Chapter Text
[ Cover art by: Swamp-Spirit ]
1
Kaladin heard the story of what happened with Renarin Kholin a few days before the two actually met. It was quite the tale, and rumors spread quickly through the Circle Tower on Lake Calenhad. One of the king’s cousins, discovered as a mage after all these years? It was a scandal that blazed its way across Ferelden in a rush of shared stories and whispers.
By the time the young prince arrived, the Circle was abuzz with expectation.
Kaladin had thought he would have been able to guess the way a noble apostate would act. Living in luxury for twenty years of his life would make him spoiled. The privilege of being hidden from the Circle by his important family would make him think he could exempt himself from the rules. He’d be exactly the kind of nobleman that Kaladin hated. The kind that made him glad he’d become a templar if it meant gaining the authority to put noble mages in their place.
The young man who walked through the doors, flanked by his templar escort, was not at all what anyone expected.
He had four templars accompanying him, the minimum for any new mage being brought to the Circle. Still, in contrast to the slender mage, four fully armored guards seemed excessive. He hardly seemed like a threat, walking obediently within the formation as they stepped into the entry hall. He glanced around, taking in the new surroundings.
His eyes found Kaladin watching him from a ways down the hall, and Kaladin paused, unwilling to break eye contact. Surely he’d expected the attention he’d garner on arrival, but something in Kaladin felt bad for staring. He couldn’t clearly make out the expression on Kholin’s face from a distance. He thought it was almost too neutral, perhaps a touch of resignation or worry, but very little. He had an air about him that seemed to convey the very idea of quiet. Kaladin wondered if that had something to do with his noble training, or if that was simply the way he was.
The templars dispersed as the First Enchanter walked up to greet their new arrival, and Kaladin was spared further scrutiny. He had duties he’d been neglecting to come see the entrance, and he needed to be about them. The princeling would be a novelty for a while, Kaladin knew, but eventually the outside faded away, and he’d be just another mage.
2
“I like him,” Tien said, the statement backed with the same optimistic surety that Tien always had.
Kaladin was off-duty, as he almost always was when he saw Tien. The arrangement allowing Kaladin to become a templar had stipulated that he wouldn't guard the same quarters as Tien and wouldn't stand watch in his brother's classes. It grated that the schedules kept him away from his brother, but he also understood that the Circle couldn't risk nepotism.
Normally he'd be transferred to a different Circle than his brother, but Ferelden had but one. The First Enchanter and Knight-Commander had been very accommodating in allowing Kaladin to stay. He would be grateful for that much, he supposed.
His thoughts returned to the topic at hand. The Kholin boy, the new mage. "You like him?" Kaladin asked, surprised. "He's a nobleman. You hate noblemen. Andraste's sake, he's the king's first cousin. It doesn't get much more noble than that."
Even still, Kaladin's blood boiled at the thought of nobles. Lord Roshone's smugly triumphant face was forever burned in his memory. Nobles thought of themselves first and they weren't afraid to ruin lives on a whim. They were selfish and spoiled.
Tien kicked his heels against the stone wall that he and Kaladin were sitting on, looking out over the calm waters of Lake Calenhad. The upper levels of the tower occasionally opened up into garden terraces. A nice place for mages and templars to get fresh air and sunlight without needing to worry that anyone would be tempted to run away.
“He’s nice, though,” Tien said, still smiling. “He’s very quiet and he doesn’t smile much, but he’s nice. I don’t think he likes it very much here, but maybe he just needs a friend.”
Kaladin shook his head, unsurprised that Tien would think the best of this newcomer, but also wishing he wouldn’t. Tien saw the best in everyone, which was endearing, but sometimes there were people who couldn’t be trusted. He didn’t want his little brother taken in by someone like that.
“He’s noble, Tien,” Kaladin said. “They’re trained to seem nice. That’s how they keep you from messing up their plans. They seem like good people, but it’s all fake. The moment it’s in their interest to stop being nice, they turn on you.”
“I don’t know, Kal,” Tien said with an unaffected shrug. “I don’t think he’s like that. Maybe nobles are kinda like templars.”
Kaladin, as a templar, took offense at that. “What do you mean by that?”
“We never liked templars growing up, remember?”
It wasn’t a surprising point of view for their family. Kaladin’s father, Lirin, had been the town’s healer, and if people had been uncomfortable with the idea of magic, he’d been useful enough that they still came around. While Kaladin had inherited some of his father’s skill with the more mundane aspects of healing and surgery, Tien had been the one to inherit the magical spark. Within the context of an apostate father and an apostate younger brother, Kaladin had grown up seeing templars as the enemy.
