Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

The men shuffled and looked about. Though Teft had been working with them and the other crews for weeks now, these didn’t yet see themselves as soldiers. As long as that was true, they’d hold those spears at awkward angles, look around lazily when being addressed, and shuffle in line.

“The chasms are mine,” Kaladin said. “I give you leave to practice here. Sergeant Pitt!”

“Yes, sir!” Pitt said, standing at attention.

“This is a sloppy mess of stormleavings you’ve got to work with, but I’ve seen worse.”

“I find that hard to believe, sir!”

“Believe it,” Kaladin said, looking over the men. “I was in Bridge Four. Lieutenant Teft, they’re yours. Make them sweat.”

“Aye, sir,” Teft said. He began to call out orders as Kaladin picked up his spear and made his way farther down the chasms. It would be slow going, getting all twenty crews into shape, but at least Teft had successfully trained the sergeants. Heralds send that the same training worked on the common men.

Kaladin wished he could explain, even to himself, why he felt so anxious about getting these men ready. He felt he was racing toward something. Though what, he didn’t know. That writing on the wall… Storms, it had him on edge. Thirty-seven days.

He passed Syl sitting on the frond of a frillbloom growing from the wall. It pulled closed at Kaladin’s approach. She didn’t notice, but remained sitting in the air.

“What is it that you want, Kaladin?” she asked.

“To keep my men alive,” he said immediately.

“No,” Syl said, “that was what you wanted.”

“You’re saying I don’t want them to be safe?”

She slid down onto his shoulder, moving like a stiff breeze had blown her. She crossed her legs, sitting ladylike, skirt rippling as he walked.

“In Bridge Four, you dedicated everything you had to saving them,” Syl said. “Well, they’re saved. You can’t go about protecting every one like a… um… Like a…”

“Father kurl watches over his eggs?”

“Exactly!” She paused. “What’s a kurl?”

“A crustacean,” Kaladin said, “about the size of a small axehound. Looks kind of like a cross between a crab and a tortoise.”

“Ooooo…” Syl said. “I wanna see one!”

“They don’t live out here.”

Kaladin walked with his eyes forward, so she poked him in the neck until he looked at her. Then she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “So you admit that your men are relatively safe,” she said. “That means you haven’t really answered my question. What do you want?”

He passed piles of bones and wood, overgrown with moss. On one pile, rotspren and lifespren spun about one another, little motes of red and green glowing around the vines that sprouted incongruously from the mass of death.

“I want to beat that assassin,” Kaladin said, surprised by how vehemently he felt it.

“Why?”

“Because it’s my job to protect Dalinar.”

Syl shook her head. “That’s not it.”

“What? You think you’ve gotten that good at reading human intentions?”

“Not all humans. Just you.”

Kaladin grunted, stepping carefully around the edge of a dark pool. He’d rather not spend the rest of the day with soaked boots. These new ones didn’t hold out the water as well as they should.

“Maybe,” he said, “I want to beat that assassin because this is all his fault. If he hadn’t killed Gavilar, Tien wouldn’t have been drafted, and I wouldn’t have followed him. Tien wouldn’t have died.”

“And you don’t think Roshone would have found another way of getting back at your father?”

Roshone was the citylord of Kaladin’s hometown back in Alethkar. Sending Tien into the army had been an act of petty vengeance on his part, a way to get back at Kaladin’s father for not being a good enough surgeon to save Roshone’s son.

“He probably would have done something else,” Kaladin admitted. “Still, that assassin deserves to die.”

He heard the others before he reached them, their voices echoing down the cavernous chasm bottom.

“What I’m trying to explain,” one said, “is that nobody seems to be asking the right questions.” Sigzil’s voice, with his elevated Azish accent. “We call the Parshendi savages, and everyone says they hadn’t ever met people until that day they encountered the Alethi expedition. If those things are true, then what storm brought them a Shin assassin? A Shin assassin who can Surgebind, no less.”

Kaladin stepped into the light of their spheres sprinkled about on the floor of the chasm, which had been cleared of debris since the last time Kaladin had been here. Sigzil, Rock, and Lopen sat on boulders, waiting for him.

“Are you implying that the Assassin in White never really worked for the Parshendi?” Kaladin asked. “Or are you implying that the Parshendi lied about being as isolated as they claimed?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Sigzil said, turning toward Kaladin. “My master trained me to ask questions, so I’m asking them. Something doesn’t make sense about this whole matter. The Shin are extremely xenophobic. They rarely leave their lands, and you never find them working as mercenaries. Now this one goes about assassinating kings? With a Shardblade? Is he still working for the Parshendi? If so, why did they wait so long to unleash him against us again?”

“Does it matter who he’s working for?” Kaladin asked, sucking in Stormlight.

“Of course it does,” Sigzil said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s a question,” he said, as if offended. “Besides, discovering his true employer might give us a clue to their goal, and knowing that might help us defeat him.”

Kaladin smiled, then tried to run up the wall.

After falling to the ground, ending up flat on his back, he sighed.

Rock’s head leaned in over him. “Is fun to watch,” he said. “But this thing, you are certain she can work?”

“The assassin walked on the ceiling,” Kaladin said.

“Are you sure he wasn’t just doing what we did?” Sigzil asked skeptically. “Using the Stormlight to stick one object to another? He could have sprayed the ceiling with Stormlight, then jumped up into it to stick there.”

“No,” Kaladin said, Stormlight escaping his lips. “He jumped up and landed on the ceiling. Then he ran down the wall and sent Adolin to the ceiling somehow. The prince didn’t stick there, he fell that way.” Kaladin watched his Stormlight rise and evaporate. “At the end of it all, the assassin… he flew away.”

“Ha!” Lopen said from his rock perch. “I knew it. When we have this figured out, the king of all Herdaz, he will say to me, ‘Lopen, you are glowing, and this is impressive. But you can also fly. For this, you may marry my daughter.’”

“The king of Herdaz doesn’t have a daughter,” Sigzil said.

“He doesn’t? I have been lied to all this time!”

“You don’t know your royal family?” Kaladin asked, sitting up.