Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

I’m sorry, Father, Kaladin thought, reaching for the scalpel in his boot. As the axe fell again, Kaladin let it bite him in the left shoulder, praying his Stormlight would hold. He rammed the scalpel into the side of the Regal’s knee, directly between bits of carapace.

The Regal screamed and stumbled. Kaladin’s shoulder hurt like Damnation, but he pushed through the pain and leaped to his feet. His Stormlight ran out as he rushed his enemy, toppling them again—but this time Kaladin fell with more care and dropped on top of the Regal. With the momentum of the fall, he rammed his scalpel into the creature’s neck, right above its carapace gorget.

The knife wasn’t intended for battle, but it was sharpened to exactness. Kaladin twisted it and swiftly cut the carotid artery, then threw himself up.

He stumbled back against the counter, covered in sweat, panting, his hearing not fully healed from the blast. The Regal thrashed on the floor, and orange blood … Well, Kaladin turned away. Some sights were sickening even for a surgeon.

Even for a soldier, he corrected. You’re no surgeon.

He looked across the room at the singer who huddled beside the far wall. He’d watched, stunned, and hadn’t intervened.

“Haven’t been in many fights, have you?” Kaladin asked, hoarse.

The singer jumped, his eyes wide. He was in warform, so he appeared fearsome, but his expression told another story. That of a person who wanted to be anywhere else, a person horrified by the brutality of the fight.

Storms … He hadn’t considered that singers might feel battle shock too.

“Go,” Kaladin said, then winced as the dying Regal’s leg thumped against the wall with a frantic, panicked sound. Bleeding out always seemed to happen too quickly to your friends, and not quickly enough to those you killed.

The singer stared at him, haunted, and Kaladin realized the malen might also have been deafened by the lightning. Kaladin pointed, mouthing the word. “Go!”

The singer scrambled away, leaving wet orange footprints from the dying singer’s blood. Kaladin pulled himself over to the opposite counter, where a few spheres still glowed. He drew those in and healed the rest of his wounds. He should have kept another pouch on him. This had been coming.

He searched out the doorway, and found his father on the floor where Kaladin had shoved him, lit by morning light coming in through the distant window.

“You all right?” Kaladin asked him. “Did that blast hurt you?”

Lirin stood up, staring past Kaladin. Into the room, square at the dying Regal. In the other room, Oroden had started crying. Then Lirin, overcoming his shock, scrambled into the room to try to help the dying singer.

Father is fine, Kaladin thought. The thunder of stormform lightning blasts—at least those made by a single individual—wasn’t as bad as that of real lightning. As long as you were sheltered, as his father had been, you wouldn’t suffer permanent hearing loss.

Kaladin tiredly glanced to Syl, who sat on the counter with her hands in her lap. Her eyes were closed, her head turned away from the dying Regal as Lirin tried to stanch the blood flow. Kaladin had killed dozens, perhaps hundreds of them during this war—though he’d tried to focus his attention on the Fused. He’d told himself that those fights were more meaningful, but the truth was that he hated killing common soldiers. They never seemed to have much of a chance against him.

Yet each Fused he killed meant something even worse. A noncombatant would be sacrificed to give that Fused new life, so each one of them Kaladin killed meant taking the life of some housewife or craftsman.

He moved over to Teft, Kaladin’s glowing body illuminating the man, unconscious on the table. Kaladin spared a momentary worry for the Stoneward who had been taken. Could he somehow rescue her too?

Don’t be a fool, Kaladin. You barely saved Teft. In fact, you might not have saved him yet. Deal with the current problems before creating new ones.

Nearby, Lirin gave up, lowering his head and slumping in place as he knelt before the body. It had stopped moving, finally.

“We’ll need to hide,” Kaladin said to his father. “I’ll fetch Mother.” He surveyed his bloody clothing. “Perhaps you should do that, actually.”

“How dare you!” Lirin whispered, his voice hoarse.

Kaladin hesitated, shocked.

“How dare you kill in this place!” Lirin shouted, turning on Kaladin, angerspren pooling at his feet. “My sanctuary. The place where we heal! What is wrong with you?”

“They were going to take Teft,” Kaladin said. “Kill him.”

“You don’t know that!” Lirin said. He stared at his bloodied hands. “You … You just…” He took a deep breath. “The Fused are probably gathering the Radiants to keep them in one location, and watch to see that none of them wake up!”

“You don’t know that,” Kaladin said. “I wasn’t going to let them take him. He’s my friend.”

“Is that it, or did you just want an excuse?” Lirin’s hands trembled as he tried to wipe the blood onto his trousers. When he looked back at Kaladin, something seemed to have broken in him, tears on his cheeks. Storms, he seemed exhausted.

“Heralds above…” Lirin whispered. “They really did kill my boy, didn’t they? What have they done to you?”

Kaladin’s smidgen of Stormlight ran out. Damnation, he was so tired. “I’ve tried to tell you. Your boy died years ago.”

Lirin stared at the floor, wet with blood. “Go. They’ll come for you now.”

“You need to go into hiding with me,” Kaladin said. “They’ll know you’re my—”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Lirin snapped.

“Don’t play the sixth fool, Father,” Kaladin said. “You can’t let them take you after this.”

“I can and will!” Lirin shouted, standing up. “Because I will take responsibility for what I’ve done! I will work within whatever confines I must in order to protect people! I have taken oaths not to harm!” He grimaced, sickened. “Oh, Almighty. You murdered a man inside my home.”

“It wasn’t murder,” Kaladin said.

Lirin didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t murder.”

Lirin sank to the floor. “Just … go,” he said, his voice growing soft again. The grief in it, the disappointment, was far worse than the anger had been. “I will … find a way to get the rest of us out of this. That singer saw me trying to make you stop. They won’t harm a surgeon who didn’t fight. But you, they’ll kill.”

Kaladin hesitated. Could he really leave them here?

“Storms…” Lirin whispered. “Storms, my son has become a monster.…”

Kaladin steeled himself, then slipped into the back room and recovered an extra pouch of spheres he kept there. Then he returned to the exam room, trying—and failing—to avoid the blood. He lifted Teft with a grunt, putting him in a medic’s carry across his back.

“I’ve taken oaths too, Father,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not the man you wanted me to be. But if I were a monster, I would never have let that other soldier go.”

He left, running for the uninhabited center of the sixth floor as shouts in the singer tongue began to sound behind him.