Rhythm of War (9781429952040) Page 3

  Navani had gone down to bid farewell to the guests. She had implied that Gavilar wasn’t deliberately snubbing anyone. He was merely exhausted from his extensive touring. Yes, she was certain he’d be holding audience soon. They’d love to visit once the next storm passed.…

  On and on she went, until each smile made her face feel as if it would crack. She was relieved when a messenger girl came running for her. She stepped away from the departing guests, expecting to hear that an expensive vase had shattered, or that Dalinar was snoring at his table.

  Instead, the messenger girl brought Navani over to the palace steward, his face a mask of grief. Eyes reddened, hands shaking, the aged man reached out for her and took her arm—as if for stability. Tears ran down his face, getting caught in his wispy beard.

  Seeing his emotion, she realized she rarely thought of the man by his name, rarely thought of him as a person. She’d often treated him like a fixture of the palace, much as one might the statues out front. Much as Gavilar treated her.

  “Gereh,” she said, taking his hand, embarrassed. “What happened? Are you well? Have we been working you too hard without—”

  “The king,” the elderly man choked out. “Oh, Brightness, they’ve taken our king! Those parshmen. Those barbarians. Those … those monsters.”

  Her immediate suspicion was that Gavilar had found some way to escape the palace, and everyone thought he’d been kidnapped. That man … she thought, imagining him out in the city with his uncommon visitors, discussing secrets in a dark room.

  Gereh held to her tighter. “Brightness, they’ve killed him. King Gavilar is dead.”

  “Impossible,” she said. “He’s the most powerful man in the land, perhaps the world. Surrounded by Shardbearers. You are mistaken, Gereh. He’s…”

  He’s as enduring as the storms. But of course that wasn’t true—it was merely what he wished people to think. I will never end.… When he said things like that, it was hard to disbelieve him.

  She had to see the body before the truth started to seep in at last, chilling her like a winter rain. Gavilar, broken and bloody, lay on a table in the larder—with guards forcibly turning aside the frightened house staff when they asked for explanations.

  Navani stood over him. Even with the blood in his beard, the shattered Shardplate, his lack of breath and the gaping wounds in his flesh … even then she wondered if it was a trick. What lay before her was an impossibility. Gavilar Kholin couldn’t simply die like other men.

  She had them show her the fallen balcony, where Gavilar had been found lifeless after dropping from above. Jasnah had witnessed it, they said. The normally unflappable girl sat in the corner, her fisted safehand to her mouth as she cried.

  Only then did the shockspren begin to appear around Navani, like triangles of breaking light. Only then did she believe.

  Gavilar Kholin was dead.

  Sadeas pulled Navani aside and, with genuine sorrow, explained his role in the events. She listened in a numb sense of disconnect. She had been so busy, she hadn’t realized that most of the Parshendi had left the palace in secret—fleeing into the darkness moments before their minion attacked. Their leaders had stayed behind to cover up the withdrawal.

  In a trance, Navani walked back to the larder and the cold husk of Gavilar Kholin. His discarded shell. From the looks of the attending servants and surgeons, they anticipated grief from her. Wailing perhaps. Certainly there were painspren appearing in droves in the room, even a few rare anguishspren, like teeth growing from the walls.

  She felt something akin to those emotions. Sorrow? No, not exactly. Regret. If he truly was dead, then … that was it. Their last real conversation had been another argument. There was no going back. Always before, she’d been able to tell herself that they’d reconcile. That they’d hunt through the thorns and find a path to return to what they’d been. If not loving, then at least aligned.

  Now that would never be. It was over. He was dead, she was a widow, and … storms, she’d prayed for this. That knowledge stabbed her straight through. She had to hope the Almighty hadn’t listened to her foolish pleas written in a moment of fury. Although a part of her had grown to hate Gavilar, she didn’t truly want him dead. Did she?

  No. No, this was not how it should have ended. And so she felt another emotion. Pity.

