Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Soon, blessedly, this would all dry up and he could finally see the sun again.

“So we let him go?” Khen asked. She had a gruff voice, angry.

“I don’t know. Would you actually do it, Khen? Bash his head in yourself?”

The tent fell silent.

“If it means they can’t take us again?” she said. “Yes, I’d kill him. I won’t go back, Ton.”

They had simple, darkeyed Alethi names—matched by their uncomfortably familiar accents. Kaladin didn’t worry for his safety; though they’d taken his knife, spanreed, and spheres, he could summon Syl at a moment’s notice. She flitted nearby on gusts of wind, dodging between the branches of trees.

The parshmen eventually left their conference, and Kaladin dozed. He was later roused by the noise of them gathering up their meager belongings: an axe or two, some waterskins, the nearly ruined bags of grain. As the sun set, long shadows stretched across Kaladin, plunging the camp into darkness again. It seemed that the group moved at night.

The tall male who had been playing cards the night before approached Kaladin, who recognized the pattern of his skin. He untied the ropes binding Kaladin to the tree, the ones around his ankles—but left the bonds on Kaladin’s hands.

“You could capture that card,” Kaladin noted.

The parshman stiffened.

“The card game,” Kaladin said. “The squire can capture if supported by an allied card. So you were right.”

The parshman grunted, yanking on the rope to tow Kaladin to his feet. He stretched, working stiff muscles and painful cramps, as the other parshmen broke down the last of the improvised tarp tents: the one that had been fully enclosed. Earlier in the day, though, Kaladin had gotten a look at what was inside.

Children.

There were a dozen of them, dressed in smocks, of various ages from toddler to young teenager. The females wore their hair loose, and the males wore theirs tied or braided. They hadn’t been allowed to leave the tent except at a few carefully supervised moments, but he had heard them laughing. He’d first worried they were captured human children.

As the camp broke, they scattered about, excited to finally be released. One younger girl scampered across the wet stones and seized the empty hand of the man leading Kaladin. Each of the children bore the distinctive look of their elders—the not-quite-Parshendi appearance with the armored portions on the sides of their heads and forearms. For the children, the color of the carapace was a light orange-pink.

Kaladin couldn’t define why this sight seemed so strange to him. Parshmen did breed, though people often spoke of them being bred, like animals. And, well, that wasn’t far from the truth, was it? Everyone knew it.

What would Shen—Rlain—think if Kaladin had said those words out loud?

The procession moved out of the trees, Kaladin led by his ropes. They kept talk to a minimum, and as they crossed through a field in the darkness, Kaladin had a distinct impression of familiarity. Had he been here before, done this before?

“What about the king?” his captor said, speaking in a soft voice, but turning his head to direct the question at Kaladin.

Elhokar? What … Oh, right. The cards.

“The king is one of the most powerful cards you can place,” Kaladin said, struggling to remember all the rules. “He can capture any other card except another king, and can’t be captured himself unless touched by three enemy cards of knight or better. Um … and he is immune to the Soulcaster.” I think.

“When I watched men play, they used this card rarely. If it is so powerful, why delay?”

“If your king gets captured, you lose,” Kaladin said. “So you only play him if you’re desperate or if you are certain you can defend him. Half the times I’ve played, I left him in my barrack all game.”

The parshman grunted, then looked to the girl at his side, who tugged on his arm and pointed. He gave her a whispered response, and she ran on tiptoes toward a patch of flowering rockbuds, visible by the light of the first moon.

The vines pulled back, blossoms closing. The girl, however, knew to squat at the side and wait, hands poised, until the flowers reopened—then she snatched one in each hand, her giggles echoing across the plain. Joyspren followed her like blue leaves as she returned, giving Kaladin a wide berth.

Khen, walking with a cudgel in her hands, urged Kaladin’s captor to keep moving. She watched the area with the nervousness of a scout on a dangerous mission.

That’s it, Kaladin thought, remembering why this felt familiar. Sneaking away from Tasinar.

It had happened after he’d been condemned by Amaram, but before he’d been sent to the Shattered Plains. He avoided thinking of those months. His repeated failures, the systematic butchering of his last hints of idealism … well, he’d learned that dwelling on such things took him to dark places. He’d failed so many people during those months. Nalma had been one of those. He could remember the touch of her hand in his: a rough, callused hand.

That had been his most successful escape attempt. It had lasted five days.

“You’re not monsters,” Kaladin whispered. “You’re not soldiers. You’re not even the seeds of the void. You’re just … runaway slaves.”

His captor spun, yanking on Kaladin’s rope. The parshman seized Kaladin by the front of his uniform, and his daughter hid behind his leg, dropping one of her flowers and whimpering.

“Do you want me to kill you?” the parshman asked, pulling Kaladin’s face close to his own. “You insist on reminding me how your kind see us?”

Kaladin grunted. “Look at my forehead, parshman.”

“And?”

“Slave brands.”

“What?”

Storms … parshmen weren’t branded, and they didn’t mix with other slaves. Parshmen were actually too valuable for that. “When they make a human into a slave,” Kaladin said, “they brand him. I’ve been here. Right where you are.”

“And you think that makes you understand?”

“Of course it does. I’m one—”

“I have spent my entire life living in a fog,” the parshman yelled at him. “Every day knowing I should say something, do something to stop this! Every night clutching my daughter, wondering why the world seems to move around us in the light—while we are trapped in shadows. They sold her mother. Sold her. Because she had birthed a healthy child, which made her good breeding stock.

“Do you understand that, human? Do you understand watching your family be torn apart, and knowing you should object—knowing deep in your soul that something is profoundly wrong? Can you know that feeling of being unable to say a single storming word to stop it?”

The parshman pulled him even closer. “They may have taken your freedom, but they took our minds.”

He dropped Kaladin and whirled, gathering up his daughter and holding her close as he jogged to catch up to the others, who had turned back at the outburst. Kaladin followed, yanked by his rope, stepping on the little girl’s flower in his forced haste. Syl zipped past, and when Kaladin tried to catch her attention, she just laughed and flew higher on a burst of wind.

His captor suffered several quiet chastisements when they caught up; this column couldn’t afford to draw attention. Kaladin walked with them, and remembered. He did understand a little.