Cradling the sphere in one hand, Ico touched the glass bead he’d put in the fabrial. “This is a soul,” he said. “Soul of water, but very cold.”
“Ice?”
“Ice from a high, high place,” he said. “Ice that has never melted. Ice that has never known warmth.” The light in Kaladin’s sphere dimmed as Ico concentrated. “You know how to manifest souls?”
“No,” Kaladin said.
“Some of your kind do,” he said. “It is rare. Rare among us too. The gardeners among the cultivationspren are best at it. I am unpracticed.”
The ocean bead expanded and grew cloudy, looking like ice. Kaladin got a distinct sense of coldness from it.
Ico handed back the diamond mark, now partially drained, then dusted off his hands and stood up, pleased.
“What does it do?” Kaladin asked.
Ico nudged the device with his foot. “It gets cold now.”
“Why?”
“Cold makes water,” he said. “Water collects in that basin. You drink, and don’t die.”
Cold makes water? It didn’t seem to be making any water that Kaladin could see. Ico hiked off to survey the spren steering the ship, so Kaladin knelt beside the device, trying to understand. Eventually, he spotted drops of water collecting on the “branches” of the device. They ran down the metal and gathered in the basin.
Huh. When the captain had said—during their initial negotiations—that he could provide water for human passengers, Kaladin had assumed the ship would have some barrels in the hold.
The device took about a half hour to make a small cup of water, which Kaladin drank as a test—the basin had a spigot and a detachable tin cup. The water was cool but flavorless, unlike rainwater. How did coldness make water though? Was this melting ice in the Physical Realm somehow, and bringing it here?
As he was sipping the water, Syl walked over—her skin, hair, and dress still colored like those of a human. She stopped next to him, placed her hands on her hips, and went into full pout.
“What?” Kaladin asked.
“They won’t let me ride one of the flying spren.”
“Smart.”
“Insufferable.”
“Why on Roshar would you look at one of those things and think, ‘You know what, I need to get on its back’?”
Syl looked at him as if he were crazy. “Because they can fly.”
“So can you. Actually, so can I.”
“You don’t fly, you fall the wrong way.” She unfolded her arms so that she could fold them immediately again and huff loudly. “You’re telling me you’re not even curious what it’s like to climb on one of those things?”
“Horses are bad enough. I’m not about to get onto something that doesn’t even have legs.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I dragged it out back and clubbed it senseless for getting me into the army. What have you done to your skin and hair, by the way?”
“It’s a Lightweaving,” she said. “I asked Shallan, because I didn’t want rumors of an honorspren spreading from the ship’s crew.”
“We can’t waste Stormlight on something like that, Syl.”
“We used a mark that was running out anyway!” she said. “So it was worthless to us; it would have been depleted by the time we arrived. So it’s wasting nothing.”
“What if there’s an emergency?”
She stuck her tongue out at him, then at the sailors at the front of the ship. Kaladin returned the little tin cup to its place on the side of the device, then settled with his back to the ship railing. Shallan sat across the deck near the flying spren, doing sketches.
“You should go talk to her,” Syl said, sitting next to him.
“About wasting Stormlight?” Kaladin said. “Yes, perhaps I should. She does seem inclined to be frivolous with who she expends it for.”
Syl rolled her eyes.
“What?”
“Don’t go lecture her, silly. Chat with her. About life. About fun things.” Syl nudged him with her foot. “I know you want to. I can feel that you do. Be glad I’m the wrong kind of spren, or I would probably be licking your forehead or something to get at your emotions.”
The ship surged against a wave of beads. The souls of things in the physical world.
“Shallan is betrothed to Adolin,” Kaladin said.
“Which isn’t an oath,” Syl said. “It’s a promise to maybe make an oath sometime.”
“It’s still not the sort of thing you play around with.”
Syl rested her hand on his knee. “Kaladin. I’m your spren. It’s my duty to make sure that you’re not alone.”
“Is that so? Who decided?”
“I did. And don’t give me excuses about not being lonely, or about ‘only needing your brothers in arms.’ You can’t lie to me. You feel dark, sad. You need something, someone, and she makes you feel better.”
Storms. It felt like Syl and his emotions were double-teaming him. One smiled with encouragement, while the other whispered terrible things. That he’d always be alone. That Tarah had been right to leave him.
He filled another cup with as much water as he could get from the basin, then carried it toward Shallan. The pitching of the ship almost made him dump the cup overboard.
Shallan glanced up as he eased down beside her, his back resting against the deck’s railing. He handed her the cup. “It makes water,” he said, thumbing at the device. “By getting cold.”
“Condensation? How fast does it go? Navani would be interested in that.” She sipped the water, holding it in her gloved safehand—which was strange to see on her. Even when they’d traveled the bottoms of the chasms together, she’d worn a very formal havah.
“You walk like they do,” she said absently, finishing her sketch of one of the flying beasts.
“They?”
“The sailors. You keep your balance well. You’d have been at home as a sailor yourself, I suspect. Unlike some others.” She nodded toward Azure, who stood across the deck, holding on to the railing for dear life and occasionally shooting distrusting glares at the Reachers. Either she did not like being on a ship, or she did not trust the spren. Perhaps both.
“May I?” Kaladin asked, nodding toward Shallan’s sketch. She shrugged, so he took the sketchpad and studied her pictures of the flying beasts. As always, they were excellent. “What does the text say?”
“Just some theorizing,” she said, flipping back a page in her notebook. “I lost my original of this picture, so this is kind of crude. But have you ever seen something like these arrowhead spren here?”
“Yeah…” Kaladin said, studying her drawing of a skyeel flying with arrowhead spren moving around it. “I’ve seen them near greatshells.”
“Chasmfiends, skyeels, anything else that should be heavier than it actually is. Sailors call them luckspren on our side.” She gestured with the cup toward the front of the ship, where sailors managed the flying beasts. “They call these ‘mandras,’ but the arrowhead shapes on their heads are the same shape as luckspren. These are bigger, but I think they—or something like them—help skyeels fly.”