Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

“I made a point of telling them to stay close,” Kaladin said. “At the time, I was half convinced you were here to assassinate Adolin.”

Well, he was nothing if not honest. And blunt.

“My men said,” Kaladin continued, “that you seemed to want to get the parshmen murdered.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” she said. “Though I am worried that they might betray us. It’s a moot point, as I doubt I’ll persuade the highprinces without more evidence.”

“If you got your way, though,” Kaladin said, sounding curious, “what would you do? About the parshmen.”

“Have them exiled,” Shallan said.

“And who will replace them?” Kaladin said. “Darkeyes?”

“I’m not saying it would be easy,” Shallan said.

“They’d need more slaves,” Kaladin said, contemplative. “A lot of honest men might find themselves with brands.”

“Still sore about what happened to you, I assume.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yes, I suppose I would. I am sorry that you were treated in such a way, but it could have been worse. You could have been hanged.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to be the executioner who tried that.” He said it with a quiet intensity.

“Me neither,” Shallan said. “I think hanging people is a poor choice of professions for an executioner. Better to be the guy with an axe.”

He frowned at her.

“You see,” she said, “with the axe, it’s easier to get ahead…”

He stared. Then, after a moment, he winced. “Oh, storms. That was awful.”

“No, it was funny. You seem to get those two mixed up a lot. Don’t worry. I’m here to help.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that you aren’t witty, Shallan. I just feel like you try too hard. The world is not a sunny place, and frantically trying to turn everything into a joke is not going to change that.”

“Technically,” she said, “it is a sunny place. Half the time.”

“To people like you, perhaps,” Kaladin said.

“What does that mean?”

He grimaced. “Look, I don’t want to fight again, all right? I just… Please. Let’s let the topic drop.”

“What if I promise not to get angry?”

“Are you capable of that?”

“Of course. I spend most of my time not being angry. I’m terribly proficient at it. Most of those times aren’t around you, granted, but I think I’ll be all right.”

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

“Sorry.”

They walked in silence for a moment, passing plants in bloom with a shockingly well-preserved skeleton underneath them, somehow barely disturbed by the flowing of water in the chasm.

“All right,” Kaladin said. “Here it is. I can imagine how the world must appear to someone like you. Growing up pampered, with everything you want. To someone like you, life is wonderful and sunny and worth laughing over. That’s not your fault, and I shouldn’t blame you. You haven’t had to deal with pain or death like I have. Sorrow is not your companion.”

Silence. Shallan didn’t reply. How could she reply to that?

“What?” Kaladin finally asked.

“I’m trying to decide how to react,” Shallan said. “You see, you just said something very, very funny.”

“Then why aren’t you laughing?”

“Well, it isn’t that kind of funny.” She handed him her satchel and stepped onto a small dry rise of rock running through the middle of a deep pond on the chasm floor. The ground was usually flat—all of that crem settling—but the water in this pool looked a good two or three feet deep.

She crossed with hands out to the sides, balancing. “So, let me see,” she said as she stepped carefully. “You think I’ve lived a simple, happy life full of sunshine and joy. But you also imply that I’ve got dark, evil secrets, so you’re suspicious of and even hostile to me. You tell me I’m arrogant and assume that I consider darkeyes to be playthings, but when I tell you what I’m trying to do to protect them—and everyone else—you imply I’m meddling and should just leave well enough alone.”

She reached the other side and turned about. “Would you say that’s an accurate summary of our conversations up to this point, Kaladin Stormblessed?”

He grimaced. “Yes. I suppose.”

“Wow,” she said, “you sure do seem to know me well. Particularly considering that you started this conversation by professing that you don’t know what to make of me. An odd statement from someone who seems, from my perspective, to have figured it all out. Next time I’m trying to decide what to do, I’ll just ask you, since you appear to understand me better than I understand myself.”

He crossed the same ridge of rock in the path, and she watched anxiously, as he was carrying her satchel. She trusted him better with it over the water than she trusted herself, though. She reached for it when he arrived on the other side, but found herself taking his arm to draw his attention.

“How about this?” she said, holding his eyes. “I promise, solemnly and by the tenth name of the Almighty, that I mean no harm to Adolin or his family. I mean to prevent a disaster. I might be wrong, and I might be misguided, but I vow to you that I’m sincere.”

He stared into her eyes. So intense. She felt a shiver meeting that expression. This was a man of passion.

“I believe you,” he said. “And I guess that will do.” He looked upward, then cursed.

“What?” she asked, looking toward the distant light above. The sun was peeking out over the lip of the ridge there.

The wrong ridge. They weren’t going west any longer. They’d strayed again, pointing southward.

“Blast,” Shallan said. “Give me that satchel. I need to draw this out.”

71. Vigil

He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context. He is what we made him to be, old friend. And that is what he, unfortunately, wished to become.

“I was young,” Teft said, “so I didn’t hear much. Kelek, I didn’t want to hear much. The things my family did, they weren’t the sort of things you want your parents doing, all right? I didn’t want to know. So it’s not surprising I can’t remember.”

Sigzil nodded in that mild, yet infuriating way of his. The Azish man just knew things. And he made you tell him things too. Unfair, that was. Terribly. Why did Teft have to end up with him on watch duty?

The two sat on rocks near the chasms just east of Dalinar’s warcamp. A cold wind blew in. Highstorm tonight.

He’ll be back before then. Surely by then.

A cremling scuttled past. Teft threw a rock at it, driving it toward a nearby crack. “I don’t know why you want to hear all of these things anyway. They aren’t any use.”

Sigzil nodded. Storming foreigner.

“All right, fine,” Teft said. “It was some kind of cult, you see, called the Envisagers. They… well, they thought if they could find a way to return the Voidbringers, then the Knights Radiant would return as well. Stupid, right? Only, they knew things. Things they shouldn’t, things like what Kaladin can do.”