“I see this is hard for you,” Sigzil said. “Want to play another hand of michim to pass the time instead?”
“You just want my storming spheres,” Teft snapped, wagging his finger at the Azish man. “And don’t call it by that name.”
“Michim is the game’s actual name.”
“That’s a holy word, and ain’t no game named a holy word.”
“The word isn’t holy where it came from,” Sigzil said, obviously annoyed.
“We ain’t there now, are we? Call it something else.”
“I thought you’d like it,” Sigzil said, picking up the colored rocks that were used in the game. You bet them, in a pile, while trying to guess the ones your opponent had hidden. “It’s a game of skill, not chance, so it doesn’t offend Vorin sensibilities.”
Teft watched him pick up the rocks. Maybe it would be better if he just lost all of his spheres in that storming game. It wasn’t good for him to have money again. He couldn’t be trusted with money.
“They thought,” Teft said, “that people were more likely to manifest powers if their lives were in danger. So… they’d put lives in danger. Members of their own group—never an innocent outsider, bless the winds. But that was bad enough. I watched people let themselves be pushed off cliffs, watched them tied in place with a candle slowly burning a rope until it snapped and dropped a rock to crush them. It was bad, Sigzil. Awful. The sort of thing nobody should have to watch, especially a boy of six.”
“So what did you do?” Sigzil asked softly, pulling tight the string on his little bag of rocks.
“Ain’t none of your business,” Teft said. “Don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”
“It’s all right,” Sigzil said. “I can see—”
“I turned them in,” Teft blurted out. “To the citylord. He held a trial for them, a big one. Had them all executed in the end. Never did understand that. They were only a danger to themselves. Their punishment for threatening suicide was to be killed. Nonsense, that is. Should have found a way to help them…”
“Your parents?”
“Mother died in that rock–string contraption,” Teft said. “She really believed, Sig. That she had it in her, you know? The powers? That if she were about to die, they’d come out in her, and she’d save herself…”
“And you watched?”
“Storms, no! You think they’d let her son watch that? Are you mad?”
“But—”
“Did watch my father die, though,” Teft said, looking out over the Plains. “Hanged.” He shook his head, digging in his pocket. Where had he put that flask? As he turned, however, he caught sight of that other lad sitting back there, fiddling with his little box as he often did. Renarin.
Teft wasn’t one for all that nonsense like Moash had talked about, wanting to overturn lighteyes. The Almighty had put them in their place, and who had business questioning him? Not spearmen, that’s for certain. But in a way, Prince Renarin was as bad as Moash. Neither one knew their place. A lighteyes wanting to join Bridge Four was as bad as a darkeyes talking stupid and lofty to the king. It didn’t fit, even if the other bridgemen seemed to like the lad.
And, of course, Moash was one of them now. Storms. Had he left his flask back at the barrack?
“Heads up, Teft,” Sigzil said, rising.
Teft turned around and saw men in uniform approaching. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing his spear. It was Dalinar Kholin, accompanied by several of his lighteyed advisors, along with Drehy and Skar from Bridge Four, the day’s guards. With Moash promoted away and Kaladin… well, not there… Teft had taken over daily assignments. Nobody else would storming do it. They said he was in command now. Idiots.
“Brightlord,” Teft said, slapping his chest in salute.
“Adolin told me you men were coming here,” the highprince said. He spared a glance for Prince Renarin, who had also stood and saluted, as if this weren’t his own father. “A rotation, I understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Teft said, looking toward Sigzil. It was a rotation.
Teft was just on nearly every shift.
“You really think he’s alive out there, soldier?” Dalinar asked.
“He is, sir,” Teft said. “It’s not about what I or anyone thinks.”
“He fell hundreds of feet,” Dalinar said.
Teft continued to stand at attention. The highprince hadn’t asked a question, so Teft didn’t give a reply.
He did have to banish a few terrible images in his head. Kaladin having knocked his head while falling. Kaladin having been crushed by the falling bridge. Kaladin lying with a broken leg, unable to find spheres to heal himself. The fool boy thought he was immortal, sometimes.
Kelek. They all thought he was.
“He is going to come back, sir,” Sigzil said to Dalinar. “He’s going to come climbing right up out of that chasm right there. It will be well if we’re here to meet him. Uniforms on, spears polished.”
“We wait on our own time, sir,” Teft said. “Neither of us three are supposed to be anywhere else.” He blushed as soon as he said it. And here he’d been thinking about how Moash talked back to his betters.
“I didn’t come to order you away from your chosen task, soldier,” Dalinar said. “I came to make certain you were caring for yourselves. No men are to skip meals to wait here, and I don’t want you getting any ideas about waiting during a highstorm.”
“Er, yes, sir,” Teft said. He had used his morning meal break to put in duty here. How had Dalinar known?
“Good luck, soldier,” Dalinar said, then continued on his way, flanked by attendants, apparently off to inspect the battalion that was nearest to the eastern edge of camp. Soldiers there scurried like cremlings after a storm, carrying supply bags and piling them inside their barracks. The time for Dalinar’s full expedition onto the Plains was quickly approaching.
“Sir,” Teft called after the highprince.
Dalinar turned back toward him, his attendants pausing mid-sentence.
“You don’t believe us,” Teft said. “That he’ll come back, I mean.”
“He’s dead, soldier. But I understand that you need to be here anyway.” The highprince touched his hand to his shoulder, a salute to the dead, then continued on his way.
Well, Teft supposed that was all right, Dalinar not believing. He’d just be that much more surprised when Kaladin did return.
Highstorm tonight, Teft thought, settling back down on his rock. Come on, lad. What are you doing out there?
* * *
Kaladin felt like one of the ten fools.
Actually, he felt like all of them. Ten times an idiot. But most specifically Eshu, who spoke of things he did not understand in front of those who did.
Navigation this deep in the chasms was hard, but he could usually read directions by the way that the debris was deposited. Water blew in from the east to the west, but then it drained out the other way—so cracks on walls where debris was smashed in tight usually marked a western direction, but places where debris had been deposited more naturally—as water drained—marked where water had flowed east.