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this here coach. Oi had to hop on without jostling things. He ran off giggling like a child, he did.” “He just likes to surprise people,” Adolin said, helping Shallan from the carriage. “Ignore him.” The new carriage driver hunched down as if embarrassed. Kaladin didn’t recognize him; he wasn’t one of Adolin’s regular servants. I’ll have to ride up there on the way back. Keep an eye on the man. Shallan and Adolin walked off toward the menagerie. Kaladin retrieved his spear from the back of the carriage, then jogged to catch up, eventually falling in a few steps behind them. He listened to them both laughing, and wanted to punch them in the face. “Wow,” Syl’s voice said. “You’re supposed to harness the storms, Kaladin. Not carry them about behind your eyes.” He glanced at her as she flew over and danced around him in the air, a ribbon of light. He set his spear on his shoulder and kept walking. “What’s wrong?” Syl asked, settling down in the air in front of him. Whichever way he turned his head, she automatically glided that way, as if seated on an invisible shelf, girlish dress fluttering to mist just below her knees. “Nothing’s wrong,” Kaladin said softly. “I’m just tired of listening to those two.” Syl looked over her shoulder at the pair just ahead. Adolin paid their way in, thumbing back toward Kaladin, paying for him as well. A pompous-looking Azish man in an odd patterned hat and long coat with an intricate design waved them forward, pointing to the different rows of cages and indicating which animals were where. “Shallan and Adolin seem happy,” Syl said. “What’s wrong with that?” “Nothing,” Kaladin said. “So long as I don’t have to listen to it.” Syl wrinkled her nose. “It’s not them, it’s you. You’re being sour. I can practically taste it.” “Taste?” Kaladin asked. “You don’t eat, Syl. I doubt you have a sense of taste.” “It’s a metaphor. And I can imagine it. And you taste sour. And stop arguing, because I’m right.” She zipped off to dangle near Shallan and Adolin as they inspected the first cage. Blasted spren, Kaladin thought, walking up bedside Shallan and Adolin. Arguing with her is like . . . well, arguing with the wind, I guess. This stormwagon looked a lot like the slaver cage he’d ridden in on his way to the Shattered Plains, though the animal within looked to have been treated far better than the slaves had. It sat on a rock, and the cage had been covered over with crem on the inside as if to imitate a cave. The creature itself was little more than a lump of flesh with two bulbous eyes and four long tentacles. “Ooo . . .” Shallan said, eyes wide. She looked like she’d been given a pile of jewelry—only instead, it was a slimy lump of something that Kaladin would have expected to find stuck to the bottom of his boot. “That,” Adolin said, “is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.
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It’s like the stuff in the middle of a hasper, only without the shell.” “It’s one of the sarpenthyn,” Shallan said. “Poor thing,” Adolin said. “Did its mother give it that name?” Shallan swatted him on the shoulder. “It’s a family.” “So the mother was behind it.” “A family of animals, idiot. They have more of them in the west, where the storms aren’t as strong. I’ve only seen a few of them—we’ve got little ones in Jah Keved, but nothing like this. I don’t even know what species this is.” She hesitated, then stuck her fingers through the bars and grabbed one of the tentacle arms. The thing pulled away immediately, inflating to look bigger, raising two of its arms behind its head in a threatening way. Adolin yelped and pulled Shallan back. “He said not to touch any of them!” Adolin said. “What if it’s poisonous?” Shallan ignored him, digging a notebook from her satchel. “Warm to the touch,” she mumbled to herself. “Truly warm-blooded. Fascinating. I need a sketch of it.” She squinted at a little plaque on the cage. “Well, that’s useless.” “What does it say?” Adolin asked. “‘Devil rock captured in Marabethia. The locals claim it is the reborn vengeful spirit of a child who was murdered.’ Not even a mention of its species. What kind of scholarship is this?” “It’s a menagerie, Shallan,” Adolin said, chuckling. “Brought all this distance to entertain soldiers and camp followers.” Indeed, the menagerie was popular. As Shallan sketched, Kaladin kept busy watching those who passed by, making certain they kept their distance. He saw everything from washmaids and tenners to officers, and even some higher lighteyes. Behind them, a lighteyed woman was paraded past in her palanquin, barely even glancing at the cages. It provided quite a contrast to Shallan’s eager drawing and Adolin’s good-natured gibes. Kaladin wasn’t giving those two enough credit. They might ignore him, but they weren’t actively mean to him. They were happy and pleasant. Why did that annoy him so? Eventually, Shallan and Adolin moved on to the next cage, which contained skyeels and a large tub of water for them to dip in. They didn’t look as comfortable as the “devil rock.” There wasn’t much room to move in the cage, and they didn’t often take to the air. Not very interesting. Next was a cage with a creature that looked like a small chull, but with larger claws. Shallan wanted a sketch of this one too, so Kaladin found himself lounging beside the cage, watching people pass and listening to Adolin try to crack jokes to amuse his betrothed. He wasn’t very good at it, but Shallan laughed anyway. “Poor thing,” Syl said, landing on the floor of the cage, looking at its crab occupant. “What kind of life is this?” “A safe one.” Kaladin shrugged. “At least it has no need to worry about predators. Always kept fed. I doubt a chull-thing could ask for more than that.” “Oh?” Syl asked. “And you’d be all right if that were you.” “Of course
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not. I’m not a chull-thing. I’m a soldier.” They moved on, passing cage after cage of animals. Some Shallan wanted to draw, others she concluded didn’t need an immediate sketch. The one she found the most fascinating was also the strangest, a kind of colorful chicken with red, blue, and green feathers. She dug out colored pencils to do that sketch. Apparently, she’d missed a chance at sketching one of these a long time ago. Kaladin had to admit the thing was pretty. How did it survive, though? It had shell on the very front of its face, but the rest of it wasn’t squishy, so it couldn’t hide in cracks like the devil rock. What did this chicken do when a storm came? Syl landed on Kaladin’s shoulder. “I’m a soldier,” Kaladin repeated, speaking very softly. “That’s what you were,” Syl said. “It’s what I want to be again.” “Are you sure?” “Mostly.” He folded his arms, spear leaning against his shoulder. “The only thing is . . . It’s crazy, Syl. Insane. My time as a bridgeman was the worst in my life. We suffered death, oppression, indignity. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive as I did in those final weeks.” Next to the work he’d done with Bridge Four, being a simple soldier—even a highly respected one, like captain of a highprince’s guard—just felt mundane. Ordinary. But soaring on the winds—that had been anything but ordinary. “You’re almost ready, aren’t you?” Syl whispered. He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.” The next cage in line had a large crowd around it, and even a few fearspren wiggling out of the ground. Kaladin pushed in, though he didn’t have to clear a space—the people made room for Dalinar’s heir as soon as they realized who he was. Adolin walked past them without a second glance, obviously accustomed to such deference. This cage was different from the others. The bars were closer together, the wood reinforced. The animal inside didn’t seem to deserve the special treatment. The sorry beast lay in front of some rocks, eyes closed. The square face showed sharpened mandibles—like teeth, only somehow more vicious—and a pair of long, toothlike tusks that pointed down from the upper jaw. The stark spikes running from the head along the sinuous back, along with powerful legs, were clues as to what this beast was. “Whitespine,” Shallan breathed, stepping closer to the cage. Kaladin had never seen one. He remembered a young man, lying dead on the operating table, blood everywhere. He remembered fear, frustration. And then misery. “I expected,” Kaladin said, trying to sort through it all, “the thing to be . . . more.” “They don’t do well in captivity,” Shallan said. “This one probably would have gone dormant in crystal long ago, if it had been allowed. They must keep dousing it to wash away the shell.” “Don’t feel sorry for the thing,” Adolin said. “I’ve seen what they can do to a man.” “Yeah,” Kaladin said softly. Shallan got out her drawing things,
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though as she started, people began to move away from the cage. At first, Kaladin thought it was something about the beast itself—but the animal continued to just lie there, eyes closed, occasionally snorting out of its nose holes. No, people were congregating at the other side of the menagerie. Kaladin caught Adolin’s attention, then pointed. I’m going to go check that out, the gesture implied. Adolin nodded and rested his hand on his sword. I’ll be on the watch, that said. Kaladin jogged off, spear on his shoulder, to investigate. Unfortunately, he soon recognized a familiar face above the crowd. Amaram was a tall man. Dalinar stood at his side, guarded by several of Kaladin’s men, who were keeping the gawking crowd back a safe distance. “. . . heard my son was here,” Dalinar was saying to the well-dressed owner of the menagerie. “You needn’t pay, Highprince!” the menagerie owner said, speaking with a lofty accent similar to Sigzil’s. “Your presence is a grand blessing from the Heralds upon my humble collection. And your distinguished guest.” Amaram. He wore a strange cloak. Bright yellow-gold, with a black glyph on the back. Oath? Kaladin didn’t recognize the shape. It looked familiar, though. The double eye, he realized. Symbol of . . . “Is it true?” the menagerie owner asked, inspecting Amaram. “The rumors around camp are most intriguing. . . .” Dalinar sighed audibly. “We were going to announce this at the feast tonight, but as Amaram insists on wearing the cloak, I suppose it needs to be stated. Under the king’s direction, I have commanded the refounding of the Knights Radiant. Let it be spoken of in the camps. The ancient oaths are spoken again, and Brightlord Amaram was—at my request—the first to speak them. The Knights Radiant have been reestablished, and he stands at their head.” “Amaram obviously doesn’t have any Surgebinding abilities,” Sigzil said softly, standing beside Kaladin. Dalinar, Navani, the king, and Amaram climbed out of their carriage ahead. The dueling arena rose before them, another of the craterlike formations that rimmed the Shattered Plains. It was much smaller than the ones that held the warcamps, however, and had tiered seats inside. With both Elhokar and Dalinar in attendance—not to mention Navani and both of Dalinar’s sons—Kaladin had brought every guard he could. That included some of the men from Bridge Seventeen and Bridge Two. Those stood proudly, with spears held high, obviously excited to finally be trusted with their first bodyguard assignment. In total, he had forty men on duty. None of them would be worth a drop of rain if the Assassin in White attacked. “Can we be certain?” Kaladin asked, nodding toward Amaram, who still wore his yellow-gold cloak with the symbol of the Knights Radiant on the back. “I haven’t shown anyone my powers. There have to be others training as I am. Storms, Syl all but promised me there were.” “He’d have displayed the abilities if he had them,” Sigzil said. “Gossip is moving through the ten warcamps like floodwater. Half the
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people think it’s blasphemous and stupid, what Dalinar is doing. The other half are undecided. If Amaram displayed Surgebinding powers, Brightlord Dalinar’s move would look a lot less precarious.” Sigzil was probably right. But . . . Amaram? The man walked with such pride, head held high. Kaladin felt his neck growing hot, and for a moment it seemed the only thing he could see was Amaram. Golden cloak. Haughty face. Bloodstained. That man was bloodstained. Kaladin told Dalinar about it! Dalinar wouldn’t do anything. Someone else would have to. “Kaladin?” Sigzil asked. Kaladin realized he’d stepped toward Amaram, hands clenched on his spear. He took a deep breath, then pointed. “Put men up on the rim of the arena there. Skar and Eth are in the preparation room with Adolin, for all the good it will do him out on the field. Put another few down at the arena bottom, just in case. Three men at every door. I’ll take six with me to the king’s seats.” Kaladin paused, then added, “Let’s also put two men guarding Adolin’s betrothed, just in case. She’ll be sitting with Sebarial.” “Will do.” “Tell the men to keep focused, Sig. This is likely to be a dramatic fight. I want their minds on the possibility of assassins, not on the duel.” “Is he really going to fight two men at once?” “Yeah.” “Can he possibly win that?” “I don’t know, and I don’t really care. Our job is to watch for other threats.” Sigzil nodded, and moved to leave. He hesitated, however, taking Kaladin by the arm. “You could join them, Kal,” he said softly. “If the king’s refounding the Knights Radiant, you have an excuse to show what you are. Dalinar is trying, but so many think of the Radiants as an evil force, forgetting the good they did before they betrayed mankind. But if you showed your powers, it could change minds.” Join. Under Amaram. Not likely. “Go pass my orders,” Kaladin said, gesturing, then pulled his arm free of Sigzil’s grip and jogged after the king and his retinue. At least the sun was out today, the spring air warm. Syl bobbed along behind Kaladin. “Amaram is ruining you, Kaladin,” she whispered. “Don’t let him.” He gritted his teeth and didn’t reply. Instead, he moved up beside Moash, who was in charge of a team who would watch Brightness Navani—she preferred to watch the duels from down below, in the preparation rooms. A part of him wondered if he should let Moash guard anyone other than Dalinar, but storm it, Moash had sworn to him that he’d take no more actions against the king. Kaladin trusted him on that count. They were Bridge Four. I’ll get you out of this, Moash, Kaladin thought, pulling the man aside. We’ll fix this. “Moash,” Kaladin said, speaking softly. “Starting tomorrow, I’m putting you on patrol duty.” Moash frowned. “I thought you always wanted me guarding . . .” His expression grew hard. “This is about what happened. In the tavern.” “I want you to take
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a deep patrol,” Kaladin said. “Head out toward New Natanan. I don’t want you here when we move against Graves and his people.” It had been too long already. “I’m not leaving.” “You will, and it’s not subject to—” “What they’re doing is right, Kal!” Kaladin frowned. “Have you still been meeting with them?” Moash looked away. “Only once. To assure them that you’d come around.” “You still disobeyed an order!” Kaladin said. “Storm it, Moash!” The noise inside the arena was building. “Almost time for the match,” Moash said, pulling his arm free of Kaladin’s grip. “We can talk about this later.” Kaladin ground his teeth, but unfortunately, Moash was right. This wasn’t the time. Should have grabbed him this morning, Kaladin thought. No, what I should have done was make a decision on this days ago. It was his own fault. “You will go on that patrol, Moash,” he said. “You don’t get to be insubordinate just because you’re my friend. Go on.” The man jogged ahead, collecting his squad. * * * Adolin knelt beside his sword in the preparation room and found he didn’t know what to say. He looked at his reflection in the Blade. Two Shardbearers at once. He’d never even tried that outside of the practice grounds. Fighting multiple opponents was tough. In the histories, if you heard of a man fighting six men at once or whatnot, the truth was probably that he managed to take them one at a time somehow. Two at once was hard, if they were prepared and careful. Not impossible, but really hard. “It comes down to this,” Adolin said. He had to say something to the sword. It was tradition. “Let’s go be spectacular. Then let’s wipe that smile off Sadeas’s face.” He stood up, dismissing his Blade. He left the small preparation room, walking down the tunnel with carved, painted duelists. In the room beyond, Renarin sat in his Kholin uniform—he wore that to official functions like this, instead of the blasted Bridge Four uniform—waiting anxiously. Aunt Navani was screwing the lid off a jar of paint to do a glyphward. “No need,” Adolin said, taking one from his pocket. Painted in Kholin blue, it read “excellence.” Navani cocked an eyebrow. “The girl?” “Yeah,” Adolin said. “The calligraphy isn’t bad,” Navani said, grudgingly. “She’s quite wonderful, Aunt,” Adolin said. “I wish you’d give her more of a chance. And she does want to share her scholarship with you.” “We’ll see,” Navani said. She sounded more thoughtful than she had before, regarding Shallan. A good sign. Adolin placed the glyphward in the brazier, then bowed his head as it burned. A prayer to the Almighty for aid. His combatants for the day would probably be burning their own prayers. How did the Almighty decide whom to help? I can’t believe, Adolin thought, raising his head from the prayer, that he’d want those who serve Sadeas, even indirectly, to succeed. “I’m worried,” Navani said. “Father thinks the plan could work, and Elhokar really likes it.” “Elhokar can be impulsive,”
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Navani said, folding her arms and watching the remnants of the glyphward burn. “The terms change things.” The terms—agreed upon with Relis and spoken in front of the highjudge just earlier—indicated that this duel would go until surrender, not until a certain number of Plate sections were broken. That meant if Adolin did manage to beat one of his foes, making the man give in, the other could keep fighting. It also meant that Adolin didn’t have to stop fighting until he was convinced he was bested. Or until he was incapacitated. Renarin walked over, resting a hand on Adolin’s shoulder. “I think the plan is a good one,” he said. “You can do this.” “They’re going to try to break you,” Navani said. “That’s why they insisted this be a match until the surrender. They’ll leave you crippled if they can, Adolin.” “No different from the battlefield,” he said. “Actually, in this case, they will want to leave me alive. I’ll work better as an object lesson with Blade-dead legs than I would as ashes.” Navani closed her eyes, drawing in a breath. She looked pale. It was a little like having his mother back. A little. “Make sure you don’t give Sadeas any outs,” Renarin said to him as the armorers entered with Adolin’s Shardplate. “When you corner him with a challenge, he will look for a way to escape. Don’t let him. Bring him down on those sands and beat him bloody, Brother.” “With pleasure.” “Now, you ate chicken?” Renarin asked. “Two plates of the stuff, with curry.” “Mother’s chain?” Adolin felt in his pocket. Then he felt in his other one. “What?” Renarin asked, fingers tightening on Adolin’s shoulder. “I could have sworn I slipped it in.” Renarin cursed. “Might be back in my rooms,” Adolin said. “In the warcamps. On my end table.” Assuming he hadn’t grabbed it, then lost it on the way. Storms. It was just a good luck charm. It didn’t mean anything. He started sweating anyway as Renarin scrambled to send a runner off to search. They wouldn’t get back in time. Already he could hear the crowd outside, the growing roar that came before a duel. Adolin reluctantly allowed his armorers to begin putting on his Plate. By the time they gave him his helm, he had recovered most of his rhythm—the anticipation that was an odd blend of anxiety in his stomach and relaxation in his muscles. You couldn’t fight while tense. You could fight while nervous, but not while tense. He nodded to the servants, and they pushed open the doors, letting him stride out onto the sand. He could tell from their cheering where the darkeyes sat. In contrast, the lighteyes grew softer, instead of louder, when he emerged. It was good that Elhokar reserved space for the darkeyes. Adolin liked the noise. It reminded him of a battlefield. There was a time, he thought, when I didn’t like the battlefield because it wasn’t quiet, like a duel. Despite his original reluctance, he had become a soldier. He strode
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out into the center of the arena. The others hadn’t left their preparation room yet. Take Relis first, Adolin told himself. You know his dueling style. The man preferred Vinestance, slow and steady, but with sudden, quick lunges. Adolin wasn’t sure whom he’d bring along to fight with him, though he’d borrowed a full set of the King’s Blade and Plate. Perhaps his cousin wanted to try again, for vengeance? Shallan was there, on the opposite side of the arena, her red hair standing out like blood on stone. She had two bridgeman guards. Adolin found himself nodding in appreciation of that, and raised a fist to her. She waved back. Adolin danced from one foot to the other, letting the power of the Plate flow through him. He could win, even without Mother’s chain. The problem was, he intended to challenge Sadeas after this. So he had to retain enough strength for that duel. He checked, anxious. Was Sadeas there? Yes; he sat only a little ways from Father and the king. Adolin narrowed his eyes, remembering the crushing moment of realization when he’d seen Sadeas’s armies retreating from the Tower. That steadied him. He’d stewed long about that betrayal. It was time, finally, to do something. The doors across from him opened. Four men in Shardplate strode out. * * * “Four?” Dalinar said, leaping to his feet. Kaladin took a step downward toward the arena floor. Yes, those were all Shardbearers, entering the sands of the dueling arena below. One wore a set of the King’s Plate; the other three wore their own, ornamented and painted. Down below, the highjudge for the bout turned and cocked her head toward the king. “What is this?” Dalinar bellowed toward Sadeas, who sat only a short distance away. The lighteyes on the benchlike rows of seats between them hunched down or fled, leaving a direct line of sight between the highprinces. Sadeas and his wife turned about, lazily. “Why do you ask me?” Sadeas called back. “None of those men are mine. I’m just an observer today.” “Oh, don’t be tiresome, Sadeas,” Elhokar called. “You know full well what is happening. Why are there four? Is Adolin supposed to pick the two he wants to duel?” “Two?” Sadeas asked. “When was it said that he would fight two?” “That’s what he said when he set up the duel!” Dalinar shouted. “Paired disadvantaged duel, two against one, as per the dueling conventions!” “Actually,” Sadeas replied, “that is not what young Adolin agreed to. Why, I have it on very good authority that he told Prince Relis: ‘I’ll fight you and whomever you bring.’ I don’t hear a specification of a number in there—which subjects Adolin to a full disadvantaged duel, not a paired duel. Relis may bring as many as he wishes. I know several scribes who recorded Adolin’s precise words, and I hear the highjudge asked him specifically if he understood what he was doing, and he said that he did.” Dalinar growled softly. It was a sound Kaladin had never heard
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from him, the growl of a beast on a chain. It surprised him. The highprince contained himself, however, sitting down with a curt motion. “He outthought us,” Dalinar said softly to the king. “Again. We’ll need to retreat and consider our next move. Someone tell Adolin to pull out of the contest.” “Are you certain?” the king said. “Pulling out would require that Adolin forfeit, Uncle. That’s six Shards, I believe. Everything you own.” Kaladin could read the conflict in Dalinar’s features—the scrunched-up brow, the red fury rising on his cheeks, the indecision in his eyes. Give up? Without a fight? It was probably the right thing to do. Kaladin doubted he could have done it. Below, after an extended pause—frozen on the sand—Adolin raised his hand in a sign of agreement. The judge began the duel. * * * I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot. I’m a storm-cursed idiot! Adolin jogged backward across the sand-covered circle of the arena. He’d need to put his back to the wall to avoid being completely surrounded. That meant he’d start the duel with no place to retreat, locked in a box. Cornered. Why hadn’t he been more specific? He could see the holes in his challenge—he’d agreed to a full disadvantaged duel without realizing it. He should have stated, specifically, that Relis could bring one other. But no, doing so would have been smart. And Adolin was a storming idiot! He recognized Relis from his Plate and Blade, colored completely a deep black, breakaway cloak bearing his father’s glyphpair. The man in King’s Plate—judging by his height and the way he walked—would indeed be Elit, Relis’s cousin, returned for a rematch. He carried an enormous hammer, rather than a Blade. The two moved across the field carefully, and their two companions took the flanks. One in orange, the other in green. Adolin recognized the Plate. That would be Abrobadar, a full Shardbearer from Aladar’s camp and . . . and Jakamav, bearing the King’s Blade that Relis had borrowed. Jakamav. Adolin’s friend. Adolin cursed. Those two were among the best duelists in the camp. Jakamav would have won his own Blade years ago if he’d been allowed to risk his Plate. That had apparently changed. Had he, and his house, been bought with a promise of a share in the spoils? Blade forming in his hand, Adolin backed into the cool shade of the wall around the arena grounds. Just above him, darkeyes roared on their benches. Whether they were thrilled or horrified by what he faced, Adolin could not tell. He’d come here intending to give a spectacular show. They’d get the opposite instead. A quick slaughter. Well, he’d made this pyre himself. If he was going to burn on it, he’d at least put up a fight first. Relis and Elit prowled closer—one in slate grey, the other in black—as their allies worked around the sides. Those would hang back to try to make Adolin focus on the two in front of him. Then the others could attack him from the sides.
