Wonderful.
“Mother,” Jasnah said, “might I speak for a moment with my ward?”
Navani nodded, her eyes lingering on the doorway where Amaram had exited. Once, she’d pushed for the union between them. Jasnah didn’t blame her; the truth of Amaram was difficult to see, and had been even more so in the past, when he’d been close to Jasnah’s father.
Navani withdrew, leaving Shallan alone at the table stacked with reports.
“Brightness!” Shallan said as Jasnah sat. “That was incredible!”
“I let myself be pushed into abundant emotion.”
“You were so clever!”
“And yet, my first insult was not to attack him, but the moral reputation of his female relative. Clever? Or simply the use of an obvious bludgeon?”
“Oh. Um … Well…”
“Regardless,” Jasnah cut in, wishing to avoid further conversation about Amaram, “I’ve been thinking about your training.”
Shallan stiffened immediately. “I’ve been very busy, Brightness. However, I’m sure I’ll be able to get to those books you assigned me very soon.”
Jasnah rubbed her forehead. This girl …
“Brightness,” Shallan said, “I think I might have to request a leave from my studies.” Shallan spoke so quickly the words ran into one another. “His Majesty says he needs me to go with him on the expedition to Kholinar.”
Jasnah frowned. Kholinar? “Nonsense. They’ll have the Windrunner with them. Why do they need you?”
“The king is worried they might need to sneak into the city,” Shallan said. “Or even through the middle of it, if it’s occupied. We can’t know how far the siege has progressed. If Elhokar has to reach the Oathgate without being recognized, then my illusions will be invaluable. I have to go. It’s so inconvenient. I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath, eyes wide, as if afraid that Jasnah would snap at her.
This girl.
“I’ll speak with Elhokar,” Jasnah said. “I feel that might be extreme. For now, I want you to do drawings of Renarin’s and Kaladin’s spren, for scholarly reasons. Bring them to me for…” She trailed off. “What is he doing?”
Renarin stood near the far wall, which was covered in palm-size tiles. He tapped a specific one, and somehow made it pop out, like a drawer.
Jasnah stood, throwing back her chair. She strode across the room, Shallan scampering along behind her.
Renarin glanced at them, then held up what he’d found in the small drawer. A ruby, long as Jasnah’s thumb, cut into a strange shape with holes drilled in it. What on Roshar? She took it from him and held it up.
“What is it?” Navani said, shouldering up beside her. “A fabrial? No metal parts. What is that shape?”
Jasnah reluctantly surrendered it to her mother.
“So many imperfections in the cut,” Navani said. “That will cause it to lose Stormlight quickly. It won’t even hold a charge for a day, I bet. And it will vibrate something fierce.”
Curious. Jasnah touched it, infusing the gemstone with Stormlight. It started glowing, but not nearly as brightly as it should have. Navani was, of course, right. It vibrated as Stormlight curled off it. Why would anyone spoil a gem with such a twisted cut, and why hide it? The small drawer was latched with a spring, but she couldn’t see how Renarin had gotten it undone.
“Storms,” Shallan whispered as other scholars crowded around. “That’s a pattern.”
“A pattern?”
“Buzzes in sequence…” Shallan said. “My spren says he thinks this is a code. Letters?”
“Music of language,” Renarin whispered. He drew in Stormlight from some spheres in his pocket, then turned and pressed his hands against the wall, sending a surge of Stormlight through it that extended from his palms like twin ripples on the surface of a pond.
Drawers slid open, one behind each white tile. A hundred, two hundred … each revealing gemstones inside.
The library had decayed, but the ancient Radiants had obviously anticipated that.
They’d found another way to pass on their knowledge.
I would have thought, before attaining my current station, that a deity could not be surprised.
Obviously, this is not true. I can be surprised. I can perhaps even be naive, I think.
“I’m just asking,” Khen grumbled, “how this is any better. We were slaves under the Alethi. Now we’re slaves under the Fused. Great. It does me so much good to know that our misery is now at the hands of our own people.” The parshwoman set her bundle down with a rattling thump.
“You’ll get us in trouble again, talking like that,” Sah said. He dropped his bundle of wooden poles, then walked back the other way.
Moash followed, passing rows of humans and parshmen turning the poles into ladders. These, like Sah and the rest of his team, would soon be carrying those ladders into battle, facing down a storm of arrows.
What a strange echo of his life months ago in Sadeas’s warcamp. Except here he’d been given sturdy gloves, a nice pair of boots, and three solid meals a day. The only thing wrong with the situation—other than the fact that he and the others would soon be charging a fortified position—was that he had too much free time.
The workers hauled stacks of wood from one part of the lumberyard to the next, and were occasionally assigned to saw or chop. But there wasn’t enough to keep them busy. That was a very bad thing, as he’d learned on the Shattered Plains. Give condemned men too much time and they’d start to ask questions.
“Look,” Khen said, walking next to Sah just ahead, “at least tell me you’re angry, Sah. Don’t tell me you think we deserve this.”
“We harbored a spy,” Sah muttered.
A spy that, Moash had quickly learned, had been none other than Kaladin Stormblessed.
