“I suppose,” Kaladin said slowly, “that maybe you feel … like a moon.…”
“No, not really.” It was about responsibility, but he had really not explained it well. Storms. Master Hoid had named him a full Worldsinger, and here he couldn’t even tell a story straight.
Kaladin clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Sig.”
“Sir,” Sigzil said. “The other men don’t have any direction. You’ve given them purpose, a reason to be good men. They are good men. But in some ways, it was easy when we were slaves. What do we do if not all the men manifest the ability to draw in Stormlight? What is our place in the army? Brightlord Kholin released us from guard duty, as he said he wanted us practicing and training as Radiants instead. But what is a Knight Radiant?”
“We’ll need to figure it out.”
“And if the men need guidance? If they need a moral center? Someone has to talk to them when they’re doing something wrong, but the ardents ignore us, since they associate us with the things Brightlord Dalinar is saying and doing.”
“You think you can be the one to guide the men instead?” Kaladin asked.
“Someone should, sir.”
Kaladin waved for Sigzil to follow him out into the corridor. Together they started walking toward the Bridge Four barracks, Sigzil holding out a sphere for light.
“I don’t mind if you want to be something like our unit’s ardent,” Kaladin said. “The men like you, Sig, and they put a lot of stock in what you have to say. But you should try to understand what they want out of life, and respect that, rather than projecting onto them what you think they should want out of life.”
“But sir, some things are just wrong. You know what Teft has gotten into, and Huio, he’s been visiting the prostitutes.”
“That’s not forbidden. Storms, I’ve had some sergeants who suggested it as the key to a healthy mind in battle.”
“It’s wrong, sir. It’s imitating an oath without the commitment. Every major religion agrees to this, except the Reshi, I suppose. But they’re pagans even among pagans.”
“Your master teach you to be this judgmental?”
Sigzil stopped short.
“I’m sorry, Sig,” Kaladin said.
“No, he said the same thing about me. All the time, sir.”
“I give you permission to sit down with Huio and explain your worries,” Kaladin said. “I won’t forbid you from expressing your morals—I’d encourage it. Just don’t present your beliefs as our code. Present them as yours, and make a good argument. Maybe the men will listen.”
Sigzil nodded, hurrying to catch up. To cover his embarrassment—more at completely failing to tell the right story than anything else—he dug into his notebook. “That does raise another issue, sir. Bridge Four is down to twenty-eight members, after our losses during the first Everstorm. Might be time for some recruitment.”
“Recruitment?” Kaladin said. He cocked his head.
“Well, if we lose any more members—”
“We won’t,” Kaladin said. He always thought that.
“—or, even if we don’t, we’re down from the thirty-five or forty of a good bridge crew. Maybe we don’t need to keep that number, but a good active unit should always be watching for people to recruit.
“What if someone else in the army has been displaying the right attitude to be a Windrunner? Or, more pointedly, what if our men start swearing oaths and bonding their own spren? Would we dissolve Bridge Four, and let each man be their own Radiant?”
The idea of dissolving Bridge Four seemed to pain Kaladin almost as much as the idea of losing men in battle. They walked in silence for a short time. They weren’t going to the Bridge Four barracks after all; Kaladin had taken a turn deeper into the tower. They passed a water wagon, pulled by laborers to deliver water from the wells to the officers’ quarters. Normally that would be parshman work.
“We should at least put out a call for recruitment,” Kaladin finally said, “though honestly I can’t think of how I’ll cull hopefuls down to a manageable number.”
“I’ll try to come up with some strategies, sir,” Sigzil said. “If I might ask, where are we…” He trailed off as he saw Lyn hurrying down the hallway toward them. She carried a diamond chip in her palm for light, and wore her Kholin uniform, her dark Alethi hair pulled back in a tail.
She drew up when she saw Kaladin, then saluted him smartly. “Just the man I was looking for. Quartermaster Vevidar sends word that ‘your unusual request has been fulfilled,’ sir.”
