These forty would be ready soon, ready to become sergeants to their own teams of bridgemen. The transformation had happened more quickly than Kaladin had hoped. Teft, you marvelous man, he thought. You did it.
Where was Teft, anyway? He’d gone on the patrol with them, and now he’d vanished. Kaladin glanced over his shoulder but didn’t see him; perhaps he’d gone to check on some of the other bridge crews. He did catch Rock shooing away a lanky man in an ardent’s robe.
“What was that?” Kaladin asked, catching the Horneater as he passed.
“That one,” Rock said. “Keeps loitering here with sketchbook. Wants to draw bridgemen. Ha! Because we are famous, you see.”
Kaladin frowned. Strange actions for an ardent—but, then, all ardents were strange, to an extent. He let Rock return to his stew and stepped away from the fire, enjoying the peace.
Everything was so quiet out there, in the camp. Like it was holding its breath.
“The patrol seems to have worked out,” Sigzil said, strolling up to Kaladin. “Those men are changed.”
“Funny what a couple of days spent marching as a unit can do to soldiers,” Kaladin said. “Have you seen Teft?”
“No, sir,” Sigzil said. He nodded toward the fire. “You’ll want to get some stew. We won’t have much time for chatting tonight.”
“Highstorm,” Kaladin realized. It seemed like too soon since the last one, but they weren’t always regular—not in the way he thought of it. The stormwardens had to do complex mathematics to predict them; Kaladin’s father had made a hobby of it.
Perhaps that was what he was noticing. Was he suddenly predicting highstorms because the night seemed too . . . something?
You’re imagining things, Kaladin thought. Shrugging off his fatigue from the extended ride and march, he went over to get some stew. He’d have to eat quickly—he’d want to go join the men guarding Dalinar and the king during the storm.
The men from the patrol cheered him as he filled his bowl.
* * *
Shallan sat on the rattling wagon and moved her hand over the sphere on the seat beside her, palming it and dropping another.
Tyn raised an eyebrow. “I heard the replacement hit.”
“Drynets!” Shallan said. “I thought I had it.”
“Drynets?”
“It’s a curse,” Shallan said, blushing. “I heard it from the sailors.”
“Shallan, do you have any idea at all what that means?”
“Like . . . for fishing?” Shallan said. “The nets are dry, maybe? They haven’t been catching any fish, so it’s bad?”
Tyn grinned. “Dear, I’m going to do my very best to corrupt you. Until then, I think you should avoid using sailor curses. Please.”
“All right.” Shallan passed her hand over the sphere again, swapping the spheres. “No clink! Did you hear that? Or, um, did you not hear that? It didn’t make a noise!”
“Nice,” Tyn said, getting out a pinch of some kind of mossy substance. She began rubbing it between her fingers, and Shallan thought she saw smoke rising from the moss. “You are getting better. I also feel like we should figure out some way to use that drawing talent of yours.”
Shallan already had an inkling of how it would come in handy. More of the former deserters had asked her for pictures.
“You’ve been working on your accents?” Tyn asked, eyes glazing as she rubbed the moss.
“I have indeed, my good woman,” Shallan said with a Thaylen accent.
“Good. We’ll get around to costuming once we have more resources. I, for one, am going to be very amused to watch your face when you have to go out in public with that hand of yours uncovered.”
Shallan immediately pulled her safehand up to her breast. “What!”
“I warned you about difficult things,” Tyn said, smiling in a devious way. “West of Marat, almost all women go out with both hands uncovered. If you’re going to go to those places and not stand out, you’ll have to be able to do as they do.”
“It’s immodest!” Shallan said, blushing furiously.
“It’s just a hand, Shallan,” Tyn said. “Storms, you Vorins are so prim. That hand looks exactly like your other hand.”
“A lot of women have breasts that aren’t much more pronounced than male ones,” Shallan snapped. “That doesn’t make it right for them to go out wearing no shirt, like a man would!”
“Actually, in parts of the Reshi Isles and Iri, it’s not uncommon for women to walk about topless. It gets hot up there. Nobody minds. I rather like it, myself.”
