(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

*Twenty-six years ago.* The evening of the killing at the stone, Szeth lies alone on the family mat. His sister Elid has been sent to cousins for a few days; his parents are outside on the steps with the Farmer. He has been fed, washed, tucked in, treated like something fragile, and his mother has taken Molli's pelt from him. Through the wall he listens, eyes squeezed shut.

*He subtracted*, Father keeps saying, voice thick as undiluted broth. Szeth cannot bear the sanitised word and corrects it in his head — *he killed someone. With a rock to the head.* The Farmer, voice flute-kindly, lays the blame entirely on the soldier and on himself as the soldiers' overseer; the boy did nothing wrong. He says the raids grow more frequent and that letting his men fight has made subtraction *feed upon itself.*

Mother, firm as a tree, refuses the contradiction: you cannot say in one breath that my son did nothing wrong and in the next imply he is broken. The Farmer eases the framing — not broken; *we need people capable of this.* He invokes the Stone Shamans' teaching that there is such a thing as a talent for subtraction, and the old Knights Radiant philosophy of *watchers at the rim — those who went to fight, and be changed, so we might live.* He wants Szeth sent for training. He notes pragmatically that soldiers may touch rock and iron forged from the blood of the earth without blasphemy; sending Szeth away will protect him from what he did and from what the shamans might do if they learn he was hiding a stone.

Szeth whispers it to himself in the dark — *you will never hear the spren, Szeth; you aren't worthy* — and a voice that is not his own answers, kind: *don't be so certain. We watch you. We are curious.* A jolt shoots through him. The first stirring of his long-distant highspren bond.

Outside, Mother says aloud what is happening: *you're going to steal him and turn him into a killer.* The Farmer says she can visit. Silence.

Then Father stands. *No*, he says, voice stronger than the wind. *I will not visit. If you are taking my son, then I will go with him. I will learn to subtract as well.* Something snaps in Szeth like a clay vessel dropped — pain at hearing his father's words, then a rushing warmth of relief. He will not be alone. The Farmer protests — *you are my best administrator!* Neturo is implacable: if you mean to teach my son to kill, you will teach me too, so that he is never alone with what he must do. Mother folds in: *then Elid and I will go too*; if she hates it, she may move to her cousins in the town as she has often wanted.

*This is insanity*, the Farmer says. *Are you going to reconsider?* Father asks. *No.* *Then neither will I.* And Szeth, lying in the dark, learns that the family will step into the darkness together.