Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

When a darkeyed baby was born to the man’s wife, everyone had gotten angry at Dabbid. He’d explained that they were wrong. Everybody was wrong sometimes.

It hadn’t been until much later that he’d realized the brightlady had lied. To punish someone other than her secret lover. He could understand things, if he had time to think about them. Sometimes.

He’d ended up running bridges. Dabbid didn’t remember much from that time. He’d lost track of the days. He’d barely spoken back then. He had been confused. He had been frightened. He had been angry. But he didn’t let people know he was angry. People got scared and hurt him when he was angry.

He’d done his job, terrified more each day, certain he would die. In fact, he’d figured he must already be dead. So when a horse—from one of Sadeas’s own soldiers—had all but trampled him, shoving him and hurling him to the ground, his arm broken, he’d curled up and waited to die.

Then … Kaladin. Kaladin Stormblessed. He hadn’t cared that Dabbid was different. He hadn’t cared that Dabbid had given up. Kaladin hauled him out of Damnation and gave him another family.

Dabbid couldn’t quite recall when he’d started to come out of his battle shock. He hadn’t ever really lost it. Who could? People clapping sounded like bowstrings snapping. Footfalls sounded like hooves. Or he’d hear singing, like the Parshendi, and he was there again. Dying.

Still, he had started to feel better. Somewhere along the way, he’d started to feel like his old self. Except he’d had a new family. He’d had friends.

And none of them had known he was different.

Well, they thought he was another kind of different. They thought he had been hurt by the battle, like all of them. He was one of them. They hadn’t known about his mind. How he’d been born.

He didn’t like it when people used the word “stupid” for the way he was. People called one another stupid when they made mistakes. Dabbid wasn’t a mistake. He could make mistakes. Then he was stupid. But not always. He couldn’t think fast like others. But that made him different, not stupid. Stupid was a choice.

In the past, his speech had told people he was different. He’d figured that out when he was moving from job to job after his mother died. When he’d spoken, they’d known. So … with Bridge Four … he’d just kept on not speaking.

That way they wouldn’t know. That way they wouldn’t realize he was Dabbid different. He could just be Bridge Four different.

Then everyone had started getting spren. Except him. And then the tower had started talking to him. And … he still wasn’t certain if he’d done something stupid or not. But going to Rlain, that hadn’t been stupid. He was certain of it.

So today, he tried not to think about his mistakes. He tried not to think about how if he’d been stronger, he could have helped Kaladin fight. He tried not to think about how he’d lied to the others by pretending he couldn’t speak. He tried to focus on what he could do to help.

He led Rlain up through the tunnels. They met singers a couple of times. Rlain talked, his voice calm with rhythms, and the singers let them go. They went up and up, and Dabbid showed him a hidden stairwell. They snuck past the guard patrols on the sixth floor.

Up and up. Dabbid’s heart thumped. Worrying. Would Lift meet them, like she’d promised? Lift knew the tower better than they did. She said she could make it on her own. But would she run away?

When they reached the meeting place on the tenth floor, they found her waiting. She sat on the ground, eating some curry and bread.

“Where did you get that?” Rlain asked.

“Fused,” she said, gesturing. “Funny. They need to eat. Suppose that means they poop, right?”

“I suppose,” Rlain said, sounding disapproving.

“Ain’t that a kick in the bits?” Lift asked. “You get made immortal; you can live through the centuries. You can fly, or walk through rock, or something like that. But you still gotta piss like everyone else.”

“I don’t see the point of this conversation,” Rlain said. “Hurry. We need to get to Kaladin.”

Lift rolled her eyes in an exaggerated way, then stood up and handed Dabbid some flatbread. He nodded in thanks and tucked it away for later.

“When didya start talkin’?” Lift asked him.

“I was six,” he said. “Mom said.”

“No, I mean…” She gestured at him.

Dabbid felt himself blush, and he looked at his feet. “I could for a long time. Just didn’t.”

“Didn’t want to talk? I’ve never felt like that. Except this once, when I ate the queen’s dinner, but it had been sitting out, see, and she didn’t put it away like she should have. It’s her fault, I told her, because it’s like leavin’ a sword out where a baby could step on it and cut up her foot or somethin’.”

“Can we please keep moving?” Rlain demanded.

Dabbid led them the rest of the way. He felt more anxious now. Was he too late? Had Kaladin died while he was gone? Was he too slow to help? Too different to have realized earlier what he should have done?

Dabbid led them to the place on the eleventh floor, but the door had stopped working. It had been too long since Kaladin infused it. They had Lift though, and when she pressed her hand to the gemstone, the door opened.

It smelled of sweat and blood in there. Dabbid hurried past the place where Teft lay unconscious, reaching Kaladin. On the floor, wrapped in blankets. Thrashing. Still alive.

Still alive.

“Storms,” Lift said, stepping over. Kaladin’s face was coated in sweat. His teeth were gritted, his eyes squeezed shut. He flailed in his blankets, growling softly. Dabbid had cut off his shirt to look for wounds. While there were scabs all along Kaladin’s side, the worst part was the infection. It spread across the skin from the cut. A violent redness. Hateful, covered in little rotspren.

Lift stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself. “Storms.”

“I’ve … never seen a fever like that,” Rlain said, towering over the two of them. Did he know how large he was in warform? “Have you?”

Lift shook her head.

“Please,” Dabbid said. “Please help.”

Lift held out her hand, palm forward, and burst alight with power. Stormlight rose from her skin like white smoke, and she knelt. She shied away as Kaladin thrashed again, then she lunged forward and pressed her hand to his chest.

The redness immediately retreated, and the rotspren fled, as if they couldn’t stand the presence of her touch. Kaladin’s back arched. He was hurting!

Then he collapsed into the blankets. Lift pressed her other hand against his side, and the wound continued to heal, the redness fleeing. She furrowed her brow and bit her lip. Dabbid did the same. Maybe it would help.

She pushed so much Stormlight into Kaladin he started glowing himself. When she sat back, the scabs flaked off his side, leaving smooth new skin.

“That … was hard,” she whispered. “Even harder than when I saved Gawx.” She wiped her brow. “I’m sweating.”

“Thank you,” Dabbid said, taking her hand.

“Ew,” she said. Oh. It was the hand she’d just used to wipe her head.