Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

“You hush too,” Shallan told him. “Go polish your bridge or something.” She leaned in, then poked her pencil at a bug that was crawling across the moss. “Ah…” she said, then hurriedly scribbled some notes. “Anyway, you’re wrong. There’s a lot out here to get excited about, if you look in the right places. Some of the soldiers said a chasmfiend has been spotted. Do you think it might attack us?”

“You sound entirely too hopeful saying that, Shallan,” Adolin said.

“Well, I do still need a good sketch of one.”

“We’ll get you to the chrysalis. That will have to be enough.”

Shallan’s scholarship was an excuse; the truth was obvious to Kaladin. Dalinar had brought an unusual number of scouts with him today, and Kaladin suspected once they reached the chrysalis—which was on the border of unexplored lands—they’d range ahead and gather information. This was all preparation for Dalinar’s expedition.

“I don’t understand why we need so many soldiers,” Shallan said, noticing Kaladin’s gaze as he studied the army. “Didn’t you say the Parshendi haven’t been showing up to fight over chrysalises lately?”

“No, they haven’t,” Adolin said. “That’s precisely what makes us worried.”

Kaladin nodded. “Whenever your enemy changes established tactics, you need to worry. It could mean they’re getting desperate. Desperation is very, very dangerous.”

“You’re good at military thinking, for a bridgeboy,” Adolin said.

“Coincidentally,” Kaladin said, “you’re good at not being unobnoxious, for a prince.”

“Thanks,” Adolin said.

“That was an insult, dear,” Shallan said.

“What?” Adolin said. “It was?”

She nodded, still sketching, though she glanced up to eye Kaladin. He met the expression calmly.

“Adolin,” Shallan said, turning back to the small rock formation in front of her, “would you slay this moss for me, please?”

“Slay… the moss.” He looked at Kaladin, who just shrugged. How was he to know what a lighteyed woman meant? They were a strange breed.

“Yes,” Shallan said, standing up. “Give that moss, and the rock behind it, a good chop. As a favor for your betrothed.”

Adolin looked baffled, but he did as she asked, summoning his Shardblade and hacking at the moss and rock. The top of the small pile of stones slipped free, cut with ease, and clattered to the floor of the plateau.

Shallan stepped up eagerly, crouching down beside the perfectly flat top of the sliced stone. “Mmm,” she said, nodding to herself. She started sketching.

Adolin dismissed his Blade. “Women!” he said, shrugging at Kaladin. Then he went jogging off to get a drink without asking her for an explanation.

Kaladin took a step after him, but then hesitated. What did Shallan find so interesting here? This woman was a puzzle, and he knew he wouldn’t be completely comfortable until he understood her. She had too much access to Adolin, and therefore Dalinar, to leave uninvestigated.

He stepped closer, looking over her shoulder as she drew. “Strata,” he said. “You’re counting the strata of crem to guess how old the rock is.”

“Good guess,” she said, “but this is a bad location for strata dating. The wind blows across the plateaus too strongly, and the crem doesn’t collect in pools evenly. So the strata here are erratic and inaccurate.”

Kaladin frowned, narrowing his eyes. The cross section of rock was normal cremstone on the outside, some strata visible as different shades of brown. The center of the stone, though, was white. You didn’t see white rock like that often; it had to be quarried. Which meant this was either a very strange occurrence, or…

“There was a structure here once,” Kaladin said. “A long time ago. It must have taken centuries for the crem to get that thick on something sticking out of the ground.”

She glanced at him. “You’re smarter than you look.” Then, turning back to her drawing, she added, “Good thing…”

He grunted. “Why does everything you say have to include some quip? Are you that desperate to prove how clever you are?”

“Perhaps I’m merely annoyed at you for taking advantage of Adolin.”

“Advantage?” Kaladin asked. “Because I called him obnoxious?”

“You deliberately said it in a way you expected he wouldn’t understand. To make him look like a fool. He’s trying very hard to be nice to you.”

“Yes,” Kaladin said. “He’s always so munificent to all of the little darkeyes who flock around to worship him.”

Shallan snapped her pencil against the page. “You really are a hateful man, aren’t you? Underneath the mock boredom, the dangerous glares, the growls—you just hate people, is that it?”

“What? No, I—”

“Adolin is trying. He feels bad for what happened to you, and he’s doing what he can to make up for it. He is a good man. Is it too much for you to stop provoking him?”

“He calls me bridgeboy,” Kaladin said, feeling stubborn. “He’s been provoking me.”

“Yes, because he is the one storming around with alternating scowls and insults,” Shallan said. “Adolin Kholin, the most difficult man to get along with on the Shattered Plains. I mean look at him! He’s so unlikable!”

She gestured with the pencil toward where Adolin was laughing with the darkeyed water boys. The groom walked up with Adolin’s horse, and Adolin took his Shardplate helm off the carrying post, handing it over, letting one of the water boys try it on. It was ridiculously large on the lad.

Kaladin flushed as the boy took a Shardbearer’s pose, and they all laughed again. Kaladin looked back to Shallan, who folded her arms, drawing pad resting on the flat-topped cut rock before her. She smirked at him.

Insufferable woman. Bah!

Kaladin left her and hiked across the rough ground to join Bridge Four, where he insisted on taking a turn hauling the bridge, despite Teft’s protests that he was “above that sort of thing” now. He was no storming lighteyes. He’d never be above doing an honest day’s work.

The familiar weight of the bridge settled onto his shoulders. Rock was right. It did feel lighter than it once had. He smiled as he heard cursing from Lopen’s cousins, who—like Renarin—were being initiated on this run into their first bridge carry.

They hiked the bridge over a chasm—crossing on one of Dalinar’s larger, less mobile ones—and started across the plateau. For a time, marching at the front of Bridge Four, Kaladin could imagine that his life was simple. No plateau assaults, no arrows, no assassins or bodyguarding. Just him, his team, and a bridge.

Unfortunately, as they neared the other side of the large plateau, he started to feel weary and—by reflex—tried to suck in some Stormlight to bolster him. It wouldn’t come.

Life was not simple. It never had been, certainly not while running bridges. To pretend otherwise was to paint over the past.

He helped set the bridge down, then—noticing the vanguard moving out in front of the army—he and the bridgemen shoved their bridge into place across the chasm. The vanguard cheerfully welcomed the chance to get ahead, marching over the bridge and securing the next plateau.