Shallan raised both hands to her face—one clothed, one not—hiding her blush. “You’re doing this just to provoke me.”
“Yeah,” Tyn said, chuckling. “I am. This is the girl that scammed an entire troop of deserters and took over our caravan?”
“I didn’t have to go naked to do that.”
“Good thing you didn’t,” Tyn said. “You still think you’re experienced and worldly? You blush at the mere mention of exposing your safehand. Can’t you see how it’s going to be hard for you to run any kind of productive scam?”
Shallan took a deep breath. “I guess.”
“Showing your hand off isn’t going to be the toughest thing you need to do,” Tyn said, looking distant. “Not the toughest by a breeze or a stormwind. I . . .”
“What?” Shallan asked.
Tyn shook her head. “We’ll talk about it later. Can you see those warcamps yet?”
Shallan stood up on her seat, shading her eyes against the setting sun in the west. To the north, she saw a haze. Hundreds of fires—no, thousands—seeping darkness into the sky. Her breath caught in her throat. “We’re there.”
“Call camp for the night,” Tyn said, not moving from her relaxed position.
“It looks like it’s only a few hours away,” Shallan said. “We could push on—”
“And arrive after nightfall, then be forced to camp anyway,” Tyn said. “Better to arrive fresh in the morning. Trust me.”
Shallan settled down, calling for one of the caravan workers, a youth who walked barefoot—his calluses must be frightening—alongside the caravan. Only those senior among them rode.
“Ask Trademaster Macob what he thinks of stopping here for the night,” Shallan said to the young man.
He nodded, then jogged up the line, passing lumbering chulls.
“You don’t trust my assessment?” Tyn asked, sounding amused.
“Trademaster Macob doesn’t like being told what to do,” Shallan said. “If stopping is a good move, perhaps he’ll suggest it. It seems like a better way to lead.”
Tyn closed her eyes, face toward the sky. She still held one hand up, absently rubbing moss between her fingers. “I might have some information for you tonight.”
“About?”
“Your homeland.” Tyn cracked an eye. Though her posture was lazy, that eye was curious.
“That’s nice,” Shallan said, noncommittal. She tried not to say much about her home or her life there—she also hadn’t told Tyn about her trip, or about the sinking of the ship. The less Shallan said about her background, the less likely that Tyn would realize the truth about her new student.
It’s her own fault for jumping to conclusions about me, Shallan thought. Besides, she’s the one teaching me about pretending. I shouldn’t feel bad about lying to her. She lies to everyone.
Thinking that made her wince. Tyn was right; Shallan was naive. She couldn’t help feeling guilty about lying, even to a professed con woman!
“I’d have expected more from you,” Tyn said, closing her eye. “Considering.”
That provoked Shallan, and she found herself wiggling on her seat. “Considering what?” she finally asked.
“So you don’t know,” Tyn said. “I thought as much.”
“There are many things I don’t know, Tyn,” Shallan said, exasperated. “I don’t know how to build a wagon, I don’t know how to speak Iriali, and I certainly don’t know how to prevent you fro
m being annoying. Not that I haven’t tried to figure out all three.”
Tyn smiled, eyes closed. “Your Veden king is dead.”
“Hanavanar? Dead?” She’d never met the highprince, let alone the king. The monarchy was a far-off thing. She found that it didn’t particularly matter to her. “His son will inherit, then?”
“He would. If he weren’t dead too. Along with six of Jah Keved’s highprinces.”
Shallan gasped.
“They say it was the Assassin in White,” Tyn said softly, eyes still closed. “The Shin man who killed the Alethi king six years back.”
Shallan pushed through her confusion. Her brothers. Were they all right? “Six highprinces. Which ones?” If she knew that, it might tell her how her own princedom was fairing.
“I don’t know for certain,” Tyn said. “Jal Mala and Evinor for sure, and probably Abrial. Some died in the attack, others before that, though the information is vague. Getting any kind of reliable information out of Vedenar these days is tough.”
“Valam. He still lives?” Her own highprince.
“He was fighting for the succession, reports say. I have my informants sending me word tonight via spanreed. Might have something for you then.”
