Oathbringer Page 9

  “I’ll need maps,” he said. “Maps of Alethkar, as detailed as you have, and some way to carry them through the rain without ruining them.” He grimaced. “And a horse. Several of them, the finest you have.”

  “So you’re robbing me now?” Roshone asked softly, staring at the floor.

  “Robbing?” Kaladin said. “We’ll call it renting instead.” He pulled a handful of spheres from his pocket and dropped them on the table. He glanced toward the soldiers. “Well? Maps? Surely Roshone keeps survey maps of the nearby areas.”

  Roshone was not important enough to have stewardship over any of the highprince’s lands—a distinction Kaladin had never realized while he lived in Hearthstone. Those lands would be watched over by much more important lighteyes; Roshone would only be a first point of contact with surrounding villages.

  “We’ll want to wait for the lady’s permission,” the guard captain said. “Sir.”

  Kaladin raised an eyebrow. They’d disobey Roshone for him, but not the manor’s lady? “Go to the house ardents and tell them to prepare the things I request. Permission will be forthcoming. And locate a spanreed connected to Tashikk, if any of the ardents have one. Once I have the Stormlight to use it, I’ll want to send word to Dalinar.”

  The guards saluted and left.

  Kaladin folded his arms. “Roshone, I’m going to need to chase those parshmen and see if I can figure out what they’re up to. I don’t suppose any of your guards have tracking experience? Following the creatures would be hard enough without the rain swamping everything.”

  “Why do they matter so much?” Roshone asked, still staring at the floor.

  “Surely you’ve guessed,” Kaladin said, nodding to Syl as her ribbon of light flitted over to his shoulder. “Weather in turmoil and terrors transformed from common servants? That storm with the red lightning, blowing the wrong direction? The Desolation is here, Roshone. The Voidbringers have returned.”

  Roshone groaned, leaning forward, arms wrapped around himself as if he were going to be sick.

  “Syl?” Kaladin whispered. “I might need you again.”

  “You sound apologetic,” she replied, cocking her head.

  “I am. I don’t like the idea of swinging you about, smashing you into things.”

  She sniffed. “Firstly, I don’t smash into things. I am an elegant and graceful weapon, stupid. Secondly, why would you be bothered?”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Kaladin replied, still whispering. “You’re a woman, not a weapon.”

  “Wait … so this is about me being a girl?”

  “No,” Kaladin said immediately, then hesitated. “Maybe. It just feels strange.”

  She sniffed. “You don’t ask your other weapons how they feel about being swung about.”

  “My other weapons aren’t people.” He hesitated. “Are they?”

  She looked at him with head cocked and eyebrows raised, as if he’d said something very stupid.

  Everything has a spren. His mother had taught him that from an early age.

  “So … some of my spears have been women, then?” he asked.

  “Female, at least,” Syl said. “Roughly half, as these things tend to go.” She flitted up into the air in front of him. “It’s your fault for personifying us, so no complaining. Of course, some of the old spren have four genders instead of two.”

  “What? Why?”

  She poked him in the nose. “Because humans didn’t imagine those ones, silly.” She zipped out in front of him, changing into a field of mist. When he raised his hand, the Shardblade appeared.

  He strode to where Roshone sat, then stooped down and held the Shardblade before the man, point toward the floor.

  Roshone looked up, transfixed by the weapon’s blade, as Kaladin had anticipated. You couldn’t be near one of these things and not be drawn by it. They had a magnetism.

  “How did you get it?” Roshone asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  He didn’t reply, but they both knew the truth. Owning a Shardblade was enough—if you could claim it, and not have it taken from you, it was yours. With one in his possession, the brands on his head were meaningless. No man, not even Roshone, would imply otherwise.

  “You,” Kaladin said, “are a cheat, a rat, and a murderer. But as much as I hate it, we don’t have time to oust Alethkar’s ruling class and set up something better. We are under attack by an enemy we do not understand, and which we could not have anticipated. So you’re going to have to stand up and lead these people.”

  Roshone stared at the blade, looking at his reflection.

