Dawnshard Read online

  His side were the good guys. The Radiants. Urithiru. All of it. He’d decided they were, despite bad choices by some of the Radiants in the past.

  But he thought about the Shattered Plains. And how stupid that battle had been, stretching all those years. How many good people had it killed? He couldn’t help worrying they were now headed into a mire of cremwater just as bad, if not worse.

  “I wish,” he said, “that this ship could move faster. I wish we could be doing things. This is taking too long.”

  “I’m doing things,” Huio said. He turned around in his seat at the desk, holding up the repaired spanreed. “See? It has been returned identically to its previous state.”

  “Yeah? Does it still write?”

  Huio made a few circular scribbles on a piece of paper from the satchel. The conjoined spanreed, in turn, jerked across the paper in a single line, back and forth.

  “Uh . . .” Huio said.

  “You person-who-has-rotten-fruit-for-a-head!” Lopen said, jumping to his feet. “You broke it.”

  “Uh . . .” Huio repeated, then made another scribble. The pen reacted as before, moving left and right on the page in accordance with his motions, but it didn’t go up or down on the page when he moved his pen to the top or bottom. “Huh.”

  “Great,” Lopen said. “Now I’m going to have to tell boss ardent-lady. And she will say, ‘Lopen, I can see that you are very careful, and often not breaking things, but I’d still rather your older cousin not have rotten fruit inside his skull instead of brains.’ And I’ll agree.”

  “They have a ton of these things,” Huio said. “There’s at least, sure, twenty pairs in the storage they sent us. I doubt it will be an exceeding burden if one is malfunctioning.” He scribbled again. Same result. “Maybe I could—”

  “Try to repair it?” Lopen said, skeptical. “I suppose. You’re, sure, super smart. But . . .”

  “But I’d probably break it further.” Huio sighed. “I thought I had it figured out, younger-cousin. They don’t seem even as complicated as a clock.”

  “And how many of those have you managed to put together correctly after taking them apart?”

  “There was that once . . .” Huio said.

  Lopen met his eyes, then they shared a grin.

  Huio slapped him on the arm. “Return those to the ardent-lady. Tell her I will pay for the broken reed, if it’s a problem. It will have to be next month though.”

  Lopen nodded. Both of them, along with Punio, gave most of their Radiant stipend to the family for helping out with the poorer cousins. A big chunk went to Rod’s family. Radiants were paid well, but there were a lot of cousins who needed help. It was their way—when Lopen had been the poor one, they’d always helped him.

  Lopen walked out onto the deck, proud of how well he’d adapted to the swaying of the ship. However, he stopped as he noticed a large group of sailors congregating on the left side of the ship. The, uh, starboard side? He wandered over, and then Lashed himself upward to see over their heads.

  Something was floating in the water nearby. Something large. And something that was very, very dead.

  8

  Rysn felt a sinking sense of dread as Nikli carried her to the side of the ship. The sailors had bunched up here, attended by anxietyspren—like twisting black crosses—and a few globs of fearspren. They made way for Rysn, and Plamry—Nikli’s Thaylen assistant—hurried forward and set down a high stool for her. She gripped the rail to steady herself as Nikli placed her on the stool, then she nodded for him to retreat.

  That made room for the captain to step up and stand beside her. Sitting there, Rysn could peer over the side of the ship to see what the others had been whispering about: a dead santhid. A decaying shell and husk, flipped over on its side, its whited eye staring toward the sky. It was enormous, nearly a third as long as the ship itself.

  The large marine creatures were incredibly rare. She had believed them extinct, but had enjoyed stories from her babsk about them. They supposedly rescued drowning sailors, or trailed ships for days, improving the moods of those on board. More spren than animal, they were somehow able to magnify peace and confidence.

  Likely that was as much fancy as the Passions. But no sailor she’d ever met would speak ill of santhidyn, and meeting one was among the best omens in the ocean. She didn’t need to ask to know what finding a dead one would do to the mood of her crew.