He still couldn’t quite believe that he actually was one now.
Sometimes he could still picture his father’s betrayed face when Kaladin had run forward, volunteering to join the Order. He had to see it was the only way, though, didn’t he? Roshone blamed their family for his son’s death, but he knew he couldn’t go after Lirin himself. Apostate or no, the townspeople would never approve if he took their healer away.
The town healer’s youngest son was a much less protected position. Tien hadn’t done anything wrong other than hiding, but Roshone turned him over to the Circle and called the templars down on their heads. The worst had happened: they’d started to take his little brother away and he couldn’t just stand by and let it happen. There was no place for bystanders in the Circle, so he’d volunteered. He became a templar to stay close to his brother. It was the only way to protect him.
In response to Tien’s question, he said: “Of course I remember.”
“We used to think templars were all bad, and we hated them,” Tien said, ever cheery. “But then you became a templar and then we got here and met other nice templars and well, maybe it’s like that. Maybe not all the nobles are mean like Roshone was. Maybe he’s one of the nice ones.”
Kaladin’s instinct was to argue, and say that there were still plenty of templars who were jerks, or that nobles were a different thing entirely, or that Tien was only going to get taken in and manipulated with that kind of attitude. He just couldn’t buy it, but he also knew that he always had trouble acting cynical around Tien. Tien had always managed to pull Kaladin out of his grumpiness, even when it came to noblemen.
So, rather than voicing his doubts, he simply shrugged, letting the issue drop. “Yeah, Tien. Maybe you’re right.”
3
There were a few times where Kaladin’s guard schedule overlapped with Renarin Kholin’s class schedule. He was never assigned to any classes that Tien was in, but there were a few entry-levels in which he was stationed to watch over.
Watching mages with very little training attempt basic spells was usually not the most exciting of jobs. The enchanters leading the instruction were usually competent enough to keep their charges in line. As in most things, having templars on duty was meant as a last resort. A precautionary step. They were only expected to intervene if something went truly wrong.
Since things rarely went seriously off plan, this mostly meant Kaladin’s job involved a lot of watching young mages attempt to conjure flames the size of candle lights or coat a metal ball in a layer of frost. Not exactly the most engaging of activities. Two templars per class was customary, but the two would not speak with each other, of course. They wouldn’t wish to distract each other from watching or the mages from their instruction. Most of the novice class shifts Kaladin spent on guard with Dallet, one of the other templars in his squad..
More and more, however, Kaladin found himself watching Renarin Kholin whenever he was present. For one, he was one of the oldest mages in these novice classes. Most of the Circle’s inhabitants were found when they were young, very soon after they started to show signs of magic. Tien, entering at age thirteen, had been one of the older mages in his classes. Renarin, at twenty, seemed laughably out of place among his… rather young ‘peers.’
The almost awkward picture of the young man surrounded by adolescents almost made Kaladin feel bad for him. Then he remembered that the reason Renarin Kholin had been able to avoid the Circle for 20 years of his life likely had everything to do with the privilege his family name lent him, and Kaladin felt markedly less sorry for him. He realized, deep down, that it was probably a somewhat hypocritical view for him to be glad that Renarin had been caught, considering his father was currently an apostate and his brother had attempted living as one.
He didn’t really care about being hypocritical. His vindictive enjoyment of a nobleman not getting away with escaping the rules won out over his sense of pride. Besides, he could tell himself that he was just learning, finally, to accept the Chantry’s point of view, as was his duty as a templar. He was supposed to believe that mages belonged in the Circle, as that was what his training said. Supposedly, it was safer that way. He could pretend he believed that was the reason he was glad Renarin was here. He didn’t need to feel bad about enjoying the idea of an apostate being caught.
Still, he couldn’t help but watch.
Renarin seemed to struggle with some of the most basic spells, elemental spells in particular. Usually those spells with a more tangible aspect were those that beginners picked up on the fastest, but such was not the case here. Fire, frost, and flickering electricity all seemed to elude him. When he did manage to cast such spells, they were faint or difficult to control.
Despite the fact that he was often being surpassed by children barely over half his age, Kaladin never saw him complain or protest. Outwardly, he stayed calm and composed, steadying himself with a deep breath as another spell went wrong, before dutifully attempting it again. The small crease that deepened as the classes went on between Renarin’s eyebrows was the only sign the mage’s frustration at the continued futility of his efforts.