“Like a bunch of slaves should be able to spot a spy?” Khen said. “Really? Shouldn’t the spren have been the one to spot him? It’s like they wanted something to pin on us. Like it’s … it’s a…”
“Like it’s a setup?” Moash asked from behind.
“Yeah, a setup,” Khen agreed.
They did that a lot, forgetting words. Or … maybe they were simply trying the words out for the first time.
Their accent was so similar to that of many of the bridgemen who had been Moash’s friends.
Let go, Moash, something deep within him whispered. Give up your pain. It’s all right. You did what was natural.
You can’t be blamed. Stop carrying that burden.
Let go.
They each picked up another bundle and began walking back. They passed the carpenters who were making the ladder poles. Most of these were parshmen, and one of the Fused walked among their ranks. He was a head taller than the parshmen, and was a subspecies that grew large portions of carapace armor in wicked shapes.
The Fused stopped, then explained something to one of the working parshmen. The Fused made a fist, and dark violet energy surrounded his arm. Carapace grew there into the shape of a saw. The Fused sawed, carefully explaining what he did. Moash had seen this before. Some of these monsters from the void were carpenters.
Out beyond the lumberyards, parshman troops practiced close-order drill and received basic weapon training. Word was that the army intended to assault Kholinar within weeks. That was ambitious, but they didn’t have time for an extended siege. Kholinar had Soulcasters to make food, while the Voidbringer operations in the country would take months to get going. This Voidbringer army would soon eat itself out of supplies, and would have to divide up to forage. Better to attack, use overwhelming numbers, and seize the Soulcasters for themselves.
Every army needed someone to run at the front and soak up arrows. Well organized or not, benevolent or not, the Voidbringers couldn’t avoid that. Moash’s group wouldn’t be trained; they were really only waiting until the assault so they could run in front of more valuable troops.
“We were set up,” Khen repeated as they walked. “They knew they had too few hu
mans strong enough to run the first assault. They need some of us in there, so they found a reason to toss us out to die.”
Sah grunted.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” Khen demanded. “Don’t you care what our own gods are doing to us?”
Sah slammed his bundle to the ground. “Yes, I care,” Sah snapped. “You think I haven’t been asking the same questions? Storms! They took my daughter, Khen! They ripped her away from me and sent me off to die.”
“Then what do we do?” Khen asked, her voice growing small. “What do we do?”
Sah looked around at the army moving and churning, preparing for war. Overwhelming, enveloping, like its own kind of storm—in motion and inexorable. The sort of thing that picked you up and carried you along.
“I don’t know,” Sah whispered. “Storms, Khen. I don’t know anything.”
I do, Moash thought. But he couldn’t find the will to say anything to them. Instead, he found himself annoyed, angerspren boiling up around him. He felt frustrated both at himself and at the Voidbringers. He slammed his bundle down, but then stalked off, out of the lumberyard.
An overseer yelped loudly and scuttled after him—but she didn’t stop him, and neither did the guards he passed. He had a reputation.
Moash strode through the city, tailed by the overseer, searching for one of the flying type of Fused. They seemed to be in charge, even of the other Fused.
He couldn’t find one, so he settled for approaching one of the other subspecies: a malen that sat near the city’s cistern, where rainwater collected. The creature was of the heavily armored type, with no hair, the carapace encroaching across his cheeks.
Moash strode right up to the creature. “I need to talk to someone in charge.”
Behind him, Moash’s overseer gasped—perhaps only now realizing that whatever it was Moash was up to, it could get her in serious trouble.
The Fused regarded him and grinned.
“Someone in charge,” Moash repeated.
The Voidbringer laughed, then fell backward into the water of the cistern, where he floated, staring at the sky.
Great, Moash thought. One of the crazy ones. There were many of those.
Moash stalked away, but didn’t get much farther into the town before something dropped from the sky. Cloth fluttered in the air, and in the middle of it floated a creature with skin that matched the black and red clothing. He couldn’t tell if it was malen or femalen.
“Little human,” the creature said with a foreign accent, “you are passionate and interesting.”
Moash licked his lips. “I need to talk to someone in charge.”
“You need nothing but what we give you,” the Fused said. “But your desire is to be granted. Lady Leshwi will see you.”
“Great. Where can I find her?”
The Fused pressed its hand against his chest and smiled. Dark Voidlight spread from its hand across Moash’s body. Both of them rose into the air.
Panicking, Moash clutched at the Fused. Could he get the creature into a chokehold? Then what? If he killed it up here, he’d drop to his own death.
They rose until the town looked like a tiny model: lumberyard and parade ground on one side, the single prominent street down the center. To the right, the man-made ward provided a buffer against the highstorms, creating a shelter for trees and the citylord’s mansion.
They ascended even farther, the Fused’s loose clothes fluttering. Though the air was warm at ground level, up here it was quite chilly, and Moash’s ears felt odd—dull, as if they were stuffed with cloth.
Finally, the Fused slowed them to a hovering stop. Though Moash tried to hold on, the Fused shoved him to the side, then zoomed away in a flaring roil of cloth.
Moash drifted alone above the expansive landscape. His heart thundered, and he regarded that drop, realizing something. He did not want to die.