  The sailors sensed this was coming, she thought. They’ve been on edge these last few days, waiting. Perhaps, like Rysn, they’d noticed the pattern—and had expected a third, worst omen. To them, this would be proof the trip was cursed.

  And, as she looked down at that large unnatural corpse—she found herself questioning. Sure, omens seemed like nonsense. But she’d assumed the Voidbringers were only stories, and they’d returned. Her mother had always laughed at the idea of Lost Radiants wandering the storms as spirits, but now she had two Radiants on her ship. Who was Rysn to say what was fact and what was myth?

  No, she thought. There must be another explanation. Could someone have planted this?

  She’d been expecting a third omen like the grain or the dead pet. Something a person could achieve in secret. But this . . . this went far beyond such simple plots. Did she really think someone hiding among her crew had managed to find a near-mythical creature, kill it, and deposit it in the ocean without raising suspicion?

  No one has to have planted it, she told herself firmly. This could still be a random unlucky event.

  She glanced down again, and swore that oversized eye was looking at her. Seeing right through her, even in death. As decaying chunks of the santhid began to float off from the main body, she felt as if she were being watched. And she became suddenly aware of the crowding sailors’ mood. Dark. Too quiet. No mentions of what a bad omen this was. They already knew. There was nothing more to say.

  “We’ll be turning back after this,” said Alstben, a tall sailor who liked to spike his eyebrows. He looked at Rysn. “No way we continue.”

  Storms. It wasn’t a question. Rysn searched for support from the captain, but Drlwan folded her arms and didn’t contradict the sailor. Doing so would likely invite mutiny. This crew was probably too loyal to do such a thing as kill their captain, but . . . well, if the Wandersail returned to dock with its captain, armsman, and owner locked up because they’d “gone mad,” who would blame the crew? Particularly after an omen as sure as a dead santhid.

  Rysn nearly gave the order. She knew when a trade deal was mired in crem, when it was better to walk away with your goods than try to force an accommodation.

  And yet. That meant giving in to the superstitions. And someone was trying to spook her crew, even if this specific event was random. Turning back meant giving in to whoever that was.

  Most importantly, turning back meant giving up on helping Chiri-Chiri. Sometimes the trade was too important to walk away from. Sometimes you had to negotiate from a position of weakness.

  “Why is it floating?” Rysn asked the sailors. “Shouldn’t it have sunk after it died?”

  “Not necessarily,” Kstled said, emerging from the rear of the crowd. “I’ve passed a ship lost to ramming before. Days later, bloated corpses still floated in the water, nibbled at from below by fish.”

  “But something this big?” Rysn asked. “With that shell?”

  “Greatshell corpses can float,” another sailor said. “Pieces of them, after they’re dead. I’ve seen it.”

  Damnation. Rysn didn’t know enough to keep pushing on this line of reasoning. Yet it seemed so unlikely that they had randomly run across this right in their path. Maybe there was another option. Maybe it wasn’t one person working to undermine her mission, but a larger organization. The enemy had Fused, creatures with powers like Radiants. This could be a Lightweaving, or a Soulcast dummy, or any number of things.

  She didn’t want to give up. Not without more time to think, and maybe a chance to inspect this corpse. So, she took a dee
p breath. Sometimes a negotiation was all about attitude.

  “Very well,” she said. “Let us do what is right, then. Get the boarding hooks and get ready to tow that corpse.”

  “Tow it?” one of the sailors asked. “Surely we’re not going to try to profit by selling the shell?”

  “Of course not,” Rysn said. “What kind of craven do you think I am? We’re going to give the creature a proper funeral. And if it seems the beast’s will, we will keep the shell for the luck it represents and present it to the queen. It is fortunate we happened along, so the body might be burned as befits the creature’s majesty.”

  “. . . Fortunate?” Kstled asked.

  “Yes,” Rysn said. She had trained herself not to feel intimidated when seated among a crowd of standing people, but it was difficult not to feel her old insecurities as so many of them turned to stare down at her, skeptical—even angry.

  Attitude, she reminded herself. You will never sell anything if you don’t believe it’s worth the asking price.