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“One at a time, lad!” One shout from the stands seemed to separate from the others. Was that Zahel’s voice? “You’re not cornered!” Relis stepped forward in a quick motion, testing Adolin. Adolin danced away in Windstance—certainly the best against so many foes—with both hands holding the Blade in front of him, positioned sideways with one foot forward. You’re not cornered! What did Zahel mean? Of course he was cornered! It was the only way to face four. And how could he possibly face them one at a time? They’d never allow that. Relis tested forward again, making Adolin shuffle sideways along the wall, focused on him. He had to turn somewhat to face Relis, however, and that put Abrobadar—moving up the other way, wearing orange—in his blind spot. Storms! “They’re scared of you.” Zahel’s voice, drifting again above the crowd. “Do you see it in them? Show them why.” Adolin hesitated. Relis stepped forward, making a Stonestance strike. Stonestance, to be immobile. Elit came in next, hammer held wardingly. They backed Adolin along the wall toward Abrobadar. No. Adolin had demanded this duel. He had wanted it. He would not become a frightened rat. Show them why. Adolin attacked. He leaped forward, sweeping with a barrage of strikes at Relis. Elit jumped away with a curse as he did so. They were like men with spears prodding at a whitespine. And this whitespine was not yet caged. Adolin shouted, beating against Relis, scoring strikes on his helm and left vambrace, cracking the latter. Stormlight rose from Relis’s forearm. As Elit recovered, Adolin spun on him and struck, leaving Relis dazed from the attack. His assault forced Elit to hold his hammer back and block with his forearm, lest Adolin slice the hammer in two and leave him unarmed. This was what Zahel meant. Attack with fury. Don’t allow them time to respond or assess. Four men. If he could intimidate them into hesitating . . . Maybe . . . Adolin stopped thinking. He let the flow of the fight consume him, let the rhythm of his heart guide the beating of his sword. Elit cursed and pulled away, leaking Stormlight from his left shoulder and forearm. Adolin turned and smashed his shoulder into Relis, who was stepping back into his stance. His shove threw the black-Plated man tumbling to the ground. Then, with a shout, Adolin turned and met Abrobadar head-on as the man came dashing up to help. Adolin fell into Stonestance himself, smashing his Blade down again and again against Abrobadar’s raised sword until he heard grunts, curses. Until he could feel the fear coming off the man in orange like a stench, and could see fearspren on the ground. Elit approached, wary, as Relis scrambled up to his feet. Adolin fell back into Windstance and swept about himself in a wide, fluid motion. Elit jumped away and Abrobadar stumbled back, gauntleted hand against the wall of the arena. Adolin turned back toward Relis, who had recovered well, all things considered. Still, Adolin got in a second strike
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at the champion’s breastplate. If this had been a battlefield and these common foes, Relis would be dead, Elit maimed. Adolin was yet untouched. But they weren’t common foes. They were Shardbearers, and a second strike against Relis’s breastplate didn’t break the armor. Adolin was forced to turn on Abrobadar before he wanted to, and the man was now braced for the fury of the assault, sword raised defensively. Adolin’s barrage didn’t stun him this time. The man weathered it while Elit and Relis got into position. Just need to— Something crashed into Adolin from behind. Jakamav. Adolin had taken too long, and had allowed the fourth man—his supposed friend—to get into position. Adolin spun about, moving into a puff of Stormlight rising from his back plate. He raised his sword into Jakamav’s next attack, but that opened his left flank. Elit swung, hammer crashing into Adolin’s side. Plate cracked, and the blow shoved Adolin off balance. He swept around himself, growing desperate. This time, his foes didn’t back away. Instead, Jakamav charged in, head down, not even swinging. Smart man. His green armor was unscored. Even though the move let Adolin slam his sword down and hit the man on the back, it threw Adolin completely out of his stance. Adolin stumbled backward, barely keeping from being thrown to the ground as Jakamav crashed into him. Adolin shoved the man aside, somehow keeping hold of his Shardblade, but the other three moved in. Blows rained on his shoulders, helm, breastplate. Storms. That hammer hit hard. Adolin’s head rang from a blow. He’d almost done it. He let himself grin as they beat on him. Four at once. And he’d almost done it. “I yield,” he said, voice muffled by his helm. They continued attacking. He said it louder. Nobody listened. He raised his hand to signal to the judge to stop the proceedings, but someone slammed his arm downward. No! Adolin thought, swinging about himself in a panic. The judge could not end the fight. If he left this duel alive, he would do so as a cripple. * * * “That’s it,” Dalinar said, watching the four Shardbearers take turns coming in to swing at Adolin, who was obviously disoriented, barely able to fight them off. “The rules allow Adolin to have help, so long as his side is disadvantaged—one less than Relis’s team. Elhokar, I’ll need your Shardblade.” “No,” Elhokar said. The king sat with folded arms beneath the shade. Those around them watched the duel . . . no, the beating . . . in silence. “Elhokar!” Dalinar said, turning. “That is my son.” “You’re without Plate,” Elhokar said. “If you take the time to put some on, you’ll be too late. If you go down, you won’t save Adolin. You’ll simply lose my Blade as well as all the others.” Dalinar clenched his teeth. There was a drop of wisdom in that, and he knew it. Adolin was finished. They needed to end the match now and not put more on the line. “You could help him,
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you know.” Sadeas’s voice. Dalinar spun toward the man. “The dueling conventions don’t forbid it,” Sadeas said, speaking loudly enough for Dalinar to hear. “I checked to make sure. Young Adolin can be helped by up to two people. The Blackthorn I once knew would have been down there already, fighting with a rock if he had to. I guess you’re not that man anymore.” Dalinar sucked in a breath, then stood. “Elhokar, I’ll pay the fee and borrow your Blade by right of the tradition of the King’s Blade. You won’t risk it that way. I’m going to fight.” Elhokar caught him by the arm, standing. “Don’t be a fool, Uncle. Listen to him! Do you see what he’s doing? He obviously wants you to go down and fight.” Dalinar turned to meet the king’s eyes. Pale green. Like his father’s. “Uncle,” Elhokar said, grip tightening on his arm, “listen to me for once. Be a little paranoid. Why would Sadeas want you down there? It’s so that an ‘accident’ can occur! He wants you removed, Dalinar. I guarantee that if you step onto those sands, all four will attack you straight out. Shardblade or none, you’ll be dead before you get into stance.” Dalinar puffed in and out. Elhokar was right. Storm him, but he was right. Dalinar had to do something though. A murmur rose from the watching crowd, whispers like scratches on paper. Dalinar spun to see that someone else had joined the battle, stepping from the preparation room, Shardblade held nervously in two hands but wearing no Plate. Renarin. Oh no . . . * * * One of the attackers moved away, Plated feet crunching on sand. Adolin threw himself in that direction, battering his way out from among the three others. He spun and backed away. His Plate was starting to feel heavy. How much Stormlight had he lost? No broken sections, he thought, keeping his sword toward the three other men who fanned out to advance on him. He could maybe . . . No. Time to end this. He felt a fool, but better a live fool than a dead one. He turned toward the highjudge to signal his surrender. Surely she could see him now. “Adolin,” Relis said, prowling forward, his Plate leaking from small cracks on his chest. “Now, we wouldn’t want to end this prematurely, would we?” “What glory do you think will come of such a fight?” Adolin spat back, sword held carefully, ready to give the signal. “You think people will cheer you? For beating a man four against one?” “This isn’t for honor,” Relis said. “It’s simple punishment.” Adolin snorted. Only then did he notice something on the other side of the arena. Renarin in Kholin blue, holding a wobbly Shardblade and facing down Abrobadar, who stood with sword on his shoulder as if completely unthreatened. “Renarin!” Adolin shouted. “What in the storms are you doing! Go back—” Abrobadar attacked, and Renarin parried awkwardly. Renarin had done all of his sparring in Shardplate so far, but hadn’t
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had the time to fetch his Plate. Abrobadar’s blow just about knocked the weapon from Renarin’s hands. “Now,” Relis said, stepping closer to Adolin, “Abrobadar there is fond of young Renarin, and doesn’t want to hurt him. So he’ll just keep the young man engaged, make a good fight of it. So long as you’re willing to keep up what you promised, and have a good duel with us. Surrender like a coward, or get the king to end the bout, and Abrobadar’s sword might just slip.” Adolin felt a panic rising. He looked toward the highjudge. She could call this on her own, if she felt it had gone too far. She sat imperiously in her seat, watching him. Adolin thought he saw something behind her calm expression. They got to her, he thought. With a bribe, perhaps. Adolin tightened his grip on his Blade and looked back toward his three foes. “You bastards,” he whispered. “Jakamav, how dare you be a part of this?” Jakamav didn’t reply, and Adolin could not see his face behind his green helm. “So,” Relis said. “Shall we?” Adolin’s response was a charge. * * * Dalinar reached the judge’s seat, which sat on its own small, stone dais hanging out a few inches over the dueling grounds. Brightness Istow was a tall, greying woman who sat with hands in her lap, watching the duel. She did not turn as Dalinar stepped up beside her. “It is time to end this, Istow,” Dalinar said. “Call the fight. Award the victory to Relis and his team.” The woman kept her eyes forward, watching the duel. “Did you hear me?” Dalinar demanded. She said nothing. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll end it then.” “I am highprince here, Dalinar,” the woman said. “In this arena, my word is the only law, granted me by the authority of the king.” She turned to him. “Your son has not surrendered and he is not incapacitated. The terms of the duel have not been met, and I will not end it until they have been. Have you no respect for the law?” Dalinar ground his teeth together, then looked back at the arena. Renarin fought one of the men. The lad had barely any training in the sword. In fact, as Dalinar watched, Renarin’s shoulder began to twitch, pulling up toward his head violently. One of his fits. Adolin fought the other three, having cast himself among them again. He fought marvelously, but could not fend off all of them. The three surrounded him and struck. The pauldron on Adolin’s left shoulder exploded into a burst of molten metal, bits trailing smoke through the air, the main chunk of it skidding to the sands a short distance away. That left Adolin’s flesh exposed to the air, and to the Blades facing him. Please . . . Almighty . . . Dalinar turned upon the stands full of spectating lighteyes. “You can watch this?” he shouted at them. “My sons fight alone! There are Shardbearers among you. Is there not one of you
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who will fight with them?” He scanned the crowd. The king was looking at his feet. Amaram. What of Amaram? Dalinar found him seated near the king. Dalinar met the man’s eyes. Amaram looked away. No . . . “What has happened to us?” Dalinar asked. “Where is our honor?” “Honor is dead,” a voice whispered from beside him. Dalinar turned and looked at Captain Kaladin. He hadn’t noticed the bridgeman walking down the steps behind him. Kaladin took a deep breath, then looked at Dalinar. “But I’ll see what I can do. If this goes poorly, take care of my men.” Spear in hand, he grabbed the edge of the wall and flung himself over, dropping to the sands of the arena floor below. Shallan stood up in her seat, watching Adolin’s beating below. Why didn’t he surrender? Give up the bout? Four men. She should have seen that loophole. As his wife, watching for intrigue like this would be her duty. Now, barely betrothed, she’d already failed him disastrously. Beyond that, this fiasco had been her idea. Adolin seemed about to give in, but then for some reason, he threw himself back into the fight instead. “Fool man,” Sebarial said, lounging beside her, Palona on his other side. “Too arrogant to see that he’s beaten.” “No,” Shallan said. “There’s something more.” Her eyes flicked down toward poor Renarin, completely overwhelmed as he tried to fight a Shardbearer. For the briefest instant, she considered going down to help. Sheer stupidity; she’d be even more useless than Renarin down there. Why didn’t anyone else help them? She glared across at the gathered Alethi lighteyes, including Highlord Amaram, the supposed Knight Radiant. Bastard. Shocked at how quickly that sentiment rose inside of her, Shallan looked away from him. Don’t think about it. Well, as nobody was going to help, both princes seemed to stand a good chance of dying. “Pattern,” she whispered. “Go see if you can distract that Shardbearer fighting Prince Renarin.” She would not interfere with Adolin’s fight, not as he’d obviously decided he needed to keep going for some reason. But she would try to keep Renarin from getting maimed, if she could. Pattern hummed and slipped from her skirt, moving across the stone of the arena benches. He seemed painfully obvious to her, moving in the open, but everybody was focused on the fighting below. Don’t you get yourself killed on me, Adolin Kholin, she thought, glancing back up at him as he struggled against his three opponents. Please . . . Someone else dropped to the sands. * * * Kaladin dashed across the arena floor. Again, he thought, remembering coming to Amaram’s rescue so long ago. “This had better end differently than it did that time.” “It will,” Syl promised, zipping along beside his head, a line of light. “Trust me.” Trust. He’d trusted her and spoken to Dalinar about Amaram. That had gone wonderfully. One of the Shardbearers—Relis, the one in black armor—trailed Stormlight from a crack in the vambrace on his left forearm. He glanced
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at Kaladin as he approached, then turned back away, indifferent. Relis obviously didn’t think a simple spearman was a threat. Kaladin smiled, then sucked in some Stormlight. On this bright day, with the sun blazing white overhead, he could risk more than he normally would. Nobody would see it. Hopefully. He sped up, then lunged between two of the Shardbearers, ramming his spear into Relis’s cracked vambrace. The man let out a shout of pain and Kaladin pulled his spear back, twisting between the attackers and getting close to Adolin. The young man in blue armor glanced at him, then quickly turned to put his back toward Kaladin. Kaladin put his own back toward Adolin, preventing either of them from being attacked from behind. “What are you doing here, bridgeboy?” Adolin hissed from within his helmet. “Playing one of the ten fools.” Adolin grunted. “Welcome to the party.” “I won’t be able to get through their armor,” Kaladin said. “You’ll need to crack it for me.” Nearby, Relis shook his arm, cursing. The tip of Kaladin’s spear had blood on it. Not much, unfortunately. “Just keep one of them distracted from me,” Adolin said. “I can handle two.” “I— All right.” It was probably the best plan. “Keep an eye on my brother, if you can,” Adolin said. “If things go sour for these three, they might decide to use him as leverage against us.” “Done,” Kaladin said, then pulled away and jumped to the side as the one with a hammer—Dalinar had named him Elit—tried to attack Adolin. Relis came in from the other side, swinging, as if to cut right through Kaladin and hit Adolin. His heart thumped, but training with Zahel had done its job. He could stare down that Shardblade and feel only a mild panic. He twisted around Relis, dodging the Blade. The black-Plated man glanced at Adolin and took a step in that direction, but Kaladin lunged as if to strike him in the arm again. Relis turned back, then reluctantly let Kaladin draw him away from the fight with Adolin. The man attacked quickly, using what Kaladin could now identify as Vinestance—a style of fighting that focused on defensive footing and flexibility. He went more offensive against Kaladin, but Kaladin twisted and spun, always getting just out of the way of the attacks. Relis started cursing, then turned back to the fight with Adolin. Kaladin slapped him on the side of the head with the butt of his spear. It was a terrible weapon for fighting a Shardbearer, but the blow got the man’s attention again. Relis turned and swept out with his Blade. Kaladin pulled back a hair too slowly, and the Blade sheared the pointed end off his spear. A reminder. His own flesh would put up less resistance than that. Severing his spine would kill him, and no amount of Stormlight would undo that. Careful, he tried to lead Relis farther away from the fight. However, when he pulled back too far, the man just turned and moved toward Adolin. The prince
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fought desperately against his two opponents, swinging his Blade back and forth between the men on either side of him. And storms he was good. Kaladin had never seen this level of skill from Adolin on the practice grounds—nothing there had ever challenged him this much. Adolin moved between sweeps of his Blade, deflecting the Shardblade of the one in green, then warding away the one with the hammer. He frequently came within inches of striking his opponents. Two-on-one against Adolin actually seemed an even match. Three would obviously be too much for him. Kaladin needed to keep Relis distracted. But how? He couldn’t get through that Plate with a spear. The only weak points were the eye slit and the small crack on the vambrace. He had to do something. The man was striding back toward Adolin, weapon raised. Gritting his teeth, Kaladin charged. He crossed the sands in a quick dash and then, right before reaching Relis, Kaladin jumped to put his feet toward the Shardbearer and Lashed himself that direction many times in quick succession. As many as he dared, so many that he burned through all of his Stormlight. Though Kaladin fell only a short distance—enough that it wouldn’t look too unusual to those watching—he hit with the force of having fallen much farther. His feet smashed against the Plate as he kicked with everything he had. Pain shot up his legs like lightning striking, and he heard his bones crack. The kick flung the black-armored Shardbearer forward as if he’d been struck by a boulder. Relis went sprawling on his face, Blade flung from his hands. It vanished to mist. Kaladin crashed to the sand, groaning, his Stormlight exhausted and the Lashings ended. By reflex, he sucked in more Light from the spheres in his pocket, letting it heal his legs. He’d broken them both, and his feet. The healing process seemed to take forever, and he forced himself to roll over and look at Relis. Incredibly, Kaladin’s attack had cracked the Shardplate. Not the center of the back plate where he’d hit, but at the shoulders and sides. Relis climbed to his knees, shaking his head. He looked back at Kaladin with what seemed like an attitude of awe. Beyond the fallen man, Adolin spun and came in at one of his opponents—Elit, the one with the hammer—and slammed his Shardblade two-handed into the man’s chest. The breastplate there exploded into molten light. Adolin took a hit on the side of the helm from the man in green to do it. Adolin was in bad shape. Practically every piece of Plate the young man wore was leaking Stormlight. At this rate, he’d soon have none left, and the Plate would grow too heavy to move in. For now, fortunately, he’d basically incapacitated one of his adversaries. A Shardbearer could fight with his breastplate broken, but it was supposed to be storming difficult. Indeed, as Elit backed away, his steps were awkward, as if his Plate suddenly weighed a lot more. Adolin had to turn to fight
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the other Shardbearer near him. On the other side of the arena, the fourth man—the one who had been “fighting” Renarin—was waving his sword at the ground for some reason. He looked up and saw how poorly things were going for his allies, then left Renarin and dashed across the arena floor. “Wait,” Syl said. “What is that?” She zipped away toward Renarin, but Kaladin couldn’t spare much thought for her behavior. When the man in orange reached Adolin, he’d again be surrounded. Kaladin scrambled to his feet. Blessedly, they worked; the bones had reknit enough for him to walk. He charged Elit, kicking up sand as he ran, spear clutched in one hand. Elit wobbled toward Adolin, intending to continue the fight despite his disabled Plate. Kaladin reached him first, however, ducking under the man’s hasty hammer strike. Kaladin came in swinging from the shoulder, holding his broken spear in two hands, giving the attack all he had. It smashed into Elit’s exposed chest, making a satisfying crunch. The man let out an enormous gasp, doubling over. Kaladin raised his spear to swing again, but the man lifted a wobbling hand, trying to say something. “Yield . . .” his weak voice said. “Louder!” Kaladin snapped at him. The man tried, out of breath. The hand he raised, however, was enough. The watching judge spoke. “Brightlord Elit yields the combat,” she said, sounding reluctant. Kaladin backed away from the cowering man, light on his feet, Stormlight thundering inside of him. The crowd roared, even many of the lighteyes making noise. Three Shardbearers remained. Relis had now returned to his companion in green, both harrying Adolin. They had the prince backed up against a wall. The final Shardbearer, wearing orange, arrived to join them, having left Renarin behind. Renarin sat on the sand, head bowed, Shardblade stuck into the ground before him. Had he been defeated? Kaladin had heard no announcement from the judge. No time to worry. Adolin once again had three people to fight. Relis scored a hit on his helm, and the thing exploded, exposing the prince’s face. He would not last much longer. Kaladin charged up to Elit, who was trying to hobble off the field in defeat. “Remove your helm,” Kaladin shouted at him. The man turned to him with a shocked posture. “Your helm!” Kaladin screamed, raising his weapon to strike again. In the stands, people shouted. Kaladin wasn’t sure of the rules, but he had a suspicion that if he struck this man, he would forfeit the duel. Maybe even face criminal charges. Fortunately, he wasn’t forced to make good on the threat, as Elit removed his helm. Kaladin snatched it from his hand, then left him and ran toward Adolin. As he ran, Kaladin dropped his broken spear and shoved his hand into the helm from the bottom. He’d learned something about Shardplate—it attached itself automatically to its bearer. He’d hoped it might work for the helm now, and it did—the inside tightened around his wrist. When he let go, the helm remained on
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his hand like a very strange glove. Taking a deep breath, Kaladin yanked out his side knife. He’d started carrying one meant for throwing again, as he had as a spearman before his captivity, though he was out of practice with that. Throwing wouldn’t work against that armor anyway; this was a pitiful weapon against Shardbearers. Still, he could not use the spear one-handed. He charged Relis again. This time, Relis backed away immediately. He watched Kaladin, sword held out. At least Kaladin had managed to worry him. Kaladin advanced, backing him away. Relis went easily, keeping his distance. Kaladin made a show of it, darting in, backing the man away as if to give the two of them space to fight. The Shardbearer would be eager for this; with his Blade, he would want a good open area around them. Tight quarters would favor Kaladin’s knife. However, once a sufficient distance away, Kaladin turned and dashed back toward Adolin and the two men he was fighting. He left Relis standing there in an anxious pose, momentarily befuddled by Kaladin’s retreat. Adolin glanced at Kaladin, then nodded. The man in green turned with surprise at Kaladin’s advance. He swung, and Kaladin caught the blow on the Shardplate helm he carried, deflecting it. The man grunted as Adolin threw everything he had at the other Shardbearer, the one in orange, slamming his weapon down again and again. For a short time, Adolin had only one foe to fight. Hopefully he could use that time well, though his steps were lethargic and his Plate’s leaking Stormlight had slowed to a trickle. His legs were nearly immobile. Green Plate attacked Kaladin again, who deflected the blow off the helm, which cracked and began leaking Stormlight. Relis came charging up on the other side, but didn’t join the fight against Adolin—instead, he thrust at Kaladin. Kaladin gritted his teeth, dodging to the side, feeling the Blade pass in the air. He had to buy Adolin time. Moments. He needed moments. The wind began to blow around him. Syl returned to him, zipping through the air as a ribbon of light. Kaladin ducked another blow, then slammed his improvised shield against the Blade of the other, throwing it back. Sand flew as Kaladin leaped back, a Shardblade biting the ground before him. Wind. Motion. Kaladin fought two Shardbearers at once, knocking their Blades aside with the helm. He couldn’t attack—didn’t dare try to attack. He could only survive, and in this, the winds seemed to urge him. Instinct . . . then something deeper . . . guided his steps. He danced between those Blades, cool air wrapping around him. And for a moment, he felt—impossibly—that he could have dodged just as well if his eyes had been closed. The Shardbearers cursed, trying again and again. Kaladin heard the judge say something, but was too absorbed in the fight to pay attention. The crowd was growing louder. He leaped one attack, then stepped just to the side of another. You could not kill the wind. You could
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not stop it. It was beyond the touch of men. It was infinite. . . . His Stormlight ran out. Kaladin stumbled to a halt. He tried to suck in more, but all of his spheres were drained. The helm, he realized, noticing that it was gushing Stormlight from its numerous cracks, yet hadn’t exploded. It had somehow fed upon his Stormlight. Relis attacked and Kaladin barely scrambled out of the way. His back hit the wall of the arena. Green Plate saw his opening and raised his Blade. Someone hopped on him from behind. Kaladin watched, dumbfounded, as Adolin grappled Green Plate, latching on to him. Adolin’s armor hardly leaked at all anymore; his Stormlight was exhausted. It seemed that he could barely move—the sand nearby displayed a set of lurching tracks that led away from Orange Plate, who lay in the sand defeated. That was what the judge had said just earlier: the man in orange had yielded. Adolin had beaten his foe, then walked slowly—one laborious step after another—over to where Kaladin fought. It looked like he’d used his final bit of energy to hop up on Green Plate’s back and grab hold. Green Plate cursed, swatting at Adolin. The prince held on, and his Plate had locked, as they called it—becoming heavy and almost impossible to move. The two teetered, then toppled over. Kaladin looked at Relis, who glanced from the fallen Green Plate to the man in orange, then to Kaladin. Relis turned and dashed across the sands toward Renarin. Kaladin cursed, scrambling after him and tossing the helm aside. His body felt sluggish without the Stormlight to help. “Renarin!” Kaladin yelled. “Yield!” The boy looked up. Storms, he’d been crying. Was he hurt? He didn’t look it. “Surrender!” Kaladin said, trying to run faster, summoning every drop of energy from muscles that felt drained, exhausted from being inflated by Stormlight. The lad focused on Relis, who was bearing down on him, but said nothing. Instead, Renarin dismissed his Blade. Relis skidded to a stop, raising his Blade high over his head toward the defenseless prince. Renarin closed his eyes, looking upward, as if exposing his throat. Kaladin wasn’t going to arrive in time. He was too slow compared to a man in Plate. Relis hesitated, fortunately, as if unwilling to strike Renarin. Kaladin arrived. Relis spun around and swung at him instead. Kaladin skidded to his knees in the sand, momentum carrying him forward a short distance as the Blade fell. He raised his hands and snapped them together. Catching the Blade. Screaming. Why could he hear screaming? Inside his head? Was that Syl’s voice? It reverberated through Kaladin. That horrible, awful screech shook him, made his muscles tremble. He released the Shardblade with a gasp, falling backward. Relis dropped the Blade as if bitten. He backed away, raising his hands to his head. “What is it? What is it! No, I didn’t kill you!” He shrieked as if in great pain, then ran across the sands and pulled open the door to the preparation room,
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fleeing inside. Kaladin heard his screams echoing inside the hallways there long after the man vanished. The arena grew still. “Highlord Relis Ruthar,” the judge finally called, sounding disturbed, “forfeits by cause of leaving the dueling arena.” Kaladin climbed, trembling, to his feet. He glanced at Renarin—the lad was fine—then slowly crossed the arena. Even the watching darkeyes had grown silent. Kaladin was pretty sure they hadn’t heard that strange scream, though. It had only been audible to him and Relis. He stepped up to Adolin and Green Plate. “Stand up and fight me!” Green Plate shouted. He lay faceup on the ground, Adolin buried beneath him and holding on in a wrestling grip. Kaladin knelt down. Green Plate struggled more as Kaladin retrieved his side knife from the sand, then pressed the tip of it into the opening in Green Plate’s armor. The man grew perfectly still. “You going to yield?” Kaladin growled. “Or do I get to kill my second Shardbearer?” Silence. “Storms curse you both!” Green Plate finally shouted inside his helm. “This wasn’t a duel, this was a circus! Grappling is the way of the coward!” Kaladin pressed the knife in farther. “I yield!” the man yelled, holding up his hand. “Storm you, I yield!” “Brightlord Jakamav yields,” the judge said. “The day goes to Brightlord Adolin.” The darkeyes in their seats cheered. The lighteyes seemed stunned. Above, Syl spun with the winds, and Kaladin could feel her joy. Adolin released Green Plate, who rolled off him and stomped away. Underneath, the prince lay in a depression in the sand, head and shoulder exposed through broken pieces of Plate. He was laughing. Kaladin sat down beside the prince as Adolin laughed himself silly, tears streaming from his eyes. “That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,” Adolin said. “Oh, wow. . . . Ha! I think I just won three full suits of Plate and two Blades, bridgeboy. Here, help me get this armor off.” “Your armorer can do that,” Kaladin said. “No time,” Adolin said, trying to sit up. “Storms. Completely drained. Hurry, help with this. There’s something yet for me to do.” Challenge Sadeas, Kaladin realized. That was the point of all of this. He reached in under Adolin’s gauntlet, helping him undo the strap there. The gauntlet didn’t come off automatically, as it was supposed to. Adolin really had completely drained the suit. They pulled the gauntlet off, then worked on the other one. A few minutes later, Renarin wandered over and helped. Kaladin didn’t ask him about what had happened. The lad provided some spheres, and after Kaladin had tucked those in under Adolin’s loosened breastplate, the armor started to function again. They worked to the roar of the crowd as Adolin finally got free of the Plate and stood up. Ahead, the king had stepped up beside the judge, one foot on the railing around the arena. He looked down at Adolin, who nodded. This is Adolin’s chance, Kaladin realized, but it can be my chance too. The king raised his hands,
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quieting the crowd. “Warrior, duelmaster,” the king shouted, “I am greatly pleased by what you have accomplished today. This was a fight the like of which hasn’t been seen in Alethkar for generations. You have pleased your king greatly.” Cheering. I could do this, Kaladin thought. “I offer you a boon,” the king proclaimed, pointing to Adolin as the cheering quieted. “Name what you wish of me or of this court. It shall be yours. No man, having seen this display, could deny you.” The Right of Challenge, Kaladin thought. Adolin sought out Sadeas, who had stood and was making his way up the steps to flee. He understood. Far to the right, Amaram sat in his golden cloak. “For my boon,” Adolin shouted to the quiet arena, “I demand the Right of Challenge. I demand the chance to duel Highprince Sadeas, right here and now, as redress for the crimes he committed against my house!” Sadeas stopped upon the steps. A murmur ran through the crowd. Adolin looked as if he were going to say something more, but hesitated as Kaladin stepped up beside him. “And for my boon!” Kaladin shouted, “I demand the Right of Challenge against the murderer Amaram! He stole from me and slaughtered my friends to cover it up. Amaram branded me a slave! I will duel him here, right now. That is the boon I demand!” The king’s jaw dropped. The crowd grew very, very still. Beside him, Adolin groaned. Kaladin didn’t spare either one a thought. Across the distance, he met the eyes of Brightlord Amaram, the murderer. He saw horror therein. Amaram stood up, then stumbled back. He hadn’t known, hadn’t recognized Kaladin, until just then. You should have killed me, Kaladin thought. The crowd started to shout and yell. “Arrest him!” the king bellowed over the din. Perfect. Kaladin grinned. Until he noticed the soldiers were coming for him and not Amaram. “Captain Kaladin is a man of honor, Elhokar!” Dalinar shouted, gesturing toward Kaladin, who sat nearby. “He was the only one who went to help my sons.” “That’s his job!” Elhokar snapped back. Kaladin listened dully, chained to a seat inside Dalinar’s rooms back in the warcamp. They hadn’t gone to the palace. Kaladin didn’t know why. The three of them were alone. “He insulted a highlord in front of the entire court,” Elhokar said, pacing beside the wall. “He dared challenge a man so high above his station, the gap between them could hold a kingdom.” “He was caught up in the moment,” Dalinar said. “Be reasonable, Elhokar. He’d just helped bring down four Shardbearers!” “On a dueling ground, where his help was invited,” Elhokar said, throwing his hands into the air. “I still don’t agree with letting a darkeyes duel Shardbearers. If you hadn’t held me back . . . Bah! I won’t stand for this, Uncle. I won’t. Common soldiers challenging our highest and most important generals? It is madness.” “What I said was true,” Kaladin whispered. “Don’t you speak!” Elhokar shouted, stopping and leveling a finger at
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Kaladin. “You’ve ruined everything! We lost our chance at Sadeas!” “Adolin made his challenge,” Kaladin said. “Surely Sadeas can’t ignore it.” “Of course he can’t,” Elhokar shouted. “He’s already responded!” Kaladin frowned. “Adolin didn’t get a chance to pin down the duel,” Dalinar said, looking at Kaladin. “As soon as he was free of the arena, Sadeas sent word agreeing to duel Adolin—in one year’s time.” One year? Kaladin felt a hollowness in his stomach. By the time a year had passed, chances were the duel wouldn’t matter anymore. “He wiggled out of the noose,” Elhokar said, throwing up his hands. “We needed that moment in the arena to pin him down, to shame him into a fight! You stole that moment, bridgeman.” Kaladin lowered his head. He’d have stood up to confront them, except for the chains. They were cold around his ankles, locking him to the chair. He remembered chains like those. “This is what you get, Uncle,” Elhokar said, “for putting a slave in charge of our guard. Storms! What were you thinking? What was I thinking in allowing you?” “You saw him fight, Elhokar,” Dalinar said softly. “He is good.” “It’s not his skill but his discipline that is the problem!” The king folded his arms. “Execution.” Kaladin looked up sharply. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dalinar said, stepping up beside Kaladin’s chair. “It is the punishment for slandering a highlord,” Elhokar said. “It is the law.” “You can pardon any crime, as king,” Dalinar said. “Don’t tell me you honestly want to see this man hanged after what he did today.” “Would you stop me?” Elhokar said. “I wouldn’t stand for it, that’s certain.” Elhokar crossed the room, stepping right up to Dalinar. For a moment, Kaladin seemed forgotten. “Am I king?” Elhokar asked. “Of course you are.” “You don’t act like it. You’re going to have to decide something, Uncle. I won’t continue letting you rule, making a puppet of me.” “I’m not—” “I say the boy is to be executed. What do you say of that?” “I’d say that in attempting such a thing, you’d make an enemy of me, Elhokar.” Dalinar had grown tense. Just try to execute me . . . Kaladin thought. Just try. The two stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Elhokar turned away. “Prison.” “How long?” Dalinar said. “Until I say he’s done!” the king said, waving a hand and stalking toward the exit. He stopped there, looking at Dalinar, a challenge in his eyes. “Very well,” Dalinar said. The king left. “Hypocrite,” Kaladin hissed. “He’s the one who insisted you put me in charge of his guard. Now he blames you?” Dalinar sighed, kneeling down beside Kaladin. “What you did today was a wonder. In protecting my sons, you justified my faith in you before the entire court. Unfortunately, you then threw it away.” “He asked me for a boon!” Kaladin snapped, raising his manacled hands. “I got one, it seems.” “He asked Adolin for a boon. You knew what we were about, soldier. You heard the plan
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in conference with us this morning. You overshadowed it in the name of your own petty vengeance.” “Amaram—” “I don’t know where you got this idea about Amaram,” Dalinar said, “but you have to stop. I checked into what you said, after you brought it to my attention the first time. Seventeen witnesses told me that Amaram won his Shardblade only four months ago, long after your ledger says you were made a slave.” “Lies.” “Seventeen men,” Dalinar repeated. “Lighteyed and dark, along with the word of a man I’ve known for decades. You’re wrong about him, soldier. You’re just plain wrong.” “If he is so honorable,” Kaladin whispered, “then why didn’t he fight to save your sons?” Dalinar hesitated. “It doesn’t matter,” Kaladin said, looking away. “You’re going to let the king put me in prison.” “Yes,” Dalinar said, rising. “Elhokar has a temper. Once he cools down, I’ll get you free. For now, it might be best if you had some time to think.” “They’ll have a tough time forcing me to go to prison,” Kaladin said softly. “Have you even been listening?” Dalinar suddenly roared. Kaladin sat back, eyes widening, as Dalinar leaned down, red-faced, taking Kaladin by the shoulders as if to shake him. “Have you not felt what is coming? Have you not seen how this kingdom squabbles? We don’t have time for this! We don’t have time for games! Stop being a child, and start being a soldier! You’ll go to prison, and you’ll go happily. That’s an order. Do you listen to orders anymore?” “I . . .” Kaladin found himself stammering. Dalinar stood up, rubbing his hands on his temples. “I thought we had Sadeas cornered, there. I thought maybe we’d be able to cut his feet out from under him and save this kingdom. Now I don’t know what to do.” He turned and walked to the door. “Thank you for saving my sons.” He left Kaladin alone in the cold stone room. * * * Torol Sadeas slammed the door to his quarters. He walked to his table and leaned over it, hands flat on the surface, looking down at the slice through the center he’d made with Oathbringer. A drop of sweat smacked the surface right beside that slot. He’d kept himself from trembling all the way back to the safety of his warcamp—he’d actually managed to paste on a smile. He’d shown no concern, even as he dictated to his wife a response to the challenge. And all the while, in the back of his mind a voice had laughed at him. Dalinar. Dalinar had almost outmaneuvered him. If that challenge had been sustained, Sadeas would quickly have found himself in the arena with a man who had just defeated not one, but four Shardbearers. He sat down. He did not look for wine. Wine made a man forget, and he didn’t want to forget this. He must never forget this. How satisfying it would be to someday ram Dalinar’s own sword into his chest. Storms. To think he’d almost
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felt pity for his former friend. Now the man pulled something like this. How had he grown so deft? No, Sadeas told himself. This was not deftness. It was luck. Pure and simple luck. Four Shardbearers. How? Even allowing for the help of that slave, it was now obvious that Adolin was at last growing into the man his father had once been. That terrified Sadeas, because the man Dalinar had once been—the Blackthorn—had been a large part of what had conquered this kingdom. Isn’t this what you wanted? Sadeas thought. To reawaken him? No. The deeper truth was that Sadeas didn’t want Dalinar back. He wanted his old friend out of the way, and it had been such for months now, no matter what he wanted to tell himself. A while later, the door to his study opened and Ialai slipped in. Seeing him lost in thought, she stopped by the door. “Organize all of your informants,” Sadeas said, looking up at the ceiling. “Every spy you have, every source you know. Find me something, Ialai. Something to hurt him.” She nodded. “And after that,” Sadeas said, “it will be time to make use of those assassins you’ve planted.” He had to ensure that Dalinar was desperate and wounded—had to guarantee that the others viewed him as broken, ruined. Then he’d end this. * * * Soldiers arrived for Kaladin a short time later. Men that Kaladin didn’t know. They were respectful as they unchained him from the chair, though they left the chains binding his hands and feet. One gave him a lifted fist, a sign of respect. Stay strong, the fist said. Kaladin bowed his head and shuffled with them, led through camp before the watching eyes of soldiers and scribes alike. He caught a glimpse of Bridge Four uniforms in the crowd. He reached Dalinar’s camp prison, where soldiers did time for fighting or other offenses. It was a small, nearly windowless building with thick walls. Inside, in an isolated section, Kaladin was placed in a cell with stone walls and a door of steel bars. They left the chains on as they locked him in. He sat down on a stone bench, waiting, until Syl finally drifted into the room. “This,” Kaladin said, looking at her, “is what comes of trusting lighteyes. Never again, Syl.” “Kaladin . . .” He closed his eyes, turning and lying down on the cold stone bench. He was in a cage once again. THE END OF Part Three Lift had never robbed a palace before. Seemed like a dangerous thing to try. Not because she might get caught, but because once you robbed a starvin’ palace, where did you go next? She climbed up onto the outer wall and looked in at the grounds. Everything inside—trees, rocks, buildings—reflected the starlight in an odd way. A bulbous-looking building stuck up in the middle of it all, like a bubble on a pond. In fact, most of the buildings were that same round shape, often with small protrusions sprouting out of the top.
