Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

Rushu approved, but Navani felt annoyed as she moved on. I need to do more than waste time, Navani thought. I need to work toward our freedom.

She’d been formulating her plan. Step one was to continue making certain they didn’t lose ground, and Kaladin would have to handle that. Step two was getting word to Dalinar. Now that she had spanreeds, perhaps she could find a way.

It was the third step that currently concerned her. In talking to the Sibling, Navani had confirmed a number of things she’d previously suspected. The tower regulated pressure and heat for those living inside—and it had once done a far better job of this, along with performing a host of other vital functions.

Most of that, including the tower’s protections against Fused, had ended around the Recreance. The time when the Radiants had abandoned their oaths—and the time when the ancient singers had been transformed into parshmen, their songs and forms stolen. The actions of those ancient Radiants had somehow broken the tower—and Raboniel, by filling the tower with Voidlight, was starting to repair it in a twisted way.

Navani felt smothered by it all. She needed to fix a problem using mechanisms she didn’t understand—and indeed had learned about only days ago. She paced, massaging her temples. She needed a smaller problem she could work on first, to give her brain some time away from the bigger problem.

What was a smaller problem she could fix? Helping Kaladin move faster up and down through the tower? Was there a hidden lift that she could …

Wait.

A way for one person to quickly get up and down, she thought. Storms. She turned on her heel and walked to the other side of the room, suppressing—as best she could—visible signs of her excitement.

The junior engineer Tomor had survived the initial assault. Navani had him recalculating the math on certain schematics. She leaned down beside the young ardent and pointed at his current project, but whispered something else.

“That glove you made,” she said. “The one that you wanted to use as a single-person lift. Where is it?”

“Brightness?” he asked, surprised. “In the boxes out in the hallway.”

“I need you to sneak it out,” she whispered, “when you leave today.”

The singers let her lesser scholars move more freely than Navani. What else could they do? Force three dozen people to sleep in this room, without facilities? A few of the key scholars—Navani, Rushu, Falilar—were always escorted, but the subordinates weren’t paid as much attention.

“Brightness?” Tomor said. “What if I get caught?”

“You might be killed,” she whispered. “But it is a risk we must take. A Radiant still fights, Tomor, and he needs your device to climb between floors.”

Tomor’s eyes lit up. “My device … Stormblessed needs it?”

“You know he’s the one?”

“Everyone’s talking about him,” Tomor said. “I thought it was a fanciful rumor.”

“Bring such rumors to me, fanciful or not,” Navani said. “For now, I need you to sneak that glove out and leave it hidden somewhere it won’t be discovered, but where Kaladin can reasonably retrieve it.”

“I’ll try, Brightness,” Tomor said, nervous. “But fabrials don’t work anymore.”

“Leave that to me,” she said. “Include a quick sketch of a map to the location of the weights on the twentieth floor, as he’ll need to visit those too.”

With the conjoined rubies Kaladin had stolen in those spanreeds, they could hopefully make the device function. She’d have to coach Kaladin through installing it all. And the rubies would be smaller than the ones Tomor had built into the device; would they be able to handle the weight? She’d need to do some calculations, but assuming Tomor had used the newer cages that didn’t stress the rubies as much, it should work.

She rose to go speak to some of the others in the same manner and posture, to hide the importance of her conversation with Tomor. During the second such conference, however, she noticed someone at the doorway.

Raboniel. Navani took a deep breath, composing herself and smothering her spike of anxiety. Raboniel would likely be unhappy about what had happened last night. Hopefully she didn’t suspect Navani’s part in it.

Unfortunately, a guard soon walked into the room, then made straight for Navani. Raboniel didn’t fetch an inferior personally. Navani couldn’t banish the anxietyspren that trailed her as she joined the Fused at the doorway.

Raboniel wore a gown today, though of no cut Navani recognized. Loose and formless, it felt like what an Alethi woman would wear to bed. Though the Fused wore it well with her tall figure, it was strangely off-putting to see her in something that seemed more regal than martial.

The Fused didn’t speak as Navani arrived. Instead she turned and walked out of the chamber with a relaxed gait. Navani followed, and they entered the hallway with the murals. Down to the left, the shield surrounding the crystal pillar glowed a soft blue.

“Your scholars,” Raboniel finally noted, “do not seem to be making much progress. They were to deliver up to my people fabrials to test.”

“My scholars are frightened and unnerved, Ancient One,” Navani said. “It might take weeks before they feel up to true studies again.”

“Yes, and longer, if you continue having them repeat work in an effort to not make progress.”

She figured that out faster than I anticipated, Navani thought as the two strolled along the hallway toward the shield. Here a common singer soldier in warform was working under the direction of several Fused. With a Shardblade.

They’d known the singers had claimed some Blades from the humans they’d fought—but Navani recognized this one. It had belonged to her son. Elhokar’s Blade, Sunraiser.

Navani kept her face impassive only with great effort, though the anxietyspren faded and an agonyspren arrived instead: an upside-down face carved from stone pressing out from the wall nearby. It betrayed her true emotions. That loss ran deep.

Raboniel glanced at it, but said nothing. Navani kept her eyes forward. Watching that horrible Blade in that awful creature’s hand. The warform held the weapon at the ready. It held no gemstone at its pommel; it seemed that the warform didn’t have it bonded. Or perhaps the summoning mechanism didn’t work in the tower, with the protections in place.

The warform attacked the shield—and contrary to Navani’s expectation, the Blade bit into the blue light. The warform carved off a chunk, which evaporated to nothing before it hit the floor—and the shield restored itself just as quickly. The warform tried again, attempting to dig faster. After a few minutes of watching, Navani could tell the effort was futile. The bubble regrew too quickly.

“Fascinating behavior, wouldn’t you say?” Raboniel asked Navani.

Navani turned toward Raboniel, steeling herself against the memories brought forth by the sight of the sword. She could cry for her child again tonight, as she had done many nights in the past. For now, she would not show these creatures her pain.

“I’ve never seen anything like that shield, Lady of Wishes,” she said. “I couldn’t begin to understand how it was created.”

“We could unravel its secrets, if we tried together,” Raboniel said, “instead of wasting our time watching one another for hidden motives.”