  “Someone killed this poor thing,” Rysn continued. “Look at those gouges on the side of the corpse.”

  “Bad luck,” a sailor said. “Extremely bad luck to kill a santhid.”

  “Which we did not do,” Rysn said. “Someone else did, and incurred the bad luck. We are lucky to have found the creature so we can witness what was done to it—and see the body cared for.”

  “We shouldn’t touch a santhid corpse,” said Kstled, folding his arms.

  “I’ve seen their shells hung proudly in Thaylen City,” Rysn said. “There’s one at the naval academy!”

  “Those weren’t killed by malice,” Kstled said. “Besides, they washed up on the shore. Found their way there.”

  “Like this one,” Rysn said, “made its way to us, here. How vast is the ocean? And yet we happen across this relatively small body? The santhid’s soul undoubtedly led us here so we could witness and care for the corpse.” She pondered, as if thinking of it for the first time. “This is a good omen. It came to us intentionally. A sign that we are trusted.”

  She hid the uncertainty she felt, knowing her argument was full of holes and sinking fast. She decried superstition, but now she relied upon it to make this argument?

  Nevertheless, it seemed to work. A few sailors nodded. That was the thing about omens—they were made up. Imagined signals of something nebulous. So why not make them up to be something positive?

  “We always consider it a good sign when one washes up on shore,” a man said. “Why is this different?”

  “We need to spread the word,” said another, “about how someone out there is killing santhidyn. It wanted us to find it so that the news could spread.”

  “Let’s hook the corpse,” Rysn repeated, “and carry it to shore.”

  “No,” several voices said from the crowd—but she couldn’t see who. “That’s bad luck!”

  “If it’s bad luck,” Rysn said, her voice louder, “then we’ve already invited it by letting our hull touch the corpse. I say the best thing to do now is care for the body. We will burn the body, and leave the shell on a nearby island. We will purchase some floats at a port on our way home, and then tow it to Thaylen City. That’s what the santhid would want: for us to keep the shell as a mark of the respect it showed us.”

  The crew fell silent. Rysn had taken part in her fair share of tense negotiations, but this one made her hold her breath, her heart thundering. Like she was trying to contain a storm inside her.

  “I think,” the captain said eventually, “that I do see a good omen in this. I’ve always wanted to meet a santhid in the wild. I have burned prayers that one would someday come to me. This creature’s soul must have known that.”

  “Yeah,” another sailor said. “Notice how it doesn’t stink? It should smell, rotting like that. I don’t see a single rotspren. Good omen, that. It wants us to come near.”

  “Grab the hooks,” the captain said. “If its spirit is restless, I certainly wouldn’t want it thinking we ignored its last wishes!”

  The sailors, blessedly, responded to her order. Rysn had given them an escape from their ill luck, and the captain had certified it. That was enough. Some went for the boarding hooks, which had ropes attached for use in holding the Wandersail to enemy ships. Others returned to their posts, to help keep the ship from drifting too far from the corpse.

  The captain remained standing beside Rysn’s chair. Tall, proud, in control. Rysn had learned to hold herself in a similar way, but she couldn’t help being jealous of the ability to simply stand there. Exuding control and confidence was so much easier when you weren’t several feet shorter than everyone.

  “Thank you,” Rysn said to her.

  “We have a charge from the queen to see this mission to its end,” the captain said. “I’d turn around now if I worried about losing my ship, but I won’t do so on a whim.”

  “Do you truly believe what I said about this being a good omen?”

  “I believe that passionate people make their own luck,” the captain said. Which wasn’t exactly an answer—the Passions, as a religion, believed that wanting something changed fate to bring it to you. Among many Thaylens, superstition and confidence interwove like threads in a rope.

  “Thank you, either way,” Rysn said.

  “For now, I trust your confidence to move forward, Rebsk,” Captain Drlwan said as sailors returned with hooks. “Take care. This crew is precious to me. I will not waste their lives, if this mission turns ugly.” If it turns out these omens are accurate, she left unsaid.

