Words of Radiance

“And they’ll be helping you change clothes?”

Shallan blushed. “I mean that I’d like them to be housed, if you can manage it.”

“I can,” Palona said lightly. “I can probably even find something productive for them to do. You’ll want them paid out of your stipend, I assume—your maid as well, which I’ll get for you. Food is served at second bell, noon, and tenth bell. If you want something at other times, ask at the kitchens. Cook might swear at you, assuming I can get him to come back this time. We’ve a storm cistern, so there’s usually running water. If you want it warm for a bath, the boys will need an hour or so to heat it.”

“Running water?” Shallan said, eager. She’d seen this for the first time in Kharbranth.

“As I said, storm cistern.” Palona pointed upward. “Each highstorm fills it, and the shape of the cistern sifts out the crem. Don’t use the system until midday after a highstorm, or the water will be brown. And you look entirely too eager about this.”

“Sorry,” Shallan said. “We didn’t have this sort of thing in Jah Keved.”

“Welcome to civilization. I trust you left your club and loincloth at the door. Let me set to finding you a maid.” The short woman started to leave.

“Palona?” Shallan asked.

“Yes, child?”

“Thank you.”

Palona smiled. “Winds know, you’re not the first stray he’s brought home. Some of us even end up staying.” She left.

Shallan sat down on the plush, white bed, and sank almost down to her neck. What had they made the thing out of? Air and wishes? It felt luxurious.

In her sitting room—her sitting room—thumps announced the footmen arriving with her trunks. They left a moment later, closing the door. For the first time in quite a long while, Shallan found herself not fighting for her survival or worrying about being murdered by one of her traveling companions.

So she fell asleep.

This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at this time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal; and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership; but this was only nine of the ten, as one said they would not abandon their arms and flee, but instead entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the other nine.

—From Words of Radiance, chapter 38, page 20

Kaladin rested his fingers on the chasm wall as Bridge Seventeen formed up behind him.

He remembered being frightened of these chasms when he first descended into them. He had feared that heavy rains would cause a flash flood while his men were scavenging. He was a little surprised Gaz hadn’t found a way to “accidentally” get Bridge Four assigned to chasm duty on the day of a highstorm.

Bridge Four had embraced its punishment, claiming these pits. Kaladin was startled to realize that coming down here felt more like coming home than returning to Hearthstone and his parents would have. The chasms were his.

“The lads are ready, sir,” Teft said, stepping up beside him.

“Where were you the other night?” Kaladin asked, looking up toward the crack of open sky above.

“I was off duty, sir,” Teft said. “Went to see what I could find in the market. Do I need to report every little thing I do?”

“You went to the market,” Kaladin said, “in a highstorm?”

“Time may have gotten away from me for a breath or two . . .” Teft said, looking away.

Kaladin wanted to press further, but Teft was entitled to his privacy. They’re not bridgemen anymore. They don’t have to spend all of their time together. They’ll start having lives again.

He wanted to encourage that. Still, it was disturbing. If he didn’t know where they all were, how could he make sure they were all safe?

He turned around to regard Bridge Seventeen—a motley crew. Some had been slaves, purchased for the bridges. Others had been criminals, though the crimes punishable by bridge duty in Sadeas’s army could be practically anything. Falling into debt, insulting an officer, fighting.

“You,” Kaladin said to the men, “are Bridge Seventeen, under the command of Sergeant Pitt. You are not soldiers. You may wear the uniforms, but they don’t fit you yet. You’re playing dress-up. We’re going to change that.”

The men shuffled and looked about. Though Teft had been working with them and the other crews for weeks now, these didn’t yet see themselves as soldiers. As long as that was true, they’d hold those spears at awkward angles, look around lazily when being addressed, and shuffle in line.

“The chasms are mine,” Kaladin said. “I give you leave to practice here. Sergeant Pitt!”

“Yes, sir!” Pitt said, standing at attention.

“This is a sloppy mess of stormleavings you’ve got to work with, but I’ve seen worse.”

“I find that hard to believe, sir!”

“Believe it,” Kaladin said, looking over the men. “I was in Bridge Four. Lieutenant Teft, they’re yours. Make them sweat.”

“Aye, sir,” Teft said. He began to call out orders as Kaladin picked up his spear and made his way farther down the chasms. It would be slow going, getting all twenty crews into shape, but at least Teft had successfully trained the sergeants. Heralds send that the same training worked on the common men.

Kaladin wished he could explain, even to himself, why he felt so anxious about getting these men ready. He felt he was racing toward something. Though what, he didn’t know. That writing on the wall . . . Storms, it had him on edge. Thirty-seven days.

He passed Syl sitting on the frond of a frillbloom growing from the wall. It pulled closed at Kaladin’s approach. She didn’t notice, but remained sitting in the air.

“What is it that you want, Kaladin?” she asked.

“To keep my men alive,” he said immediately.

“No,” Syl said, “that was what you wanted.”

“You’re saying I don’t want them to be safe?”

She slid down onto his shoulder, moving like a stiff breeze had blown her. She crossed her legs, sitting ladylike, skirt rippling as he walked.

“In Bridge Four, you dedicated everything you had to saving them,” Syl said. “Well, they’re saved. You can’t go about protecting every one like a . . . um . . . Like a . . .”

“Father kurl watches over his eggs?”

“Exactly!” She paused. “What’s a kurl?”

“A crustacean,” Kaladin said, “about the size of a small axehound. Looks kind of like a cross between a crab and a tortoise.”

“Ooooo . . .” Syl said. “I wanna see one!”

“They don’t live out here.”

Kaladin walked with his eyes forward, so she poked him in the neck until he looked at her. Then she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “So you admit that your men are relatively safe,” she said. “That means you haven’t really answered my question. What do you want?”

He passed piles of bones and wood, overgrown with moss. On one pile, rotspren and lifespren spun about one another, little motes of red and green glowing around the vines that sprouted incongruously from the mass of death.

“I want to beat that assassin,” Kaladin said, surprised by how vehemently he felt it.

“Why?”

“Because it’s my job to protect Dalinar.”

Syl shook her head. “That’s not it.”

“What? You think you’ve gotten that good at reading human intentions?”

“Not all humans. Just you.”

Kaladin grunted, stepping carefully around the edge of a dark pool. He’d rather not spend the rest of the day with soaked boots. These new ones didn’t hold out the water as well as they should.

“Maybe,” he said, “I want to beat that assassin because this is all his fault. If he hadn’t killed Gavilar, Tien wouldn’t have been drafted, and I wouldn’t have followed him. Tien wouldn’t have died.”

“And you don’t think Roshone would have found another way of getting back at your father?”

Roshone was the citylord of Kaladin’s hometown back in Alethkar. Sending Tien into the army had been an act of petty vengeance on his part, a way to get back at Kaladin’s father for not being a good enough surgeon to save Roshone’s son.

“He probably would have done something else,” Kaladin admitted. “Still, that assassin deserves to die.”

He heard the others before he reached them, their voices echoing down the cavernous chasm bottom.

“What I’m trying to explain,” one said, “is that nobody seems to be asking the right questions.” Sigzil’s voice, with his elevated Azish accent. “We call the Parshendi savages, and everyone says they hadn’t ever met people until that day they encountered the Alethi expedition. If those things are true, then what storm brought them a Shin assassin? A Shin assassin who can Surgebind, no less.”

Kaladin stepped into the light of their spheres sprinkled about on the floor of the chasm, which had been cleared of debris since the last time Kaladin had been here. Sigzil, Rock, and Lopen sat on boulders, waiting for him.