Skar and Drehy stopped, but Elhokar followed as Kaladin and Adolin continued forward—and so did Shallan. Her servants hesitated briefly, then trailed after her. Storms, the command structure in this expedition was going to be a nightmare.
Elhokar imperiously marched forward and barked at people to move out of his way. Reluctantly, they did—a woman with his bearing was not someone to cross. Kaladin exchanged a wearied glance with Adolin, then both fell in beside the king.
“I demand entry,” Elhokar said, reaching the front of the crowd—which had swelled to some fifty or sixty people, with more steadily arriving.
The small group of guards looked over Elhokar, and their captain spoke. “How many fighting men can you provide for the city defense?”
“None,” Elhokar snapped. “They are my personal guard.”
“Then, Brightness, you should march them personally on to the south and try another city.”
“Where?” Elhokar demanded, the sentiment echoed by many in the crowd. “There are monsters everywhere, Captain.”
“Word is that there are fewer to the south,” the soldier said, pointing. “Regardless, Kholinar is full to bursting. You won’t find sanctuary here. Trust me. Move on. The city—”
“Who is your superior?” Elhokar cut in.
“I serve Highmarshal Azure, of the Wall Guard.”
“Highmarshal Azure? I’ve never heard of such a man. Do these people look like they can walk farther? I command you to let us enter the city.”
“I’m under orders to only let a set number in each day,” the guard said with a sigh. Kaladin recognized that sense of exasperation; Elhokar could bring it out in the most patient of guards. “We’ve passed the limit. You’ll need to wait until tomorrow.”
People growled, and more angerspren appeared around them.
“It’s not that we’re callous,” the guard captain called. “Will you just listen? The city is low on food, and we’re running out of room in stormshelters. Every person we add strains our resources further! But the monsters are focused here; if you flee to the south, you can take refuge there, maybe even get to Jah Keved.”
“Unacceptable!” Elhokar said. “You’ve gotten these inane orders from that Azure fellow. Who commands him?”
“The highmarshal has no commander.”
“What?” Elhokar demanded. “What of Queen Aesudan?”
The guard just shook his head. “Look, are those two men yours?” He pointed at Drehy and Skar, still standing near the back of the crowd. “They look like good soldiers. If you assign them to the Wall Guard, I’ll give you immediate entry, and we’ll see that you get a grain ration.”
“Not that one though,” another guard said, nodding toward Kaladin. “He looks sick.”
“Impossible!” Elhokar demanded. “I need my guards with me at all times.”
“Brightness…” the captain said. Storms, but Kaladin empathized with the poor man.
Syl suddenly grew alert, zipping into the sky as a ribbon of light. Kaladin immediately stopped paying attention to Elhokar and the guards. He searched the sky until he saw figures flying toward the wall in a V formation. There were at least twenty Voidbringers, each trailing a plume of dark energy.
Above, soldiers began to scream. The urgent call of drums followed, and the guard captain cursed in response. He and his men charged in through the open doors, then ran toward the nearest stairs leading up to the wall walk.
“In!” Adolin said as other refugees surged forward. He grabbed the king and towed him inside.
Kaladin fought against the press, refusing to be pushed into the city. He instead craned his neck to look upward, watching the Voidbringers hit the wall. Kaladin’s angle at the base was terrible for making sense of the action directly above.
A few men got tossed off the wall farther along. Kaladin took a step toward them, but before he could do anything, they crashed to the ground with strikingly loud impacts. Storms! He was shoved farther toward the city by the crowd, and barely restrained himself from drawing in Stormlight.
Steady, he told himself. The point is to get in without being seen. You would ruin that by flying to the defense of the city?
But he was supposed to protect.
“Kaladin,” Adolin called, fighting back through the crowd to where Kaladin stood right outside. “Come on.”
“They’re dominating that wall, Adolin. We should go help.”
“Help how?” Adolin said. He leaned in, speaking softly. “Summon Shardblades and swing them wildly in the air, like a farmer chasing skyeels? This is merely a raid to test our defenses. It’s not a full-on assault.”