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There wasn’t a straight line in the whole starvin’ place. Just lots and lots of curves. Lift’s companions climbed up to peek over the top of the wall. A scuffling, scrambling, rowdy mess they were. Six men, supposedly master thieves. They couldn’t even climb a wall properly. “The Bronze Palace itself,” Huqin breathed. “Bronze? Is that what everythin’ is made of?” Lift asked, sitting on the wall with one leg over the side. “Looks like a bunch of breasts.” The men looked at her, aghast. They were all Azish, with dark skin and hair. She was Reshi, from the islands up north. Her mother had told her that, though Lift had never seen the place. “What?” Huqin demanded. “Breasts,” Lift said, pointing. “See, like a lady layin’ on her back. Those points on the tops are nipples. Bloke who built this place musta been single for a looong time.” Huqin turned to one of his companions. Using their ropes, they scuttled back down the outside of the wall to hold a whispered conference. “Grounds at this end look empty, as my informant indicated would be the case,” Huqin said. He was in charge of the lot of them. Had a nose like someone had taken hold of it when he was a kid and pulled real, real hard. Lift was surprised he didn’t smack people in the face with it when he turned. “Everyone’s focused on choosing the new Prime Aqasix,” said Maxin. “We could really do this. Rob the Bronze Palace itself, and right under the nose of the vizierate.” “Is it . . . um . . . safe?” asked Huqin’s nephew. He was in his teens, and puberty hadn’t been kind to him. Not with that face, that voice, and those spindly legs. “Hush,” Huqin snapped. “No,” Tigzikk said, “the boy is right to express caution. This will be very dangerous.” Tigzikk was considered the learned one in the group on account of his being able to cuss in three languages. Downright scholarly, that was. He wore fancy clothing, while most of the others wore black. “There will be chaos,” Tigzikk continued, “because so many people move through the palace tonight, but there will also be danger. Many, many bodyguards and a likelihood of suspicion on all sides.” Tigzikk was an aging fellow, and was the only one of the group Lift knew well. She couldn’t say his name. That “quq” sound on the end of his name sounded like choking when someone pronounced it correctly. She just called him Tig instead. “Tigzikk,” Huqin said. Yup. Choking. “You were the one who suggested this. Don’t tell me you’re getting cold now.” “I’m not backing down. I’m pleading caution.” Lift leaned down over the wall toward them. “Less arguing,” she said. “Let’s move. I’m hungry.” Huqin looked up. “Why did we bring her along?” “She’ll be useful,” Tigzikk said. “You’ll see.” “She’s just a child!” “She’s a youth. She’s at least twelve.” “I ain’t twelve,” Lift snapped, looming over them. They turned up toward her. “I ain’t,” she said. “Twelve’s
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an unlucky number.” She held up her hands. “I’m only this many.” “. . . Ten?” Tigzikk asked. “Is that how many that is? Sure, then. Ten.” She lowered her hands. “If I can’t count it on my fingers, it’s unlucky.” And she’d been that many for three years now. So there. “Seems like there are a lot of unlucky ages,” Huqin said, sounding amused. “Sure are,” she agreed. She scanned the grounds again, then glanced back the way they had come, into the city. A man walked down one of the streets leading to the palace. His dark clothing blended into the gloom, but his silver buttons glinted each time he passed a streetlight. Storms, she thought, a chill running up her spine. I didn’t lose him after all. She looked down at the men. “Are you coming with me or not? ’Cuz I’m leaving.” She slipped over the top and dropped into the palace yards. Lift squatted there, feeling the cold ground. Yup, it was metal. Everything was bronze. Rich people, she decided, loved to stick with a theme. As the boys finally stopped arguing and started climbing, a thin, twisting trail of vines grew out of the darkness and approached Lift. It looked like a little stream of spilled water picking its way across the floor. Here and there, bits of clear crystal peeked out of the vines, like sections of quartz in otherwise dark stone. Those weren’t sharp, but smooth like polished glass, and didn’t glow with Stormlight. The vines grew super-fast, curling about one another in a tangle that formed a face. “Mistress,” the face said. “Is this wise?” “’Ello, Voidbringer,” Lift said, scanning the grounds. “I am not a Voidbringer!” he said. “And you know it. Just . . . just stop saying that!” Lift grinned. “You’re my pet Voidbringer, and no lies are going to change that. I got you captured. No stealing souls, now. We ain’t here for souls. Just a little thievery, the type what never hurt nobody.” The vine face—he called himself Wyndle—sighed. Lift scuttled across the bronze ground over to a tree that was, of course, also made of bronze. Huqin had chosen the darkest part of night, between moons, for them to slip in—but the starlight was enough to see by on a cloudless night like this. Wyndle grew up to her, leaving a small trail of vines that people didn’t seem to be able to see. The vines hardened after a few moments of sitting, as if briefly becoming solid crystal, then they crumbled to dust. People spotted that on occasion, though they certainly couldn’t see Wyndle himself. “I’m a spren,” Wyndle said to her. “Part of a proud and noble—” “Hush,” Lift said, peeking out from behind the bronze tree. An open-topped carriage passed on the drive beyond, carrying some important Azish folk. You could tell by the coats. Big, drooping coats with really wide sleeves and patterns that argued with each other. They all looked like kids who had snuck into their parents’ wardrobe. The hats were
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nifty, though. The thieves followed behind her, moving with reasonable stealth. They really weren’t that bad. Even if they didn’t know how to climb a wall properly. They gathered around her, and Tigzikk stood up, straightening his coat—which was an imitation of one of those worn by the rich scribe types who worked in the government. Here in Azir, working for the government was real important. Everyone else was said to be “discrete,” whatever that meant. “Ready?” Tigzikk said to Maxin, who was the other one of the thieves dressed in fine clothing. Maxin nodded, and the two of them moved off to the right, heading toward the palace’s sculpture garden. The important people would supposedly be shuffling around in there, speculating about who should be the next Prime. Dangerous job, that. The last two had gotten their heads chopped off by some bloke in white with a Shardblade. The most recent Prime hadn’t lasted two starvin’ days! With Tigzikk and Maxin gone, Lift only had four others to worry about. Huqin, his nephew, and two slender brothers who didn’t talk much and kept reaching under their coats for knives. Lift didn’t like their type. Thieving shouldn’t leave bodies. Leaving bodies was easy. There was no challenge to it if you could just kill anyone who spotted you. “You can get us in,” Huqin said to Lift. “Right?” Lift pointedly rolled her eyes. Then she scuttled across the bronze grounds toward the main palace structure. Really does look like a breast . . . Wyndle curled along the ground beside her, his vine trail sprouting tiny bits of clear crystal here and there. He was as sinuous and speedy as a moving eel, only he grew rather than actually moving. Voidbringers were a strange lot. “You realize that I didn’t choose you,” he said, a face appearing in the vines as they moved. His speaking left a strange effect, the trail behind him clotted with a sequence of frozen faces. The mouth seemed to move because it was growing so quickly beside her. “I wanted to pick a distinguished Iriali matron. A grandmother, an accomplished gardener. But no, the Ring said we should choose you. ‘She has visited the Old Magic,’ they said. ‘Our mother has blessed her,’ they said. ‘She will be young, and we can mold her,’ they said. Well, they don’t have to put up with—” “Shut it, Voidbringer,” Lift hissed, drawing up beside the wall of the palace. “Or I’ll bathe in blessed water and go listen to the priests. Maybe get an exorcism.” Lift edged sideways until she could look around the curve of the wall to spot the guard patrol: men in patterned vests and caps, with long halberds. She looked up the side of the wall. It bulged out just above her, like a rockbud, before tapering up further. It was of smooth bronze, with no handholds. She waited until the guards had walked farther away. “All right,” she whispered to Wyndle. “You gotta do what I say.” “I do not.” “Sure you do. I
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captured you, just like in the stories.” “I came to you,” Wyndle said. “Your powers come from me! Do you even listen to—” “Up the wall,” Lift said, pointing. Wyndle sighed, but obeyed, creeping up the wall in a wide, looping pattern. Lift hopped up, grabbing the small handholds made by the vine, which stuck to the surface by virtue of thousands of branching stems with sticky discs on them. Wyndle wove ahead of her, making a ladder of sorts. It wasn’t easy. It was starvin’ difficult, with that bulge, and Wyndle’s handholds weren’t very big. But she did it, climbing all the way to the near-top of the building’s dome, where windows peeked out at the grounds. She glanced toward the city. No sign of the man in the black uniform. Maybe she’d lost him. She turned back to examine the window. Its nice wooden frame held very thick glass, even though it pointed east. It was unfair how well Azimir was protected from highstorms. They should have to live with the wind, like normal folk. “We need to Voidbring that,” she said, pointing at the window. “Have you realized,” Wyndle said, “that while you claim to be a master thief, I do all of the work in this relationship?” “You do all the complainin’ too,” she said. “How do we get through this?” “You have the seeds?” She nodded, fishing in her pocket. Then in the other one. Then in her back pocket. Ah, there they were. She pulled out a handful of seeds. “I can’t affect the Physical Realm except in minor ways,” Wyndle said. “This means that you will need to use Investiture to—” Lift yawned. “Use Investiture to—” She yawned wider. Starvin’ Voidbringers never could catch a hint. Wyndle sighed. “Spread the seeds on the frame.” She did so, throwing the handful of seeds at the window. “Your bond to me grants two primary classes of ability,” Wyndle said. “The first, manipulation of friction, you’ve already—don’t yawn at me!—discovered. We have been using that well for many weeks now, and it is time for you to learn the second, the power of Growth. You aren’t ready for what was once known as Regrowth, the healing of—” Lift pressed her hand against the seeds, then summoned her awesomeness. She wasn’t sure how she did it. She just did. It had started right around when Wyndle had first appeared. He hadn’t talked then. She kind of missed those days. Her hand glowed faintly with white light, like vapor coming off the skin. The seeds that saw the light started to grow. Fast. Vines burst from the seeds and wormed into the cracks between the window and its frame. The vines grew at her will, making constricted, straining sounds. The glass cracked, then the window frame popped open. Lift grinned. “Well done,” Wyndle said. “We’ll make an Edgedancer out of you yet.” Her stomach grumbled. When had she last eaten? She’d used a lot of her awesomeness practicing earlier. She probably should have stolen something to eat. She wasn’t quite
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so awesome when she was hungry. She slipped inside the window. Having a Voidbringer was useful, though she wasn’t completely sure her powers came from him. That seemed the sorta thing a Voidbringer would lie about. She had captured him, fair and square. She’d used words. A Voidbringer had no body, not really. To catch something like that, you had to use words. Everybody knew it. Just like curses made evil things come find you. She had to get out a sphere—a diamond mark, her lucky one—to see properly in here. The small bedroom was decorated after the Azish way with lots of intricate patterns on the rugs and the fabric on the walls, mostly gold and red here. Those patterns were everything to the Azish. They were like words. She looked out the window. Surely she’d escaped Darkness, the man in the black and silver with the pale crescent birthmark on his cheek. The man with the dead, lifeless stare. Surely he hadn’t followed her all the way from Marabethia. That was half a continent away! Well, a quarter one, at the least. Convinced, she uncoiled the rope that she wore wrapped around her waist and over her shoulders. She tied it to the door of a built-in closet, then fed it out the window. It tightened as the men started climbing. Nearby, Wyndle grew up around one of the bedposts, coiled like a skyeel. She heard whispered voices below. “Did you see that? She climbed right up it. Not a handhold in sight. How . . . ?” “Hush.” That was Huqin. Lift began poking through cabinets and drawers as the boys clambered in the window one at a time. Once inside, the thieves pulled up the rope and shut the window as best they could. Huqin studied the vines she’d grown from seeds on the frame. Lift stuck her head in the bottom of a wardrobe, groping around. “Ain’t nothing in this room but moldy shoes.” “You,” Huqin said to her, “and my nephew will hold this room. The three of us will search the bedrooms nearby. We will be back shortly.” “You’ll probably have a whole sack of moldy shoes . . .” Lift said, pulling out of the wardrobe. “Ignorant child,” Huqin said, pointing at the wardrobe. One of his men grabbed the shoes and outfits inside, stuffing them in a sack. “This clothing will sell for bundles. It’s exactly what we’re looking for.” “What about real riches?” Lift said. “Spheres, jewelry, art . . .” She had little interest in those things herself, but she’d figured it was what Huqin was after. “That will all be far too well guarded,” Huqin said as his two associates made quick work of the room’s clothing. “The difference between a successful thief and a dead thief is knowing when to escape with your takings. This haul will let us live in luxury for a year or two. That is enough.” One of the brothers peeked out the door into the hallway. He nodded, and the three of them slipped
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out. “Listen for the warning,” Huqin said to his nephew, then eased the door almost closed behind him. Tigzikk and his accomplice below would listen for any kind of alarm. If anything seemed to be amiss, they’d slip off and blow their whistles. Huqin’s nephew crouched by the window to listen, obviously taking his duty very seriously. He looked to be about sixteen. Unlucky age, that. “How did you climb the wall like that?” the youth asked. “Gumption,” Lift said. “And spit.” He frowned at her. “I gots magic spit.” He seemed to believe her. Idiot. “Is it strange for you here?” he asked. “Away from your people?” She stood out. Straight black hair—she wore it down to her waist—tan skin, rounded features. Everyone would immediately mark her as Reshi. “Don’t know,” Lift said, strolling to the door. “Ain’t never been around my people.” “You’re not from the islands?” “Nope. Grew up in Rall Elorim.” “The . . . City of Shadows?” “Yup.” “Is it—” “Yup. Just like they say.” She peeked through the door. Huqin and the others were well out of the way. The hallway was bronze—walls and everything—but a red and blue rug, with lots of little vine patterns, ran down the center. Paintings hung on the walls. She pulled the door all the way open and stepped out. “Lift!” The nephew scrambled to the door. “They told us to wait here!” “And?” “And we should wait here! We don’t want to get Uncle Huqin in trouble!” “What’s the point of sneaking into a palace if not to get into trouble?” She shook her head. Odd men, these. “This should be an interesting place, what with all of the rich folk hanging around.” There ought to be some really good food in here. She padded out into the hallway, and Wyndle grew along the floor beside her. Interestingly, the nephew followed. She’d expected him to stay in the room. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he said as they passed a door that was open a crack, shuffles sounding from inside. Huqin and his men, robbing the place silly. “Then stay,” Lift whispered, reaching a large stairwell. Servants whisked back and forth below, even a few parshmen, but she didn’t catch sight of anyone in one of those coats. “Where are the important folk?” “Reading forms,” the nephew said from beside her. “Forms?” “Sure,” he said. “With the Prime dead, the viziers, scribes, and arbiters were all given a chance to fill out the proper paperwork to apply to take his place.” “You apply to be emperor?” Lift said. “Sure,” he said. “Lots of paperwork involved in that. And an essay. Your essay has to be really good to get this job.” “Storms. You people are crazy.” “Other nations do it better? With bloody succession wars? This way, everyone has a chance. Even the lowest of clerks can submit the paperwork. You can even be discrete and end up on the throne, if you are convincing enough. It happened once.” “Crazy.” “Says the girl who talks to herself.” Lift looked
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at him sharply. “Don’t pretend you don’t,” he said. “I’ve seen you doing it. Talking to the air, as if somebody were there.” “What’s your name?” she asked. “Gawx.” “Wow. Well then, Gaw. I don’t talk to myself because I’m crazy.” “No?” “I do it because I’m awesome.” She started down the steps, waited for a gap between passing servants, then made for a closet across the way. Gawx cursed, then followed. Lift was tempted to use her awesomeness to slide across the floor quickly, but she didn’t need that yet. Besides, Wyndle kept complaining that she used the awesomeness too often. That she was at risk of malnutrition, whatever that meant. She slipped up to the closet, using just her normal everyday sneakin’ skills, and moved inside. Gawx scrambled into the closet with her just before she pulled it shut. Dinnerware on a serving cart clinked behind them, and they could barely crowd into the space. Gawx moved, causing more clinks, and she elbowed him. He stilled as two parshmen passed, bearing large wine barrels. “You should go back upstairs,” Lift whispered to him. “This could be dangerous.” “Oh, sneaking into the storming royal palace is dangerous? Thanks. I hadn’t realized.” “I mean it,” Lift said, peeking out of the closet. “Go back up, leave when Huqin returns. He’ll abandon me in a heartbeat. Probably will you, too.” Besides, she didn’t want to be awesome with Gawx around. That started questions. And rumors. She hated both. For once, she’d like to be able to stay someplace for a while without being forced to run off. “No,” Gawx said softly. “If you’re going to steal something good, I want a piece of it. Then maybe Huqin will stop making me stay behind, giving me the easy jobs.” Huh. So he had some spunk to him. A servant passed carrying a large, plate-filled tray. The food smells wafting from it made Lift’s stomach growl. Rich-person food. So delicious. Lift watched the woman go, then broke out of the closet, following after. This was going to get difficult with Gawx in tow. He’d been trained well enough by his uncle, but moving unseen through a populated building wasn’t easy. The serving woman pulled open a door that was hidden in the wall. Servants’ hallways. Lift caught it as it closed, waited a few heartbeats, then eased it open and slipped through. The narrow hallway was poorly lit and smelled of the food that had just passed. Gawx entered behind Lift, then silently pulled the door closed. The serving woman disappeared around a corner ahead—there were probably lots of hallways like this in the palace. Behind Lift, Wyndle grew around the doorframe, a dark green, funguslike creep of vines that covered the door, then the wall beside her. He formed a face in the vines and spots of crystal, then shook his head. “Too narrow?” Lift asked. He nodded. “It’s dark in here. Hard to see us.” “Vibrations on the floor, mistress. Someone coming this direction.” She looked longingly after the servant with the food,
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then shoved past Gawx and pushed open the door, entering the main hallways again. Gawx cursed. “Do you even know what you’re doing?” “No,” she said, then scuttled around a corner into a large hallway lined with alternating green and yellow gemstone lamps. Unfortunately, a servant in a stiff, black and white uniform was coming right at her. Gawx let out a “meep” of worry, ducking back around the corner. Lift stood up straight, clasped her hands behind her back, and strolled forward. She passed the man. His uniform marked him as someone important, for a servant. “You, there!” the man snapped. “What is this?” “Mistress wants some cake,” Lift said, jutting out her chin. “Oh, for Yaezir’s sake. Food is served in the gardens! There is cake there!” “Wrong type,” Lift said. “Mistress wants berry cake.” The man threw his hands into the air. “Kitchens are back the other way,” he said. “Try and persuade the cook, though she’ll probably chop your hands off before she takes another special request. Storming country scribes! Special dietary needs are supposed to be sent ahead of time, with the proper forms!” He stalked off, leaving Lift with hands behind her back, watching him. Gawx slunk around the corner. “I thought we were dead for sure.” “Don’t be stupid,” Lift said, hurrying down the hallway. “This ain’t the dangerous part yet.” At the other end, this hallway intersected another one—with the same wide rug down the center, bronze walls, and glowing metal lamps. Across the way was a door with no light shining under it. Lift checked in both directions, then dashed to the door, cracked it, peeked in, then waved for Gawx to join her inside. “We should go right down that hallway outside,” Gawx whispered as she shut the door all but a crack. “Down that way, we’ll find the vizier quarters. They’re probably empty, because everyone will be in the Prime’s wing deliberating.” “You know the palace layout?” she asked, crouching in near darkness beside the door. They were in a small sitting room of some sort, with a couple of shadowed chairs and a small table. “Yeah,” Gawx said. “I memorized the palace maps before we came. You didn’t?” She shrugged. “I’ve been in here once before,” Gawx said. “I watched the Prime sleeping.” “You what?” “He’s public,” Gawx said, “belongs to everyone. You can enter a lottery to come look at him sleeping. They rotate people through every hour.” “What? On a special day or something?” “No, every day. You can watch him eat too, or watch him perform his daily rituals. If he loses a hair or cuts off a nail, you might be able to keep it as a relic.” “Sounds creepy.” “A little.” “Which way to his rooms?” Lift asked. “That way,” Gawx said, pointing left down the hallway outside—the opposite direction from the vizier chambers. “You don’t want to go there, Lift. That’s where the viziers and everyone important will be reviewing applications. In the Prime’s presence.” “But he’s dead.” “The new Prime.” “He ain’t been
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chosen yet!” “Well, it’s kind of strange,” Gawx said. By the dim light of the cracked door, she could see him blushing, as if he knew how starvin’ odd this all was. “There’s never not a Prime. We just don’t know who he is yet. I mean, he’s alive, and he’s already Prime—right now. We’re just catching up. So, those are his quarters, and the scions and viziers want to be in his presence while they decide who he is. Even if the person they decide upon isn’t in the room.” “That makes no sense.” “Of course it makes sense,” Gawx said. “It’s government. This is all very well detailed in the codes and . . .” He trailed off as Lift yawned. Azish could be real boring. At least he could take a hint, though. “Anyway,” Gawx continued, “everyone outside in the gardens is hoping to be called in for a personal interview. It might not come to that, though. The scions can’t be Prime, as they’re too busy visiting and blessing villages around the kingdom—but a vizier can, and they tend to have the best applications. Usually, one of their number is chosen.” “The Prime’s quarters,” Lift said. “That’s the direction the food went.” “What is it with you and food?” “I’m going to eat their dinner,” she said, soft but intense. Gawx blinked, startled. “You’re . . . what?” “I’m gonna eat their food,” she said. “Rich folk have the best food.” “But . . . there might be spheres in the vizier quarters. . . .” “Eh,” she said. “I’d just spend ’em on food.” Stealing regular stuff was no fun. She wanted a real challenge. Over the last two years, she’d picked the most difficult places to enter. Then she’d snuck in. And eaten their dinners. “Come on,” she said, moving out of the doorway, then turned left toward the Prime’s chambers. “You really are crazy,” Gawx whispered. “Nah. Just bored.” He looked the other way. “I’m going for the vizier quarters.” “Suit yourself,” she said. “I’d go back upstairs instead, if I were you. You aren’t practiced enough for this kind of thing. You leave me, you’re probably going to get into trouble.” He fidgeted, then slipped off in the direction of the vizier quarters. Lift rolled her eyes. “Why did you even come with them?” Wyndle asked, creeping out of the room. “Why not just sneak in on your own?” “Tigzikk found out about this whole election thing,” she said. “He told me tonight was a good night for sneaking. I owed it to him. Besides, I wanted to be here in case he got into trouble. I might need to help.” “Why bother?” Why indeed? “Someone has to care,” she said, starting down the hallway. “Too few people care, these days.” “You say this while coming in to rob people.” “Sure. Ain’t gonna hurt them.” “You have an odd sense of morality, mistress.” “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Every sense of morality is odd.” “I suppose.” “Particularly to a Voidbringer.” “I’m not—” She grinned
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and hurried her pace toward the Prime’s quarters. She knew she’d found those when she glanced down a side hallway and spotted guards at the end. Yup. That door was so nice, it had to belong to an emperor. Only super-rich folk built fancy doors. You needed money coming out your ears before you spent it on a door. Guards were a problem. Lift knelt down, peeking around the corner. The hallway leading to the emperor’s rooms was narrow, like an alleyway. Smart. Hard to sneak down something like that. And those two guards, they weren’t the bored type. They were the “we gotta stand here and look real angry” type. They stood so straight, you’d have thought someone had shoved brooms up their backsides. She glanced upward. The hallway was tall; rich folk liked tall stuff. If they’d been poor, they’d have built another floor up there for their aunts and cousins to live in. Rich people wasted space instead. Proved they had so much money, they could waste it. Seemed perfectly rational to steal from them. “There,” Lift whispered, pointing to a small ornamented ledge that ran along the wall up above. It wouldn’t be wide enough to walk on, unless you were Lift. Which, fortunately, she was. It was dim up there too. The chandeliers were the dangly kind, and they hung low, with mirrors reflecting their spherelight downward. “Up we go,” she said. Wyndle sighed. “You gotta do what I say or I’ll prune you.” “You’ll . . . prune me.” “Sure.” That sounded threatening, right? Wyndle grew up the wall, giving her handholds. Already, the vines he’d trailed through the hallway behind them were vanishing, becoming crystal and disintegrating into dust. “Why don’t they notice you?” Lift whispered. She’d never asked him, despite their months together. “Is it ’cuz only the pure in heart can see you?” “You’re not serious.” “Sure. That’d fit into legends and stories and stuff.” “Oh, the theory itself isn’t ridiculous,” Wyndle said, speaking out of a bit of vine near her, the various cords of green moving like lips. “Merely the idea that you consider yourself to be pure in heart.” “I’m pure,” Lift whispered, grunting as she climbed. “I’m a child and stuff. I’m so storming pure I practically belch rainbows.” Wyndle sighed again—he liked to do that—as they reached the ledge. Wyndle grew along the side of it, making it slightly wider, and Lift stepped onto it. She balanced carefully, then nodded to Wyndle. He grew further along the ledge, then doubled back and grew up the wall to a point above her head. From there, he grew horizontally to give her a handhold. With the extra inch of vine on the ledge and the handhold above, she managed to sidle along, stomach to the wall. She took a deep breath, then turned the corner into the hallway with the guards. She moved along it slowly, Wyndle wrapping back and forth, enhancing both footing and handholds for her. The guards didn’t cry out. She was doing it. “They can’t see
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me,” Wyndle said, growing up beside her to create another line of handholds, “because I exist mostly in the Cognitive Realm, even though I’ve moved my consciousness to this Realm. I can make myself visible to anyone, should I desire, though it’s not easy for me. Other spren are more skilled at it, while some have the opposite trouble. Of course, no matter how I manifest, nobody can touch me, as I barely have any substance in this Realm.” “Nobody but me,” Lift whispered, inching down the hallway. “You shouldn’t be able to either,” he said, sounding troubled. “What did you ask for, when you visited my mother?” Lift didn’t have to answer that, not to a storming Voidbringer. She eventually reached the end of the hallway. Beneath her was the door. Unfortunately, that was exactly where the guards stood. “This does not seem very well thought out, mistress,” Wyndle noted. “Had you considered what you were going to do once you got here?” She nodded. “Well?” “Wait,” she whispered. They did, Lift with her front pressed to the wall, her heels hanging out above a fifteen-foot drop onto the guards. She didn’t want to fall. She was pretty sure she was awesome enough to survive it, but if they saw her, that would end the game. She’d have to run, and she’d never get any dinner. Fortunately, she’d guessed right, unfortunately. A guard appeared at the other end of the hallway, looking out of breath and not a little annoyed. The other two guards jogged over to him. He turned, pointing the other way. That was her chance. Wyndle grew a vine downward, and Lift grabbed it. She could feel the crystals jutting out between the tendrils, but they were smooth and faceted—not angular and sharp. She dropped, vine smooth between her fingers, pulling herself to a stop just before the floor. She only had a few seconds. “. . . caught a thief trying to ransack the vizier quarters,” said the newer guard. “Might be more. Keep watch. By Yaezir himself! I can’t believe they’d dare. Tonight of all nights!” Lift cracked open the door to the emperor’s rooms and peeked in. Big room. Men and women at a table. Nobody looking her direction. She slipped through the door. Then became awesome. She ducked down, kicked herself forward, and for a moment, the floor—the carpet, the wood beneath—had no purchase on her. She glided as if on ice, making no noise as she slid across the ten-foot gap. Nothing could hold her when she got Slick like this. Fingers would slip off her, and she could glide forever. She didn’t think she’d ever stop unless she turned off the awesomeness. She’d slide all the way to the storming ocean itself. Tonight, she stopped herself under the table, using her fingers—which weren’t Slick—then removed the Slickness from her legs. Her stomach growled in complaint. She needed food. Real fast, or no more awesomeness for her. “Somehow, you are partly in the Cognitive Realm,” Wyndle said, coiling beside her and raising a
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twisting mesh of vines that could make a face. “It is the only answer I can find to why you can touch spren. And you can metabolize food directly into Stormlight.” She shrugged. He was always saying words like those. Trying to confuse her, starvin’ Voidbringer. Well, she wouldn’t talk back to him, not now. The men and women standing around the table might hear her, even if they couldn’t hear Wyndle. That food was in here somewhere. She could smell it. “But why?” Wyndle said. “Why did She give you this incredible talent? Why a child? There are soldiers, grand kings, incredible scholars among humankind. Instead she chose you.” Food, food, food. Smelled great. Lift crawled along under the long table. The men and women up above were talking in very concerned voices. “Your application was clearly the best, Dalksi.” “What! I misspelled three words in the first paragraph alone!” “I didn’t notice.” “You didn’t . . . Of course you noticed! But this is pointless, because Axikk’s essay was obviously superior to mine.” “Don’t bring me into this again. We disqualified me. I’m not fit to be Prime. I have a bad back.” “Ashno of Sages had a bad back. He was one of the greatest Emuli Primes.” “Bah! My essay was utter rubbish, and you know it.” Wyndle moved along beside Lift. “Mother has given up on your kind. I can feel it. She doesn’t care any longer. Now that He’s gone . . .” “This arguing does not befit us,” said a commanding female voice. “We should take our vote. People are waiting.” “Let it go to one of those fools in the gardens.” “Their essays were dreadful. Just look at what Pandri wrote across the top of hers.” “My . . . I . . . I don’t know what half of that even means, but it does seem insulting.” This finally caught Lift’s attention. She looked up toward the table above. Good cusses? Come on, she thought. Read a few of those. “We’ll have to pick one of them,” the other voice—she sounded very in charge—said. “Kadasixes and Stars, this is a puzzle. What do we do when nobody wants to be Prime?” Nobody wanted to be Prime? Had the entire country suddenly grown some sense? Lift continued on. Being rich seemed fun and all, but being in charge of that many people? Pure misery, that would be. “Perhaps we should pick the worst application,” one of the voices said. “In this situation, that would indicate the cleverest applicant.” “Six different monarchs killed . . .” one of the voices said, a new one. “In a mere two months. Highprinces slaughtered throughout the East. Religious leaders. And then, two Primes murdered in a matter of a single week. Storms . . . I almost think it’s another Desolation come upon us.” “A Desolation in the form of a single man. Yaezir help the one we choose. It is a death sentence.” “We have stalled too long as it is. These weeks of waiting with no Prime
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have been harmful to Azir. Let’s just pick the worst application. From this stack.” “What if we pick someone who is legitimately terrible? Is it not our duty to care for the kingdom, regardless of the risk to the one we choose?” “But in picking the best from among us, we doom our brightest, our best, to die by the sword . . . Yaezir help us. Scion Ethid, a prayer for guidance would be appreciated. We need Yaezir himself to show us his will. Perhaps if we choose the right person, he or she will be protected by his hand.” Lift reached the end of the table and looked out at a banquet that had been set onto a smaller table at the other side of the room. This place was very Azish. Curls of embroidery everywhere. Carpets so fine, they probably drove some poor woman blind weaving them. Dark colors and dim lights. Paintings on the walls. Huh, Lift thought, someone scratched a face off of that one. Who’d ruin a painting like that, and such a fine one, the Heralds all in a row? Well, nobody seemed to be touching that feast. Her stomach growled, but she waited for a distraction. It came soon after. The door opened. Likely the guards coming to report about the thief they’d found. Poor Gawx. She’d have to go break him out later. Right now, it was time for food. Lift shoved herself forward on her knees and used her awesomeness to Slick her legs. She slid across the floor and grabbed the corner leg of the food table. Her momentum smoothly pivoted her around and behind it. She crouched down, the tablecloth neatly hiding her from the people at the room’s center, and unSlicked her legs. Perfect. She reached up a hand and plucked a dinner roll off the table. She took a bite, then hesitated. Why had everyone grown quiet? She risked a glance over the tabletop. He had arrived. The tall Azish man with the white mark on his cheek, like a crescent. Black uniform with a double row of silver buttons down the coat’s front, a stiff silver collar poking up from a shirt underneath. His thick gloves had collars of their own that extended halfway back around his forearms. Dead eyes. This was Darkness himself. Oh no. “What is the meaning of this!” demanded one of the viziers, a woman in one of their large coats with the too-big sleeves. Her cap was of a different pattern, and it clashed quite spectacularly with the coat. “I am here,” Darkness said, “for a thief.” “Do you realize where you are? How dare you interrupt—” “I have,” Darkness said, “the proper forms.” He spoke completely without emotion. No annoyance at being challenged, no arrogance or pomposity. Nothing at all. One of his minions entered behind him, a man in a black and silver uniform, less ornamented. He proffered a neat stack of papers to his master. “Forms are all well and good,” the vizier said. “But this is not the
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time, constable, for—” Lift bolted. Her instincts finally battered down her surprise and she ran, leaping over a couch on her way to the room’s back door. Wyndle moved beside her in a streak. She tore a hunk off the roll with her teeth; she was going to need the food. Beyond that door would be a bedroom, and a bedroom would have a window. She slammed open the door, dashing through. Something swung from the shadows on the other side. A cudgel took her in the chest. Ribs cracked. Lift gasped, dropping face-first to the floor. Another of Darkness’s minions stepped from the shadows inside the bedroom. “Even the chaotic,” Darkness said, “can be predictable with proper study.” His feet thumped across the floor behind her. Lift gritted her teeth, curled up on the floor. Didn’t get enough to eat . . . So hungry. The few bites she’d taken earlier worked within her. She felt the familiar feeling, like a storm in her veins. Liquid awesomeness. The pain faded from her chest as she healed. Wyndle ran around her in a circle, a little lasso of vines sprouting leaves on the floor, looping her again and again. Darkness stepped up close. Go! She leaped to her hands and knees. He seized her by the shoulder, but she could escape that. She summoned her awesomeness. Darkness thrust something toward her. The little animal was like a cremling, but with wings. Bound wings, tied-up legs. It had a strange little face, not crabbish like a cremling. More like a tiny axehound, with a snout, mouth, and eyes. It seemed sickly, and its shimmering eyes were pained. How could she tell that? The creature sucked the awesomeness from Lift. She actually saw it go, a glistening whiteness that streamed from her to the little animal. It opened its mouth, drinking it in. Suddenly, Lift felt very tired and very, very hungry. Darkness handed the animal to one of his minions, who made it vanish into a black sack he then tucked in his pocket. Lift was certain that the viziers—standing in an outraged cluster at the table—hadn’t seen any of this, not with Darkness’s back to them and the two minions crowding around. “Keep all spheres from her,” Darkness said. “She must not be allowed to Invest.” Lift felt terror, panicked in a way she hadn’t known for years, ever since her days in Rall Elorim. She struggled, thrashing, biting at the hand that held her. Darkness didn’t even grunt. He hauled her to her feet, and another minion took her by the arms, wrenching them backward until she gasped at the pain. No. She’d freed herself! She couldn’t be taken like this. Wyndle continued to spin around her on the ground, distressed. He was a good type, for a Voidbringer. Darkness turned to the viziers. “I will trouble you no further.” “Mistress!” Wyndle said. “Here!” The half-eaten roll lay on the floor. She’d dropped it when the cudgel hit. Wyndle ran into it, but he couldn’t do anything more than make it