  “We’re not powerless,” Kaladin said. “We can and will fight back—but first we need to survive. The Everstorm will return. Regularly, though I don’t know the interval yet. I need you to prepare.”

  “How?” Roshone whispered.

  “Build homes with slopes in both directions. If there’s not time for that, find a sheltered location and hunker down. I can’t stay. This crisis is bigger than one town, one people, even if it’s my town and my people. I have to rely on you. Almighty preserve us, you’re all we have.”

  Roshone slumped down farther in his seat. Great. Kaladin stood and dismissed Syl.

  “We’ll do it,” a voice said from behind him.

  Kaladin froze. Laral’s voice sent a shiver down his spine. He turned slowly, and found a woman who did not at all match the image in his head. When he’d last seen her, she’d been wearing a perfect lighteyed dress, beautiful and young, yet her pale green eyes had seemed hollow. She’d lost her betrothed, Roshone’s son, and had instead become engaged to the father—a man more than twice her age.

  The woman he confronted was no longer a youth. Her face was firm, lean, and her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense tail of black peppered with blonde. She wore boots and a utilitarian havah, damp from the rain.

  She looked him up and down, then sniffed. “Looks like you went and grew up, Kal. I was sorry to hear the news of your brother. Come now. You need a spanreed? I’ve got one to the queen regent in Kholinar, but that one hasn’t been responsive lately. Fortunately, we do have one to Tashikk, as you asked about. If you think that the king will respond to you, we can go through an intermediary.”

  She walked back out the doorway.

  “Laral…” he said, following.

  “I hear you stabbed my floor,” she noted. “That’s good hardwood, I’ll have you know. Honestly. Men and their weapons.”

  “I dreamed of coming back,” Kaladin said, stopping in the hallway outside the library. “I imagined returning here a war hero and challenging Roshone. I wanted to save you, Laral.”

  “Oh?” She turned back to him. “And what made you think I needed saving?”

  “You can’t tell me,” Kaladin said softly, waving backward toward the library, “that you’ve been happy with that.”

  “Becoming a lighteyes does not grant a man any measure of decorum, it appears,” Laral said. “You will stop insulting my husband, Kaladin. Shardbearer or not, another word like that, and I’ll have you thrown from my home.”

  “Laral—”

  “I am quite happy here. Or I was, until the winds started blowing the wrong direction.” She shook her head. “You take after your father. Always feeling like you need to save everyone, even those who would rather you mind your own business.”

  “Roshone brutalized my family. He sent my brother to his death and did everything he could to destroy my father!”

  “And your father spoke against my husband,” Laral said, “disparaging him in front of the other townspeople. How would you feel, as a new brightlord exiled far from home, only to find that the town’s most important citizen is openly critical of you?”

  Her perspective was skewed, of course. Lirin had tried to befriend Roshone at first, hadn’t he? Still, Kaladin found little passion to continue the argument. What did he care? He intended to see his parents moved from this city anyway.

  “I’ll go set up the spanreed,
” she said. “It might take some time to get a reply. In the meantime, the ardents should be fetching your maps.”

  “Great,” Kaladin said, pushing past her in the hallway. “I’m going to go speak with my parents.”

  Syl zipped over his shoulder as he started down the steps. “So, that’s the girl you were going to marry.”

  “No,” Kaladin whispered. “That’s a girl I was never going to marry, no matter what happened.”

  “I like her.”

  “You would.” He reached the bottom of the steps and looked back up. Roshone had joined Laral at the top of the stairs, carrying the gems Kaladin had left on the table. How much had that been?

  Five or six ruby broams, he thought, and maybe a sapphire or two. He did the calculations in his head. Storms … That was a ridiculous sum—more money than the goblet full of spheres that Roshone and Kaladin’s father had spent years fighting over back in the day. That was now mere pocket change to Kaladin.

  He’d always thought of all lighteyes as rich, but a minor brightlord in an insignificant town … well, Roshone was actually poor, just a different kind of poor.