  Lying there, blood pooling on the tabletop around him, Gavilar Kholin’s corpse seemed the ultimate insult to his grand plans. He thought he was eternal, did he? He thought to reach for some grand vision, too important to share with her? Well, the Father of Storms and the Mother of the World ignored the desires of men, no matter how grand.

  What she didn’t feel was grief. His death was meaningful, but it didn’t mean anything to her. Other than perhaps a way for her children to never have to learn what he’d become.

  I will be the better person, Gavilar, she thought, closing his eyes. For what you once were, I’ll let the world pretend. I’ll give you your legacy.

  Then she paused. His Shardplate—well, the Plate he was wearing—had broken near the waist. She reached her fingers into his pocket and brushed hogshide leather. She eased out the pouch of spheres he’d been showing off earlier, but found it empty.

  Storms. Where had he put them?

  Someone in the room coughed, and she became suddenly cognizant of how it looked for her to be rifling through his pockets. Navani took the spheres from her hair, put them into the pouch, then folded it into his hand before resting her forehead on his broken chest. That would appear as if she were returning gifts to him, symbolizing her light becoming his as he died.

  Then, with his blood on her face, she stood up and made a show of composing herself. Over the next hours, organizing the chaos of a city turned upside down, she worried she’d get a reputation for callousness. Instead, people seemed to find her sturdiness comforting.

  The king was gone, but the kingdom lived on. Gavilar had left this life as he’d lived it: with grand drama that afterward required Navani to pick up the pieces.

  First, you must get a spren to approach.

  The type of gemstone is relevant; some spren are naturally more intrigued by certain gemstones. In addition, it is essential to calm the spren with something it knows and loves. A good fire for a flamespren, for example, is a must.

  —Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175

  Lirin was impressed at how calm he felt as he checked the child’s gums for scurvy. Years of training as a surgeon served him well today. Breathing exercises—intended to keep his hands steady—worked as well during espionage as they did during surgery.

  “Here,” he said to the child’s mother, digging a small carved carapace chit from his pocket. “Show this to the woman at the dining pavilion. She’ll get some juice for your son. Make certain he drinks it all, each morning.”

  “Very thank you,” the woman said in a thick Herdazian accent. She gathered her son close, then looked to Lirin with haunted eyes. “If … if child … found…”

  “I will make certain you’re notified if we hear of your other children,” Lirin promised. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She nodded, wiped her cheeks, and carried the child to the watchpost outside of town. Here, a group of armed parshmen lifted her hood and compared her face to drawings sent by the Fused. Hesina, Lirin’s wife, stood nearby to read the descriptions as required.

  Behind them, the morning fog obscured Hearthstone. It seemed to be a group of dark, shadowy lumps. Like tumors. Lirin could barely make out tarps stretched between buildings, offering meager shelter for the many refugees pouring out of Herdaz. Entire streets were closed off, and phantom sounds—plates clinking, people talking—rose through the fog.

  Those shanties would never last a storm, of course, but they could be quickly torn down and stowed. There simply wasn’t enough housing otherwise. People could pack into stormshelters for a few hours, but couldn’t live like that.

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nbsp; He turned and glanced at the line of those waiting for admittance today. It vanished into the fog, attended by swirling insectile hungerspren and exhaustionspren like jets of dust. Storms. How many more people could the town hold? The villages closer to the border must be filled to capacity, if so many were making their way this far inward.

  It had been over a year since the coming of the Everstorm and the fall of Alethkar. A year during which the country of Herdaz—Alethkar’s smaller neighbor to the northwest—had somehow kept fighting. Two months ago, the enemy had finally decided to crush the kingdom for good. Refugee numbers had increased soon after. As usual, the soldiers fought while the common people—their fields trampled—starved and were forced out of their homes.

  Hearthstone did what it could. Aric and the other men—once guards at Roshone’s manor, now forbidden weapons—organized the line and kept anyone from sneaking into town before Lirin saw them. He had persuaded Brightness Abiajan that it was essential he inspect each individual. She worried about plague; he just wanted to intercept those who might need treatment.