“Excellent,” Kaladin said, marching through the hallway past her. Sigzil shot her a look as she fell in with him, and she shrugged. She didn’t know what the unusual request was, only that it had been fulfilled.
Kaladin eyed Lyn as they walked. “You’re the one who has been helping my men, right? Lyn, was it?”
“Yes, sir!”
“In fact, it seems you’ve been making excuses to run messages to Bridge Four.”
“Um, yes, sir.”
“Not afraid of the ‘Lost Radiants’ then?”
“Frankly, sir, after what I saw on the battlefield, I’d rather be on your side than bet on the opposition.”
Kaladin nodded, thoughtful as he walked. “Lyn,” he finally said, “how would you like to join the Windrunners?”
The woman stopped in place, jaw dropping. “Sir?” She saluted. “Sir, I’d love that! Storms!”
“Excellent,” Kaladin said. “Sig, can you get her our ledgers and accounts?”
Lyn’s hand drooped from her brow. “Ledgers? Accounts?”
“The men will also need letters written to family members,” Kaladin said. “And we should probably write a history of Bridge Four. People will be curious, and a written account will save me from having to explain it all the time.”
“Oh,” Lyn said. “A scribe.”
“Of course,” Kaladin said, turning back toward her in the hallway, frowning. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?”
“I thought you were asking … I mean, in the highprince’s visions, there were women who were Knights Radiant, and with Brightness Shallan…” She blushed. “Sir, I didn’t join the scouts because I liked sitting around staring at ledgers. If that’s what you’re offering, I’ll have to pass.”
Her shoulders fell, and she wouldn’t meet Kaladin’s eyes. Sigzil found, strangely, that he wanted to punch his captain. Not hard, mind you. Just a gentle “wake up” punch. He couldn’t remember feeling that way with Kaladin since the time the captain had woken him up that first morning, back in Sadeas’s warcamp.
“I see,” Kaladin said. “Well … we’re going to have tryouts to join the order proper. I suppose I could extend you an invitation. If you’d like.”
“Tryouts?” she said. “For real positions? Not just doing accounts? Storms, I’m in.”
“Speak with your superior, then,” Kaladin said. “I haven’t devised the proper test yet, and you’d need to pass it before you could be let in. Either way, you’d need clearance to change battalions.”
“Yes, sir!” she said, and bounded off.
Kaladin watched her go, then grunted softly.
Sigzil—without even thinking about it—mumbled, “Did your master teach you to be that insensitive?”
Kaladin eyed him.
“I have a suggestion, sir,” Sigzil continued. “Try to understand what people want out of life, and respect that, rather than projecting onto them what you think they should—”
“Shut it, Sig.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
They continued on their way, and Kaladin cleared his throat. “You don’t have to be so formal with me, you know.”
“I know, sir. But you’re a lighteyes now, and a Shardbearer and … well, it feels right.”
Kaladin stiffened, but didn’t contradict him. In truth, Sigzil had always felt … awkward trying to treat Kaladin like any other bridgeman. Some of the others could do it—Teft and Rock, Lopen in his own strange way.
But Sigzil felt more comfortable when the relationship was set out and clear. Captain and his clerk.
Moash had been the closest to Kaladin, but he wasn’t in Bridge Four any longer. Kaladin hadn’t said what Moash had done, only that he had “removed himself from our fellowship.” Kaladin got stiff and unresponsive whenever Moash’s name was mentioned.
“Anything else on that list of yours?” Kaladin asked as they passed a guard patrol in the hallway. He received crisp salutes.
Sigzil looked through his notebook. “Accounts and the need for scribes … Code of morals for the men … Recruitment … Oh, we’re still going to need to define our place in the army, now that we’re no longer bodyguards.”
“We’re still bodyguards,” Kaladin said. “We just protect anyone who needs it. We have bigger problems, in that storm.”