  Kaladin searched back through the house, passing people he’d once known—people who now whispered “Shardbearer” and got out of his way with alacrity. So be it. He’d accepted his place the moment he’d seized Syl from the air and spoken the Words.

  Lirin was back in the parlor, working on the wounded again. Kaladin stopped in the doorway, then sighed and knelt beside Lirin. As the man reached toward his tray of tools, Kaladin picked it up and held it at the ready. His old position as his father’s surgery assistant. The new apprentice was helping with wounded in another room.

  Lirin eyed Kaladin, then turned back to the patient, a young boy who had a bloodied bandage around his arm. “Scissors,” Lirin said.

  Kaladin proffered them, and Lirin took the tool without looking, then carefully cut the bandage free. A jagged length of wood had speared the boy’s arm. He whimpered as Lirin palpated the flesh nearby, covered in dried blood. It didn’t look good.

  “Cut out the shaft,” Kaladin said, “and the necrotic flesh. Cauterize.”

  “A little extreme, don’t you think?” Lirin asked.

  “Might want to remove it at the elbow anyway. That’s going to get infected for sure—look how dirty that wood is. It will leave splinters.”

  The boy whimpered again. Lirin patted him. “You’ll be fine. I don’t see any rotspren yet, and so we’re not going to take the arm off. Let me talk to your parents. For now, chew on this.” He gave the boy some bark as a relaxant.

  Together, Lirin and Kaladin moved on; the boy wasn’t in immediate danger, and Lirin would want to operate after the anesthetic took effect.

  “You’ve hardened,” Lirin said to Kaladin as he inspected the next patient’s foot. “I was worried you’d never grow calluses.”

  Kaladin didn’t reply. In truth, his calluses weren’t as deep as his father might have wanted.

  “But you’ve also become one of them,” Lirin said.

  “My eye color doesn’t change a thing.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of your eye color, son. I don’t give two chips whether a man is lighteyed or not.” He waved a hand, and Kaladin passed him a rag to clean the toe, then started preparing a small splint.

  “What you’ve become,” Lirin continued, “is a killer. You solve problems with the fist and the sword. I had hoped that you would find a place among the army’s surgeons.”

  “I wasn’t given much choice,” Kaladin said, handing over the splint, then preparing some bandages to wrap the toe. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.” The less soul-crushing parts of it, at least.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to stay.”

  “No. I need to follow those parshmen.”

  “More killing, then.”

  “And you honestly think we shouldn’t fight the Voidbringers, Father?”

  Lirin hesitated. “No,” he whispered. “I know that war is inevitable. I just didn’t want you to have to be a part of it. I’ve seen what it does to men. War flays their souls, and those are wounds I can’t heal.” He secured the splint, then turned to Kaladin. “We’re surgeons. Let others rend and break; we must not harm others.”

  “No,” Kaladin said. “You’re a surgeon, Father, but I’m something else. A watcher at the rim.” Words spoken to Dalinar Kholin in a vision. Kaladin stood up. “I will protect those who need it. Today, that means hunting down some Voidbringers.”

  Lirin looked away. “Very well. I am … glad you returned, son. I’m glad you’re safe.”

  Kaladin rested his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Life before death, Father.”

  “See your mother before you leave,” Lirin said. “She has something to show you.”

  Kaladin frowned, but made his way out of the healing chamber to the kitchens. The entire place was lit only by candles, and not many of them. Everywhere he went, he saw shadows and uncertain light.

  He filled his canteen with fresh water and found a small umbrella. He’d need that for reading maps in this rain. From there, he went hiking up to check on Laral in the library. Roshone had retreated to his room, but she was sitting at a writing table with a spanreed before her.

  Wait. The spanreed was working. Its ruby glowed.

  “Stormlight!” Kaladin said, pointing.

  “Well, of course,” she said, frowning at him. “Fabrials require it.”

  “How do you have infused spheres?”

  “The highstorm,” Laral said. “Just a few days back.”

  During the clash with the Voidbringers, the Stormfather had summoned an irregular highstorm to match the Everstorm. Kaladin had flown before its stormwall, fighting the Assassin in White.