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wobble. Lift thrashed, trying to pull free, but without that storm inside of her, she was just a child in the grip of a trained soldier. “I am highly disturbed by the nature of this incursion, constable,” the lead vizier said, shuffling through the stack of papers that Darkness had dropped. “Your paperwork is in order, and I see you even included a plea—granted by the arbiters—to search the palace itself for this urchin. Surely you did not need to disturb a holy conclave. For a common thief, no less.” “Justice waits upon no man or woman,” Darkness said, completely calm. “And this thief is anything but common. With your leave, we will cease disturbing you.” He didn’t seem to care if they gave him leave or not. He strode toward the door, and his minion pulled Lift along after. She got her foot out to the roll, but only managed to kick it forward, under the long table by the viziers. “This is a leave of execution,” the vizier said with surprise, holding up the last sheet in the stack. “You will kill the child? For mere thievery?” Kill? No. No! “That, in addition to trespassing in the Prime’s palace,” Darkness said, reaching the door. “And for interrupting a holy conclave in session.” The vizier met his gaze. She held it, then wilted. “I . . .” she said. “Ah, of course . . . er . . . constable.” Darkness turned from her and pulled open the door. The vizier set one hand on the table and raised her other hand to her head. The minion dragged Lift up to the door. “Mistress!” Wyndle said, twisting up nearby. “Oh . . . oh dear. There is something very wrong with that man! He is not right, not right at all. You must use your powers.” “Trying,” Lift said, grunting. “You’ve let yourself grow too thin,” Wyndle said. “Not good. You always use up the excess. . . . Low body fat . . . That might be the problem. I don’t know how this works!” Darkness hesitated beside the door and looked at the low-hanging chandeliers in the hallway beyond, with their mirrors and sparkling gemstones. He raised his hand and gestured. The minion not holding Lift moved out into the hallway and found the chandelier ropes. He unwound those and pulled, raising the chandeliers. Lift tried to summon her awesomeness. Just a little more. She just needed a little. Her body felt exhausted. Drained. She really had been overdoing it. She struggled, increasingly panicked. Increasingly desperate. In the hallway, the minion tied off the chandeliers high in the air. Nearby, the vizier leader glanced from Darkness to Lift. “Please,” Lift mouthed. The vizier pointedly shoved the table. It clipped the elbow of the minion holding Lift. He cursed, letting go with that hand. Lift dove for the floor, ripping out of his grip. She squirmed forward, getting underneath the table. The minion seized her by the ankles. “What was that?” Darkness asked, his voice cold, emotionless. “I slipped,” the
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vizier said. “Watch yourself.” “Is that a threat, constable? I am beyond your reach.” “Nobody is beyond my reach.” Still no emotion. Lift thrashed underneath the table, kicking at the minion. He cursed softly and hauled Lift out by her legs, then pulled her to her feet. Darkness watched, face emotionless. She met his gaze, eye to eye, a half-eaten roll in her mouth. She stared him down, chewing quickly and swallowing. For once, he showed an emotion. Bafflement. “All that,” he said, “for a roll?” Lift said nothing. Come on . . . They walked her down the hallway, then around the corner. One of the minions ran ahead and purposefully removed the spheres from the lamps on the walls. Were they robbing the place? No, after she passed, the minion ran back and restored the spheres. Come on . . . They passed a palace guard in the larger hallway beyond. He noted something about Darkness—perhaps that rope tied around his upper arm, which was threaded with an Azish sequence of colors—and saluted. “Constable, sir? You found another one?” Darkness stopped, looking as the guard opened the door beside him. Inside, Gawx sat on a chair, slumped between two other guards. “So you did have accomplices!” shouted one of the guards in the room. He slapped Gawx across the face. Wyndle gasped from just behind her. “That was certainly uncalled for!” Come on . . . “This one is not your concern,” Darkness said to the guards, waiting as one of his minions did the strange gemstone-moving sequence. Why did they worry about that? Something stirred inside of Lift. Like the little swirls of wind at the advent of a storm. Darkness looked at her with a sharp motion. “Something is—” Awesomeness returned. Lift became Slick, every part of her but her feet and the palms of her hands. She yanked her arm—it slipped from the minion’s fingers—then kicked herself forward and fell to her knees, sliding under Darkness’s hand as he reached for her. Wyndle let out a whoop, zipping along beside her as she began slapping the floor like she was swimming, using each swing of her arms to push herself forward. She skimmed the floor of the palace hallway, knees sliding across it as if it were greased. The posture wasn’t particularly dignified. Dignity was for rich folk who had time to make up games to play with one another. She got going real fast real quick—so fast it was hard to control herself as she relaxed her awesomeness and tried to leap to her feet. She crashed into the wall at the end of the hallway instead, a sprawling heap of limbs. She came out of it with a grin. That had gone way better than the last few times she’d tried this. Her first attempt had been super embarrassing. She’d been so Slick, she hadn’t even been able to stay on her knees. “Lift!” Wyndle said. “Behind.” She glanced down the hallway. She could swear he was glowing faintly, and he was certainly running too
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quickly. Darkness was awesome too. “That is not fair!” Lift shouted, scrambling to her feet and dashing down a side hallway—the way she’d come when sneaking with Gawx. Her body had already started to feel tired again. One roll didn’t get it far. She sprinted down the lavish hallway, causing a maid to jump back, shrieking as if she’d seen a rat. Lift skidded around a corner, dashed toward the nice scents, and burst into the kitchens. She ran through the mess of people inside. The door slammed open behind her a second later. Darkness. Ignoring startled cooks, Lift leaped up onto a long counter, Slicking her leg and riding on it sideways, knocking off bowls and pans, causing a clatter. She came down off the other end of the counter as Darkness shoved his way past cooks in a clump, his Shardblade held up high. He didn’t curse in annoyance. A fellow should curse. Made people feel real when they did that. But of course, Darkness wasn’t a real person. Of that, though little else, she was sure. Lift snatched a sausage off a steaming plate, then pushed into the servant hallways. She chewed as she ran, Wyndle growing along the wall beside her, leaving a streak of dark green vines. “Where are we going?” he asked. “Away.” The door into the servant hallways slammed open behind her. Lift turned a corner, surprising an equerry. She went awesome, and threw herself to the side, easily slipping past him in the narrow hallway. “What has become of me?” Wyndle asked. “Thieving in the night, chased by abominations. I was a gardener. A wonderful gardener! Cryptics and honorspren alike came to see the crystals I grew from the minds of your world. Now this. What have I become?” “A whiner,” Lift said, puffing. “Nonsense.” “So you were always one of those, then?” She looked over her shoulder. Darkness casually shoved down the equerry, barely breaking stride as he charged over the man. Lift reached a doorway and slammed her shoulder against it, scrambling out into the rich hallways again. She needed an exit. A window. Her flight had just looped her around back near the Prime’s quarters. She picked a direction by instinct and started running, but one of Darkness’s minions appeared around a corner that way. He also carried a Shardblade. Some starvin’ luck, she had. Lift turned the other way and passed by Darkness striding out of the servant hallways. She barely dodged a swing of his Blade by diving, Slicking herself, and sliding along the floor. She made it to her feet without stumbling this time. That was something, at least. “Who are these men?” Wyndle asked from beside her. Lift grunted. “Why do they care so much about you? There’s something about those weapons they carry . . .” “Shardblades,” Lift said. “Worth a whole kingdom. Built to kill Voidbringers.” And they had two of the things. Crazy. Built to kill Voidbringers . . . “You!” she said, still running. “They’re after you!” “What? Of course they aren’t!” “They
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are. Don’t worry. You’re mine. I won’t lettem have you.” “That’s endearingly loyal,” Wyndle said. “And not a little insulting. But they are not after—” The second of Darkness’s minions stepped out into the hallway ahead of her. He held Gawx. He had a knife to the young man’s throat. Lift stumbled to a halt. Gawx, in far over his head, whimpered in the man’s hands. “Don’t move,” the minion said, “or I will kill him.” “Starvin’ bastard,” Lift said. She spat to the side. “That’s dirty.” Darkness thumped up behind her, the other minion joining him. They penned her in. The entrance to the Prime’s quarters was actually just ahead, and the viziers and scions had flooded out into the hallway, where they jabbered to one another in outraged tones. Gawx was crying. Poor fool. Well. This sorta thing never ended well. Lift went with her gut—which was basically what she always did—and called the minion’s bluff by dashing forward. He was a lawman type. Wouldn’t kill a captive in cold— The minion slit Gawx’s throat. Crimson blood poured out and stained Gawx’s clothing. The minion dropped him, then stumbled back, as if startled by what he’d done. Lift froze. He couldn’t— He didn’t— Darkness grabbed her from behind. “That was poorly done,” Darkness said to the minion, tone emotionless. Lift barely heard him. So much blood. “You will be punished.” “But . . .” the minion said. “I had to do as I threatened . . .” “You have not done the proper paperwork in this kingdom to kill that child,” Darkness said. “Aren’t we above their laws?” Darkness actually let go of her, striding over to slap the minion across the face. “Without the law, there is nothing. You will subject yourself to their rules, and accept the dictates of justice. It is all we have, the only sure thing in this world.” Lift stared at the dying boy, who held his hands to his neck, as if to stop the blood flow. Those tears . . . The other minion came up behind her. “Run!” Wyndle said. She started. “Run!” Lift ran. She passed Darkness and pushed through the viziers, who gasped and yelled at the death. She barreled into the Prime’s quarters, slid across the table, snatched another roll off the platter, and burst into the bedroom. She was out the window a second later. “Up,” she said to Wyndle, then stuffed the roll in her mouth. He streaked up the side of the wall, and Lift climbed, sweating. A second later, one of the minions leaped out the window beneath her. He didn’t look up. He charged out onto the grounds, twisting about, searching, his Shardblade flashing in the darkness as it reflected starlight. Lift safely reached the upper reaches of the palace, hidden in the shadows there. She squatted down, hands around her knees, feeling cold. “You barely knew him,” Wyndle said. “Yet you mourn.” She nodded. “You’ve seen much death,” Wyndle said. “I know it. Aren’t you accustomed to it?” She shook her head.
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Below, the minion moved off, hunting farther and farther for her. She was free. Climb across the roof, slip down on the other side, disappear. Was that motion on the wall at the edge of the grounds? Yes, those moving shadows were men. The other thieves were climbing their wall and disappearing into the night. Huqin had left his nephew, as expected. Who would cry for Gawx? Nobody. He’d be forgotten, abandoned. Lift released her legs and crawled across the curved bulb of the roof toward the window she’d entered earlier. Her vines from the seeds, unlike the ones Wyndle grew, were still alive. They’d overgrown the window, leaves quivering in the wind. Run, her instincts said. Go. “You spoke of something earlier,” she whispered. “Re . . .” “Regrowth,” he said. “Each bond grants power over two Surges. You can influence how things grow.” “Can I use this to help Gawx?” “If you were better trained? Yes. As it stands, I doubt it. You aren’t very strong, aren’t very practiced. And he might be dead already.” She touched one of the vines. “Why do you care?” Wyndle asked again. He sounded curious. Not a challenge. An attempt to understand. “Because someone has to.” For once, Lift ignored what her gut was telling her and, instead, climbed through the window. She crossed the room in a dash. Out into the upstairs hallway. Onto the steps. She soared down them, leaping most of the distance. Through a doorway. Turn left. Down the hallway. Left again. A crowd in the rich corridor. Lift reached them, then wiggled through. She didn’t need her awesomeness for that. She’d been slipping through cracks in crowds since she started walking. Gawx lay in a pool of blood that had darkened the fine carpet. The viziers and guards surrounded him, speaking in hushed tones. Lift crawled up to him. His body was still warm, but the blood seemed to have stopped flowing. His eyes were closed. “Too late?” she whispered. “I don’t know,” Wyndle said, curling up beside her. “What do I do?” “I . . . I’m not sure. Mistress, the transition to your side was difficult and left holes in my memory, even with the precautions my people took. I . . .” She set Gawx on his back, face toward the sky. He wasn’t really anything to her, that was true. They’d barely just met, and he’d been a fool. She’d told him to go back. But this was who she was, who she had to be. I will remember those who have been forgotten. Lift leaned forward, touched her forehead to his, and breathed out. A shimmering something left her lips, a little cloud of glowing light. It hung in front of Gawx’s lips. Come on . . . It stirred, then drew in through his mouth. A hand took Lift by the shoulder, pulling her away from Gawx. She sagged, suddenly exhausted. Real exhausted, so much so that even standing was difficult. Darkness pulled her by the shoulder away from the crowd. “Come,” he
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said. Gawx stirred. The viziers gasped, their attention turning toward the youth as he groaned, then sat up. “It appears that you are an Edgedancer,” Darkness said, steering her down the corridor as the crowd moved in around Gawx, chattering. She stumbled, but he held her upright. “I had wondered which of the two you would be.” “Miracle!” one vizier said. “Yaezir has spoken!” said one of the scions. “Edgedancer,” Lift said. “I don’t know what that is.” “They were once a glorious order,” Darkness said, walking her down the hallway. Everyone ignored them, focused instead on Gawx. “Where you blunder, they were elegant things of beauty. They could ride the thinnest rope at speed, dance across rooftops, move through a battlefield like a ribbon on the wind.” “That sounds . . . amazing.” “Yes. It is unfortunate they were always so concerned with small-minded things, while ignoring those of greater import. It appears you share their temperament. You have become one of them.” “I didn’t mean to,” Lift said. “I realize this.” “Why . . . why do you hunt me?” “In the name of justice.” “There are tons of people who do wrong things,” she said. She had to force out every word. Talking was hard. Thinking was hard. So tired. “You . . . you coulda hunted big crime bosses, murderers. You chose me instead. Why?” “Others may be detestable, but they do not dabble in arts that could return Desolation to this world.” His words were so cold. “What you are must be stopped.” Lift felt numb. She tried to summon her awesomeness, but she’d used it all up. And then some, probably. Darkness turned her and pushed her against the wall. She couldn’t stand, and slumped down, sitting. Wyndle moved up beside her, spreading out a starburst of creeping vines. Darkness knelt next to her. He held out his hand. “I saved him,” Lift said. “I did something good, didn’t I?” “Goodness is irrelevant,” Darkness said. His Shardblade dropped into his fingers. “You don’t even care, do you?” “No,” he said. “I don’t.” “You should,” she said, exhausted. “You should . . . should try it, I mean. I wanted to be like you, once. Didn’t work out. Wasn’t . . . even like being alive . . .” Darkness raised his Blade. Lift closed her eyes. “She is pardoned!” Darkness’s grip on her shoulder tightened. Feeling completely drained—like somebody had held her up by the toes and squeezed everything out of her—Lift forced her eyes to open. Gawx stumbled to a stop beside them, breathing heavily. Behind, the viziers and scions moved up as well. Clothing bloodied, his eyes wide, Gawx clutched a piece of paper in his hand. He thrust this at Darkness. “I pardon this girl. Release her, constable!” “Who are you,” Darkness said, “to do such a thing?” “I am the Prime Aqasix,” Gawx declared. “Ruler of Azir!” “Ridiculous.” “The Kadasixes have spoken,” said one of the scions. “The Heralds?” Darkness said. “They have done no such thing. You are mistaken.” “We have
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voted,” said a vizier. “This young man’s application was the best.” “What application?” Darkness said. “He is a thief!” “He performed the miracle of Regrowth,” said one of the older scions. “He was dead and he returned. What better application could we ask for?” “A sign has been given,” said the lead vizier. “We have a Prime who can survive the attacks of the One All White. Praise to Yaezir, Kadasix of Kings, may he lead in wisdom. This youth is Prime. He has been Prime always. We have only now realized it, and beg his forgiveness for not seeing the truth sooner.” “As it always has been done,” the elderly scion said. “As it will be done again. Stand down, constable. You have been given an order.” Darkness studied Lift. She smiled tiredly. Show the starvin’ man some teeth. That was the right of it. His Shardblade vanished to mist. He’d been bested, but he didn’t seem to care. Not a curse, not even a tightening of the eyes. He stood up and pulled on his gloves by the cuffs, first one, then the other. “Praise Yaezir,” he said. “Herald of Kings. May he lead in wisdom. If he ever stops drooling.” Darkness bowed to the new Prime, then left with a sure step. “Does anyone know the name of that constable?” one of the viziers asked. “When did we start letting officers of the law requisition Shardblades?” Gawx knelt beside Lift. “So you’re an emperor or something now,” she said, closing her eyes, settling back. “Yeah. I’m still confused. It seems I performed a miracle or something.” “Good for you,” Lift said. “Can I eat your dinner?” Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, sat atop the highest tower in the world and contemplated the End of All Things. The souls of the people he had murdered lurked in the shadows. They whispered to him. If he drew close, they screamed. They also screamed when he shut his eyes. He had taken to blinking as little as possible. His eyes felt dry in his skull. It was what any . . . sane man would do. The highest tower in the world, hidden in the tops of the mountains, was perfect for his contemplation. If he had not been bound to an Oathstone, if he had been another man entirely, he would have stayed here. The only place in the East where the stones were not cursed, where walking on them was allowed. This place was holy. Bright sunlight shone down to banish the shadows, which kept those screams to a minimum. The screamers deserved their deaths, of course. They should have killed Szeth. I hate you. I hate . . . everyone. Glories within, what a strange emotion. He did not look up. He would not meet the gaze of the God of Gods. But it was good to be in the sunlight. There were no clouds here to bring the darkness. This place was above them all. Urithiru ruled even the clouds. The massive tower was also empty; that was another
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reason he liked it. A hundred levels, built in ring shapes, each one beneath larger than the one above it to provide a sunlit balcony. The eastern side, however, was a sheer, flat edge that made the tower look from a distance as if that side had been sliced off by an enormous Shardblade. What a strange shape. He sat on that edge, right at the top, feet swinging over a drop of a hundred massive stories and a plummet down the mountainside below. Glass sparkled on the smooth surface of the flat side there. Glass windows. Facing east, toward the Origin. The first time he had visited this place—just after being exiled from his homeland—he hadn’t understood just how odd those windows were. Back then, he’d still been accustomed to gentle highstorms. Rain, wind, and meditation. Things were different in these cursed lands of the stonewalkers. These hateful lands. These lands flowing with blood, death, and screams. And . . . And . . . Breathe. He forced the air in and out and stood up on the rim of the parapet atop the tower. He had fought an impossibility. A man with Stormlight, a man who knew the storm within. That meant . . . problems. Years ago, Szeth had been banished for raising the alarm. The false alarm, it had been said. The Voidbringers are no more, they had told him. The spirits of the stones themselves promised it. The powers of old are no more. The Knights Radiant are fallen. We are all that remains. All that remains. . . . Truthless. “Have I not been faithful?” Szeth shouted, finally looking up to face the sun. His voice echoed against the mountains and their spirit-souls. “Have I not obeyed, kept my oath? Have I not done as you demanded of me?” The killing, the murder. He blinked tired eyes. SCREAMS. “What does it mean if the Shamanate are wrong? What does it mean if they banished me in error?” It meant the End of All Things. The end of truth. It would mean that nothing made sense, and that his oath was meaningless. It would mean he had killed for no reason. He dropped off the side of the tower, white clothing—now a symbol to him of many things—flapping in the wind. He filled himself with Stormlight and Lashed himself southward. His body lurched in that direction, falling across the sky. He could only travel this way for a short time; his Stormlight did not last long. Too imperfect a body. The Knights Radiant . . . they’d been said . . . they’d been said to be better at this . . . like the Voidbringers. He had just enough Light to free himself from the mountains and land in a village in the foothills. They often set out spheres for him there as an offering, considering him some kind of god. He would feed upon that Light, and it would let him go a farther distance until he found another city and more Stormlight. It would
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take days to get where he was going, but he would find answers. Or, barring that, someone to kill. Of his own choice, this time. Eshonai waved her hand as she climbed the central spire of Narak, trying to shoo away the tiny spren. It danced around her head, shedding rings of light from its cometlike form. Horrid thing. Why would it not leave her alone? Perhaps it could not stay away. She was experiencing something wonderfully new, after all. Something that had not been seen in centuries. Stormform. A form of true power. A form given of the gods. She continued up the steps, feet clinking in her Shardplate. It felt good on her. She had held this form for fifteen days now, fifteen days of hearing new rhythms. At first, she had attuned those often, but this had made some people very nervous. She had backed off, and forced herself to attune the old, familiar ones when speaking. It was difficult, for those old rhythms were so dull. Buried within those new rhythms, the names of which she intuited somehow, she could almost hear voices speaking to her. Advising her. If her people had received such guidance over the centuries, they surely would not have fallen so far. Eshonai reached the top of the spire, where the other four awaited her. Again, her sister Venli was also there, and she wore the new form as well—with its spiking armor plates, its red eyes, its lithe danger. This meeting would proceed very differently from the previous one. Eshonai cycled through the new rhythms, careful not to hum them. The others weren’t ready yet. She sat down, then gasped. That rhythm! It sounded like . . . like her own voice yelling at her. Screaming in pain. What was that? She shook her head, and found that she had reflexively pulled her hand to her chest in anxiety. When she opened it, the cometlike spren shot out. She attuned Irritation. The others of the Five regarded her with heads cocked, a couple humming to Curiosity. Why did she act as she did? Eshonai settled herself, Shardplate grinding against stone. This close to the lull—the time called the Weeping by the humans—highstorms were growing more rare. That had created a small impediment in her march to see every listener given stormform. There had only been one storm since Eshonai’s own transformation, and during it, Venli and her scholars had taken stormform along with two hundred soldiers chosen by Eshonai. Not officers. Common soldiers. The type she was sure would obey. The next highstorm was mere days away, and Venli had been gathering her spren. They had thousands ready. It was time. Eshonai regarded the others of the Five. Today’s clear sky rained down white sunlight, and a few windspren approached on a breeze. They stopped when they grew near, then zipped away in the opposite direction. “Why have you called this meeting?” Eshonai asked the others. “You’ve been speaking of a plan,” Davim said, broad worker’s hands clasped before him. “You’ve been telling
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everyone of it. Shouldn’t you have brought it to the Five first?” “I’m sorry,” Eshonai said. “I am merely excited. I believe, however, we should now be the Six.” “That has not been decided,” Abronai said, weak and plump. Mateform was disgusting. “This moves too quickly.” “We must move quickly,” Eshonai replied to Resolve. “We have only two highstorms before the lull. You know what the spies report. The humans are planning a final push toward us, toward Narak.” “It is a pity,” Abronai said to Consideration, “that your meeting with them went so poorly.” “They wanted to tell me of the destruction they planned to bring,” Eshonai lied. “They wanted to gloat. That was the only reason they met with me.” “We need to be ready to fight them,” Davim said to Anxiety. Eshonai laughed. A blatant use of emotion, but she truly felt it. “Fight them? Haven’t you been listening? I can summon a highstorm.” “With help,” Chivi said to Curiosity. Nimbleform. Another weak form. They should expunge that one from their ranks. “You have said you cannot do it alone. How many others would you need? Certainly the two hundred you have now are enough.” “No, that is not nearly enough,” Eshonai replied. “I feel that the more people we have in this form, the more likely we are to succeed. I would like, therefore, to move that we transform.” “Yes,” Chivi said. “But how many of us?” “All of us.” Davim hummed to Amusement, thinking it must be a joke. He trailed off as the rest sat in silence. “We will have just one chance,” Eshonai said to Resolve. “The humans will leave their warcamps together, in one large army that intends to reach Narak during the lull. They will be completely exposed on the plateaus, with no shelter. A highstorm at that time would destroy them.” “We don’t even truly know if you can summon one,” Abronai said to Skepticism. “That is why we need as many of us in stormform as possible,” Eshonai said. “If we miss this opportunity, our children will sing us the songs of Cursing, assuming they even live long enough to do so. This is our chance, our one chance. Imagine the ten armies of men, isolated on the plateaus, buffeted and overwhelmed by a tempest they could never have expected! With stormform, we would be immune to its effects. If any survive, we could destroy them easily.” “It is tempting,” Davim said. “I do not like the look of those who have taken this form,” Chivi said. “I do not like how people clamor to be given it. Perhaps two hundred are enough.” “Eshonai,” Davim said, “how does this form feel?” He was asking more than he actually said. Each form changed a person in some ways. Warform made you more aggressive, mateform made you easy to distract, nimbleform encouraged focus, and workform made you obedient. Eshonai attuned Peace. No. That was the screaming voice. How had she spent weeks in this form and not noticed? “I feel alive,” Eshonai said
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to Joy. “I feel strong, and I feel powerful. I feel a connection to the world that I should have always known. Davim, this is like the change from dullform to one of the other forms—it is that much of an upgrade. Now that I hold this strength, I realize I wasn’t fully alive before.” She lifted her hand and made a fist. She could feel the energy coursing down her arm as the muscles flexed, though it was hidden beneath the Shardplate. “Red eyes,” Abronai whispered. “Have we come to this?” “If we decide to do this,” Chivi said. “Perhaps we four should assess it first, then say if the others should join us.” Venli opened her mouth to speak, but Chivi waved her hand, interrupting her. “You have had your say, Venli. We know what you wish.” “We cannot wait, unfortunately,” Eshonai said. “If we want to trap the Alethi armies, we will need time to transform everyone before the Alethi leave to search for Narak.” “I’m willing to try it,” Abronai said. “Perhaps we should propose a mass transformation to our people.” “No.” Zuln spoke to Peace. The dullform member of the Five sat slouched, looking at the ground before her. She almost never said anything. Eshonai attuned Annoyance. “What was that?” “No,” Zuln repeated. “It is not right.” “I would have us all be in agreement,” Davim said. “Zuln, can you not listen to reason?” “It is not right,” the dullform said again. “She is dull,” Eshonai said. “We should ignore her.” Davim hummed to Anxiety. “Zuln represents the past, Eshonai. You shouldn’t say such things of her.” “The past is dead.” Abronai joined Davim in humming to Anxiety. “Perhaps this is worth more thought. Eshonai, you . . . do not speak as you used to. I hadn’t realized the changes were so stark.” Eshonai attuned one of the new rhythms, the Rhythm of Fury. She held the song inside, and found herself humming. These were so cautious, so weak! They would see her people destroyed. “We will meet again later today,” Davim said. “Let us spend time considering. Eshonai, I would speak with you alone during that period, if you are willing.” “Of course.” They rose from their places atop the pillar. Eshonai stepped to the edge and looked down as the others filed down. The spire was too high to jump from, even in Shardplate. She so wanted to try. It seemed that every person in the city had gathered around the base to await the decision. In the weeks since Eshonai’s transformation, talk of what had happened to her—then the others—had infused the city with a certain mixture of anxiety and hope. Many had come to her, begging to be given the form. They saw the chance it offered. “They’re not going to agree to it,” Venli said from behind once the others were down. She spoke to Spite, one of the new rhythms. “You spoke too aggressively, Eshonai.” “Davim is with us,” Eshonai said to Confidence. “Chivi will come too, with persuasion.” “That
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isn’t enough. If the Five do not come to a consensus—” “Don’t worry.” “Our people must take that form, Eshonai,” Venli said. “It is inevitable.” Eshonai found herself attuning the new version of Amusement . . . Ridicule, it was. She turned to her sister. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew exactly what this form would do to me. You knew this before you took the form yourself.” “I . . . Yes.” Eshonai grabbed her sister by the front of her robe, then yanked her forward, holding her tightly. With Shardplate it was easy, though Venli resisted more than she should have been able to, and a small spark of red lightning ran across the woman’s arms and face. Eshonai was not accustomed to such strength from her scholar of a sister. “You could have destroyed us,” Eshonai said. “What if this form had done something terrible?” Screaming. In her head. Venli smiled. “How did you discover this?” Eshonai asked. “It didn’t come from the songs. There is more.” Venli did not speak. She met Eshonai’s eyes and hummed to Confidence. “We must make certain the Five agree to this plan,” she said. “If we are to survive, and if we are to defeat the humans, we must be in this form—all of us. We must summon that storm. It has been . . . waiting, Eshonai. Waiting and building.” “I will see to it,” Eshonai said, dropping Venli. “You can gather enough spren for us to transform all of our people?” “My staff have been working on it these three weeks. We will be ready to transform thousands upon thousands over the course of the final two highstorms before the lull.” “Good.” Eshonai started down the steps. “Sister?” Venli asked. “You are planning something. What is it? How will you persuade the Five?” Eshonai continued down the steps. With the added balance and strength of Shardplate, she didn’t need to bother with the chains to steady herself. As she neared the bottom, where the others of the Five were speaking to the people, she stopped a short distance above the crowd and drew in a deep breath. Then, as loudly as she could, Eshonai shouted, “In two days, I will take any who wish to go into the storm and give them this new form.” The crowd stilled, their humming dropping off. “The Five seek to deny you this right,” Eshonai bellowed. “They don’t want you to have this form of power. They are frightened, like cremlings hiding in cracks. They cannot deny you! It is the right of every person to choose their own form.” She raised her hands above her head, humming to Resolve, and summoned a storm. A tiny one, a mere trickle compared to what waited. It grew between her hands, a wind coursing with lightning. A miniature tempest in her palms, light and power, wind spinning in a vortex. It had been centuries since this power had been used, and so—like a river that had been dammed—the energy waited impatiently to be freed. The tempest
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grew so that it whipped at her clothing, spinning around her in a swirl of wind, crackling red lightning, and dark mist. Finally, it dissipated. She heard Awe being sung throughout the crowd—full songs, not humming. Their emotions were strong. “With this power,” Eshonai declared, “we can destroy the Alethi and protect our people. I have seen your despair. I have heard you sing to Mourning. It need not be so! Come with me into the storms. It is your right, your duty, to join with me.” Behind her on the steps, Venli hummed to Tension. “This will divide us, Eshonai. Too aggressive, too abrupt!” “It will work,” Eshonai said to Confidence. “You do not know them as I do.” Below, the other members of the Five were glaring up at her, looking betrayed, though she could not hear their songs. Eshonai marched to the bottom of the spire, then pushed her way through the crowd, being joined by her soldiers in stormform. The people made way for her, many humming to Anxiety. Most who had come were workers or nimbleforms. That made sense. The warforms were too pragmatic for gawking. Eshonai and her stormform warriors left the town’s center ring. She allowed Venli to tag along behind, but paid the woman no heed. Eshonai eventually approached the barracks on the leeward side of the city, a large group of buildings built together to form a community for the soldiers. Though her troops were not required to sleep here, many did so. The practice grounds one plateau over were busy with the sounds of warriors honing their skills, or—more likely—newly transformed soldiers being trained. The second division, a hundred and twenty-eight in number, were away watching for humans entering the middle plateaus. Scouts in warpairs roamed the Plains. She’d set them on this task soon after obtaining her form, as she had known even then that she would need to change the way this battle worked. She wanted every bit of information about the Alethi and their current tactics that she could get. Her soldiers would ignore chrysalises for the time being. She would not lose soldiers to that petty game any longer, not when each man and woman under her command represented the potential of stormform. The other divisions were all here, however. Seventeen thousand soldiers total. A mighty force in some ways, but also so few, compared to what they had once been. She raised her hand in a fist, and her stormform division raised the call for all soldiers in the listener army to gather. Those practicing set down their weapons and jogged over. Others left the barracks. In a short time, all had joined her. “It is time to end the fight against the Alethi,” Eshonai announced in a loud voice. “Which of you are willing to follow me in doing so?” Humming to Resolve moved through the crowd. So far as she could hear, not a one hummed to Skepticism. Excellent. “This will require each soldier to join me in this form,” Eshonai shouted, her words being
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relayed through the ranks. More humming to Resolve. “I am proud of you,” Eshonai said. “I am going to have the Storm Division go among you and take your word, each of you, on this transformation. If there are any here who do not wish to change, I would know of it personally. It is your decision, by right, and I will not force you—but I must know.” She looked to her stormforms, who saluted and broke apart, moving in warpairs. Eshonai stepped back, folding her arms, watching as these visited each other division in turn. The new rhythms thrummed in her skull, though she stayed away from the Rhythm of Peace, with its strange screams. There was no fighting against what she had become. The eyes of the gods were too strongly upon her. Nearby, some soldiers gathered, familiar faces beneath hardened skullplates, the men bearing bits of gemstone tied to their beards. Her own division, once her friends. She could not quite explain why she had not chosen them at first for the transformation, instead picking two hundred soldiers from across many divisions. She’d needed soldiers who were obedient, but not known for their brightness. Thude and the soldiers of Eshonai’s former division . . . they knew her too well. They would have questioned. Soon, she had gotten word. Of her seventeen thousand troops, only a handful refused the required transformation. Those who had declined were gathered on the practice grounds. As she contemplated her next move, Thude approached. Tall and thick-limbed, he had always worn warform save for two weeks as a mate to Bila. He hummed to Resolve—the way for a soldier to indicate a willingness to obey orders. “I am worried about this, Eshonai,” he said. “Do so many need to change?” “If we do not transform,” Eshonai said, “we are dead. The humans will ruin us.” He continued to hum to Resolve, to indicate he trusted her. His eyes seemed to tell another story. Melu, of her stormforms, returned and saluted. “The counting is finished, sir.” “Excellent,” Eshonai said. “Pass word to the troops. We’re going to do the same thing for everyone in the city.” “Everyone?” Thude said to Anxiety. “Our time is short,” Eshonai said. “If we do not act, we will miss our opportunity to move against the humans. We have two storms left; I want every willing person in this city ready to take up stormform before those have passed us. Those who will not are given that right, but I want them gathered so we may know where we stand.” “Yes, General,” Melu said. “Use a tight scouting formation,” Eshonai said, pointing toward parts of the city. “Move through the streets, counting every person. Use the non-stormform divisions too, for speed. Tell the common people that we’re trying to determine how many soldiers we will have for the coming battle, and have our soldiers be calm and sing to Peace. Put those people who are willing to transform into the central ring. Send those who are unwilling out here. Give
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them an escort so that they do not get lost.” Venli stepped up to her as Melu passed the word, sending ranks out to obey. Thude rejoined his division. Every half year, they did an accounting to determine their numbers and see if the forms were properly balanced. Once in a while, they would need more volunteers to become mates or workers. Most often, they needed more warforms. That meant this exercise was familiar to the soldiers, and they took easily to the orders. After years of war, they were accustomed to doing as she said. Many had the same depression that the regular people expressed—only for the troops, it manifested as bloodlust. They just wanted to fight. They would probably have charged head-on against the human encampments, and ten times their own numbers, if Eshonai ordered. The Five all but handed this to me, she thought as the first of the unwilling began to trickle out of the city, guarded by her soldiers. For years I’ve been absolute leader of our armies, and every person among us with a hint of aggression has been given to me as a soldier. Workers would obey; it was their nature. Many of the nimbles who hadn’t transformed yet were loyal to Venli, as the majority of them aspired to be scholars. The mates wouldn’t care, and the few dulls would be too numb of brain to object. The city was hers. “We’ll have to kill them, unfortunately,” Venli said, watching the unwilling be gathered. They huddled together, afraid, despite the soft songs of the soldiers. “Will your troops be able to do it?” “No,” Eshonai said, shaking her head. “Many would resist us if we did this now. We will have to wait for all of my soldiers to be transformed. They will not object then.” “That’s sloppy,” Venli said to Spite. “I thought you commanded their loyalty.” “Do not question me,” Eshonai said. “I control this city, not you.” Venli quieted, though her humming to Spite continued. She would attempt to seize control from Eshonai. It was an uncomfortable realization, as was the realization of how deeply Eshonai herself wanted to be in control. That didn’t feel like her. Not at all. None of this feels like me. I . . . The new rhythms’ beats surged in her mind. She turned from such thoughts as a group of soldiers approached, towing a shouting figure. Abronai, of the Five. She should have realized that he’d be trouble; he maintained mateform too easily, avoiding its distractions. Transforming him would have been dangerous, she thought. He has too much control over himself. As the stormform soldiers pulled him to Eshonai, his shouts beat against her. “This is outrageous! The dictates of the Five rule us, not the will of a single person! Can’t you see that the form, the new form is overriding her! You’ve all lost your minds! Or . . . or worse.” It was discomfortingly close to the truth. “Put him with the others,” Eshonai said, gesturing toward the group of dissidents.