  Her soldiers moved down the line, alert. Parshmen carrying swords. Learning to read, insisting they be called “singers.” A year after their awakening, Lirin still found the notions odd. But really, what was it to him? In some ways, little had changed. The same old conflicts consumed the parshmen as easily as they had the Alethi brightlords. People who got a taste of power wanted more, then sought it with the sword. Ordinary people bled, and Lirin was left to stitch them up.

  He returned to his work. Lirin had at least a hundred more refugees to see today. Hiding somewhere among them was a man who had authored much of this suffering. He was the reason Lirin was so nervous today. The next person in line was not him, however, but was instead a ragged Alethi man who had lost an arm in battle. Lirin inspected the refugee’s wound, but it was a few months old at this point, and there was nothing Lirin could do about the extensive scarring.

  Lirin moved his finger back and forth before the man’s face, watching his eyes track it. Shock, Lirin thought. “Have you suffered recent wounds you’re not telling me about?”

  “No wounds,” the man whispered. “But brigands … they took my wife, good surgeon. Took her … left me tied to a tree. Just walked off laughing…”

  Bother. Mental shock wasn’t something Lirin could cut out with a scalpel. “Once you enter the town,” he said, “look for tent fourteen. Tell the women there I sent you.”

  The man nodded dully, his stare hollow. Had he registered the words? Memorizing the man’s features—greying hair with a cowlick in the back, three large moles on the upper left cheek, and of course the missing arm—Lirin made a note to check that tent for him tonight. Assistants there watched refugees who might turn suicidal. It was, with so many to care for, the best Lirin could manage.

  “On with you,” Lirin said, gently pushing the man toward the town. “Tent fourteen. Don’t forget. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  The man walked off.

  “You say it so easily, surgeon,” a voice said from behind.

  Lirin spun, then immediately bowed in respect. Abiajan, the new citylady, was a parshwoman with stark white skin and fine red marbling on her cheeks.

  “Brightness,” Lirin said. “What was that?”

  “You told that man you were sorry for his loss,” Abiajan said. “You say it so readily to each of them—but you seem to have the compassion of a stone. Do you feel nothing for these people?”

  “I feel, Brightness,” Lirin said, “but I must be careful not to be overwhelmed by their pain. It’s one of the first rules of becoming a surgeon.”

  “Curious.” The parshwoman raised her safehand, which was shrouded in the sleeve of a havah. “Do you remember setting my arm when I was a child?”

  “I do.” Abiajan had returned—with a new name and a new commission from the Fused—after fleeing with the others following the Everstorm. She had brought many parshmen with her, all from this region, but of those from Hearthstone only Abiajan had returned. She remained closed-lipped about what she had experienced in the intervening months.

  “Such a curious memory,” she said. “That life feels like a dream now. I remember pain. Confusion. A stern figure bringing me more pain—though I now recognize you were seeking to heal me. So much trouble to go through for a slave child.”

  “I have never cared who I heal, Brightness. Slave or king.”

  “I’m sure the fact that Wistiow had paid good money for me had nothing to do with it.” She narrowed her eyes at Lirin, and when she next spoke there was a cadence to her words, as if she were speaking the words to a song. “Did you feel for me, the poor confused slave child whose mind had been stolen from her? Did you weep for us, surgeon, and the life we led?”

  “A surgeon must not weep,” Lirin said softly. “A surgeon cannot afford to weep.”

  “Like a stone,” she said again, then shook her head. “Have you seen any plaguespren on these refugees? If those spren get into the city, it could kill everyone.”

  “Disease isn’t caused by spren,” Lirin said. “It is spread by contaminated water, improper sanitation, or sometimes by the breath of those who bear it.”

  “Superstition,” she said.

  “The wisdom of the Heralds,” Lirin replied. “We should be careful.” Fragments of old manuscripts—translations of translations of translations—mentioned quick-spreading diseases that had killed tens of thousands. Such things hadn’t been recorded in any modern texts he’d been read, but he had heard rumors of something strange to the west—a new plague, they were calling it. Details were sparse.