Kaladin had felt ready to write the boy off as simply a weak caster until, one day, the unexpected came to pass. One of the other mages, young enough to be inexperienced but old enough to feel reckless, lost control of his spell. He pulled too deeply, let his casting get away from him. With a surge of mana, the modest ball of flame he’d held between his hands burst forward, expanding in a rush through the room.
Kaladin had jumped to attention immediately, both he and Dallet rushing forward. Kaladin pulled the cool power from his lyrium into his hands, immediately laying suppression upon the spell to dissipate the flames. The unfortunate caster was thankfully experienced enough to protect himself from his own magic, and he was far enough from most of the other students that his out of control fire didn’t immediately engulf anyone else.
Out of the corner of his eye, however, Kaladin caught sight of something. With the lyrium’s power burning through his veins and his focus on the fire, he was surprised that he noticed it at all. Off to the side, in front of the nearest group of mages, Renarin Kholin threw up his hands before the rogue spell and a solid barrier blossomed forth, shielding both him and the others near him. The fires pressed against the wall, red and orange licking up against the impenetrable magic for only a moment before the templars’ dispel took hold and the flames disappeared.
There was a space of still-tense silence in the wake of the event, Kaladin and Dallet standing alert, the other mages watching wide-eyed at the display. When Kaladin glanced back to the side, the barrier was gone, and Renarin had his arms down at his sides, hands hidden within the large sleeves of his robes. At Kaladin’s glance, their eyes locked again for a few heartbeats, and there was -- if anything -- a slight touch of fear in Renarin’s eyes as he realized Kaladin had seen.
Then, the instructor stepped forward again, quickly taking control of the situation with a few authoritative words. The moment passed, and Renarin looked away. Kaladin stepped backward, returning to his post at the side of the room and trying, unsuccessfully, to understand what exactly he had seen, what it meant, and why Renarin might be afraid that he had seen it.
He failed on all three accounts.
4
“I am not going to be passed off and dismissed by some templar recruit who’s barely come off his first dose. If you’re not going to help me, then I demand to talk to someone who can.”
Kaladin overheard the imperious voice coming from the hallway he’d just passed by and simply stopped, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. That was a nobleman’s voice if ever he’d heard one, and there was a part of him that wanted to just pass by and keep walking. Leave whatever annoying lord had walked into the Circle to whatever unfortunate recruit had gotten caught up in trying to get rid of him.
“My lord, ser,” a nervous sounding voice replied. “I’m sorry, but I’m under orders. I-I cannot permit you to go any further into the Circle.”
Kaladin sighed. He recognized that voice. Dunny. He’d always had a soft spot for Dunny. Besides, it wasn’t as though he didn’t enjoy telling off various lords when they overstepped their bounds. Mustering every bit of defiant authority he possessed, he turned down the hall, walking quickly to Dunny’s rescue.
He turned the corner just as the nobleman was winding up for another round of self-entitled complaining. Not giving him a chance to get started, Kaladin gave Dunny a small nod of acknowledgement. “Is there a problem here, Recruit?”
The nobleman closed his mouth with an affronted look. He likely wasn’t used to being ignored in a conversation. Kaladin tried to look at him out of the corner of his eye, not wishing to give him the honor of an actual regard. He was younger than Kaladin had expected, perhaps only a few years older than Kaladin himself. Maker’s breath, how could someone manage to become so pompous, so young?
He wore some of the finest clothes Kaladin had ever seen, though they were dusty from days on the road. The idea that someone would wear something so fashionable to travel seemed nothing short of ridiculous. The outfit was obviously Orlesian-inspired, though a very Ferelden mantle of fur across the shoulders kept the style from seeming too Orlesian.
Dunny looked unduly grateful to see Kaladin. “I was just trying to explain, ser, to this--”
“He was attempting to brush me off with flimsy excuses. I didn’t travel all the way from Denerim to get turned away at the gate by a common recruit.” There was something about this man that seemed familiar, but Kaladin couldn’t quite place what it was.
Kaladin crossed his arms, giving him an unimpressed look. “The ‘common recruit’ is entirely correct, actually. The Circle has established visiting days, and you happen to be at least two months early. If you’d like to come back then, I’m sure we’d be happy to help you then.” The steely smile Kaladin gave him said enough about how sincere that sentiment was.
The nobleman gave him a flat look. “You must be joking. Do you know who I am?”
Kaladin shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t particularly care.”
To the side, Dunny made a small choking noise, then covered it with a cough. Stepping forward, the young recruit said nervously: “This is… Prince Adolin Kholin, ser.”