Kaladin drew in a breath, then let Adolin pull him into the city. “Two dozen of the Fused. They could take this city with ease.”
“Not alone,” Adolin said. “Everyone knows that Shardbearers can’t hold ground—it should be the same for Radiants and those Fused. You need soldiers to take a city. Let’s move.”
They went inside and met with the others, then moved away from the walls and gates. Kaladin tried to close his ears to the distant shouts of the soldiers. As Adolin had guessed, the raid ended as abruptly as it had begun, the Fused soaring away from the wall after only a few minutes of fighting. Kaladin sighed, watching them go, then steeled himself and followed with the rest as Adolin led them down a wide thoroughfare.
Kholinar was both more impressive and more depressing from the inside. They passed endless side streets packed with tall, three-story homes built like stone boxes. And storms, the guard at the wall had not been exaggerating. People crowded every street. Kholinar didn’t have many alleyways; the stone buildings were built right up against each other in long rows. But people sat in the gutters, clinging to blankets and meager possessions. Too many doors were closed; often on nice days like this, people in the warcamps would leave the thick stormdoors and shutters open to the breeze. Not here. They were locked up tightly, for fear of being overwhelmed by refugees.
Shallan’s soldiers pulled tight around her, hands carefully on their pockets. They seemed familiar with the underbelly of city life. Fortunately, she’d accepted Kaladin’s pointed suggestion and hadn’t brought Gaz.
Where are the patrols? Kaladin thought as they walked through curving streets, up and down slopes. With all these people clogging the streets, surely they needed as many men as possible keeping the peace.
He didn’t see anything until they passed out of the section of city nearest the gates and entered a more wealthy area. This part was dominated by larger homes, with grounds marked by iron fences anchored into the stone with hardened crem. Behind those were guards, but the streets were devoid of anything similar.
Kaladin felt the gaze of the refugees. The wondering. Was it worth robbing him? Did it matter? Did they have food? Fortunately, the spears Skar and Drehy carried—along with the cudgels held by Shallan’s two men—seemed enough to deter any would-be robbers.
Kaladin quickened his pace to catch up to Adolin at the front of their little group. “Is this safehouse of yours close? I don’t like the feeling on these streets.”
“It’s a way yet,” Adolin said. “But I agree. Storms, I should have brought a side sword. Who knew I’d be worried about summoning my Blade?”
“Why can’t Shardbearers hold a city?” Kaladin asked.
“Basic military theory,” Adolin said. “Shardbearers do a great job killing people—but what are they going to do against the population of an entire city? Murder everyone who disobeys? They’d get overwhelmed, Shards or not. Those flying Voidbringers will need to bring in the entire army to take the city. But first they’ll test the walls, maybe weaken the defenses.”
Kaladin nodded. He liked to think he knew a great deal about warfare, but the truth was, he didn’t have the training of a man like Adolin. He’d participated in wars, but he’d never run any.
The farther they got from the walls, the better things seemed to be in the city—fewer refugees, more sense of order. They passed a mar
ket that was actually open, and inside he finally spotted a policing force: a tight group of men wearing unfamiliar colors.
This area would have looked nice, under other circumstances. Ridges of shalebark along the street, manicured with a variety of colors: some like plates, others like knobby branches reaching upward. Cultivated trees—which rarely pulled in their leaves—sprouted in front of many of the buildings, gripping the ground with thick roots that melded into the stone.
Refugees huddled in family groups. Here, the buildings were built in large square layouts, with windows facing inward and courtyards at the centers. People crowded into these, turning them into improvised shelters. Fortunately, Kaladin saw no obvious starvation, so the city’s food stores hadn’t given out yet.
“Did you see that?” Shallan asked softly, joining him.
“What?” Kaladin asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Performers in that market over there, dressed in very odd clothing.” Shallan frowned, pointing down an intersecting street as they passed. “There’s another one.”