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“What of the rest of the Five?” “They agreed,” Melu said. “Some were reluctant, but they agreed.” “Go and fetch Zuln. Put her with the dissenters. I don’t trust her to do what is needed.” The soldier didn’t question as she towed Abronai away. There were perhaps a thousand dissenters there on the large plateau that made up the practice grounds. An acceptably small number. “Eshonai . . .” The song was sung to Anxiety. She turned as Thude approached. “I don’t like this, what we’re doing here.” Bother. She had worried that he would be difficult. She took him by the arm, leading him a ways off. The new rhythms cycled through her mind as her armored feet crunched on the stones. Once they were far enough away from Venli and the others for some privacy, she turned Thude to look him in the eyes. “Out with it,” she said to Irritation, picking one of the old, familiar rhythms for him. “Eshonai,” he said quietly. “This isn’t right. You know it’s not right. I agreed to change—every soldier did—but it’s not right.” “Do you disagree that we needed new tactics in this war?” Eshonai said to Resolve. “We were dying slowly, Thude.” “We did need new tactics,” Thude said. “But this . . . Something’s wrong with you, Eshonai.” “No, I just needed an excuse for such extreme action. Thude, I’ve been considering something like this for months.” “A coup?” “Not a coup. A refocusing. We are doomed if we don’t change our methods! My only hope was Venli’s research. The only thing she turned up was this form. Well, I’ve got to try and use it, make one last attempt to save our people. The Five tried to stop me. I’ve heard you yourself complain about how much they talk instead of acting.” He hummed to Consideration. She knew him well enough, however, to sense when he was forcing a rhythm. The beat was too obvious, too strong. I almost convinced him, she thought. It’s the red eyes. I’ve instilled in him, and some of the others of my own division, too much of a fear of our gods. It was a shame, but she’d probably have to see him, and her other former friends, executed. “I see you’re not convinced,” Eshonai said. “I just . . . I don’t know, Eshonai. This seems bad.” “I’ll talk you through it later,” Eshonai said. “I don’t have time right now.” “And what are you going to do to those?” Thude asked, nodding toward the dissenters. “This looks an awful lot like a roundup of people who don’t agree with you. Eshonai . . . did you realize your own mother was among them?” She started, looking and seeing her aging mother being guided to the group by two stormforms. They hadn’t even come to her with the question. Did that mean they were extra obedient, following her orders no matter what, or were they worried she would weaken because her mother refused to change? She could hear her mother singing. One
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of the old songs, as she was guided. “You can watch over that group,” Eshonai said to Thude. “You and soldiers you trust. I’ll put my own division in charge of the people there, you at their head. That way, nothing will happen to them without your agreement.” He hesitated, then nodded, humming to Consideration for real this time. She let him go and he jogged over to Bila and a few others of Eshonai’s former division. Poor, trusting Thude, she thought as he took command of guarding the dissenters. Thank you for rounding yourself up so neatly. “This was handled well,” Venli said as Eshonai walked back to her. “Can you control the city long enough for the transformation?” “Easily,” Eshonai said, nodding to the soldiers who came to give her a report. “Just make certain you can deliver the proper spren and in the proper quantities.” “I will,” Venli said to Satisfaction. Eshonai took the reports. Everyone who had agreed was gathered in the center of the city. It was time to speak to them and deliver the lies she’d prepared. That the Five would be reinstated once the humans were dealt with, that there was no reason to worry. That everything was just fine. Eshonai strode into a city that was now hers, flanked by soldiers in the new form. She summoned her Blade for effect, the last one her people owned, resting it on her shoulder. She made her way to the center of the city, passing melted buildings and shacks built from carapace. It was a wonder that those things survived the storms. Her people deserved better. With the return of the gods, they would have better. Irritatingly, it took some time to get the people ready for her speech. Some twenty thousand non-warforms gathered together was quite a sight; looking upon them, the city’s population did not seem nearly so small. Still, this was a fraction of their original numbers. Her soldiers seated them all, prepared messengers to deliver her words to those not near enough to hear. As she waited for the preparations, she listened to reports regarding the population. Surprisingly, the majority of those who had dissented were workers. They were supposed to be obedient. Well, the greater number of them were elderly, the ones who had not fought in the war against the Alethi. Those who had not been forced to watch their friends be killed. She waited by the base of the pillar until everything was ready. She climbed the steps to begin her speech, but stopped as she noticed Varanis, one of her lieutenants, running toward her. He was one she had chosen for stormform. Suddenly alert, Eshonai attuned the Rhythm of Destruction. “General,” he said to Anxiety. “They’ve escaped!” “Who?” “The ones you had us set apart, the ones who did not want to transform. They’ve fled.” “Well, chase them down,” Eshonai said to Spite. “They can’t get far. The workers won’t be able to jump chasms; they can only go as far as the bridges allow.” “General! They cut
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down one of the bridges, then used the ropes to climb down into the chasm itself. They’ve fled through those.” “Then they’re dead anyway,” Eshonai said. “There is a storm in two days. They’ll be caught in the chasms and killed. Ignore them.” “What of their guards?” Venli demanded to Spite, shoving her way up beside Eshonai. “Why weren’t they being watched?” “The guards went with them,” Varanis said. “Eshonai, Thude was leading those—” “No matter,” Eshonai said. “You are dismissed.” Varanis retreated. “You aren’t surprised,” Venli said to Destruction. “Who are these guards that are willing to help their prisoners escape? What have you done, Eshonai?” “Do not challenge me.” “I—” “Do not challenge me,” Eshonai said, grabbing her sister by the neck with a gauntleted hand. “Kill me, and you’ll ruin everything,” Venli said, not a hint of fear in her voice. “They’ll never follow a woman who murdered her own sister in public, and only I can provide the spren you need for this transformation.” Eshonai hummed to the Rhythm of Derision, but let go. “I’m going to make my speech.” She turned her back on Venli and stepped up to address the people. Kaladin had never been in prison before. Cages, yes. Pits. Pens. Under guard in a room. Never a proper prison. Perhaps that was because prisons were too nice. He had two blankets, a pillow, and a chamber pot that was changed regularly. They fed him far better than he’d ever been fed as a slave. The stone shelf wasn’t the most comfortable bed, but with the blankets, it wasn’t too bad. He didn’t have any windows, but at least he wasn’t out in the storms. All in all, the room was very nice. And he hated it. In the past, the only times he’d been stuck in a small space had been to weather a highstorm. Now, being enclosed here for hours on end, with nothing to do but lie on his back and think . . . Now he found himself restless, sweating, missing the open spaces. Missing the wind. The solitude didn’t bother him. Those walls, though. They felt like they were crushing him. On the third day of his imprisonment, he heard a disturbance from farther inside the prison, beyond his chamber. He stood up, ignoring Syl, who sat on an invisible bench on his wall. What was that shouting? It echoed in from the hallway. His little cell was in its own room. The only people he’d seen since being locked up were the guards and the servants. Spheres glowed on the walls, keeping the place well lit. Spheres in a room meant for criminals. Were they there to taunt the men locked away? Riches just beyond reach. He pressed against the cold bars, listening to the indistinct shouts. He imagined Bridge Four having come to break him out. Stormfather send they didn’t try something so foolish. He eyed one of the spheres in its setting on the wall. “What?” Syl asked him. “I might be able to get close enough
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to suck that Light out. It’s only a little farther than the Parshendi were when I drew the Light from their gemstones.” “Then what?” Syl asked, voice small. Good question. “Would you help me break out, if I wanted to?” “Do you want to?” “I’m not sure.” He turned around, still standing, and rested his back against the bars. “I might need to. Breaking out would be against the law, though.” She lifted her chin. “I’m no highspren. Laws don’t matter; what’s right matters.” “On that point, we agree.” “But you came willingly,” Syl said. “Why would you leave now?” “I won’t let them execute me.” “They’re not going to,” Syl said. “You heard Dalinar.” “Dalinar can go rot. He let this happen.” “He tried to—” “He let it happen!” Kaladin snapped, turning and slamming his hands against the bars. Another storming cage. He was right back where he’d begun! “He’s the same as the others,” Kaladin growled. Syl zipped over to him, coming to rest between the bars, hands on hips. “Say that again.” “He . . .” Kaladin turned away. Lying to her was hard. “All right, fine. He’s not. But the king is. Admit it, Syl. Elhokar is a terrible king. At first he lauded me for trying to protect him. Now, at the snap of his fingers, he’s willing to execute me. He’s a child.” “Kaladin, you’re scaring me.” “Am I? You told me to trust you, Syl. When I jumped down into the arena, you said this time things would be different. How is this different?” She looked away, seeming suddenly very small. “Even Dalinar admitted that the king had made a big mistake in letting Sadeas wiggle out of the challenge,” Kaladin said. “Moash and his friends are right. This kingdom would be better off without Elhokar.” Syl dropped to the floor, head bowed. Kaladin walked back to his bench, but was too stirred up to sit. He found himself pacing. How could a man be expected to live trapped in a little room, without fresh air to breathe? He wouldn’t let them leave him here. You’d better keep your word, Dalinar. Get me out. Soon. The disturbance, whatever it had been, quieted. Kaladin asked the servant about it when she came with his food, pushing it through the small opening at the bottom of the bars. She wouldn’t speak to him, and scurried off like a cremling before a storm. Kaladin sighed, retrieving the food—steamed vegetables, dribbled with a salty black sauce—and flopping back on his bench. They gave him food he could eat with his fingers. No forks or knives for him, just in case. “Nice place you have here, bridgeboy,” Wit said. “I considered moving in here myself on several occasions. The rent might be cheap, but the price of admission is quite steep.” Kaladin scrambled up to his feet. Wit sat on a bench by the far wall, outside the cell and under the spheres, tuning some kind of strange instrument on his lap made of taut strings and polished wood. He
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hadn’t been there a moment ago. Storms . . . had the bench even been there before? “How did you get in?” Kaladin asked. “Well, there are these things called doors . . .” “The guards let you?” “Technically?” Wit asked, plucking at a string, then leaning down to listen as he plucked another. “Yes.” Kaladin sat back down on the bench in his cell. Wit wore his black-on-black, his thin silver sword undone from his waist and sitting on the bench beside him. A brown sack slumped there as well. Wit leaned down to tune his instrument, one leg crossed over the other. He hummed softly to himself and nodded. “Perfect pitch,” Wit said, “makes this all so much easier than it once was. . . .” Kaladin sat, waiting, as Wit settled back against the wall. Then did nothing. “Well?” Kaladin asked. “Yes. Thank you.” “Are you going to play music for me?” “No. You wouldn’t appreciate it.” “Then why are you here?” “I like visiting people in prison. I can say whatever I want to them, and they can’t do anything about it.” He looked up at Kaladin, then rested his hands on his instrument, smiling. “I’ve come for a story.” “What story?” “The one you’re going to tell me.” “Bah,” Kaladin said, lying back down on his bench. “I’m in no mood for your games today, Wit.” Wit plucked a note on his instrument. “Everyone always says that—which, first off, makes it a cliche. I am led to wonder. Is anyone ever in the mood for my games? And if they are, would that not defeat the point of my type of game in the first place?” Kaladin sighed as Wit continued to pluck out notes. “If I play along today,” Kaladin asked, “will that get rid of you?” “I will leave as soon as the story is done.” “Fine. A man went to jail. He hated it there. The end.” “Ah . . .” Wit said. “So it’s a story about a child, then.” “No, it’s about—” Kaladin cut off. Me. “Perhaps a story for a child,” Wit said. “I will tell you one, to get you in the mood. A bunny rabbit and a chick went frolicking in the grass together on a sunny day.” “A chick . . . baby chicken?” Kaladin said. “And a what?” “Ah, forgot myself for a moment,” Wit said. “Sorry. Let me make it more appropriate for you. A piece of wet slime and a disgusting crab thing with seventeen legs slunk across the rocks together on an insufferably rainy day. Is that better?” “I suppose. Is the story over?” “It hasn’t started yet.” Wit abruptly slapped the strings, then began to play them with ferocious intent. A vibrant, energetic repetition. One punctuated note, then seven in a row, frenzied. The rhythm got inside of Kaladin. It seemed to shake the entire room. “What do you see?” Wit demanded. “I . . .” “Close your eyes, idiot!” Kaladin closed his eyes. This is stupid. “What do you see?” Wit repeated.
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Wit was playing with him. The man was said to do that. He was supposedly Sigzil’s old mentor. Shouldn’t Kaladin have earned a reprieve by helping out his apprentice? There was nothing of humor to those notes. Those powerful notes. Wit added a second melody, complementing the first. Was he playing that with his other hand? Both at the same time? How could one man, one instrument, produce so much music? Kaladin saw . . . in his mind . . . A race. “That’s the song of a man who is running,” Kaladin said. “In the driest part of the brightest day, the man set off from the eastern sea.” Wit said it perfectly to the beat of his music, a chant that was almost a song. “And where he went or why he ran, the answer comes from you to me.” “He ran from the storm,” Kaladin said softly. “The man was Fleet, whose name you know; he’s spoken of in song and lore. The fastest man e’er known to live. The surest feet e’er known to roam. In time long past, in times I’ve known, he raced the Herald Chan-a-rach. He won that race, as he did each one, but now the time for defeat had come. “For Fleet so sure, and Fleet the quick, to all that heard he yelled his goal: to beat the wind, and race a storm. A claim so brash, a claim too bold. To race the wind? It can’t be done. Undaunted, Fleet was set to run. So to the east, there went our Fleet. Upon the shore his mark was set. “The storm grew strong, the storm grew wild. Who was this man all set to dash? No man should tempt the God of Storms. No fool had ever been so rash.” How did Wit play this music with only two hands? Surely another hand had joined him. Should Kaladin look? In his mind’s eye, he saw the race. Fleet, a barefooted man. Wit claimed all knew of him, but Kaladin had never heard of such a story. Lanky, tall, with tied-back long hair that went to his waist. Fleet took his mark on the shore, leaning forward in a running posture, waiting as the stormwall thundered and crashed across the sea toward him. Kaladin jumped as Wit hit a burst of notes, signaling the race’s start. Fleet tore off just in front of an angry, violent wall of water, lightning, and wind-blown rocks. Wit did not speak again until Kaladin prompted him. “At first,” Kaladin said, “Fleet did well.” “O’er rock and grass, our Fleet did run! He leaped the stones and dodged the trees, his feet a blur, his soul a sun! The storm so grand, it raged and spun, but away from it our Fleet did run! The lead was his, the wind behind, did man now prove that storms could lose? “Through land he ran so quick and sure, and Alethkar he left behind. But now the test he saw ahead, for mountains he would have to climb.