  “That storm was unexpected,” Kaladin said. “How in the world did you know to leave your spheres out?”

  “Kal,” she said, “it’s not so hard to hang some spheres out once a storm starts blowing!”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Some,” Laral said. “The ardents have a few—I wasn’t the only one to think of it. Look, I’ve got someone in Tashikk willing to relay a message to Navani Kholin, the king’s mother. Wasn’t that what you implied you wanted? You really think she’ll respond to you?”

  The answer, blessedly, came as the spanreed started writing. “ ‘Captain?’ ” Laral read. “ ‘This is Navani Kholin. Is it really you?’ ”

  Laral blinked, then looked up at him.

  “It is,” Kaladin said. “The last thing I did before leaving was speak with Dalinar at the top of the tower.” Hopefully that would be enough to authenticate him.

  Laral jumped, then wrote it.

  “ ‘Kaladin, this is Dalinar,’ ” Laral read as the message came back. “ ‘What is your status, soldier?’ ”

  “Better than expected, sir,” Kaladin said. He outlined what he’d discovered, in brief. He ended by noting, “I’m worried that they left because Hearthstone wasn’t important enough to bother destroying. I’ve ordered horses and some maps. I figure I can do a little scouting and see what I can find about the enemy.”

  “ ‘Careful,’ ” Dalinar responded. “ ‘You don’t have any Stormlight left?’ ”

  “I might be able to find a little. I doubt it will be enough to get me home, but it will help.”

  It took a few minutes before Dalinar replied, and Laral took the opportunity to change the paper on the spanreed board.

  “ ‘Your instincts are good, Captain,’ ” Dalinar finally sent. “ ‘I feel blind in this tower. Get close enough to discover what the enemy is doing, but don’t take unnecessary risks. Take the spanreed. Send us a glyph each evening to know you are safe.’ ”

  “Understood, sir. Life before death.”

  “ ‘Life before death.’ ”

  Laral looked to him, and he nodded that the conversation was over. She packed up the spanreed for him without a word, and he took it gratefully, then hurried out of the r
oom and down the steps.

  His activities had drawn quite a crowd of people, who had gathered in the small entry hall before the steps. He intended to ask if anyone had infused spheres, but was interrupted by the sight of his mother. She was speaking with several young girls, and held a toddler in her arms. What was she doing with …

  Kaladin stopped at the foot of the steps. The little boy was perhaps a year old, chewing on his hand and babbling around his fingers.

  “Kaladin, meet your brother,” Hesina said, turning toward him. “Some of the girls were watching him while I helped with the triage.”

  “A brother,” Kaladin whispered. It had never occurred to him. His mother would be forty-one this year, and …

  A brother.

  Kaladin reached out. His mother let him take the little boy, hold him in hands that seemed too rough to be touching such soft skin. Kaladin trembled, then pulled the child tight against him. Memories of this place had not broken him, and seeing his parents had not overwhelmed him, but this …

  He could not stop the tears. He felt like a fool. It wasn’t as if this changed anything—Bridge Four were his brothers now, as close to him as any blood relative.

  And yet he wept.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Oroden.”

  “Child of peace,” Kaladin whispered. “A good name. A very good name.”

  Behind him, an ardent approached with a scroll case. Storms, was that Zeheb? Still alive, it seemed, though she’d always seemed older than the stones themselves. Kaladin handed little Oroden back to his mother, then wiped his eyes and took the scroll case.

  People crowded at the edges of the room. He was quite the spectacle: the surgeon’s son turned slave turned Shardbearer. Hearthstone wouldn’t see this much excitement for another hundred years.

  At least not if Kaladin had any say about it. He nodded to his father—who had stepped out of the parlor room—then turned to the crowd. “Does anyone here have infused spheres? I will trade you, two chips for one. Bring them forth.”

  Syl buzzed around him as a collection was made, and Kaladin’s mother made the trades for him. What he ended up with was only a pouch’s worth, but it seemed vast riches. At the very least, he wasn’t going to need those horses any longer.