It was a man dressed all in white, with strips of cloth that streamed and fluttered as he moved. Head down, he stood on a street corner, leaping back and forth from one position to another. When he looked up and met Kaladin’s eyes, he was the first stranger that day who didn’t immediately look away.
Kaladin watched until a chull pulling a wagon of storm refuse blocked his view. Then, ahead of them, people started clearing the street.
“To the side,” Elhokar said. “I’m curious about what this could be.”
They joined the crowds pressed up against the buildings, Kaladin shoving his hands in his pack to protect the large number of spheres he had tucked away in a black purse there. Soon, a strange procession came marching down the center of the street. These men and women were also dressed like performers—their clothes augmented with brightly colored strips of red, blue, or green fabric. They walked past, calling out nonsense phrases. Words Kaladin knew, but which didn’t belong together.
“What in Damnation is happening in this city?” Adolin muttered.
“This isn’t normal?” Kaladin whispered.
“We have buskers and street performers, but nothing like this. Storms. What are they?”
“Spren,” Shallan whispered. “They’re imitating spren. Look, those are like flamespren, and the ones of white and blue with the flowing ribbons—windspren. Emotion spren too. There’s pain, that’s fear, anticipation…”
“So it’s a parade,” Kaladin said, frowning. “But nobody is having any fun.”
The heads of spectators bowed, and people murmured or … prayed? Nearby an Alethi refugee—wrapped in rags and holding a sniveling baby in her arms—leaned against a building. A burst of exhaustionspren appeared above her, like jets of dust rising in the air. Only these were bright red instead of the normal brown, and seemed distorted.
“This is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Syl said from Kaladin’s shoulder. “Oh … oh, that spren is from him, Kaladin.”
Shallan watched the rising not-exhaustionspren with widening eyes. She took Adolin by the arm. “Keep us moving,” she hissed.
He started pushing through the crowd toward a corner where they could cut away from the strange procession. Kaladin grabbed the king by the arm, while Drehy, Skar, and Shallan’s two guards instinctively formed up around them. The king let Kaladin pull him away, and a good thing too. Elhokar had been fishing in his pocket, perhaps for a sphere to give the exhausted woman. Storms! In the middle of the crowd!
“Not far now,” Adolin said once they had breathing room on the side street. “Follow me.”
He led them to a small archway, where the buildings had been built around a shared courtyard garden. Of course, refugees had taken shelter there, many of them huddled in blanket tents that were still wet from the storm the day before. Lifespren bobbed among the plants.
Adolin carefully wound his way through all the people to get to the door he wanted, and then knocked. It was the back door, facing the courtyard instead of the street. Was this a rich person’s winehouse, perhaps? It seemed more like a home though.
Adolin knocked again, looking worried. Kaladin stepped up beside him, then froze. On the door was a shiny steel plate with engraved numbers. In it, he could see his reflection.
“Almighty above,” Kaladin said, poking at the scars and bulges on his face, some with open sores. Fake teeth jutted from his mouth, and one eye was higher in his head than the other. His hair grew out in patches, and his nose was tiny. “What did you do to me, woman?”
“I’ve recently learned,” Shallan said, “that a good disguise can be memorable, so long as it makes you memorable for the wrong reason. You, Captain, have a way of sticking in people’s heads, and I worried you would do so no matter what face you wore. So I enveloped it with something even more memorable.”
“I look like some kind of hideous spren.”
“Hey!” Syl said.
The door finally opened, revealing a short, matronly Thaylen woman in an apron and vest. Behind her stood a burly man with a white beard, cut after the Horneater style.
“What?” she said. “Who are you?”
“Oh!” Adolin said. “Shallan, I’ll need…”
Shallan rubbed his face with a towel from her pack, as if to remove makeup—covering the transformation as his face became his own again. Adolin grinned at the woman, and her jaw dropped.
“Prince Adolin?” she said. “Hurry, hurry. Get in here. It’s not safe outside!”
She ushered them in and quickly shut the door. Kaladin blinked at the sphere-lit chamber, its walls lined with bolts of cloth and dummies with half-finished coats on them.