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The storm surged on, released a howl; it saw its chance might now approach. “To the highest mounts and the coldest peaks, our hero Fleet did make his way. The slopes were steep and paths unsure. Would he maintain his mighty lead?” “Obviously not,” Kaladin said. “You can never stay ahead. Not for long.” “No! The storm grew close, ’til it chewed his heels. Upon his neck, Fleet felt its chill. Its breath of ice was all around, a mouth of night and wings of frost. Its voice was of the breaking rocks; its song was of the crashing rain.” Kaladin could feel it. Icy water seeping through his clothing. Wind buffeting his skin. A roar so loud that soon, he could hear nothing at all. He’d been there. He’d felt it. “Then the tip he reached! The point he found! Fleet climbed no more; he crossed the peak. And down the side, his speed returned! Outside the storm, Fleet found the sun. Azir’s plains were now his path. He sprinted west, more broad his stride.” “But he was growing weak,” Kaladin said. “No man can run that far without getting tired. Even Fleet.” “Yet soon the race its toll did claim. His feet like bricks, his legs like cloth. In gasps our runner drew his breath. The end approached, the storm outdone, but slowly did our hero run.” “More mountains,” Kaladin whispered. “Shinovar.” “A final challenge raised its head, a final shadow to his dread. The land did rise up once again, the Misted Mountains guarding Shin. To leave the storming winds behind, our Fleet again began to climb.” “The storm caught up.” “The storms again came to his back, the winds again did spin around! The time was short, the ending near, as through those mounts our Fleet did dash.” “It was right upon him. Even going down the other side of the mountains, he was unable to stay very far ahead.” “He crossed the peaks, but lost his lead. The last paths lay before his feet, but strength he’d spent and might he’d lost. Each step was toil, each breath in pain. A sunken land he crossed with grief, the grass so dead it did not move. “But here the storm, it too did wilt, with thunder lost and lightning spent. The drops slipped down, now weak as wet. For Shin is not a place for them. “Ahead the sea, the race’s end. Fleet stayed ahead, his muscles raw. Eyes barely saw, legs barely walked, but on he went to destiny. The end you know, the end will live, a shock for men to me you’ll give.” Music, but no words. Wit waited for Kaladin’s reply. Enough of this, Kaladin thought. “He died. He didn’t make it. The end.” The music stopped abruptly. Kaladin opened his eyes, looking toward Wit. Would he be mad that Kaladin had made such a poor conclusion to the story? Wit stared at him, instrument still in his lap. The man didn’t seem angry. “So you do know this story,” Wit said. “What? I
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thought you were making it up.” “No, you were.” “Then what is there to know?” Wit smiled. “All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.” Kaladin sat up. He tapped one finger against his stone block of a bench. “So . . . Fleet. Was he real?” “As real as I am,” Wit said. “And he died?” Kaladin said. “Before he could finish the race?” “He died.” Wit smiled. “What?” Wit attacked the instrument. Music ripped through the small room. Kaladin rose to his feet as the notes reached new heights. “Upon that land of dirt and soil,” Wit shouted, “our hero fell and did not stir! His body spent, his strength undone, Fleet the hero was no more. “The storm approached and found him there. It stilled and stopped upon its course! The rains they fell, the winds they blew, but forward they could not progress. “For glory lit, and life alive, for goals unreached and aims to strive. All men must try, the wind did see. It is the test, it is the dream.” Kaladin stepped slowly up to the bars. Even with eyes open, he could see it. Imagine it. “So in that land of dirt and soil, our hero stopped the storm itself. And while the rain came down like tears, our Fleet refused to end this race. His body dead, but not his will, within those winds his soul did rise. “It flew upon the day’s last song, to win the race and claim the dawn. Past the sea and past the waves, our Fleet no longer lost his breath. Forever strong, forever fast, forever free to race the wind.” Kaladin rested his hands against the bars of his cage. The music rang in the room, then slowly died. Kaladin gave it a moment, Wit looking at his instrument, a proud smile on his lips. Finally, he tucked his instrument under his arm, took his bag and sword, and walked toward the doorway out. “What does it mean?” Kaladin whispered. “It’s your story. You decide.” “But you already knew it.” “I know most stories, but I’d never sung this one before.” Wit looked back at him, smiling. “What does it mean, Kaladin of Bridge Four? Kaladin Stormblessed?” “The storm caught him,” Kaladin said. “The storm catches everyone, eventually. Does it matter?” “I don’t know.” “Good.” Wit tipped his sword up toward his forehead, as if in respect. “Then you have something to think about.” He left. “Aha!” Shallan said. She scrambled across her fluffy bed—sinking down practically to her neck with each motion—and leaned precariously over the side. She scrabbled among the stacks of papers on the floor, tossing aside irrelevant sheets. Finally, she retrieved the one she wanted, holding it up while pushing hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ears. The page was a map, one of those ancient ones that Jasnah had talked about. It had
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taken forever to find a merchant at the Shattered Plains who had a copy. “Look,” Shallan said, holding the map beside a modern one of the same area, copied by her own hand from Amaram’s wall. Bastard, she noted to herself. She turned the maps around so that Pattern—who decorated the wall above her headboard—could see them. “Maps,” he said. “A pattern!” Shallan exclaimed. “I see no pattern.” “Look right here,” she said, edging over beside the wall. “On this old map, the area is . . .” “Natanatan,” Pattern read, then hummed softly. “One of the Epoch Kingdoms,” Shallan said. “Organized by the Heralds themselves for divine purposes and blah blah. But look.” She stabbed the page with her finger. “The capital of Natanatan, Stormseat. If you were to judge where we’d find the ruins of it, comparing this old map to the one Amaram had . . .” “It would be in those mountains somewhere,” Pattern said, “between the words ‘Dawn’s Shadow’ and the U in ‘Unclaimed Hills.’” “No, no,” Shallan said. “Use a little imagination! The old map is wildly inaccurate. Stormseat was right here. On the Shattered Plains.” “That is not what the map says,” Pattern said, humming. “Close enough.” “That is not a pattern,” he said, sounding offended. “Humans; you do not understand patterns. Like right now. It is second moon. Each night, you sleep during this time. But not tonight.” “I can’t sleep tonight.” “More information, please,” Pattern said. “Why not tonight? Is it the day of the week? Do you always not sleep on Jesel? Or is it the weather? Has it grown too warm? The position of the moons relative to—” “It’s none of that,” Shallan said, shrugging. “I just can’t sleep.” “Your body is capable of it, surely.” “Probably,” Shallan said. “But not my head. It surges with too many ideas, like waves against the rocks. Rocks that . . . I guess . . . are also in my head.” She cocked her head. “I don’t think that metaphor makes me sound particularly bright.” “But—” “No more complaints,” Shallan said, raising a finger. “Tonight, I am doing scholarship.” She put the page down on her bed, then leaned over the side, fishing out several others. “I wasn’t complaining,” Pattern complained. He moved down onto the bed beside her. “I do not remember well, but did Jasnah not use a desk when . . . ‘doing scholarship’?” “Desks are for boring people,” Shallan said. “And for people who don’t have a squishy bed.” Would Dalinar’s camp have had such a plush bed for her? Likely, the workload would have been smaller. Though, finally, she’d managed to finish sorting through Sebarial’s personal finances and was almost ready to present him with a set of relatively neat books. In a stroke of insight, she’d slipped a copy of one of her pages of quotes about Urithiru—its potential riches, and its connection to the Shattered Plains—in among the other reports she’d sent Palona. At the bottom, she wrote, “Among Jasnah Kholin’s notes are these indications of
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something valuable hidden out on the Shattered Plains. Will keep you informed of my discoveries.” If Sebarial thought there was opportunity beyond gemhearts out on the Plains, she might be able to get him to take her out there with his armies, in case Adolin’s promises didn’t come through. Getting all of that ready had left her with little time for studying, unfortunately. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t sleep. This would be easier, Shallan thought, if Navani would agree to meet with me. She’d written again, and gotten the reply that Navani was busy caring for Dalinar, who had come down with a sickness. Nothing life-threatening, apparently, but he had withdrawn for a few days to recuperate. Did Adolin’s aunt blame her for botching the dueling agreement? After what Adolin had decided to do last week . . . Well, at least his preoccupation left Shallan with some time to read and think about Urithiru. Anything other than worrying about her brothers, who still hadn’t responded to her letters pleading for them to leave Jah Keved and come to her. “I find sleeping very odd,” Pattern said. “I know that all beings in the Physical Realm engage in it. Do you find it pleasant? You fear nonexistence, but is not unconsciousness the same thing?” “With sleep, it’s only temporary.” “Ah. It is all right, because in the morning, you each return to sentience.” “Well, that depends on the person,” Shallan said absently. “For many of them, ‘sentience’ might be too generous a term. . . .” Pattern hummed, trying to sort through to the meaning of what she said. Finally, he buzzed an approximation of a laugh. Shallan cocked an eyebrow at him. “I have guessed that what you said is humorous,” Pattern said. “Though I do not know why. It was not a joke. I know of jokes. A soldier came running into camp after going to see the prostitutes. He was white in the face. His friends asked if he had found a good time. He said that he had not. They asked why. He said that when he’d asked how much the woman charged, she’d said one mark plus the tip. He told his friends that he hadn’t realized they were charging body parts now.” Shallan grimaced. “You heard that from Vathah’s men, didn’t you?” “Yes. It is funny because the word ‘tip’ means several different things. A payment made in addition to the sum initially charged, usually given voluntarily, and the top piece of something. In addition, I believe that ‘the tip’ means something in the slang of the soldiers, and so the man in the joke thought she was going to cut off his—” “Yes, thank you,” Shallan said. “That is a joke,” Pattern continued. “I understand why it is funny. Ha ha. Sarcasm is similar. You replace an expected result with one grossly unexpected, and the humor is in the juxtaposition. But why was your earlier comment funny?” “It’s debatable whether it was, at this point. . . .” “But—” “Pattern, nothing is less funny
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than explaining humor,” Shallan said. “We have more important things to discuss.” “Mmm . . . Such as why you have forgotten how to make your images produce sound? You did it once, long ago.” . . . Shallan blinked, then held up the modern map. “The capital of Natanatan was here, on the Shattered Plains. The old maps are misleading. Amaram notes that the Parshendi use weapons of masterly design, far beyond their skill in craftsmanship. Where would they have gotten those? From the ruins of the city that once was here.” Shallan dug in her stacks of papers, getting out a map of the city itself. It didn’t show the surrounding area—it was just a city map, and a rather vague one, taken from a book she’d purchased. She thought it was the one that Jasnah referenced in her notes. The merchant she’d bought it from claimed it was ancient—that it was a copy of a copy from a book in Azir that claimed to be a drawing of a tile mosaic depiction of the city of Stormseat. The mosaic no longer existed—so much of what they had of the shadowdays came from fragments like these. “Scholars reject the idea that Stormseat was here on the Plains,” Shallan said. “They say that the craters of the warcamps don’t match the descriptions of the city. Instead, they propose that the ruins must be hidden up in the highlands, where you indicated. But Jasnah didn’t agree with them. She points out that few of the scholars have actually been here, and that this area in general is poorly explored.” “Mmm,” Pattern said. “Shallan . . .” “I agree with Jasnah,” Shallan said, turning from him. “Stormseat wasn’t a large city. It could have been in the middle of the Plains, and these craters something else. . . . Amaram says here he thinks they might once have been domes. I wonder if that is even possible. . . . They’d be so large. . . . Anyway, this might have been a satellite city of some sort.” Shallan felt like she was getting close to something. Amaram’s notes spoke mostly of trying to meet with the Parshendi, to ask them about the Voidbringers and how to return them. He did mention Urithiru, however, and seemed to have come to the same conclusion as Jasnah—that the ancient city of Stormseat would have contained a path to Urithiru. Ten of them had once connected the ten capitals of the Epoch Kingdoms to Urithiru, which had some kind of conference room for the ten monarchs of the Epoch Kingdoms—and a throne for each one. That was why none of the maps placed the holy city in the same location. It was ridiculous to walk there; instead, you made for the nearest city with an Oathgate and used that. He’s searching for the information there, Shallan thought. Same as I am. But he wants to return the Voidbringers, not fight them. Why? She held up the antique map of Stormseat, the copy from the mosaic. It
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had artistic stylings instead of specific indications of things like distance and location. While she appreciated the former, the latter was truly frustrating. Are you on here? she thought. The secret, the Oathgate? Are you here, on this dais, as Jasnah thought? “The Shattered Plains haven’t always been shattered,” Shallan whispered to herself. “That’s what the scholars, all but Jasnah, are missing. Stormseat was destroyed during the Last Desolation, but it was so long ago, nobody talks about how. Fire? Earthquake? No. Something more terrible. The city was broken, like a piece of fine dinnerware hit with a hammer.” “Shallan,” Pattern said, moving closer to her. “I know that you have forgotten much of what once was. Those lies attracted me. But you cannot continue like this; you must admit the truth about me. About what I can do, and what we have done. Mmm . . . More, you must know yourself. And remember.” She sat cross-legged on the too-nice bed. Memories tried to claw their way out of the boxes inside her head. Those memories all pointed one way, toward carpet bloodied. And carpet . . . not. “You wish to help,” Pattern said. “You wish to prepare for the Everstorm, the spren of the unnatural one. You must become something. I did not come to you merely to teach you tricks of light.” “You came to learn,” Shallan said, staring at her map. “That’s what you said.” “I came to learn. We became to do something greater.” “Would you have me unable to laugh?” she demanded, suddenly holding back tears. “Would you have me crippled? That is what those memories would do to me. I can be what I am because I cut them off.” An image formed in front of her, born of Stormlight, created by instinct. She hadn’t needed to draw this image first, for she knew it too well. The image was of herself. Shallan, as she should be. Curled in a huddle on the bed, unable to weep for she had long since run out of tears. This girl . . . not a woman, a girl . . . flinched whenever spoken to. She expected everyone to shout at her. She could not laugh, for laughter had been squeezed from her by a childhood of darkness and pain. That was the real Shallan. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The person she had become instead was a lie, one she had fabricated in the name of survival. To remember herself as a child, discovering Light in the gardens, Patterns in the stonework, and dreams that became real . . . . . . “Mmmm . . . Such a deep lie,” Pattern whispered. “A deep lie indeed. But still, you must obtain your abilities. Learn again, if you have to.” “Very well,” Shallan said. “But if we did this before, can’t you just tell me how it is done?” “My memory is weak,” Pattern said. “I was dumb so long, nearly dead. Mmm. I could not speak.” “Yeah,” Shallan
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said, remembering him spinning on the ground and running into the wall. “You were kind of cute, though.” She banished the image of the frightened, huddled, whimpering girl, then got out her drawing implements. She tapped a pencil against her lips, then did something simple, a drawing of Veil, the darkeyed con woman. Veil was not Shallan. Her features were different enough that the two of them would be distinct individuals to anyone who happened to see them both. Still, Veil did bear echoes of Shallan. She was a darkeyed, tan-skinned, Alethi version of Shallan—a Shallan that was a few years older and had a pointier nose and chin. Finished with the drawing, Shallan breathed out Stormlight and created the image. It stood beside the bed, arms folded, looking as confident as a master duelist facing a child with a stick. Sound. How would she do sound? Pattern had called it a force, part of the Surge of Illumination—or at least similar to it. She situated herself on the bed, one leg folded beneath her, inspecting Veil. Over the next hour, Shallan tried everything she could think of, from straining herself and concentrating, to trying to draw sounds to make them appear. Nothing worked. Finally, she climbed off the bed and walked to get herself a drink from the bottle chilling in the bucket in the next room. As she approached it, however, she felt a tugging inside of her. She looked over her shoulder into the bedroom, and saw that the image of Veil had started to blur, like smudged pencil lines. Blast, but that was inconvenient. Sustaining the illusion required Shallan to provide a constant source of Stormlight. She walked back into the bedroom and set a sphere on the floor inside of Veil’s foot. When she walked away, the illusion still grew indistinct, like a bubble preparing to pop. Shallan turned and put her hands on her hips, staring at the version of Veil that had gone all fuzzy. “Annoying!” she snapped. Pattern hummed. “I’m sorry that your mystical, godlike powers do not instantly work as you would like them to.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you didn’t understand humor.” “I do. I just explained . . .” He paused for a moment. “Was I being funny? Sarcasm. I was sarcastic. By accident!” He seemed surprised, even gleeful. “I guess you’re learning.” “It is the bond,” he explained. “In Shadesmar, I do not communicate this way, this . . . human way. My connection to you gives me the means by which I can manifest in the Physical Realm as more than a mindless glimmer. Mmmm. It links me to you, helps me communicate as you do. Fascinating. Mmmm.” He settled down like a trumping axehound, perfectly content. And then Shallan noticed something. “I’m not glowing,” Shallan said. “I’m holding a lot of Stormlight, but I’m not glowing.” “Mmm . . .” Pattern said. “Large illusion transforms the Surge into another. Feeds off your Stormlight.” She nodded. The Stormlight she held fed the illusion, drawing the
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excess from her that would normally float above her skin. That could be useful. As Pattern moved up onto the bed, Veil’s elbow—which was closest to him—grew more distinct. Shallan frowned. “Pattern, move closer to the image.” He obliged, crossing the cover of her bed toward where Veil stood. She unfuzzed. Not completely, but his presence made a noticeable difference. Shallan walked over, her proximity making the illusion snap back to full clarity. “Can you hold Stormlight?” Shallan asked Pattern. “I don’t . . . I mean . . . Investiture is the means by which I . . .” “Here,” Shallan said, pressing her hand down on him, muffling his words to an annoyed buzzing. It was an odd sensation, as if she’d trapped an angry cremling under the bedsheets. She pushed some Stormlight into him. When she lifted her hand, he was trailing wisps of it, like steam off a hotplate fabrial. “We’re bonded,” she said. “My illusion is your illusion. I’m going to get a drink. See if you can keep the image from breaking apart.” She backed to the sitting room and smiled. Pattern, still buzzing with annoyance, moved down off the bed. She couldn’t see him—the bed was in the way—but she guessed he’d gone to Veil’s feet. It worked. The illusion stayed. “Ha!” Shallan said, getting herself a cup of wine. She walked back and eased onto the bed—flopping down with a cup of red wine did not seem prudent—and looked over the side at the floor, where Pattern sat beneath Veil. He was visible because of the Stormlight. I’ll need to take that into account, Shallan thought. Build illusions so that he can hide in them. “It worked?” Pattern said. “How did you know it would work?” “I didn’t.” Shallan took a sip of wine. “I guessed.” She drank another sip as Pattern hummed. Jasnah would not have approved. Scholarship requires a sharp mind and alert senses. These do not mix with alcohol. Shallan drank the rest of the wine in a gulp. “Here,” Shallan said, reaching down. She did the next bit by instinct. She had a connection to the illusion, and she had a connection to Pattern, so . . . With a push of Stormlight, she attached the illusion to Pattern as she often attached them to herself. His glow subsided. “Walk around,” she said. “I don’t walk . . .” Pattern said. “You know what I mean,” Shallan said. Pattern moved, and the image moved with him. It didn’t walk, unfortunately. The image just kind of glided. Like light reflected onto the wall from a spoon you idly turned in your hands. She cheered to herself anyway. After so long failing to get sounds from one of her creations, this different discovery seemed a major victory. Could she get it to move more naturally? She settled down with her sketchpad and started drawing. ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO Shallan became the perfect daughter. She kept quiet, particularly in Father’s presence. She spent most days in her room, sitting by the
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window, reading the same books over and over or sketching the same objects again and again. He had proven several times by this point that he would not touch her if she angered him. Instead, he would beat others in her name. The only times she allowed herself to drop the mask was when she was with her brothers, times when her father couldn’t hear. Her three brothers often cajoled her—with an edge of desperation—to tell them stories from her books. For their hearing only, she made jokes, poked fun at Father’s visitors, and invented extravagant tales by the hearth. Such an insignificant way to fight back. She felt a coward for not doing more. But surely . . . surely things would get better now. Indeed, as Shallan was involved more by the ardents in accounts, she noted a shrewdness to the way her father stopped being bullied by other lighteyes and started playing them against each other. He impressed her, but frightened her, in how he seized for power. Father’s fortunes changed further when a new marble deposit was discovered on his lands—providing resources to keep up with his promises, bribes, and deals. Surely that would make him start laughing again. Surely that would drive the darkness from his eyes. It did not. * * * “She is too low for you to marry,” Father said, setting down his mug. “I won’t have it, Balat. You will break off contact with that woman.” “She belongs to a good family!” Balat said, standing, palms on the table. It was lunch, and so Shallan was expected to be here, rather than remaining shut up in her room. She sat to the side, at her private table. Balat stood facing Father across the high table. “Father, they’re your vassals!” Balat snapped. “You yourself have invited them to dine with us.” “My axehounds dine at my feet,” Father said. “I do not allow my sons to court them. House Tavinar is not nearly ambitious enough for us. Now, Sudi Valam, that might be worth considering.” Balat frowned. “The highprince’s daughter? You can’t be serious. She’s in her fifties!” “She is single.” “Because her husband died in a duel! Anyway, the highprince would never approve it.” “His perception of us will change,” Father said. “We are a wealthy family now, with much influence.” “Yet still headed by a murderer,” Balat snapped. Too far! Shallan thought. On Father’s other side, Luesh laced his fingers in front of him. The new house steward had a face like a well-worn glove, leathery and wrinkled in the places most used—notably the frown lines. Father stood up slowly. This new anger of his, the cold anger, terrified Shallan. “Your new axehound pups,” he said to Balat. “Terrible that they caught a sickness during the latest highstorm. Tragic. It is unfortunate they need to be put down.” He gestured, and one of his new guards—a man Shallan did not know well—stepped outside, pulling his sword from its sheath. Shallan grew very cold. Even Luesh grew concerned, placing a hand on Father’s
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arm. “You bastard,” Balat said, growing pale. “I’ll—” “You’ll what, Balat?” Father asked, shaking off Luesh’s touch, leaning toward Balat. “Come on. Say it. Will you challenge me? Don’t think I wouldn’t kill you if you did. Wikim may be a pathetic wreck, but he will serve just as well as you for what this house needs.” “Helaran is back,” Balat said. Father froze, hands on the table, unmoving. “I saw him two days ago,” Balat said. “He sent for me, and I rode out to meet him in the city. Helaran—” “That name is not to be spoken in this house!” Father said. “I mean it, Nan Balat! Never.” Balat met his father’s gaze, and Shallan counted ten beats of her thumping heart before Balat broke the stare and looked away. Father sat down, looking exhausted as Balat stalked out of the room. The hall fell completely silent, Shallan too frightened to speak. Father eventually stood up, shoving his chair back and leaving. Luesh trailed soon after. That left Shallan alone with the servants. Timidly she stood up, then went after Balat. He was in the kennel. The guard had worked swiftly. Balat’s new pod of pups lay dead in a pool of violet blood on the stone floor. She’d encouraged Balat to breed these. He’d been making progress with his demons, over the years. He rarely hurt anything larger than a cremling. Now he sat on a box, looking down at the small corpses, horrified. Painspren cluttered the ground near him. The metal gate into the kennel rattled as Shallan pushed it open. She raised her safehand to her mouth as she drew closer to the pitiful remains. “Father’s guards,” Balat said. “It’s like they were waiting for a chance to do something like this. I don’t like the new group he has. That Levrin, with the angry eyes, and Rin . . . that one frightens me. What ever happened to Ten and Beal? Soldiers that you could joke with. Almost friends . . .” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Balat. Did you really see Helaran?” “Yes. He said I wasn’t to tell anyone. He warned me that this time when he left, he might not be coming back for a long time. He told me . . . told me to watch over the family.” Balat buried his head in his hands. “I can’t be him, Shallan.” “You don’t need to be.” “He’s brave. He’s strong.” “He abandoned us.” Balat looked up, tears running down his cheeks. “Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s the only way, Shallan.” “Leave our house?” “What of it?” Balat asked. “You spend every day locked away, brought out only for Father to display. Jushu has gone back to his gambling—you know he has, even if he’s smarter about it. Wikim talks about becoming an ardent, but I don’t know if Father will ever let go of him. He’s insurance.” It was, unfortunately, a good argument. “Where would we go?” Shallan asked. “We have nothing.” “I have nothing here either,” Balat said.
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“I’m not going to give up on Eylita, Shallan. She’s the only beautiful thing that has happened in my life. If she and I have to go live in Vedenar as tenth dahn, with me working as a house guard or something like that, we’ll do it. Doesn’t that seem a better life than this?” He gestured toward the dead pups. “Perhaps.” “Would you go with me? If I took Eylita and left? You could be a scribe. Earn your own way, be free of Father.” “I . . . No. I need to stay.” “Why?” “Something has hold of Father, something awful. If we all leave, we give him to it. Someone has to help him.” “Why do you defend him so? You know what he did.” “He didn’t do it.” “You can’t remember,” Balat said. “You’ve told me over and over that your mind blanks. You saw him kill her, but you don’t want to admit that you witnessed it. Storms, Shallan. You’re as broken as Wikim and Jushu. As . . . as I am sometimes . . .” She shook off her numbness. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you go, are you going to take Wikim and Jushu with you?” “I couldn’t afford to,” Balat said. “Jushu in particular. We’d have to live lean, and I couldn’t trust that he’d . . . you know. But if you came, it might be easier for one of us to find work. You’re better at writing and art than Eylita.” “No, Balat,” Shallan said, frightened of how eager a part of her was to say yes to him. “I can’t. Particularly if Jushu and Wikim remain here.” “I see,” he said. “Maybe . . . maybe there’s another way out. I’ll think.” She left him in the kennel, worried that Father would find her there and that it would upset him. She entered the manor, but couldn’t help feeling that she was trying to hold together a carpet as dozens of people pulled out threads from the sides. What would happen if Balat left? He backed down from fights with Father, but at least he resisted. Wikim merely did what he was told, and Jushu was still a mess. We have to just weather this, Shallan thought. Stop provoking Father, let him relax. Then he’ll come back. . . . She climbed the steps and passed Father’s door. It was open a crack; she could hear him inside. “. . . find him in Valath,” Father said. “Nan Balat claims to have met him in the city, and that is what he must have meant.” “It will be done, Brightlord.” That voice. It was Rin, captain of Father’s new guards. Shallan backed up, peeking into the room. Father’s strongbox shone behind the picture on the back wall, bright light bursting through the canvas. To her it was almost blinding, though the men in the room didn’t seem able to see it. Rin bowed before Father, hand on sword. “Bring me his head, Rin,” Father said. “I want to see
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it with my own eyes. He is the one who could ruin all of this. Surprise him, kill him before he can summon his Shardblade. That weapon will be yours in payment so long as you serve House Davar.” Shallan stumbled back from the door before Father could look up and see her. Helaran. Father had just ordered Helaran’s assassination. I have to do something. I have to warn him. How? Could Balat contact him again? Shallan— “How dare you,” said a feminine voice within. Stunned silence followed. Shallan edged back to look into the room. Malise, her stepmother, stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting room. The small, plump woman had never seemed threatening to Shallan before. But the storm on her face today could have frightened a whitespine. “Your own son,” Malise said. “Have you no morals left? Have you no compassion?” “He is no longer my son,” Father growled. “I believed your story about the woman before me,” Malise said. “I’ve supported you. I’ve lived with this cloud over the house. Now I hear this? It is one thing to beat the servants, but to kill your son?” Father whispered something to Rin. Shallan jumped, and barely got down the hallway to her room before the man slipped out of the room, then closed Father’s door with a click. Shallan shut herself in her room as the shouting started, a violent, angry back-and-forth between Malise and her father. Shallan huddled up beside the bed, tried to use a pillow to keep out the sounds. When she thought it was over, she removed the pillow. Her father stormed out into the hallway. “Why will nobody in this house obey?” he shouted, thumping down the stairs. “This wouldn’t happen if you all just obeyed.” Life continued in Kaladin’s cell. Though the accommodations were nice for a dungeon, he found himself wishing he were back in the slave wagon. At least then he’d been able to watch the scenery. Fresh air, wind, an occasional rinse in the highstorm’s last rains. Life certainly hadn’t been good, but it had been better than being locked away and forgotten. They took the spheres away at night, abandoning him to blackness. In the dark, he found himself imagining that he was someplace deep, with miles of stone above him and no pathway out, no hope of rescue. He could not conceive a worse death. Better to be gutted on the battlefield, looking up at the open sky as your life leaked away. * * * Light awoke him. He sighed, watching the ceiling as the guards—lighteyed soldiers he didn’t know—replaced the lamp spheres. Day after day, everything was the storming same in here. Waking to the frail light of spheres, which only made him wish for the sun. The servant arrived to give him his breakfast. He’d placed his chamber pot in reach of the opening at the bottom of the bars, and it scraped stone as she pulled it out and replaced it with a fresh one. She scurried away. He frightened
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her. With a groan at stiff muscles, Kaladin sat up and regarded his meal. Flatbread stuffed with bean paste. He stood, waving away some strange spren like taut wires crossing before him, then forced himself to do a set of push-ups. Keeping his strength up would be difficult if the imprisonment continued too long. Perhaps he could ask for some stones to use for training. Was this what happened to Moash’s grandparents? Kaladin wondered, taking the food. Waiting for a trial until they died in prison? Kaladin sat back on his bench, nibbling on the flatbread. There’d been a highstorm yesterday, but he’d barely been able to hear it, locked away in this room. He heard Syl humming nearby, but couldn’t find where she’d gone. “Syl?” he asked. She kept hiding from him. “There was a Cryptic at the fight,” her voice said softly. “You mentioned those before, didn’t you? A type of spren?” “A revolting type.” She paused. “But not evil, I don’t think.” She sounded begrudging. “I was going to follow it, as it fled, but you needed me. When I went back to look, it had hidden from me.” “What does it mean?” Kaladin asked, frowning. “Cryptics like to plan,” Syl said slowly, as if recalling something long lost. “Yes . . . I remember. They debate and watch and never do anything. But . . .” “What?” Kaladin asked, rising. “They’re looking for someone,” Syl said. “I’ve seen the signs. Soon, you might not be alone, Kaladin.” Looking for someone. To choose, like him, as a Surgebinder. What kind of Knight Radiant had been made by a group of spren Syl so obviously detested? It didn’t seem like someone he’d want to get to know. Oh, storms, Kaladin thought, sitting back down. If they choose Adolin . . . The thought should have made him sick. Instead, he found Syl’s revelation oddly comforting. Not being alone, even if it did turn out to be Adolin, made him feel better and drove away some small measure of his gloom. As he was finishing his meal, a thump came from the hallway. The door opening? Only lighteyes could visit him, though so far none had. Unless you counted Wit. The storm catches everyone, eventually. . . . Dalinar Kholin stepped into the room. Despite his sour thoughts, Kaladin’s immediate reaction—drilled into him over the years—was to stand and salute, hand to breast. This was his commanding officer. He felt an idiot as soon as he did it. He stood behind bars and saluted the man who’d put him here? “At ease,” Dalinar said with a nod. The wide-shouldered man stood with hands clasped behind his back. Something about Dalinar was imposing, even when he was relaxed. He looks like the generals from the stories, Kaladin thought. Thick of face and greying of hair, solid in the same way that a brick was. He didn’t wear a uniform, the uniform wore him. Dalinar Kholin represented an ideal that Kaladin had long since decided was a mere fancy. “How are your accommodations?”
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Dalinar asked. “Sir? I’m in storming prison.” A smile cracked Dalinar’s face. “So I see. Calm yourself, soldier. If I’d ordered you to guard a room for a week, would you have done it?” “Yes.” “Then consider this your duty. Guard this room.” “I’ll make sure nobody unauthorized runs off with the chamber pot, sir.” “Elhokar is coming around. He’s finished cooling off, and now only worries that releasing you too quickly will make him look weak. I’ll need you to stay here a few more days, then we’ll draft a formal pardon for your crime and have you reinstated to your position.” “I don’t see that I have any choice, sir.” Dalinar stepped closer to the bars. “This is hard for you.” Kaladin nodded. “You are well cared for, as are your men. Two of your bridgemen guard the way into the building at all times. There is nothing to worry you, soldier. If it’s your reputation with me—” “Sir,” Kaladin said. “I guess I’m just not convinced that the king will ever let me go. He has a history of letting inconvenient people rot in dungeons until they die.” As soon as he said the words, Kaladin couldn’t believe they’d come from his lips. They sounded insubordinate, even treasonous. But they’d been sitting there, in his mouth, demanding to be spoken. Dalinar remained in his posture with hands clasped behind his back. “You speak of the silversmiths back in Kholinar?” So he did know. Stormfather . . . had Dalinar been involved? Kaladin nodded. “How did you hear of that incident?” “From one of my men,” Kaladin said. “He knew the imprisoned people.” “I had hoped we could escape those rumors,” Dalinar said. “But of course, rumor grows like lichen, crusted on and impossible to completely scrub free. What happened with those people was a mistake, soldier. I’ll admit that freely. The same won’t happen to you.” “Are the rumors about them true, then?” “I would really rather not speak of the Roshone affair.” Roshone. Kaladin remembered screams. Blood on the floor of his father’s surgery room. A dying boy. A day in the rain. A day when one man tried to steal away Kaladin’s light. He eventually succeeded. “Roshone?” Kaladin whispered. “Yes, a minor lighteyes,” Dalinar said, sighing. “Sir, it’s important that I know of this. For my own peace of mind.” Dalinar looked him up and down. Kaladin just stared straight ahead, mind . . . numb. Roshone. Everything had started to go wrong when Roshone had arrived in Hearthstone to be the new citylord. Before then, Kaladin’s father had been respected. When that horrid man had arrived, dragging petty jealousy behind him like a cloak, the world had twisted upon itself. Roshone had infected Hearthstone like rotspren on an unclean wound. He was the reason Tien had gone to war. He was the reason Kaladin had followed. “I suppose I owe you this,” Dalinar said. “But it is not to be spread around. Roshone was a petty man who gained Elhokar’s ear. Elhokar was crown prince then,
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commanded to rule over Kholinar and watch the kingdom while his father organized our first camps here in the Shattered Plains. I was . . . away at the time. “Anyway, do not blame Elhokar. He was taking the advice of someone he trusted. Roshone, however, sought his own interests instead of those of the Throne. He owned several silversmith shops . . . well, the details are not important. Suffice it to say that Roshone led the prince to make some errors. I cleared it up when I returned.” “You saw this Roshone punished?” Kaladin asked, voice soft, feeling numb. “Exiled,” Dalinar said, nodding. “Elhokar moved the man to a place where he couldn’t do any more harm.” A place he couldn’t do any more harm. Kaladin almost laughed. “You have something to say?” “You don’t want to know what I think, sir.” “Perhaps I don’t. I probably need to hear it anyway.” Dalinar was a good man. Blinded in some ways, but a good man. “Well, sir,” Kaladin said, controlling his emotions with difficulty, “I find it . . . troubling that a man like this Roshone could be responsible for the deaths of innocent people, yet escape prison.” “It was complicated, soldier. Roshone was one of Highprince Sadeas’s sworn liegemen, cousin to important men whose support we needed. I originally argued that Roshone should be stripped of station and made a tenner, forced to live his life in squalor. But this would have alienated allies, and could have undermined the kingdom. Elhokar argued for leniency toward Roshone, and his father agreed via spanreed. I relented, figuring that mercy was not an attribute I should discourage in Elhokar.” “Of course not,” Kaladin said, clenching his teeth. “Though it seems that such mercy often ends up serving the cousins of powerful lighteyes, and rarely someone lowly.” He stared through the bars between himself and Dalinar. “Soldier,” Dalinar asked, voice cool. “Do you think I’ve been unfair toward you or your men?” “You. No, sir. But this isn’t about you.” Dalinar exhaled softly, as if in frustration. “Captain, you and your men are in a unique position. You spend your daily lives around the king. You don’t see the face that is presented to the world, you see the man. It has ever been so for close bodyguards. “So your loyalty needs to be extra firm and generous. Yes, the man you guard has flaws. Every man does. He is still your king, and I will have your respect.” “I can and do respect the Throne, sir,” Kaladin said. Not the man sitting in it, perhaps. But he did respect the office. Somebody needed to rule. “Son,” Dalinar said after a moment’s thought, “do you know why I put you into the position that I did?” “You said it was because you needed someone you could trust not to be a spy for Sadeas.” “That’s the rationale,” Dalinar said, stepping up closer to the bars, only inches from Kaladin. “But it’s not the reason. I did it because it felt right.” Kaladin
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frowned. “I trust my hunches,” Dalinar said. “My gut said you were a man who could help change this kingdom. A man who could live through Damnation itself in Sadeas’s camp and still somehow inspire others was a man I wanted under my command.” His expression grew harder. “I gave you a position no darkeyes has ever held in this army. I let you into conferences with the king, and I listened when you spoke. Do not make me regret those decisions, soldier.” “You don’t already?” Kaladin asked. “I’ve come close,” Dalinar said. “I understand, though. If you truly believe what you told me about Amaram . . . well, if I’d been in your place, I’d have been hard pressed not to do the same thing you did. But storm it, man, you’re still a darkeyes.” “It shouldn’t matter.” “Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. You want to change that? Well, you’re not going to do it by screaming like a lunatic and challenging men like Amaram to duels. You’ll do it by distinguishing yourself in the position I gave you. Be the kind of man that others admire, whether they be lighteyed or dark. Convince Elhokar that a darkeyes can lead. That will change the world.” Dalinar turned and walked away. Kaladin couldn’t help thinking that the man’s shoulders seemed more bowed than when he’d entered. After Dalinar left, Kaladin sat back on his bench, letting out a long, annoyed breath. “Stay calm,” he whispered. “Do as you’re told, Kaladin. Stay in your cage.” “He’s trying to help,” Syl said. Kaladin glanced to the side. Where was she hiding? “You heard about Roshone.” Silence. “Yes,” Syl finally said, voice sounding small. “My family’s poverty,” Kaladin said, “the way the town ostracized us, Tien being forced into the army, these things were all Roshone’s fault. Elhokar sent him to us.” Syl didn’t respond. Kaladin fished a bit of flatbread from his bowl, chewing on it. Stormfather—Moash really was right. This kingdom would be better off without Elhokar. Dalinar tried his best, but he had an enormous blind spot regarding his nephew. It was time someone stepped in and cut the ties binding Dalinar’s hands. For the good of the kingdom, for the good of Dalinar Kholin himself, the king had to die. Some people—like a festering finger or a leg shattered beyond repair—just needed to be removed. What are you doing? the spanreed wrote to Shallan. Nothing much, she wrote back by spherelight, just working on Sebarial’s income ledgers. She peeked out through the hole in her illusion, regarding the street far below. People flowed through the city as if marching to some strange rhythm. A dribble, then a burst, then back to a dribble. Rarely a constant flow. What caused that? You want to come visit? the pen wrote. This is getting really boring. Sorry, she wrote back to Adolin, I really need to get this work done. It might be nice to have a spanreed conversation to keep me company, though. Pattern hummed softly beside her at the lie.