Shallan settled back. The king, dead? A succession war? Stormfather! How could she find out about her family and their estate? They were nowhere near the capital, but if the entire country was consumed by war, it could reach even to the backwater areas. There was no easy way to reach her brothers. She’d lost her own spanreed in the sinking of the Wind’s Pleasure.
“Any information would be appreciated,” Shallan said. “Any at all.”
“We’ll see. I’ll let you come by for the report.”
Shallan settled back to digest this information. She suspected I didn’t know, but didn’t tell me until now. Shallan liked Tyn, but had to remember that the woman made a profession of hiding information. What else did Tyn know that she wasn’t sharing?
Ahead, the caravan youth walked back down the line of moving wagons. As he reached Shallan, he turned and walked beside her vehicle. “Macob says you are wise to ask, and says we should probably camp here. The warcamps each have secure borders, and aren’t likely to let us in during the night. Beyond that, he is uncertain if we could reach the camps before tonight’s storm.”
To the side, eyes still closed, Tyn grinned.
“We camp, then,” Shallan said.
The spren betrayed us, it’s often felt.
Our minds are too close to their realm
That gives us our forms, but more is then
Demanded by the smartest spren,
We can’t provide what the humans lend,
Though broth are we, their meat is men.
—From the Listener Song of Spren, 9th stanza
In his dream, Kaladin was the storm.
He claimed the land, surging across it, a cleansing fury. All washed before him, broke before him. In his darkness, the land was reborn.
He soared, alive with lightning, his flashes of inspiration. The wind’s howling was his voice, the thunder his heartbeat. He overwhelmed, overcame, overshadowed, and—
And he had done this before.
An awareness came to Kaladin, like water seeping under a door. Yes. He’d dreamed this dream before.
With effort, he turned around. A face as large as eternity stretched behind him, the force behind the tempest, the Stormfather himself.
SON OF HONOR, said a voice like roaring wind.
“This is real!” Kaladin yelled into the storm. He was wind itself. Spren. He found voice somehow. “You are real!”
SHE TRUSTS YOU.
“Syl?” Kaladin called. “Yes, she does.”
SHE SHOULD NOT.
“Are you the one who forbade her to come to me? Are you the one who keeps the spren back?”
YOU WILL KILL HER. The voice, so deep, so powerful, sounded regretful. Mournful. YOU WILL MURDER MY CHILD AND LEAVE HER CORPSE TO WICKED MEN.
“I will not!” Kaladin shouted.
YOU BEGIN IT ALREADY.
The storm continued. Kaladin saw the world from above. Ships in sheltered harbors rocking on violent swells. Armies huddled in valleys, preparing for war in a place of many hills and mountains. A vast lake going dry ahead of his arrival, the water retreating into holes in the rock beneath.
“How can I prevent it?” Kaladin demanded. “How can I protect her?”
YOU ARE HUMAN. YOU WILL BE A TRAITOR.
“No I won’t!”
YOU WILL CHANGE. MEN CHANGE. ALL MEN.
The continent was so vast. So many people speaking languages he could not comprehend, everyone hiding in their rooms, their caverns, their valleys.
AH, the Stormfather said. SO IT WILL END.
“What?” Kaladin shouted into the winds. “What changed? I feel—”
HE COMES FOR YOU, LITTLE TRAITOR. I AM SORRY.
Something rose before Kaladin. A second storm, one of red lightning, so enormous as to make the continent—the world itself—into nothing by comparison. Everything fell into its shadow.
I AM SORRY, the Stormfather said. HE COMES.
Kaladin awoke, heart thundering in his chest.
He almost fell from his chair. Where was he? The Pinnacle, the king’s conference chamber. Kaladin had sat down for a moment and . . .
He blushed. He’d dozed off.
Adolin stood nearby, talking to Renarin. “I’m not sure if anything will come from the meeting, but I’m glad Father agreed to it. I’d almost given up hope of it happening, with how long the Parshendi messenger took to arrive.”
“You’re sure the one you met out there was a woman?” Renarin asked. He seemed more at ease since he had finished bonding his Blade a couple weeks back, and no longer needed to carry it around. “A woman Shardbearer?”