He forced himself to twist and look about him. He felt a surge of hope as he found he was drifting toward another Fused. A woman who hovered in the sky, wearing robes that must have extended a good ten feet below her, like a smear of red paint. Moash drifted right up beside her, getting so close that she was able to reach out and stop him.
He resisted grabbing that arm and hanging on for dear life. His mind was catching up to what was happening—she wanted to meet him, but in a realm where she belonged and he did not. Well, he would contain his fear.
“Moash,” the Fused said. Leshwi, the other had called her. She had a face that was all three Parshendi colors: white, red, and black, marbled like paint swirled together. He had rarely seen someone who was all three colors before, and this was one of the most transfixing patterns he’d seen, almost liquid in its effect, her eyes like pools around which the colors ran.
“How do you know my name?” Moash asked.
“Your overseer told me,” Leshwi said. She had a distinct serenity about her as she floated with feet down. The wind up here tugged at the ribbons she wore, pushing them backward in careless ripples. There were no windspren in sight, oddly. “Where did you get that name?”
“My grandfather named me,” Moash said, frowning. This was not how he’d anticipated this conversation going.
“Curious. Do you know that it is one of our names?”
“It is?”
She nodded. “How long has it drifted on the tides of time, passing from the lips of singers to men and back, to end up here, on the head of a human slave?”
“Look, you’re one of the leaders?”
“I’m one of the Fused who is sane,” she said, as if it were the same thing.
“Then I need to—”
“You’re bold,” Leshwi said, eyes forward. “Many of the singers we left here are not. We find them remarkable, considering how long they were abused by your people. But still, they are not bold enough.”
She looked to him for the first time during the conversation. Her face was angular, with long flowing parshman hair—black and crimson, thicker than that of a human. Almost like thin reeds or blades of grass. Her eyes were a deep red, like pools of shimmering blood.
“Where did you learn the Surges, human?” she asked.
“The Surges?”
“When you killed me,” she said, “you were Lashed to the sky—but you responded quickly, with familiarity. I will say, without guile, that I was furious to be caught so unaware.”
“Wait,” Moash said, cold. “When I killed you?”
She regarded him, unblinking, with those ruby eyes.
“You’re the same one?” Moash asked. That pattern of marbled skin … he realized. It’s the same as the one I fought. But the features were different.
“This is a new body offered to me in sacrifice,” Leshwi said. “To bond and make my own, as I have none.”
“You’re some kind of spren?”
She blinked but did not reply.
Moash started to drop. He felt it in his clothes, which lost their power to fly first. He cried out, reaching toward the Fused woman, and she seized him by the wrist and injected him with more Voidlight. It surged across his body, and he hovered again. The violet darkness retreated, visible again only as faint periodic crackles on her skin.
“My companions spared you,” she said to him. “Brought you here, to these lands, as they thought I might wish personal vengeance once reborn. I did not. Why would I destroy that which had such passion? Instead I watched you, curious to see what you did. I saw you help the singers who were pulling the sledges.”
Moash took a deep breath. “Can you tell me, then, why you treat your own so poorly?”
“Poorly?” she said, sounding amused. “They are fed, clothed, and trained.”
“Not all of them,” Moash said. “You had those poor parshmen working as slaves, like humans. And now you’re going to throw them at the city walls.”
“Sacrifice,” she said. “Do you think an empire is built without sacrifice?” She swept her arm across the landscape before them.
Moash?
??s stomach turned over; he’d briefly been able to fixate only on her and forget exactly how high he was. Storms … this land was big. He could see extensive hills, plains, grass, trees, and stone in all directions.
And in the direction she gestured, a dark line on the horizon. Kholinar?
“I breathe again because of their sacrifices,” Leshwi said. “And this world will be ours, because of sacrifice. Those who fall will be sung of, but their blood is ours to demand. If they survive the assault, if they prove themselves, then they will be honored.” She looked to him again. “You fought for them during the trip here.”
“Honestly, I expected you to have me killed for that.”
“If you were not killed for striking down one of the Fused,” she said, “then why would you be killed for striking one of our lessers? In both cases, human, you proved your passion and earned your right to succeed. Then you bowed to authority when presented, and earned your right to continue to live. Tell me. Why did you protect those slaves?”
“Because you need to be unified,” Moash said. He swallowed. “My people don’t deserve this land. We’re broken, ruined. Incapable.”
She cocked her head. A cool wind played with her clothing. “And are you not angered that we took your Shards?”
“They were first given me by a man I betrayed. I … don’t deserve them.”
No. Not you. It’s not your fault.
“You aren’t angry that we conquer you?”
“No.”
“Then what does anger you? What is your passionate fury, Moash, the man with an ancient singer’s name?”
Yes, it was there. Still burning. Deep down.
Storm it, Kaladin had been protecting a murderer.
“Vengeance,” he whispered.
“Yes, I understand.” She looked at him, smiling in what seemed to him a distinctly sinister way. “Do you know why we fight? Let me tell you.…”
* * *
A half hour later as evening approached, Moash walked the streets of a conquered town. By himself. Lady Leshwi had ordered that Moash be left alone, freed.