The familiarity clicked into place. Renarin’s brother. Of course. Now that Dunny had made the connection, Kaladin could see the family resemblance. Perhaps it had been the drastic difference in mannerism that had thrown him off. It was difficult to imagine that quiet, reserved Renarin and this pompous courtier could be from the same family, despite the fact that they looked alike.
Adolin gave Kaladin an expectant look, waiting for him to either amend his previous statements or apologize for his behavior thus far.
Kaladin ducked his head slightly. “I apologize, my Lord. I didn’t recognize you, and I seem to have misspoken.”
A self-satisfied smile started to assert itself across Adolin’s expression..
“If you’re here to see your brother,” Kaladin continued, “novices in the Circle are not allowed visitation rights for their first six months of training. You’ll need to come back after that period of time. Until then, you’re out of luck.”
Adolin sputtered, outrage flashing across his features, and Kaladin had to hide how pleased that made him. He probably ought to be more concerned that he might very well be making very powerful enemies, but for the moment, he would just enjoy the look on the prince’s face.
“Who exactly do you think you are to refuse me? I could have you stripped of rank for your rudeness, Serah...” Adolin’s angered outburst trailed off as he realized he didn’t actually know Kaladin’s name.
“Knight-Corporal Kaladin is the correct address, usually,” Kaladin said evenly. “And I highly doubt the Knight-Commander is going to demote me for following the rules. Lord Kholin, I realize that you are undoubtedly used to getting your way in all things, but Circle policy is very strict. Especially as regards new recruits. The high probability of those on the outside trying to mount some kind of ill-advised escape attempt makes that strictness necessary.”
The implication in Kaladin’s words was clear: You’re not going to get him out, no matter what you try.
He thought back to Tien’s first months in the Circle. Kaladin hadn’t been allowed to see him at all, and they kept Kaladin well sequestered in the templar recruit quarters. The fact that he was allowed to join and stay was already pushing the boundaries. Everyone knew there was a chance that Kaladin had only joined to try to break his brother out, so he had to prove that wasn’t the case. It was made very clear to Kaladin that if he did anything to step out of line, he’d be kicked from the Order and Tien would be all alone.
Tien had been forced to stay. Kaladin hadn’t been able to do anything to get him out. If the son of a common healer had to stay in the Circle, then so did the son of a prince.
Adolin’s fists clenched at his sides. “Listen, Knight-Corporal. There’s been a mistake. My brother is not a mage. He’s been… framed somehow. Set up by one of our House’s enemies. If you would simply let me by to speak with the First Enchanter…”
“Prince Kholin,” Kaladin interrupted. “I have personally seen your brother cast his own spells and there are an abundance of witnesses who can say the same. If you’re trying to convince the Circle to let him go, I’d suggest you try a different lie. Or, better yet, give up this line of thought entirely and accept the fact that this is the way things are.”
For a long moment, there was silence as Adolin fumed, glaring in Kaladin’s direction, and Kaladin stared impassively back. Finally Adolin let out short, terse breath. "He's my brother. Can't you understand that? There's been some kind of mistake and I can't just stand by and do nothing."
Kaladin had to keep himself from reacting, surprised that there would be something in this pompous nobleman that would be familiar. Losing a younger brother to the Circle was an experience that Kaladin could relate to, and he'd been allowed a loophole to follow along. Despite himself, he felt a tinge of sympathy that wasn't there before. Then he felt annoyed that he’d found something relatable between the two of them.
Still, he wasn't going to show that. "There's no mistake," he said. Then, because he couldn't entirely keep himself from feeling bad for Adolin, he added: "For what it's worth, I'm sorry, but there's nothing you can do."
Adolin's eyes narrowed, as if expecting a trick in Kaladin's apology. It was gone in an instant, replaced with disdainful hostility once more. “Fine,” Adolin bit out. “Give me this, then. Tell him ‘it doesn’t matter.’ Are you capable of that much, at least?”
Kaladin wanted to decline on the basis of not being ordered around, but three words didn’t actually seem too unreasonable a request. “What doesn’t matter?”
“If the message was for you, you’d understand it, templar. Seeing as it’s not, maybe you ought to mind your own business.”
“Well then,” Kaladin said, mock-politely. “If that’s everything, the door is directly behind you, my Lord. Finding it shouldn’t be too difficult for you. I assume you’re capable of that much, at least.”
Adolin bristled again, but Kaladin didn’t give him a chance to respond. Giving Dunny a nod that said ‘that ought to take care of him,’ Kaladin turned on his heel and walked back into the Circle, leaving the recruit and slighted prince behind.