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Shallan had used an illusion to expand the size of the shed atop this tenement in Sebarial’s warcamp, providing a hidden place to sit and watch the street below. Five hours of waiting—comfortable enough, with the stool and spheres for light—had revealed nothing. Nobody had approached the lone stone-barked tree growing beside the pathway. She didn’t know the species. It was too old to have been planted there recently; it must predate Sebarial’s arrival. The gnarled, sturdy bark made her think it was some variety of dendrolith, but the tree also had long fronds that rose into the air like streamers, twisting and fluttering in the wind. Those were reminiscent of a dalewillow. She’d already done a sketch; she would look it up in her books later. The tree was used to people, and didn’t pull in its fronds as they passed it. If someone had approached carefully enough to avoid brushing the fronds, Shallan would have spotted them. If, instead, they’d moved quickly, the fronds would have felt the vibrations and withdrawn—which she also would have spotted. She was reasonably certain that if anyone had tried to fetch the item in the tree, she’d have known it, even if she’d been looking away for a moment. I suppose, the pen wrote, I can continue to keep you company. Shoren isn’t doing anything else. Shoren was the ardent who wrote for Adolin today, come to visit by Adolin’s order. The prince had pointedly noted that he was using an ardent, rather than one of his father’s scribes. Did he think she’d grow jealous if he used another woman for scribing duties? He did seem surprised that she didn’t get jealous. Were the women of the court so petty? Or was Shallan the odd one, too relaxed? His eyes did wander, and she had to admit that wasn’t something that pleased her. And there was his reputation to consider. Adolin was said to have, in the past, changed relationships as frequently as other men changed coats. Perhaps she should cling more firmly, but the thought of it nauseated her. Such behavior reminded her of Father, holding so tightly to everything that he eventually broke it all. Yes, she wrote back to Adolin, using the board set on a box beside her, I’m certain the good ardent has nothing at all better to do than transcribe notes between two courting lighteyes. He’s an ardent, Adolin sent. He likes to serve. It’s what they do. I thought, she wrote, that saving souls was what they did. He’s tired of that, Adolin sent. He told me that he already saved three this morning. She smiled, checking on the tree—still no change. He did, did he? she wrote. Has them tucked away in his back pocket for safekeeping, I assume? No, Father’s way was not right. If she wanted to keep Adolin, she had to try something far more difficult than just clinging to him. She’d have to be so irresistible that he didn’t want to let go. Unfortunately, this was one area where neither Jasnah’s training
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nor Tyn’s would help. Jasnah had been indifferent toward men, while Tyn had not talked about keeping men, only distracting them for a quick con. Is your father feeling better? she wrote. Yes, actually. He’s been up and about since yesterday, looking as strong as ever. Good to hear, she wrote. The two continued exchanging idle comments, Shallan watching the tree. Mraize’s note had instructed her to come at sunrise and search the hole in the tree trunk for her instructions. So she’d come four hours early, while the sky was still dark, and sneaked up to the top of this building to watch. Apparently, she hadn’t come early enough. She’d really wanted to get a view of them placing the instructions. “I don’t like this,” Shallan said, whispering to Pattern and ignoring the pen, which scribed Adolin’s next line to her. “Why didn’t Mraize just give me the instructions via spanreed? Why make me come here?” “Mmm . . .” Pattern said from the floor beneath her. The sun had long since risen. She needed to go get the instructions, but still she hesitated, tapping her finger against the paper-covered board beside her. “They’re watching,” she realized. “What?” Pattern said. “They are doing exactly what I did. They are hiding somewhere, and want to watch me pick up the instructions.” “Why? What does it accomplish?” “It gives them information,” Shallan said. “And that is the sort of thing these people thrive upon.” She leaned to the side, peering out of her hole, which would appear from the outside as a gap between two of the bricks. She didn’t think Mraize wanted her dead, despite the sickening incident with the poor carriage driver. He’d given leave for the others around him to kill her, if they feared her, but that—like so much about Mraize—had been a test. If you really are strong and clever enough to join us, that incident implied, then you’ll avoid being assassinated by these people. This was another test. How did she pass it in a way that didn’t leave anyone dead this time? They’d be watching for her to come get her instructions, but there weren’t many good places to keep an eye on the tree. If she were Mraize and his people, where would she go to observe? She felt silly thinking it. “Pattern,” she whispered, “go look in the windows of this building that face the street. See if anyone is sitting in one of them, watching as we are.” “Very well,” he said, sliding out of her illusion. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that Mraize’s people might be hiding somewhere very close, but shoved aside her nervousness, reading Adolin’s reply. Good news, by the way, the pen wrote. Father visited last night, and we talked at length. He’s preparing his expedition out onto the Plains to fight the Parshendi, once and for all. Part of getting ready involves some scouting missions in the coming days. I got him to agree to bring you out onto the plateaus during one of them. And
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we can find a chrysalis? Shallan asked. Well, the pen wrote, even if the Parshendi aren’t fighting over those anymore, Father doesn’t take risks. I can’t bring you on a run when there is a chance they might come and contest us. But, I’ve been thinking we can probably arrange the scouting mission so it passes by a plateau with a chrysalis a day or so after it was harvested. Shallan frowned. A dead, harvested chrysalis? she wrote. I don’t know how much that will tell me. Well, Adolin replied, it’s better than not seeing one at all, right? And you did say you wanted the chance to cut one up. This is almost the same thing. He was right. Besides, getting out onto the Plains was the real goal. Let’s do it. When? In a few days. “Shallan!” She jumped, but it was only Pattern, buzzing with excitement. “You were right,” he said. “Mmmm. She watches below. Only one level down, second room.” “She?” “Mmm. The one with the mask.” Shallan shivered. Now what? Go back to her rooms, then write to Mraize and say that she didn’t appreciate being spied upon? It wouldn’t accomplish anything useful. Looking down at her pad of paper, she realized that her relationship with Mraize was similar to her relationship with Adolin. In both cases, she couldn’t just do as expected. She needed to excite, exceed. I’ll need to go, she wrote to Adolin. Sebarial is asking for me. It might take me a while. She clicked off the spanreed and tucked it and the board away in her satchel. Not her usual one, but a rugged bag with a leather strap that went over her shoulder, like Veil would carry. Then, before she could lose her nerve, she ducked out of her illusory hiding place. She put her back to the wall of the shed, facing away from the street, then touched the side of the illusion and withdrew the Stormlight. That made the illusory section of wall vanish, quickly breaking down and streaming into her hand. Hopefully, nobody had been looking at the shed at that moment. If they had been, though, they would probably just think the change a trick of the eyes. Next, she knelt and used Stormlight to infuse Pattern and bind to him an image of Veil from a drawing she’d done earlier. Shallan nodded for him to move, and as he did, the image of Veil walked. She looked good. A confident stride, a swishing coat, peaked hat shading her face against the sun. The illusion even blinked and turned her head on occasion, as prescribed by the drawing sequence Shallan had done earlier. She watched, hesitating. Was that actually how she looked while wearing Veil’s face and clothing? She didn’t feel nearly that poised, and the clothing always seemed exaggerated, even silly, to her. On this image, it looked appropriate. “Go down,” Shallan whispered to Pattern, “and walk to the tree. Try to approach carefully, slowly, and buzz loudly to get the tree’s leaves to pull back.
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Stand at the trunk for a moment, as if retrieving the thing inside, then walk to the alleyway between this building and the next.” “Yes!” Pattern said. He zipped off toward the stairs, excited to be part of the lie. “Slower!” Shallan said, wincing to see Veil’s pace not matching her speed. “As we practiced!” Pattern slowed and reached the steps. Veil’s image moved down them. Awkwardly. The illusion could walk and stand still on flat ground, but other terrain—such as steps—wasn’t accommodated. To anyone watching, it would seem like Veil was stepping on nothing and gliding down the stairs. Well, it was the best they could do for the moment. Shallan took a deep breath and pulled on her hat, breathing out a second image, one that covered her over and transformed her into Veil. The one on Pattern would remain so long as he had Stormlight. That Stormlight drained from him a lot faster than it did from Shallan, though. She didn’t know why. She went down the steps, but only one level, walking as quietly as she could. She counted over two doors in the dim hallway. The masked woman was inside that one. Shallan left it alone, instead ducking into an alcove by the stairwell, where she would be hidden from anyone in the hallway. She waited. A door eventually clicked open, and clothing rustled in the hallway. The masked woman passed Shallan’s hiding place, amazingly quiet as she moved down the steps. “What is your name?” Shallan asked. The woman froze on the steps. She spun—gloved safehand on the knife at her side—and saw Shallan standing in the alcove. The woman’s masked eyes flicked back toward the room she’d left. “I sent a double,” Shallan said, “wearing my clothing. That’s what you saw.” The woman did not move, still crouched on the steps. “Why did he want you to follow me?” Shallan asked. “He’s that interested in finding out where I’m staying?” “No,” the woman finally said. “The instructions in the tree call for you to set about a task immediately, with no time to waste.” Shallan frowned, considering. “So your job wasn’t to follow me home, but to follow me on the mission. To watch how I accomplished it?” The woman said nothing. Shallan strolled forward and seated herself on the top step, crossing her arms on her legs. “So what is the job?” “The instructions are in—” “I’d rather hear it from you,” Shallan said. “Call me lazy.” “How did you find me?” the woman asked. “A sharp-eyed ally,” Shallan said. “I told him to watch the windows, then send me word of where you were. I was waiting up above.” She grimaced. “I was hoping to catch one of you placing the instructions.” “We placed them before even contacting you,” the woman said. She hesitated, then took a few steps upward. “Iyatil.” Shallan cocked her head. “My name,” the woman said. “Iyatil.” “I’ve never heard one like it.” “Unsurprising. Your task today was to investigate a certain new arrival into Dalinar’s camp. We wish
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to know about this person, and Dalinar’s allegiances are uncertain.” “He’s loyal to the king and the Throne.” “Outwardly,” the woman said. “His brother knew things of an extraordinary nature. We are uncertain if Dalinar was told of these things or not, and his interactions with Amaram worry us. This newcomer is linked.” “Amaram is making maps of the Shattered Plains,” Shallan said. “Why? What is out there that he wants?” And why would he want to return the Voidbringers? Iyatil didn’t answer. “Well,” Shallan said, rising, “let’s get to it, then. Shall we?” “Together?” Iyatil said. Shallan shrugged. “You can sneak along behind, or you can just go with me.” She extended her hand. Iyatil inspected the hand, then clasped it with her own gloved freehand in acceptance. She kept her other hand on the dagger at her side the entire time, though. * * * Shallan flipped through the instructions Mraize had left, as the oversized palanquin lurched along toward Dalinar’s warcamp. Iyatil sat across from Shallan, legs tucked beneath her, watching with beady, masked eyes. The woman wore simple trousers and a shirt, such that Shallan had originally mistaken her for a boy that first time. Her presence was thoroughly unsettling. “A madman,” Shallan said, flipping to the next page of instructions. “Mraize is this interested in a simple madman?” “Dalinar and the king are interested,” Iyatil said. “So, then, are we.” There did seem to be some sort of cover-up involved. The madman had arrived in the custody of a man named Bordin, a servant whom Dalinar had stationed in Kholinar years ago. Mraize’s information indicated that this Bordin was no simple messenger, but instead one of Dalinar’s most trusted footmen. He had been left behind in Alethkar to spy on the queen, or so the Ghostbloods inferred. But why would someone need to keep an eye on the queen? The briefing didn’t say. This Bordin had come to the Shattered Plains in haste a few weeks ago, bearing the madman and other mysterious cargo. Shallan’s charge was to find out who this madman was and why Dalinar had hidden him away in a monastery with strict instructions that nobody was to be allowed access save specific ardents. “Your master knows more about this,” Shallan said, “than he is telling me.” “My master?” Iyatil asked. “Mraize.” The woman laughed. “You mistake. He is not my master. He is my student.” “In what?” Shallan asked. Iyatil stared at her with a level gaze and gave no reply. “Why the mask?” Shallan asked, leaning forward. “What does it mean? Why do you hide?” “I have many times asked myself,” Iyatil said, “why those of you here go about so brazenly with features exposed to all who would see them. My mask reserves my self. Besides, it gives me the ability to adapt.” Shallan sat back, thoughtful. “You are willing to ponder,” Iyatil said. “Rather than asking question after question. This is good. Your instincts, however, must be judged. Are you the hunter, or are you the quarry?” “Neither,” Shallan said
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immediately. “All are one or the other.” The palanquin’s porters slowed. Shallan peeked out the curtains and found that they had finally reached the edge of Dalinar’s warcamp. Here, soldiers at the gates stopped each person in line waiting to enter. “How will you get us in?” Iyatil asked as Shallan closed the curtains. “Highprince Kholin has grown cautious of late, with assassins appearing in the night. What lie will gain us access to his realm?” Delightful, she thought, revising her list of tasks. Shallan not only had to infiltrate the monastery and discover information about this madman, she had to do it without revealing too much about herself—or what she could do—to Iyatil. She had to think quickly. The soldiers at the front called for the palanquin to approach—lighteyes wouldn’t be required to wait in the ordinary line, and the soldiers would assume this nice a vehicle had someone rich inside. Taking a deep breath, Shallan removed her hat, pulled her hair forward over her shoulder, then pushed her face out of the curtains so that her hair hung down before her outside the palanquin. At the same moment, she withdrew her illusion and pulled the curtains closed behind her head, tight against her neck, to prevent Iyatil from seeing the transformation. The porters were parshmen, and she doubted the parshmen would say anything about what they saw her do. Their lighteyed master was turned away, fortunately. Her palanquin wobbled up to the front of the line, and the guards started when they saw her. They waved her through immediately. The face of Adolin’s betrothed was well known by this point. Now, how to get Veil’s appearance back on? There were people on the street here; she wasn’t about to breathe Stormlight while hanging out the window. “Pattern,” she whispered. “Go make a noise at the window on the other side of the palanquin.” Tyn had drilled into her the need to make a distracting motion with one hand while palming an object with the other. The same principle might work here. A sharp yelp sounded from the other window. Shallan moved her head back into the palanquin with a quick motion, breathing out Stormlight. She flipped the curtains in a diverting way and obscured her face with the hat as she put it on. Iyatil looked back toward her from the window where the yelp had sounded, but Shallan was Veil again. She settled back, meeting Iyatil’s gaze. Had the smaller woman seen? They rode in silence for a moment. “You bribed the guards ahead of time,” Iyatil finally guessed. “I would know how you did this. Kholin’s men are difficult to bribe. You got to one of the supervisors, perhaps?” Shallan smiled in what she hoped was a frustrating way. The palanquin continued on toward the warcamp’s temple, a part of Dalinar’s camp that she’d never visited. Actually, she hadn’t been to visit Sebarial’s ardents very often either—though when she had gone, she’d found them surprisingly devout, considering who owned them. She peeked out the window as they approached.
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Dalinar’s temple grounds were as plain as she would have expected. Grey-robed ardents passed the palanquin in pairs or small groups, mixing among people of all stations. Those had come for prayers, instruction, or advice—a good temple, properly equipped, could provide each of these things and more. Darkeyes from almost any nahn could come to be taught a trade, exercising their divine Right to Learn, as mandated by the Heralds. Lesser lighteyes came to learn trades as well, and the higher dahns came to learn the arts or progress in their Callings to please the Almighty. A large population of ardents like this one would have true masters in every art and trade. Perhaps she should come and seek Dalinar’s artists for training. She winced, wondering where she would find time for such a thing. What with courting Adolin, infiltrating the Ghostbloods, researching the Shattered Plains, and doing Sebarial’s ledgers, it was a wonder she had time to sleep. Still, it felt impious of her to expect success in her duties while ignoring the Almighty. She did need to have more concern for such things. And what is the Almighty to think of you? she wondered. And the lies you’re growing so proficient at producing. Honesty was among the divine attributes of the Almighty, after all, which everyone was supposed to seek. The temple complex here included more than one building, though most people would only visit the main structure. Mraize’s instructions had included a map, so she knew the specific building she needed—one near the back, where the ardent healers saw to the sick and cared for people with long-term illnesses. “It will not be easy to enter,” Iyatil said. “The ardents are protective of their charges, and have them locked away in the back, kept from the eyes of other men. They will not welcome an attempt at intrusion.” “The instructions indicated that today was the perfect time to sneak in,” Shallan said. “I was to make haste to not miss the opportunity.” “Once a month,” Iyatil said, “all may come to the temple to ask questions or see a physician with no offering requested. Today will be a busy day, a day of confusion. That will make for an easier time infiltrating, but it does not mean they will simply let you saunter in.” Shallan nodded. “If you would rather do this at night,” Iyatil said, “perhaps I can persuade Mraize that the matter can wait until then.” Shallan shook her head. She had no experience sneaking about in the darkness. She’d just make a fool of herself. But how to get in . . . “Porter,” she commanded, sticking her head out the window and pointing, “take us to that building there, then set us down. Send one of your number to seek the master healers. Tell them I need their aid.” The tenner who led the parshmen—hired with Shallan’s spheres—nodded brusquely. Tenners were a strange lot. This one didn’t own the parshmen; he just worked for the woman who rented them out. Veil, with dark eyes, would
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be beneath him socially, but was also the one paying his wage, and so he just treated her as he would any other master. The palanquin settled down and one of the parshmen walked off to deliver her request. “Going to feign sickness?” Iyatil asked. “Something like that,” Shallan said as footsteps arrived outside. She climbed out to meet a pair of square-bearded ardents, conferring as the parshmen led them in her direction. They looked her over, noting her dark eyes and her clothing—which was well-made but obviously intended for rugged use. Likely, they placed her in one of the upper-middle nahns, a citizen, but not a particularly important one. “What is the problem, young woman?” asked the older of the two ardents. “It is my sister,” Shallan said. “She has put on this strange mask and refuses to remove it.” A soft groan rose from inside the palanquin. “Child,” said the lead ardent, his tone suffering, “a stubborn sister is not a matter for the ardents.” “I understand, good brother,” Shallan said, raising her hands before her. “But this is no simple stubbornness. I think . . . I think one of the Voidbringers has inhabited her!” She pushed aside the curtains of the palanquin, revealing Iyatil inside. Her strange mask made the ardents pull back and break off their objections. The younger of the two men peered in at Iyatil with wide eyes. Iyatil turned to Shallan, and with an almost inaudible sigh, started rocking back and forth in place. “Should we kill them?” she muttered. “No. No, we shouldn’t. But someone will see! No, do not say these things. No. I will not listen to you.” She started humming. The younger ardent turned to look back at the senior. “This is dire,” the ardent said, nodding. “Porter, come. Have your parshmen bring the palanquin.” * * * A short time later, Shallan waited in the corner of a small monastery room, watching Iyatil sit and resist the ministration of several ardents. She kept warning them that if they removed her mask, she would have to kill them. That did not seem to be part of the act. Fortunately, she otherwise played her part well. Her ravings, mixed with her hidden face, gave even Shallan shivers. The ardents seemed alternately fascinated and horrified. Concentrate on the drawing, Shallan thought to herself. It was a sketch of one of the ardents, a portly man about her own height. The drawing was rushed but capable. She idly found herself wondering what a beard would feel like. Would it itch? But no, hair on your head didn’t itch, so why should hair on your face? How did they keep food out of the things? She finished with a few quick marks, then rose quietly. Iyatil kept the ardents’ attention with a new bout of raving. Shallan nodded to her in thanks, then slipped out of the door, entering the hallway. After glancing to the sides to see that she was alone, she used a cloud of Stormlight to transform into the ardent. That
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done, she reached up and tucked her straight red hair—the only part of her that threatened to pop out of the illusion—inside the back of her coat. “Pattern,” she whispered, turning and walking down the hallway with a relaxed demeanor. “Mmm?” “Find him,” she said, removing from her satchel a sketch of the madman that Mraize had left in the tree. The sketch had been done at a distance, and wasn’t terribly good. Hopefully . . . “Second hallway on the left,” Pattern said. Shallan looked down at him, though her new costume—an ardent’s robe—obscured him where he sat on her coat. “How do you know?” “You were distracted by your drawing,” he said. “I peeked about. There is a very interesting woman four doors down. She appears to be rubbing excrement on the wall.” “Ew.” Shallan thought she could smell it. “Patterns . . .” he said as they walked. “I did not get a good look at what she was writing, but it seemed very interesting. I think I shall go and—” “No,” Shallan whispered, “stay with me.” She smiled, nodding to several ardents who strolled past. They didn’t speak to her, fortunately, merely nodding back. The monastery building, like most everything in Dalinar’s warcamp, was sliced through with dull, unornamented hallways. Shallan followed Pattern’s instructions to a thick door set into the stone. The lock clicked open with Pattern’s help, and Shallan quietly slipped inside. A single small window—more of a slit—proved insufficient to fully illuminate the large figure sitting on the bed. Dark-skinned, like a man from the Makabaki kingdoms, he had dark, ragged hair and hulking arms. Those were the arms of either a laborer or a soldier. The man sat slumped, back bowed, head down, frail light from the window cutting a slice across his back in white. It made for a grim, powerful silhouette. The man was whispering. Shallan couldn’t make out the words. She shivered, her back to the door, and held up the sketch Mraize had given her. This seemed to be the same person—at least, the skin color and stout build were the same, though this man was far more muscled than the picture indicated. Storms . . . those hands of his looked as if they could crush her like a cremling. The man did not move. He did not look up, did not shift. He was like a boulder that had rolled to a stop here. “Why is it kept so dark in this room?” Pattern asked, perfectly cheerful. The madman didn’t react to the comment, or even Shallan, as she stepped forward. “Modern theory for helping the mad suggests dim confines,” Shallan whispered. “Too much light stimulates them, and can reduce the effectiveness of treatment.” That was what she remembered, at least. She hadn’t read much on this subject. The room was dark. That window couldn’t be more than a few fingers wide. What was he whispering? Shallan cautiously continued forward. “Sir?” she asked. Then she hesitated, realizing that she was projecting a young woman’s voice from an old,
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fat ardent’s body. Would that startle the man? He wasn’t looking, so she withdrew the illusion. “He doesn’t seem angry,” Pattern said. “But you call him mad.” “‘Mad’ has two definitions,” Shallan said. “One means to be angry. The other means broken in the head.” “Ah,” Pattern said, “like a spren who has lost his bond.” “Not exactly, I’d guess,” Shallan said, stepping up to the madman. “But similar.” She knelt down by the man, trying to figure out what he was saying. “The time of the Return, the Desolation, is at hand,” he whispered. She would have expected an Azish accent from him, considering the skin color, but he spoke perfect Alethi. “We must prepare. You will have forgotten much, following the destruction of times past.” She looked over at Pattern, lost in the shadows at the side of the room, then back at the man. Light glinted off his dark brown eyes, two bright pinpricks on an otherwise shadowed visage. That slumped posture seemed so morose. He whispered on, about bronze and steel, about preparations and training. “Who are you?” Shallan whispered. “Talenel’Elin. The one you call Stonesinew.” She felt a chill. Then the madman continued, whispering the same things he had before, repeated exactly. She couldn’t even be certain if his comment had been a reply to her question, or just a part of his recitation. He did not answer further questions. Shallan stepped back, folding her arms, satchel over her shoulder. “Talenel,” Pattern said. “I know that name.” “Talenelat’Elin is the name of one of the Heralds,” Shallan said. “This is almost the same.” “Ah.” Pattern paused. “Lie?” “Undoubtedly,” Shallan said. “It defies reason that Dalinar Kholin would have one of the Heralds of the Almighty locked away in a temple’s back rooms. Many madmen think themselves someone else.” Of course, many said that Dalinar himself was mad. And he was trying to refound the Knights Radiant. Scooping up a madman who thought he was one of the Heralds could be in line with that. “Madman,” Shallan said, “where do you come from?” He continued ranting. “Do you know what Dalinar Kholin wishes of you?” More ranting. Shallan sighed, but knelt and wrote his exact words to deliver to Mraize. She got the entire sequence down, and listened to it twice through to make sure he wasn’t going to say anything new. He didn’t say his supposed name this time, though. So that was one deviation. He couldn’t actually be one of the Heralds, could he? Don’t be silly, she thought, tucking away her writing implements. The Heralds glow like the sun, wield the Honorblades, and speak with the voices of a thousand trumpets. They could cast down buildings with a command, force the storms to obey, and heal with a touch. Shallan walked to the door. By now, her absence in the other room would have been noticed. She should get back and give her lie, of seeking a drink for her parched throat. First, though, she’d want to put back on the ardent disguise. She sucked
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in some Stormlight, then breathed out, using the still-fresh memory of the ardent to create— “Aaaaaaaah!” The madman leaped to his feet, screaming. He lurched for her, moving with incredible speed. As Shallan yelped in surprise, he grabbed her and shoved her out of her cloud of Stormlight. The image fell apart, evaporating, and the madman smashed her up against the wall, his eyes wide, his breathing ragged. He searched her face with frantic eyes, pupils darting back and forth. Shallan trembled, breath catching. Ten heartbeats. “One of Ishar’s Knights,” the madman whispered. His eyes narrowed. “I remember . . . He founded them? Yes. Several Desolations ago. No longer just talk. It hasn’t been talk for thousands of years. But . . . When . . .” He stumbled back from her, hand to his head. Her Shardblade dropped into her hands, but she no longer appeared to need it. The man turned his back to her, walked to his bed, then lay down and curled up. Shallan inched forward, and found he was back to whispering the same things as before. She dismissed the Blade. Mother’s soul . . . “Shallan?” Pattern asked. “Shallan, are you mad?” She shook herself. How much time had passed? “Yes,” she said, walking hurriedly for the door. She peeked outside. She couldn’t risk using Stormlight again in this room. She’d just have to slip out— Blast. Several people approached down the hallway. She would have to wait for them to pass. Except, they seemed to be heading right to this very door. One of those men was Highlord Amaram. Kaladin lay on his bench, ignoring the afternoon bowl of steamed, spiced tallew on the floor. He had begun to imagine himself as that whitespine in the menagerie. A predator in a cage. Storms send that he didn’t end up like that poor beast. Wilted, hungry, confused. They don’t do well in captivity, Shallan had said. How many days had it been? Kaladin found himself not caring. That worried him. During his time as a slave, he’d also stopped caring about the date. He wasn’t so far removed from that wretch he’d once been. He felt himself slipping back toward that same mindset, like a man climbing a cliff covered in crem and slime. Each time he tried to pull himself higher, he slid back. Eventually he’d fall. Old ways of thinking . . . a slave’s ways of thinking . . . churned within him. Stop caring. Worry only about the next meal, and keeping it away from the others. Don’t think too much. Thinking is dangerous. Thinking makes you hope, makes you want. Kaladin shouted, throwing himself off his bench and pacing in the small room, hands to his head. He’d thought himself so strong. A fighter. But all they had to do to take that away was stuff him in a box for a few weeks, and the truth returned! He slammed himself against the bars and stretched a hand between them, toward one of the lamps on the wall. He sucked
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in a breath. Nothing happened. No Stormlight. The sphere continued to glow, even and steady. Kaladin cried out, reaching farther, pushing his fingertips toward that distant light. Don’t let the darkness take me, he thought. He . . . prayed. How long had it been since he’d done that? He didn’t have someone to properly write and burn the words, but the Almighty listened to hearts, didn’t he? Please. Not again. I can’t go back to that. Please. He strained for that sphere, breathing in. The Light seemed to resist, then gloriously streamed out into his fingertips. The storm pulsed in his veins. Kaladin held his breath, eyes shut, savoring it. The power strained against him, trying to escape. He pushed off the bars and started pacing again, eyes closed, not so frantic as before. “I’m worried about you.” Syl’s voice. “You’re growing dark.” Kaladin opened his eyes and finally found her, sitting between two of the bars as if on a swing. “I’ll be all right,” Kaladin said, letting Stormlight rise from his lips like smoke. “I just need to get out of this cage.” “It’s worse than that. It’s the darkness . . . the darkness . . .” She looked to the side, then giggled suddenly, streaking off to inspect something on the floor. A little cremling that was creeping along the edge of the room. She stood over it, eyes widening at the stark red and violet color of its shell. Kaladin smiled. She was still a spren. Childlike. The world was a place of wonder to Syl. What would that be like? He sat down and ate his meal, feeling as if he’d pushed aside the gloom for a time. Eventually, one of the guards checked on him and found the dun sphere. He pulled it out, frowning, shaking his head before replacing it and moving on. * * * Amaram was coming into this room. Hide! Shallan was proud of how quickly she spat out the rest of her Stormlight, wreathing herself in it. She didn’t even give thought to how the madman had reacted to her Lightweaving before, though perhaps she should have. Regardless, this time he didn’t seem to notice. Should she become an ardent? No. Something much simpler, something faster. Darkness. Her clothing turned black. Her skin, her hat, her hair—everything pure black. She scrambled back away from the door into the corner of the room, farthest from the slot of a window, stilling herself. With her illusion in place, the Lightweaving consumed the trails of Stormlight that would normally rise from her skin, further masking her presence. The door opened. Her heart thundered within her. She wished she’d had time to create a false wall. Amaram entered the room with a young darkeyed man, obviously Alethi, with short dark hair and prominent eyebrows. He wore Kholin livery. They shut the door quietly behind themselves, Amaram pocketing a key. Shallan felt an immediate anger at seeing her brother’s murderer here, but found that it had quieted somewhat. A smoldering loathing instead of an