“What is this place?” Kaladin asked.
“Well, I figured we’d want someplace safe,” Adolin said. “We’d need to stay with someone I’d trust with my life, or more.” He looked at Kaladin, then gestured toward the woman. “So I brought us to my tailor.”
I wish to submit my formal protest at the idea of abandoning the tower. This is an extreme step, taken brashly.
—From drawer 2-22, smokestone
Secrets.
This city was brimming with them. It was stuffed with them, so tightly they couldn’t help but ooze out.
The only thing for Shallan to do, then, was punch herself in the face.
That was harder than it seemed. She always flinched. Come on, she thought, making a fist. With eyes squeezed shut, she braced herself, then smacked her freehand into the side of her head.
It barely hurt; she simply wasn’t capable of hitting herself hard enough. Maybe she could get Adolin to do it for her. He was in the back workroom of the tailor’s shop. Shallan had excused herself to step into the front showroom, as she figured the others would react poorly to her trying to actively attract a painspren.
She could hear their voices as they interrogated the polite tailor. “It started with the riots, Your Majesty,” the woman said in response to a question from Elhokar. “Or maybe before, with the … Well, it’s complicated. Oh, I can’t believe that you’re here. I’ve had Passion for something to happen, true, but to finally … I mean…”
“Take a deep breath, Yokska,” Adolin said gently. Even his voice was adorable. “Once you’ve taken all this in, we can continue.”
Secrets, Shallan thought. Secrets caused all of this.
Shallan peeked into the other room. The king, Adolin, Yokska the tailor, and Kaladin sat inside, all wearing their own faces again. They’d sent Kaladin’s men—along with Red, Ishnah, and Vathah—off with the tailor’s housemaid to prepare the upper rooms and attic to accommodate guests.
Yokska and her husband would be sleeping on pallets in the back room here; naturally, Elhokar had been given their room. Right now, the small group had arranged a circle of wooden chairs under the heedless watch of tailor’s dummies wearing a variety of half-finished coats.
Similar finished coats were displayed around the showroom. They were made in bri
ght colors—even brighter than the Alethi wore at the Shattered Plains—with gold or silver thread, shiny buttons, and elaborate embroidery on the large pockets. The coats didn’t close at the front except for a few buttons right below the collar, while the sides flared out, then split into tails at the back.
“It was the execution of the ardent, Brightlord,” Yokska said. “The queen had her hanged, and … Oh! It was so gruesome. Blessed Passion, Your Majesty. I don’t want to speak ill of your wife! She must not have realized—”
“Just tell us,” Elhokar said. “Do not fear reprisal. I must know what the city’s people think.”
Yokska trembled. She was a small, plump woman who wore her long Thaylen eyebrows curled in twin ringlets, and was probably very fashionable in that skirt and blouse. Shallan lingered in the doorway, curious as to what the tailor had to say.
“Well,” Yokska continued, “during the riots, the queen … the queen basically vanished. We’d get proclamations from her, now and then, but they often didn’t make much sense. It all went wrong at the ardent’s death. The city was already in an uproar.… She wrote such awful things, Your Majesty. About the state of the monarchy, and the queen’s faith and…”
“And Aesudan condemned her to death,” Elhokar said. Lit by only a few spheres at the center of their circle, his face was half shadowed. It was a most intriguing effect, and Shallan took a Memory for later sketching.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“It was the dark spren, obviously, who gave the actual order,” Elhokar said. “The dark spren that is controlling the palace. My wife would never be so imprudent as to publicly execute an ardent during such parlous times.”
“Oh! Yes, of course. Dark spren. In the palace.” Yokska sounded relieved to have a rationale for not blaming the queen.
Shallan considered, then noticed a pair of fabric scissors on a ledge nearby. She snatched them, then ducked back into the showroom. She pulled her skirt to the side, then stabbed herself in the leg with the scissors.
The sharp pain seared up her leg and through her body.
“Mmmm,” Pattern said. “Destruction. This … this is not normal for you, Shallan. Too far.”
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