It had come again, a third time, this event proving that it was even more regular than the highstorms. Right around every nine days. Up high as they were, its passing was only a curiosity—but throughout the world, each new arrival strained already beleaguered cities.
“I realize that, sir,” Sigzil said. “But we still have to worry about procedure. Here, let me ask this. Are we, as Knights Radiant, still an Alethi military organization?”
“No,” Kaladin said. “This war is bigger than Alethkar. We’re for all mankind.”
“All right, then what’s our chain of command? Do we obey King Elhokar? Are we still his subjects? And what dahn or nahn are we in society? You’re a Shardbearer in Dalinar’s court, aren’t you?
“Who pays the wages of Bridge Four? What about the other bridge crews? If there is a squabble over Dalinar’s lands in Alethkar, can he call you—and Bridge Four—up to fight for him, like a normal liege-vassal relationship? If not, then can we still expect him to pay us?”
“Damnation,” Kaladin breathed.
“I’m sorry, sir. It—”
“No, they’re good questions, Sig. I’m lucky to have you to ask them.” He clasped Sigzil on the shoulder, stopping in the hallway just outside the quartermaster’s offices. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re wasted in Bridge Four. You should’ve been a scholar.”
“Well, that wind blew past me years ago, sir. I…” He took a deep breath. “I failed the exams for government training in Azir. I wasn’t good enough.”
“Then the exams were stupid,” Kaladin said. “And Azir lost out, because they missed the chance to have you.”
Sigzil smiled. “I’m glad they did.” And … strangely, he felt it was true. A nameless weight he’d been carrying seemed to slide off his back. “Honestly, I feel like Lyn. I don’t want to be huddled over a ledger when Bridge Four takes to the air. I want to be first into the sky.”
“I think you’ll have to fight Lopen for that distinction,” Kaladin said with a chuckle. “Come on.” He strode into the quartermaster’s office, where a group of waiting guardsmen immediately made space for him. At the counter, a beefy soldier with rolled-up sleeves searched through boxes and crates, muttering to himself. A stout woman—presumably his wife—inspected requisition forms. She nudged the man and pointed at Kaladin.
“Finally!” the quartermaster said. “I’m tired of having these here, drawing everyone’s eyes and making me sweat like a spy with too many spren.”
He shuffled over to a pair of large black sacks in the corner that, best that Sigzil could tell, weren’t drawing any eyes at all. The quartermaster hefted them and glanced at the scribe, who double-checked a few forms, then nodded, presenting them for Kaladin to stamp with his captain’s seal. Paperwork done, the quartermaster handed a sack to Kaladin and another to Sigzil.
They clinked when moved, and were surprisingly heavy. Sigzil undid the ties and glanced into his.
A flood of green light, powerful as sunlight, shone out over him. Emeralds. The large type, not in spheres, probably cut from the gemhearts of chasmfiends hunted on the Shattered Plains. In a moment, Sigzil realized that the guards filling the room weren’t here to get something from the quartermaster. They were here to protect this wealth.
“That’s the royal emerald reserve,” the quartermaster said. “Held for emergency grain, renewed with Light in the storm this morning. How you talked the highprince into letting you take it is beyond me.”
“We’re only borrowing them,” Kaladin said. “We’ll have them back before evening arrives. Though be warned, some will be dun. We’ll need to check them out tomorrow again. And the day after that…”
“I could buy a princedom for that much,” the quartermaster said with a grunt. “What in Kelek’s name do you need them for?”
Sigzil, however, had already guessed. He grinned like a fool. “We’re going to practice being Radiant.”
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO
Dalinar cursed as smoke billowed out of the fireplace. He shoved his weight against the lever and managed to budge it, reopening the chimney flue. He coughed, backing up and waving smoke away from his face.
“We are going to need to see that replaced,” Evi said from the sofa where she was doing needlework.
“Yeah,” Dalinar said, thumping down to the floor before the fire.
“At least you got to it quickly. Today we will not need to scrub the walls, and the life will be as white as a sun at night!”