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intense hatred. It had been a long time since she’d seen Helaran, now. And Balat had a point in that her older brother had abandoned them. To try to kill this man, apparently—or so she’d been able to put together from what she’d read of Amaram and his Shardblade. Why had Helaran gone to kill this man? And could she really blame Amaram when, in truth, he’d probably just been defending himself? She felt like she knew so little. Though Amaram was still a bastard, of course. Together, Amaram and the Alethi darkeyes turned to the madman. Shallan couldn’t make out much of their features in the mostly dark room. “I don’t know why you need to hear it for yourself, Brightlord,” the servant said. “I told you what he said.” “Hush, Bordin,” Amaram said, crossing the room. “Listen at the door.” Shallan stood stiff, pressed back in the corner. They’d see her, wouldn’t they? Amaram knelt beside the bed. “Great Prince,” he whispered, hand to the madman’s shoulder. “Turn. Let me see you.” The madman looked up, still muttering. “Ah . . .” Amaram said, breathing out. “Almighty above, ten names, all true. You are beautiful. Gavilar, we have done it. We have finally done it.” “Brightlord?” Bordin said from the door. “I don’t like being here. If we’re discovered, people might ask questions. The treasure . . .” “He truly spoke of Shardblades?” “Yes,” Bordin said. “A whole cache of them.” “The Honorblades,” Amaram whispered. “Great Prince, please, give me the same words you spoke to this one.” The madman muttered on, the same as Shallan had heard. Amaram continued kneeling, but eventually he turned toward the nervous Bordin. “Well?” “He repeated those words every day,” Bordin said, “but he only spoke of the Blades once.” “I would hear of them for myself.” “Brightlord . . . We could wait here days and not hear those words. Please. We must go. The ardents will eventually come by on their rounds.” Amaram stood up with obvious reluctance. “Great Prince,” he said to the huddled figure of the madman, “I go to recover your treasures. Speak not of them to the others. I will put the Blades to good use.” He turned to Bordin. “Come. Let us search out this place.” “Today?” “You said it was close.” “Yes, well, that was why I brought him all the way out here. But—” “If he accidentally speaks of this to others, I would have them go to the place and find it empty of treasures. Come, quickly. You will be rewarded.” Amaram strode out. Bordin lingered at the door, looking at the madman, then trailed out and shut the door with a click. Shallan breathed out a long, deep breath, slumping down to the floor. “It’s like that sea of spheres.” “Shallan?” Pattern asked. “I’ve fallen in,” she said, “and it isn’t that the water is over my head—it’s that the stuff isn’t even water, and I have no idea how to swim in it.” “I do not understand this lie,” Pattern said. She
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shook her head, the color bleeding back into her skin and clothing. She made herself look like Veil again, then walked to the door, accompanied by the sound of the madman’s rambling. Herald of War. The time of the Return is near at hand. . . . Outside, she found her way back to the room with Iyatil, then apologized profusely to the ardents there who were looking for her. She pled that she had gotten lost, but said she’d accept an escort to take her back to her palanquin. Before going, however, she leaned down to hug Iyatil, as if to wish her sister farewell. “You can escape?” Shallan whispered. “Don’t be stupid. Of course I can.” “Take this,” Shallan said, pressing a sheet of paper into Iyatil’s gloved freehand. “I wrote upon it the ramblings of the madman. They repeat without change. I saw Amaram sneak into the room; he seems to think these words are authentic, and he seeks a treasure the madman spoke of earlier. I will write a thorough report via spanreed to you and the others tonight.” Shallan moved to pull back, but Iyatil held on. “Who are you really, Veil?” the woman asked. “You caught me in stealth spying upon you, and you can lose me in the streets. This is not easily accomplished. Your clever drawings fascinate Mraize, another near-impossible task, considering all that he has seen. Now what you have done today.” Shallan felt a thrill. Why should she feel so excited to have the respect of these people? They were murderers. But storms take her, she had earned that respect. “I seek the truth,” Shallan said. “Wherever it may be, whoever may hold it. That’s who I am.” She nodded to Iyatil, then pulled away and escaped the monastery. Later on that night, after sending in a full report of the day’s events—as well as promising drawings of the madman, Amaram, and Bordin for good measure—she received back a simple message from Mraize. The truth destroys more people than it saves, Veil. But you have proven yourself. You no longer need fear our other members; they have been instructed not to touch you. You are required to get a specific tattoo, a symbol of your loyalty. I will send a drawing. You may add it to your person wherever you wish, but must prove it to me when we next meet. Welcome to the Ghostbloods. ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO What is a woman’s place in this modern world? Jasnah Kholin’s words read. I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past. They ignore the greater assumption—that a “place” for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be—by
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nature—a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood. I say that there is no role for women—there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither. Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman’s role above another. My point is not to stratify our society—we have done that far too well already—my point is to diversify our discourse. A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation. Shallan closed the book. Not two hours had passed since Father had ordered Helaran’s assassination. After Shallan had retreated to her room, a pair of Father’s guards had appeared in the hallway outside. Probably not to watch her—she doubted that Father knew that she’d overheard his order for Helaran to be killed. The guards were to see that Malise, Shallan’s stepmother, did not try to flee. That could be a mistaken assumption. Shallan didn’t even know if Malise was still alive, following her screaming and Father’s cold, angry ranting. Shallan wanted to hide, to hunker down in her closet with blankets wrapped around her, eyes squeezed shut. The words in Jasnah Kholin’s book strengthened her, though in some ways it seemed laughable for Shallan to even be reading it. Highlady Kholin talked about the nobility of choice, as if every woman had such opportunity. The decision between being a mother or a scholar seemed a difficult decision in Jasnah’s estimation. That wasn’t a difficult choice at all! That seemed like a grand place to be! Either would be delightful when compared to a life of fear in a house seething with anger, depression, and hopelessness. She imagined what Highlady Kholin must be, a capable woman who did not do as others insisted she must. A woman with power, authority. A woman who had the luxury of seeking her dreams. What would that be like? Shallan stood up. She walked to the door, then cracked it open. Though the evening had grown late, the two guards still stood at the other end of the hallway. Shallan’s heart thumped, and she cursed her timidity. Why couldn’t she be like women who acted, instead of being someone who hid in her room with a pillow around her head? Shaking, she slipped from the room. She padded toward the soldiers, feeling their eyes on her. One raised his hand. She didn’t know the man’s name. Once, she’d known all of the guards’ names. Those men, whom she’d grown up with, had been replaced now. “My father will need me,” she said, not stopping at the guard’s gesture. Though he was lighteyed, she did not need to obey him. She might spend most
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of every day in her rooms, but she was still of a much higher rank than he. She walked by the men, trembling hands clenched tight. They let her go. When she passed her father’s door, she heard soft weeping inside. Malise still lived, thankfully. She found Father in the feast hall, sitting alone with both firepits roaring, full of flames. He slumped at the high table, lit by harsh light, staring at the tabletop. Shallan slipped into the kitchen before he noticed her, and mixed his favorite. Deep violet wine, spiced with cinnamon and warmed against the chill day. He looked up as she walked back into the feast hall. She set the cup before him, looking into his eyes. No darkness there today. Just him. That was very rare, these days. “They won’t listen, Shallan,” he whispered. “Nobody will listen. I hate that I have to fight my own house. They should support me.” He took the drink. “Wikim just stares at the wall half the time. Jushu is worthless, and Balat fights me every step. Now Malise too.” “I will speak to them,” Shallan said. He drank the wine, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, that would be good. Balat is still out with those cursed axehound corpses. I’m glad they’re dead. That litter was full of runts. He didn’t need them anyway. . . .” Shallan stepped into the chill air. The sun had set, but lanterns hung on the eaves of the manor house. She had rarely seen the gardens at night, and they took on a mysterious cast in the darkness. Vines looked like fingers reaching from the void, seeking something to grab and pull away into the night. Balat lay on one of the benches. Shallan’s feet crunched on something as she stepped up to him. Claws from cremlings, pulled free of their bodies one after another, then tossed to the ground. She shivered. “You should go,” she said to Balat. He sat up. “What?” “Father can no longer control himself,” Shallan said softly. “You need to leave, while you can. I want you to take Malise with you.” Balat ran his hand through his mess of curly dark hair. “Malise? Father will never let her go. He’d hunt us down.” “He’ll hunt you anyway,” Shallan said. “He hunts Helaran. Earlier today, he ordered one of his men to find our brother and assassinate him.” “What!” Balat stood. “That bastard! I’ll . . . I . . .” He looked to Shallan in the darkness, face lit by starlight. Then he crumpled, sitting back down, holding his head in his hands. “I’m a coward, Shallan,” he whispered. “Oh, Stormfather, I’m a coward. I won’t face him. I can’t.” “Go to Helaran,” Shallan said. “Could you find him, if you needed to?” “He . . . Yes, he left me the name of a contact in Valath who could put me in touch with him.” “Take Malise and Eylita. Go to Helaran.” “I won’t have time to find Helaran before Father catches up.” “Then we will contact Helaran,”
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Shallan said. “We will make plans for you to meet him, and you can schedule your flight for a time when Father is away. He is planning another trip to Vedenar a few months from now. Leave when he’s gone, get a head start.” Balat nodded. “Yes . . . Yes, that is good.” “I will draft a letter to Helaran,” Shallan said. “We need to warn him about Father’s assassins, and we can ask him to take the three of you in.” “You shouldn’t have to do this, small one,” Balat said, head down. “I’m the eldest after Helaran. I should have been able to stop Father by now. Somehow.” “Take Malise away,” Shallan said. “That will be doing enough.” He nodded. Shallan returned to the house, passing Father mulling over his disobedient family, and fetched some things from the kitchen. Then she returned to the steps and looked upward. Taking a few deep breaths, she went over what she would say to the guards if they stopped her. Then she raced up them and opened the door into her father’s sitting room. “Wait,” the hallway guard said. “He left orders. Nobody in or out.” Shallan’s throat tightened, and even with her practice, she stammered as she spoke. “I just talked to him. He wants me to speak with her.” The guard inspected her, chewing on something. Shallan felt her confidence wilt, heart racing. Confrontation. She was as much a coward as Balat. He gestured to the other guard, who went downstairs to check. He eventually returned, nodding, and the first man reluctantly waved for her to continue. Shallan entered. Into the Place. She had not entered this room in years. Not since . . . Not since . . . She raised a hand, shading her eyes against the light coming from behind the painting. How could Father sleep in here? How was it that nobody else looked, nobody else cared? That light was blinding. Fortunately, Malise was curled in an easy chair facing that wall, so Shallan could put her back to the painting and obstruct the light. She rested a hand on her stepmother’s arm. She didn’t feel that she knew Malise, despite years living together. Who was this woman who would marry a man everyone whispered had killed his previous wife? Malise oversaw Shallan’s education—meaning she searched for new tutors each time the women fled—but Malise herself couldn’t do much to teach Shallan. One could not teach what one did not know. “Mother?” Shallan asked. She used the word. Malise looked. Despite the blazing light of the room, Shallan saw the woman’s lip was split and bleeding. She cradled her left arm. Yes, it was broken. Shallan took out the gauze and cloth she had fetched from the kitchen, then began to wipe down the wounds. She would have to find something to use as a splint for that arm. “Why doesn’t he hate you?” Malise said harshly. “He hates everyone else but you.” Shallan dabbed at the woman’s lip. “Stormfather, why did I come to this
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cursed household?” Malise shuddered. “He’ll kill us all. One by one, he’ll break us and kill us. There’s a darkness inside of him. I’ve seen it, behind his eyes. A beast . . .” “You’re going to leave,” Shallan said softly. Malise barked a laugh. “He’ll never let me go. He never lets go of anything.” “You’re not going to ask,” Shallan whispered. “Balat is going to run and join Helaran, who has powerful friends. He’s a Shardbearer. He’ll protect the both of you.” “We’ll never reach him,” Malise said. “And if we do, why would Helaran take us in? We have nothing.” “Helaran is a good man.” Malise twisted in her seat, staring away from Shallan, who continued her ministrations. The woman whimpered when Shallan bound her arm, but wouldn’t respond to questions. Finally, Shallan gathered up the bloodied cloths to throw away. “If I go,” Malise whispered, “and Balat with me, who will he hate? Who will he hit? Maybe you, finally? The one who actually deserves it?” “Maybe,” Shallan whispered, then left. Feet scraped on the stone outside of Kaladin’s cage. One of the jailers checking on him again. Kaladin continued to lie motionless with closed eyes, and did not look. In order to keep the darkness at bay, he had begun planning. What would he do when he got out? When he got out. He had to tell himself that forcibly. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dalinar. His mind, though . . . his mind betrayed him, and whispered things that were not true. Distortions. In his state, he could believe that Dalinar lied. He could believe that the highprince secretly wanted Kaladin in prison. Kaladin was a terrible guard, after all. He’d failed to do anything about the mysterious countdowns scrawled on walls, and he’d failed to stop the Assassin in White. With his mind whispering lies, Kaladin could believe that Bridge Four was happy to be rid of him—that they pretended they wanted to be guards, just to make him happy. They secretly wanted to go on with their lives, lives they’d enjoy, without Kaladin spoiling them. These untruths should have seemed ridiculous to him. They didn’t. Clink. Kaladin snapped his eyes open, growing tense. Had they come to take him, to execute him, as the king wished? He leaped to his feet, coming down in a battle stance, the empty bowl from his meal held to throw. The jailer at the cell door stepped back, eyes widening. “Storms, man,” he said. “I thought you were asleep. Well, your time is served. King signed a pardon today. They didn’t even strip your rank or position.” The man rubbed his chin, then pulled the cell door open. “Guess you’re lucky.” Lucky. People always said that about Kaladin. Still, the prospect of freedom forced away the darkness inside of him, and Kaladin approached the door. Wary. He stepped out, the guard backing away. “You are a distrustful one, aren’t you?” the jailer said. A lighteyes of low rank. “Guess that makes you a good bodyguard.” The man
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gestured for Kaladin to leave the room first. Kaladin waited. Finally, the guard sighed. “Right, then.” He walked out the doorway into the hall beyond. Kaladin followed, and with each step felt himself traveling back a few days in time. Shut the darkness away. He wasn’t a slave. He was a soldier. Captain Kaladin. He’d survived this . . . what had it been? Two, three weeks? This short time back in a cage. He was free now. He could return to his life as a bodyguard. But one thing . . . one thing had changed. Nobody will ever, ever, do this to me again. Not king or general, not brightlord or brightlady. He would die first. They passed a leeward window, and Kaladin stopped to breathe in the cool, fresh scent of open air. The window gave an ordinary, mundane view of the camp outside, but it seemed glorious. A small breeze stirred his hair, and he let himself smile, reaching a hand to his chin. Several weeks’ growth. He’d have to let Rock shave that. “Here,” the jailer said. “He’s free. Can we finally be done with this farce, Your Highness?” “Your Highness”? Kaladin turned down the hallway to where the guard had stopped at another cell—one of the larger ones set into the hallway itself. Kaladin had been put in the deepest cell, away from the windows. The jailer twisted a key in the lock of the wooden door, then pulled it open. Adolin Kholin—wearing a simple tight uniform—stepped out. He also had several weeks of growth on his face, though the beard was blond, speckled black. The princeling took a deep breath, then turned toward Kaladin and nodded. “He locked you away?” Kaladin said, baffled. “How . . . ? What . . . ?” Adolin turned to the jailer. “Were my orders followed?” “They wait in the room just beyond, Brightlord,” the jailer said, sounding nervous. Adolin nodded, moving in that direction. Kaladin reached the jailer, taking him by the arm. “What is happening? The king put Dalinar’s heir in here?” “The king didn’t have anything to do with it,” the jailer said. “Brightlord Adolin insisted. So long as you were in here, he wouldn’t leave. We tried to stop him, but the man’s a prince. We can’t storming make him do anything, not even leave. He locked himself away in the cell and we just had to live with it.” Impossible. Kaladin glanced at Adolin, who walked slowly down the hallway. The prince looked a lot better than Kaladin felt—Adolin had obviously seen a few baths, and his prison cell had been much larger, with more privacy. It had still been a cell. That was the disturbance I heard, Kaladin thought, on that day, early after I was imprisoned. Adolin came and shut himself in. Kaladin jogged up to the man. “Why?” “Didn’t seem right, you in here,” Adolin said, eyes forward. “I ruined your chance to duel Sadeas.” “I’d be crippled or dead without you,” Adolin said. “So I wouldn’t have had the chance
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to fight Sadeas anyway.” The prince stopped in the hallway, and looked at Kaladin. “Besides. You saved Renarin.” “It’s my job,” Kaladin said. “Then we need to pay you more, bridgeboy,” Adolin said. “Because I don’t know if I’ve ever met another man who would jump, unarmored, into a fight among six Shardbearers.” Kaladin frowned. “Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?” “Well, there was no need to be barbaric, just because I was incarcerated.” “Storms, you’re spoiled,” Kaladin said, smiling. “I’m refined, you insolent farmer,” Adolin said. Then he grinned. “Besides, I’ll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here.” “Poor boy.” “I know.” Adolin hesitated, then held out a hand. Kaladin clasped it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For ruining the plan.” “Bah, you didn’t ruin it,” Adolin said. “Elhokar did that. You think he couldn’t have simply ignored your request and proceeded, letting me expand on my challenge to Sadeas? He threw a tantrum instead of taking control of the crowd and pushing forward. Storming man.” Kaladin blinked at the audacious tone, then glanced toward the jailer, who stood a distance behind, obviously trying to look inconspicuous. “The things you said about Amaram,” Adolin said. “Were they true?” “Every one.” Adolin nodded. “I’ve always wondered what that man was hiding.” He continued walking. “Wait,” Kaladin said, jogging to catch up, “you believe me?” “My father,” Adolin said, “is the best man I know, perhaps the best man alive. Even he loses his temper, makes bad judgment calls, and has a troubled past. Amaram never seems to do anything wrong. If you listen to the stories about him, it’s like everyone expects him to glow in the dark and piss nectar. That stinks, to me, of someone who works too hard to maintain his reputation.” “Your father says I shouldn’t have tried to duel him.” “Yeah,” Adolin said, reaching the door at the end of the hallway. “Dueling is formalized in a way I suspect you just don’t get. A darkeyes can’t challenge a man like Amaram, and you certainly shouldn’t have done it like you did. It embarrassed the king, like spitting on a gift he’d given you.” Adolin hesitated. “Of course, that shouldn’t matter to you anymore. Not after today.” Adolin pushed open the door. Beyond, most of the men of Bridge Four crowded into a small room where the jailers obviously spent their days. A table and chairs had been shoved to the corner to make room for the twenty-something men who saluted Kaladin as the door opened. Their salutes dissolved immediately as they started to cheer. That sound . . . that sound quashed the darkness until it vanished completely. Kaladin found himself smiling as he stepped out to meet them, taking hands, listening to Rock make a wisecrack about his beard. Renarin was there in his Bridge Four uniform, and he immediately joined his brother, speaking to him quietly in a jovial way, though he had out his little box that he liked to fidget with. Kaladin glanced to
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the side. Who were those men beside the wall? Members of Adolin’s retinue. Was that one of Adolin’s armorers? They carried some items draped with sheets. Adolin stepped into the room and loudly clapped his hands, quieting Bridge Four. “It turns out,” Adolin said, “that I’m in possession of not one, but two new Shardblades and three sets of Plate. The Kholin princedom now owns a quarter of the Shards in all of Alethkar, and I’ve been named dueling champion. Not surprising, considering Relis was on a caravan back to Alethkar the night after our duel, sent by his father in an attempt to hide the shame of being beaten so soundly. “One complete set of those Shards is going to General Khal, and I’ve ordered two of the sets of Plate given to appropriate lighteyes of rank in my father’s army.” Adolin nodded toward the sheets. “That leaves one full set. Personally, I’m curious to know if the stories are true. If a darkeyes bonds a Shardblade, will his eyes change color?” Kaladin felt a moment of sheer panic. Again. It was happening again. The armorers removed the sheets, revealing a shimmering silvery Blade. Edged on both sides, a pattern of twisting vines ran up its center. At their feet, the armorers uncovered a set of Plate, painted orange, taken from one of the men Kaladin had helped defeat. Take these Shards, and everything changed. Kaladin immediately felt sick, almost cripplingly so. He turned back to Adolin. “I can do with these as I wish?” “Take them,” Adolin said, nodding. “They are yours.” “Not anymore,” Kaladin said, pointing toward one of the members of Bridge Four. “Moash. Take these. You’re now a Shardbearer.” All of the color drained from Moash’s face. Kaladin prepared himself. Last time . . . He flinched as Adolin grabbed him by the shoulder, but the tragedy of Amaram’s army did not repeat. Instead, Adolin yanked Kaladin back into the hallway, holding up a hand to stop the bridgemen from talking. “Just a second,” Adolin said. “Nobody move.” Then, in a quieter voice, he hissed to Kaladin. “I’m giving you a Shardblade and Shardplate.” “Thank you,” Kaladin said. “Moash will use them well. He’s been training with Zahel.” “I didn’t give them to him. I gave them to you.” “If they’re really mine, then I can do with them as I wish. Or are they not really mine?” “What’s wrong with you?” Adolin said. “This is the dream of every soldier, darkeyed or light. Is this out of spite? Or . . . is it . . .” Adolin seemed completely baffled. “It’s not out of spite,” Kaladin said, speaking softly. “Adolin, those Blades have killed too many people I love. I can’t look at them, can’t touch them, without seeing blood.” “You’d be lighteyed,” Adolin whispered. “Even if it didn’t change your eye color, you’d count as one. Shardbearers are immediately of the fourth dahn. You could challenge Amaram. Your whole life would change.” “I don’t want my life to change because I’ve become a lighteyes,”
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Kaladin said. “I want the lives of people like me . . . like I am now . . . to change. This gift is not for me, Adolin. I’m not trying to spite you or anyone else. I just don’t want a Shardblade.” “That assassin is going to come back,” Adolin said. “We both know it. I’d rather have you there with Shards to back me up.” “I’ll be more useful without them.” Adolin frowned. “Let me give the Shards to Moash,” Kaladin said. “You saw, on that field, that I can handle myself fine without a Blade and Plate. If we Shard-up one of my best men, there will be three of us to fight him, not just two.” Adolin looked into the room, then skeptically back at Kaladin. “You are crazy, you realize.” “I’ll accept that.” “Fine,” Adolin said, striding back into the room. “You. Moash, was it? I guess those Shards are yours, now. Congratulations. You now outrank ninety percent of Alethkar. Pick yourself a family name and ask to join one of the houses under Dalinar’s banner, or start your own if you are inclined.” Moash glanced at Kaladin for confirmation. Kaladin nodded. The tall bridgeman walked to the side of the room, reaching out a hand to rest his fingers on the Shardblade. He ran those fingers all the way down to the hilt, then seized it, lifting the Blade in awe. Like most, it was enormous, but Moash held it easily in one hand. The heliodor set into the pommel flashed with a burst of light. Moash looked to the others of Bridge Four, a sea of wide eyes and speechless mouths. Gloryspren rose around him, a spinning mass of at least two dozen spheres of light. “His eyes,” Lopen said. “Shouldn’t they be changing?” “If it happens,” Adolin said, “it might not be until he’s bonded the thing. That takes a week.” “Put the Plate on me,” Moash said to the armorers. Urgent, as if he feared it would be taken from him. “Enough of this!” Rock said as the armorers began to work, his voice filling the room like captive thunder. “We have party to give! Great Captain Kaladin, Stormblessed and dweller in prisons, you will come eat my stew now. Ha! I have been cooking it as long as you were locked away.” Kaladin let the bridgemen usher him out into the sunlight, where a crowd of soldiers waited—including many of the bridgemen from other crews. These cheered, and Kaladin caught sight of Dalinar waiting off to the side. Adolin moved to join his father, but Dalinar watched Kaladin. What did that look mean? So pensive. Kaladin looked away, accepting the greetings of bridgemen as they clasped his hand and clapped him on the back. “What did you say, Rock?” Kaladin said. “You cooked a stew for each day I was locked in prison?” “No,” Teft said, scratching his beard. “The storming Horneater has been cooking a single pot, letting it simmer for weeks now. He won’t let us try it, and
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insists on getting up at night and tending it.” “Is celebratory stew,” Rock said, folding his arms. “Must simmer long time.” “Well, let’s get to it, then,” Kaladin said. “I could certainly use something better than prison food.” The men cheered, piling off toward their barrack. As they moved, Kaladin grabbed Teft by the arm. “How did the men take it?” he asked. “My imprisonment?” “There was talk of breaking you out,” Teft admitted softly. “I beat some sense into them. Ain’t no good soldier who hasn’t spent a day or two locked up. It’s part of the job. They didn’t demote you, so they just wanted to slap your wrist a little. The men saw the truth of it.” Kaladin nodded. Teft glanced at the others. “There’s quite a lot of anger among them about this Amaram fellow. And a lot of interest. Anything about your past gets them talking, you know.” “Lead them back to the barrack,” Kaladin said. “I’ll join you in a moment.” “Don’t take too long,” Teft said. “The lads have been guarding this doorway for three weeks now. You owe them their celebration.” “I’ll be along,” Kaladin said. “I just want to say a few things to Moash.” Teft nodded and jogged off to wrangle the others. The prison’s front room felt empty when Kaladin walked back in. Only Moash and the armorers remained. Kaladin walked up to them, watching Moash make a fist with his gauntlet. “I’m still having trouble believing this, Kal,” Moash said as the armorers fit on his breastplate. “Storms . . . I’m now worth more than some kingdoms.” “I wouldn’t suggest selling the Shards, at least not to a foreigner,” Kaladin said. “That sort of thing can be considered treason.” “Sell?” Moash said, looking up sharply. He made another fist. “Never.” He smiled, a grin of pure joy as the breastplate locked into place. “I’ll help him with the rest,” Kaladin said to the armorers. They withdrew reluctantly, leaving Kaladin and Moash alone. He helped Moash fit one of the pauldrons to his shoulder. “I had a lot of time to think, in there,” Kaladin said. “I can imagine.” “The time led me to a few decisions,” Kaladin said as the section of Plate locked into place. “One is that your friends are right.” Moash turned to him sharply. “So . . .” “So tell them I agree with their plan,” Kaladin said. “I’ll do what they want me to in order to help them . . . accomplish their task.” The room grew strangely still. Moash took him by the arm. “I told them you’d see.” He gestured to the Plate he wore. “This will help too, with what we must do. And once we’ve finished, I think a certain man you challenged might need the same treatment.” “I only agree,” Kaladin said, “because it’s for the best. For you, Moash, this is about revenge—and don’t try to deny it. I really think it is what Alethkar needs. Maybe what the world needs.” “Oh, I know,” Moash said, putting
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on the helmet, visor up. He took a deep breath, then took a step and stumbled, nearly crashing to the ground. He steadied himself by grabbing a table, which he crunched beneath his fingers, the wood splitting. He stared at what he’d done, then laughed. “This . . . this is going to change everything. Thank you, Kaladin. Thank you.” “Let’s get those armorers and help you take it off,” Kaladin said. “No. You go to Rock’s storming feast. I’m going to the sparring grounds to practice! I won’t take this off until I can move in it naturally.” Having seen how much work Renarin was putting into learning his Plate, Kaladin suspected that might take longer than Moash wanted. He didn’t say anything, instead stepping back out into the sunlight. He enjoyed that for a moment, eyes closed, head toward the sky. Then, he jogged off to rejoin Bridge Four. Dalinar stopped on the switchbacks down from the Pinnacle, Navani at his side. In the waning light, they watched a river of men flowing back into the warcamps from the Shattered Plains. The armies of Bethab and Thanadal were returning from their plateau run, following their highprinces, who had probably gotten back somewhat earlier. Down below, a rider approached the Pinnacle, likely with news for the king on the runs. Dalinar looked to one of his guards—he had four tonight, two for him, two for Navani—and gestured. “You want the details, Brightlord?” asked the bridgeman. “Please.” The man jogged off down the switchbacks. Dalinar watched him go, thoughtful. These men were remarkably disciplined, considering their origin—but they were not career soldiers. They did not like what he had done in throwing their captain into prison. He suspected they wouldn’t let it become a problem. Captain Kaladin led them well—he was the exact type of officer Dalinar looked for. The kind that showed initiative not because of a desire for advancement, but because of the satisfaction of a job well done. Those kinds of soldiers often had rocky starts until they learned to keep their heads. Storms. Dalinar himself had needed similar lessons pounded into him at various points in his life. He continued with Navani down the switchbacks, walking slowly. She looked radiant tonight, hair done with sapphires that glowed softly in the light. Navani liked these strolls together, and they were in no hurry to arrive at the feast. “I keep thinking,” Navani said, continuing their previous conversation, “that there should be a way to use fabrials as pumps. You have seen the gemstones built to attract certain substances, but not others—it is most useful with something like smoke above a fire. Could we make this work with water?” Dalinar grunted, nodding. “More and more buildings in the warcamps are plumbed,” she continued, “after the Kharbranthian manner—but those use gravity itself as a way to conduct the liquid through their piping. I imagine true motion, with gemstones at the ends of piping segments to pull water through at a flow, against the pull of the earth. . . .” He
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grunted again. “We made a breakthrough in the design of new Shardblades the other day.” “What, really?” he asked. “What happened? How soon will you have one ready?” She smiled, arm around his. “What?” “Just seeing if you are still you,” she said. “Our breakthrough was realizing that the gemstones in the Blades—used to bond them—might not have originally been part of the weapons.” He frowned. “That’s important?” “Yes. If this is true, it means the Blades aren’t powered by the stones. Credit goes to Rushu, who asked why a Shardblade can be summoned and dismissed even if its gemstone has gone dun. We had no answers, and she spent the last few weeks in contact with Kharbranth, using one of those new information stations. She came up with a scrap from several decades after the Recreance which talks about men learning to summon and dismiss Blades by adding gemstones to them, an accident of ornamentation it seems.” He frowned as they passed a shalebark outcropping where a gardener was working late, carefully filing away and humming to himself. The sun had set; Salas had just risen in the east. “If this is true,” Navani said, sounding happy, “we’re back to knowing absolutely nothing about how Shardblades were crafted.” “I don’t see why that’s a breakthrough at all.” She smiled, patting him on the arm. “Imagine you had spent the last five years believing an enemy had been following Dialectur’s War as a model for tactics, but then heard it reported they instead had never heard of the treatise.” “Ah . . .” “We had been assuming that somehow, the strength and lightness of the Blades was a fabrial construct powered by the gemstone,” Navani said. “This might not be the case. It seems the gemstone’s purpose is only used in initially bonding the Blade—something that the Radiants didn’t need to do.” “Wait. They didn’t?” “Not if this fragment is correct. The implication is that the Radiants could always dismiss and summon Blades—but for a time the ability was lost. It was only recovered when someone added a gemstone to his Blade. The fragment says the weapons actually shifted shape to adopt the stones, but I’m not certain if I trust that. “Either way, after the Radiants fell but before men learned to put gemstones into their Blades and bond them, the weapons were apparently still supernaturally sharp and light, though bonding was impossible. This would explain several other fragments of records I’ve read and found confusing. . . .” She continued, and he found her voice pleasant. The details of fabrial construction, however, were not pressing to him at the moment. He did care. He had to care. Both for her, and for the needs of the kingdom. He just couldn’t care right now. In his head, he went over preparations for the expedition out onto the Shattered Plains. How to protect the Soulcasters from sight, as they preferred. Sanitation shouldn’t be an issue, and water would be plentiful. How many scribes would he need to bring? Horses? Only one week
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