Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“If it’s so common,” Kal muttered, “why am I being punished?”

“What, this? A little cleaning duty? Kid, this isn’t punishment. This is to help you fit in.”

Kal frowned, leaning back and looking up. “Sergeant?”

“Trust me. Everyone was waiting for you to get a dressing-down. The longer you went without one, the longer you were going to feel like the odd man out.”

“I’m scraping floors because I didn’t deserve to be punished?”

“That, and for talking back to an officer.”

“He wasn’t an officer! He was just a lighteyes with—”

“Better to stop that kind of behavior now. Before you do it to someone who matters. Oh, don’t glower, Kal. You’ll understand eventually.”

Kal attacked a particularly stubborn knob of crem near the leg of a bunk.

“I found your brother,” Tukks noted.

Kaladin’s breath caught.

“He’s in the Seventh,” Tukks said.

“I need to go to him. Can I be transferred? We weren’t supposed to be split apart.”

“Maybe I can get him moved here, to train with you.”

“He’s a messenger! He’s not supposed to train with the spear.”

“Everyone trains, even the messenger boys,” Tukks said.

Kal gripped his chisel tightly, fighting down the urge to stand up and go looking for Tien. Didn’t they understand? Tien couldn’t hurt cremlings. He’d catch the things and usher them outside, talking to them like pets. The image of him holding a spear was ludicrous.

Tukks took out some fathom bark and started chewing. He leaned back on the bunk and put his feet up on the footboard. “Make sure you get that spot to your left.”

Kaladin sighed, then moved to the indicated place.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tukks asked. “The moment when you froze during practice?”

Stupid crem. Why did the Almighty make it?

“Don’t be ashamed,” Tukks continued. “We practice so you can freeze now, instead of when it will get you killed. You face down a squad, knowing they want to kill you even though they’ve never met you. And you hesitate, thinking it can’t possibly be true. You can’t possibly be here, preparing to fight, to bleed. Everyone feels that fear.”

“I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt,” Kal said softly.

“You won’t get far if you can’t admit to a little fear. Emotion is good. It’s what defines us, makes us—”

“I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt.” Kaladin took a deep breath. “I was afraid of making someone hurt.”

Tukks twisted the bark in his mouth, then nodded. “I see. Well, that’s another problem. Not unusual either, but a different matter indeed.”

For a time, the only sound in the large barrack was that of chisel on stone. “How do you do it?” Kal finally asked, not looking up. “How can you hurt people, Tukks? They’re just poor darkeyed slobs like us.”

“I think about my mates,” Tukks said. “I can’t let the lads down. My squad is my family now.”

“So you kill someone else’s family?”

“Eventually, we’ll be killing shellheads. But I know what you mean, Kal. It’s hard. You’d be surprised how many men look in the face of an enemy and find that they’re simply not capable of hurting another person.”

Kal closed his eyes, letting the chisel slip from his fingers.

“It’s good you aren’t so eager,” Tukks said. “Means you’re sane. I’ll take ten unskilled men with earnest hearts over one callous idiot who thinks this is all a game.”

The world doesn’t make sense, Kal thought. His father, the consummate surgeon, told him to avoid getting too wrapped up in his patients’ emotions. And here was a career killer, telling him to care?

Boots scraped on stone as Tukks stood up. He walked over and rested one hand on Kal’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the war, or even the battle. Focus on your squadmates, Kal. Keep them alive. Be the man they need.” He grinned. “And get the rest of this floor scraped. I think when you come to dinner, you’ll find the rest of the squad more friendly. Just a hunch.”

That night, Kaladin discovered that Tukks was right. The rest of the men did seem more welcoming, now that he’d been disciplined. So Kal held his tongue, smiled, and enjoyed the companionship.

He never told Tukks the truth. When Kal had frozen on the practice field, it hadn’t been out of fear. He’d been very sure he could hurt someone. In fact, he’d realized that he could kill, if needed.

And that was what had terrified him.

* * *

Kaladin sat on a chunk of stone that looked like melted obsidian. It grew right out of the ground in Shadesmar, this place that didn’t seem real.

The distant sun hadn’t shifted in the sky since they’d arrived. Nearby, one of the strange fearspren crawled along the banks of the sea of glass beads. As big as an axehound, but longer and thinner, it looked vaguely like an eel with stumpy legs. The purple feelers on its head wiggled and shifted, flowing in his direction. When it didn’t sense anything in him that it wanted, it continued along the bank.

Syl didn’t make any noise as she approached, but he caught sight of her shadow coming up from behind—like other shadows here, it pointed toward the sun. She sat down on the lump of glass next to him, then thumped her head sideways, resting it on his arm, her hands in her lap.

“Others still asleep?” Kaladin asked.

“Yup. Pattern’s watching over them.” She wrinkled her nose. “Strange.”

“He’s nice, Syl.”

“That’s the strange part.”

She swung her legs out in front of her, barefoot as usual. It seemed odder here on this side where she was human size. A small flock of spren flew above them, with bulbous bodies, long wings, and flowing tails. Instead of a head, each one had a golden ball floating right in front of the body. That seemed familiar.…

Gloryspren, he thought. It was like the fearspren, whose antennae manifested in the real world. Only part of the actual spren showed there.

“So…” Syl said. “Not going to sleep?”

Kaladin shook his head.

“Now, I might not be an expert on humans,” she said. “For example, I still haven’t figured out why only a handful of your cultures seem to worship me. But I do think I heard somewhere that you have to sleep. Like, every night.”

He didn’t respond.

“Kaladin…”

“What about you?” he said, looking away, along the isthmus of land that marked where the river was in the real world. “Don’t you sleep?”

“Have I ever needed sleep?”

“Isn’t this your land? Where you come from? I figured you’d … I don’t know … be more mortal here.”

“I’m still a spren,” she said. “I’m a little piece of God. Did you miss the part about worshipping me?”

When he didn’t reply, she poked him in the side. “You were supposed to say something sarcastic there.”

“Sorry.”

“We don’t sleep; we don’t eat. I think we might feed off humans, actually. Your emotions. Or you thinking about us, maybe. It all seems very complicated. In Shadesmar, we can think on our own, but if we go to your realm, we need a human bond. Otherwise, we’re practically as mindless as those gloryspren.”