  Rysn nodded and sat back, troubled, watching the sailors cast the lines to hook the santhid body. If they couldn’t get a purchase, someone would have to climb down and—

  Sailors screamed, backing away, dropping the ropes as if they’d suddenly burst aflame. Rysn started, then pulled herself up on the railing to look down. Was the santhid alive? It was moving. More undulating, quivering . . .

  Disintegrating.

  Before her eyes, the santhid broke apart into hundreds of scuttling pieces. Cremlings—crustaceans the length of a person’s thumb—swarmed in the water. Rysn struggled to grasp what she was seeing. Had the hooks disturbed creatures that had been eating the dead santhid? But there were so many, and the entire beast was breaking apart. Including the shell.

  Storms. It was as if . . . as if the body had been made up of cremlings. Or sealings, as the ones in the ocean were sometimes called. The water churned and frothed, and in moments nothing was left of the santhid. Even the eyeball she’d felt watching her earlier had broken into multiple pieces, exposing legs and shells on the underside, before swimming away into the deep.

  9

  Later that night, Rysn sat in a little cove, watching the bonfire send smoke toward the Halls far above. The chill air smelled alternately of the ocean and of smoke, depending on the whims of the wind.

  She pulled her shawl closer. She often felt colder than others seemed to, though tonight she didn’t call for Nikli to take her closer to the fire. She needed some solitude. And so she remained in her chair, some twenty or thirty feet apart from the others.

  She listened as Lopen told stories to the sailors. Fortunately, his efforts to raise their spirits seemed to be working. After consulting with the captain, Rysn had ordered a shore landing to burn prayers in honor of the santhid. They’d broken out a few kegs of a special Thaylen ale, and Cord was cooking a stew. Cumulatively, their efforts seemed to mollify the crew.

  The undercurrent of the evening, however, was still confusion. Everyone seemed as baffled as Rysn was. What kind of omen was this? A corpse appeared, then vanished? Had it been a corpse at all?

  Nikli sat nearby. Chiri-Chiri slumbered on the ground next to Rysn. The larkin seemed to be getting worse. Sleeping more and more. Eating less and less. Rysn’s heart trembled every time she thought about it.

  Her spanreed finally began blinking. She snatched it up and oriented the board and pen, then let it start writing.

&
nbsp; I have answers for you, the pen wrote. Vstim was dictating to his niece Chanrm, from the look of the handwriting. The Alethi have been keeping a secret from you, and from me as well, though Queen Fen did know about it. While everything Queen Navani told you about the mission is true, there is another, more vital reason she commissioned this expedition. There was once an Oathgate on Akinah.

  Rysn read the words again, and let the implications sink in. An Oathgate. She hadn’t tracked their locations. She probably should have.

  Why did Aimia have one? she asked. Wasn’t it barren, all the way before the Recreance?

  No, Vstim wrote via his niece. The scouring happened after that, though both were so long ago that we don’t know many details. Apparently though, the capital had an Oathgate, like Thaylen City and Azimir. Queen Navani’s team on your ship is supposed to investigate what happened to it.

  And open it? Rysn wrote back.

  I gather they aren’t certain they want it opened. Securing Aimia—particularly Akinah—would require a large military force. Right now, the queen merely wants information. Is the Oathgate there? Does it seem like the enemy has been investigating it? Is the island habitable?

  So Nikli was right, the Radiants had been keeping things from her. At least their secret was a fairly innocent one. What of the other thing I asked you about, Babsk? Rysn wrote to Vstim.

  On this matter, I’ve been less successful, he dictated. None of the scholars I talked to have any idea what to make of your story of the disintegrating santhid. Though it does smell a little like some of the old stories about Aimians.

  That they could take off their arms and legs? Rysn wrote. I met one of them on that expedition where I had my accident. That creature seemed very different from what we experienced.

  True, Vstim dictated. But I spoke with Queen Jasnah Kholin about what you wrote to me, and she found it exceptionally curious. She says there were once two kinds of Aimians. One was the variety you saw. There are a few of them moving among the people of Roshar.