  Abiajan moved on without further comment. Her attendants—a group of elevated parshmen and parshwomen—joined her. Though their clothing was of Alethi cut and fashion, the colors were lighter, more muted. The Fused had explained that singers in the past eschewed bright colors, preferring to highlight their skin patterns instead.

  Lirin sensed a search for identity in the way Abiajan and the other parshmen acted. Their accents, their dress, their mannerisms—they were all distinctly Alethi. But they grew transfixed whenever the Fused spoke of their ancestors, and they sought ways to emulate those long-dead parshmen.

  Lirin turned to the next group of refugees—a complete family for once. Though he should have been happy, he couldn’t help wondering how difficult it was going to be to feed five children and parents who were all flagging from poor nutrition.

  As he sent them on, a familiar figure moved along the line toward him, shooing away hungerspren. Laral wore a simple servant’s dress now, with a gloved hand instead of a sleeve, and she carried a water bucket to the waiting refugees. Laral didn’t walk like a servant though. There was a certain … determination about the young woman that no forced subservience could smother. The end of the world seemed roughly as bothersome to her as a poor harvest once had.

  She paused by Lirin and offered him a drink—taken from her waterskin and poured into a fresh cup as he insisted, rather than ladled straight from the bucket.

  “He’s three down,” Laral whispered as Lirin sipped.

  Lirin grunted.

  “Shorter than I expected him to be,” Laral noted. “He’s supposed to be a great general, leader of the Herdazian resistance. He looks more like a traveling merchant.”

  “Genius comes in all shapes, Laral,” Lirin said, waving for her to refill his cup to give an excuse for them to keep talking.

  “Still…” she said, then fell silent as Durnash passed by, a tall parshman with marbled black and red skin, a sword on his back. Once he was well on his way, she continued softly, “I’m honestly surprised at you, Lirin. Not once have you suggested we turn in this hidden general.”

  “He’d be executed,” Lirin said.

  “You think of him as a criminal though, don’t you?”

  “He bears a terrible responsibility; he perpetuated a war against an overwhelming enemy force. He threw away the lives of his men in a hopeless battle.”
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  “Some would call that heroism.”

  “Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you. It got one of my sons killed and another taken from me. You can keep your heroism and return to me the lives of those wasted on foolish conflicts.”

  At least it seemed to almost be over. Now that the resistance in Herdaz had finally collapsed, hopefully the refugee flood would slow.

  Laral watched him with pale green eyes. She was a keen one. How he wished life had gone in another direction, that old Wistiow had held on a few more years. Lirin might call this woman daughter, and might have both Tien and Kaladin beside him now, working as surgeons.

  “I won’t turn in the Herdazian general,” Lirin said. “Stop looking at me like that. I hate war, but I won’t condemn your hero.”

  “And your son will come fetch him soon?”

  “We’ve sent Kal word. That should be enough. Make sure your husband is ready with his distraction.”

  She nodded and moved on to offer water to the parshman guards at the town entrance. Lirin got through the next few refugees quickly, then reached a group of cloaked figures. He calmed himself with the quick breathing exercise his master had taught him in the surgery room all those years ago. Although his insides were a storm, Lirin’s hands didn’t shake as he waved forward the cloaked figures.

  “I will need to do an examination,” Lirin said softly, “so it doesn’t seem unusual when I pull you out of the line.”

  “Begin with me,” said the shortest of the men. The other four shifted their positions, placing themselves carefully around him.

  “Don’t look so much like you’re guarding him, you sodden fools,” Lirin hissed. “Here, sit down on the ground. Maybe you’ll seem less like a gang of thugs that way.”

  They did as requested, and Lirin pulled over his stool beside the apparent leader. He bore a thin, silvered mustache on his upper lip, and was perhaps in his fifties. His sun-leathered skin was darker than most Herdazians’; he could almost have passed for Azish. His eyes were a deep dark brown.