“The Parshendi are pretty odd,” Adolin said with a shrug. He glanced toward Kaladin, and his lips rose in a smirk. “Sleeping on the job, bridgeboy?”
The leaking shutter shook nearby, water dribbling in under the wood. Navani and Dalinar would be in the room next door.
The king wasn’t there.
“His Majesty!” Kaladin cried, scrambling to his feet.
“In the privy, bridgeboy,” Adolin said, nodding to another door. “You can sleep during a highstorm. That’s impressive. Almost as impressive as how much you drool when you’re dozing.”
No time for gibes. That dream . . . Kaladin turned toward the balcony door, breathing quickly.
He comes. . . .
Kaladin pulled open the balcony door. Adolin shouted and Renarin called out, but Kaladin ignored them, facing the tempest.
The wind still howled and rain pelted the stone balcony with a sound like sticks breaking. There was no lightning, however, and the wind—while violent—was not nearly strong enough to fling boulders or topple walls. The bulk of the highstorm had passed.
Darkness. Wind from the depths of nothingness, battering him. He felt as if he were standing above the void itself, Damnation, known as Braize in the old songs. Home to demons and monsters. He stepped out hesitantly, light from the still-open door spilling onto the wet balcony. He found the railing—a part that was still secure—and clenched it in cold fingers. Rain bit him on the cheek, seeping through his uniform, burrowing through the cloth and seeking warm skin.
“Are you mad?” Adolin demanded from the doorway. Kaladin could barely hear his voice over the wind and distant rumbles of thunder.
* * *
Pattern hummed softly as rain fell on the wagon.
Shallan’s slaves huddled together and whimpered. She wished she could quiet the blasted spren, but Pattern wasn’t responding to her promptings. At least the highstorm was nearly over. She wanted to get away and read what Tyn’s correspondents had to say about Shallan’s homeland.
Pattern’s hums sounded almost like a whimper. Shallan frowned and leaned down close to him. Were those words?
“Bad . . . ba
d . . . so bad . . .”
* * *
Syl shot out of the highstorm’s dense darkness, a sudden flash of light in the black. She spun about Kaladin before coming to rest on the iron railing before him. Her dress seemed longer and more flowing than usual. The rain passed through her without disturbing her shape.
Syl looked into the sky, then turned her head sharply over her shoulder. “Kaladin. Something is wrong.”
“I know.”
Syl spun about, twisting this way, then that. Her small eyes opened wide. “He’s coming.”
“Who? The storm?”
“The one who hates,” she whispered. “The darkness inside. Kaladin, he’s watching. Something’s going to happen. Something bad.”
Kaladin hesitated only a moment, then scrambled back into the room, pushing past Adolin and entering the light. “Get the king. We’re leaving. Now.”
“What?” Adolin demanded.
Kaladin threw open the door into the small room where Dalinar and Navani waited. The highprince sat on a sofa, expression distant, Navani holding his hand. That wasn’t what Kaladin had expected. The highprince didn’t seem frightened or mad, just thoughtful. He was speaking softly.
Kaladin froze. He sees things during the storms.
“What are you doing?” Navani demanded. “How dare you?”
“Can you wake him?” Kaladin asked, stepping into the room. “We need to leave this room, leave this palace.”
“Nonsense.” It was the king’s voice. Elhokar stepped into the room behind him. “What are you babbling about?”
“You’re not safe here, Your Majesty,” Kaladin said. “We need to get you out of the palace and take you to the warcamp.” Storms. Would that be safe? Should he go somewhere nobody would expect?
Thunder rumbled outside, but the sound of rainfall slackened. The storm was dying.
“This is ridiculous,” Adolin said from behind the king, throwing his hands into the air. “This is the safest place in the warcamps. You want us to leave? Drag the king out into the storm?”
“We need to wake the highprince,” Kaladin said, reaching for Dalinar.
Dalinar caught his arm as he did so. “The highprince is awake,” Dalinar said, his gaze clearing, returning from the distant place where it had been. “What is going on here?”