi — the discovery that confounded all Alethi science about parshmen — while Jasnah soaks in the fabrial-heated bathing pool. The Soulcaster sits on the bench beside her folded clothes. Shallan sees the opportunity she has been waiting for and cannot make herself stand up to take it.
That night Jasnah orders a covered palanquin into a poor quarter of Kharbranth and steps out alone into a damp alley with Shallan watching from inside the curtains. Four muggers move on her out of two doorways. Jasnah turns the lead one into smoke between heartbeats, the second into a column of fire that consumes itself in seconds, the third and fourth into quartz crystal where they stand. The whole thing is done with no more visible effort than a sentence. Riding home she presses Shallan on the lesson the demonstration was meant to teach: *Am I a monster, or am I a hero? Did I slaughter four men, or did I stop four murderers from walking the streets to kill someone less able to defend herself? You will spend the next week researching this. I will not tell you the answer. There may not be one.*
Back in the dressing chamber Shallan helps Jasnah undress and brushes the princess's hair the prescribed fifty strokes. While the brushing motion covers her safehand, she draws the intact smokestone from the Davar fabrial in her safepouch, palms it under a folded silk robe on the dressing table, and swaps it for Jasnah's working Soulcaster in a single brushing pass. Jasnah locks what she believes is her own fabrial into the jewellery case with the key around her neck and goes to bed without looking back. Shallan walks from the room exhausted, sickened, and undiscovered.