Evi’s native idioms didn’t always translate well into Alethi.
The fire’s heat was welcome, as Dalinar’s clothing was still damp from the rains. He tried to ignore the ever-present sound of the Weeping’s rain outside, instead watching a pair of flamespren dance along one of the logs. These seemed vaguely human, with ever-shifting figures. He followed one with his eyes as it leaped toward the other.
He heard Evi rise, and thought she might be off to seek the privy again. She instead settled down next to him and took his arm, then sighed in contentment.
“That can’t be comfortable,” Dalinar said.
“And yet you are doing it.”
“I’m not the one who is…” He looked at her belly, which had begun to round.
Evi smiled. “My condition does not make me so frail that I risk breaking by sitting on the floor, beloved.” She pulled his arm tighter. “Look at them. They play so eagerly!”
“It’s like they’re sparring,” Dalinar said. “I can almost see the little blades in their hands.”
“Must everything be fighting to you?”
He shrugged.
She leaned her head on his arm. “Can’t you just enjoy it, Dalinar?”
“Enjoy what?”
“Your life. You went through so much to make this kingdom. Can’t you be satisfied, now that you’ve won?”
He stood up, pulling his arm from her grip, and crossed the chamber to pour himself a drink.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you act,” Evi said. “Perking up whenever the king speaks of the smallest conflict beyond our borders. Having the scribes read to you of great battles. Always talking about the next duel.”
“I’m not to have that much longer,” Dalinar grumbled, then took a sip of wine. “Gavilar says it’s foolish to endanger myself, says someone is bound to try to use one of those duels as a ploy against him. I’ll have to get a champion.” He stared at his wine.
He’d never had a high opinion of dueling. It was too fake, too sanitized. But at least it was something.
“It’s like you’re dead,” Evi said.
Dalinar looked over at her.
“It’s like you only live when you can fight,” she continued. “When you can kill. Like a blackness from old stories. You live only by taking lives from others.”
With that pale hair and light golden skin, she was like a glowing gemstone. She was a sweet, loving woman who deserved better than the treatment he gave her. He forced himself to go back and sit down beside her.
“I still think the flamespren are playing,” she said.
“I’ve always wondered,” Dalinar said. “Are they made of fire themselves? It looks like they are,
and yet what of emotion spren? Are angerspren then made of anger?”
Evi nodded absently.
“And what of gloryspren?” Dalinar said. “Made of glory? What is glory? Could gloryspren appear around someone who is delusional, or perhaps very drunk—who only thinks they’ve accomplished something great, while everyone else is standing around mocking them?”
“A mystery,” she said, “sent by Shishi.”
“But don’t you ever wonder?”
“To what end?” Evi said. “We will know eventually, when we return to the One. No use troubling our minds now about things we cannot understand.”
Dalinar narrowed his eyes at the flamespren. That one did have a sword. A miniature Shardblade.
“This is why you brood so often, husband,” Evi said. “It isn’t healthy to have a stone curdling in your stomach, still wet with moss.”
“I … What?”
“You must not think such strange thoughts. Who put such things into your mind anyway?”
He shrugged, but thought of two nights before, staying up late and drinking wine beneath the rain canopy with Gavilar and Navani. She’d talked and talked about her research into spren, and Gavilar had simply grunted, while making notations in glyphs on a set of his maps. She’d spoken with such passion and excitement, and Gavilar had ignored her.
“Enjoy the moment,” Evi told him. “Close your eyes and contemplate what the One has given you. Seek the peace of oblivion, and bask in the joy of your own sensation.”
He closed his eyes as she suggested, and tried to simply enjoy being here with her. “Can a man actually change, Evi? Like those spren change?”
“We are all different aspects of the One.”
“Then can you change from one aspect to another?”
“Of course,” Evi said. “Is not your own doctrine about transformation? About a man being Soulcast from crass to glorious?”
“I don’t know if it’s working.”
“Then petition the One,” she said.
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