Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
“Brightlord?” Janala asked. “Are you perhaps secretly an artifabrian? Studying engineering by night, reading the women’s script?”
Several of the others chuckled. Renarin blushed deeply, lowering his eyes farther.
You’d never laugh like that at any other man of his rank, Shallan thought, feeling her cheeks grow hot. The Alethi court could be severely polite—but that didn’t mean they were nice. Renarin always had been a more acceptable target than Dalinar or Adolin.
Shallan’s anger was a strange sensation. On more than one occasion, she’d been struck by Renarin’s oddness. His presence at this meeting was just another example. Was he thinking of finally joining the ardents? And he did that by simply showing up at a meeting for scribes, as if he were one of the women?
At the same time, how dare Janala embarrass him?
Navani started to say something, but Shallan cut in. “Surely, Janala, you didn’t just try to insult the son of the highprince.”
“What? No, no of course I didn’t.”
“Good,” Shallan said. “Because, if you had been trying to insult him, you did a terrible job. And I’ve heard that you’re very clever. So full of wit, and charm, and … other things.”
Janala frowned at her. “… Is that flattery?”
“We weren’t talking of your chest, dear. We’re speaking of your mind! Your wonderful, brilliant mind, so keen that it’s never been sharpened! So quick, it’s still running when everyone else is done! So dazzling, it’s never failed to leave everyone in awe at the things you say. So … um…”
Jasnah was glaring at her.
“… Hmm…” Shallan held up her notebook. “I took notes.”
“Could we have a short break, Mother?” Jasnah asked.
“An excellent suggestion,” Navani said. “Fifteen minutes, during which everyone should consider a list of requirements this tower would have, if it were to somehow become self-sufficient.”
She rose, and the meeting broke up into individual conversations again.
“I see,” Jasnah said to Shallan, “that you still use your tongue like a bludgeon rather than a knife.”
“Yeah.” Shallan sighed. “Any tips?”
Jasnah eyed her.
“You heard what she said to Renarin, Brightness!”
“And Mother was about to speak to her about it,” Jasnah said, “discreetly, with a judicious word. Instead, you threw a dictionary at her head.”
“Sorry. She gets on my nerves.”
“Janala is a fool, just bright enough to be proud of the wits she has, but stupid enough to be unaware of how outmatched they are.” Jasnah rubbed her temples. “Storms. This is why I never take wards.”
“Because they give you so much trouble.”
“Because I’m bad at it. I have scientific evidence of that fact, and you are but the latest experiment.” Jasnah shooed her away, rubbing her temples.
Shallan, feeling ashamed, walked to the side of the room, while everyone else got refreshments.
“Mmmm!” Pattern said as Shallan leaned against the wall, notebook held closer to her chest. “Jasnah doesn’t seem angry. Why are you sad?”
“Because I’m an idiot,” Shallan said. “And a fool. And … because I don’t know what I want.” Hadn’t it been only a week or two ago that she’d innocently assumed she had it figured out? Whatever “it” was?
“I can see him!” said a voice to her side.
Shallan jumped and turned to find Renarin staring at her skirt and the pattern there, which blended into her embroidery. Distinct if you knew to look, but easy to miss.
“He doesn’t turn invisible?” Renarin said.
“He says he can’t.”
Renarin nodded, then looked up at her. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“Defending my honor. When Adolin does that, someone usually gets stabbed. Your way was pleasanter.”
“Well, nobody should take that tone with you. They wouldn’t dare do it to Adolin. And besides, you’re right. This place is one big fabrial.”
“You feel it too? They keep talking about this device or that device, but that’s wrong, isn’t it? That’s like taking the parts of a cart, without realizing you’ve got a cart in the first place.”
Shallan leaned in. “That thing that we fought, Renarin. It could stretch its tendrils all the way up to the very top of Urithiru. I felt its wrongness wherever I went. That gemstone at the center is tied to everything.”
“Yes, this isn’t only a collection of fabrials. It’s many fabrials put together to make one big fabrial.”
“But what does it do?” Shallan asked.
“It does being a city.” He frowned. “Well, I mean, it bees a city.… It does what the city is.…”
Shallan shivered. “And the Unmade was running it.”
“Which let us discover this room and the fabrial column,” Renarin said. “We might not have accomplished that without it. Always look on the bright side.”
“Logically,” Shallan said, “the bright side is the only side you can look on, because the other side is dark.”
Renarin laughed. It brought to mind how her brothers would laugh at what she said. Maybe not because it was the most hilarious thing ever spoken, but because it was good to laugh. That reminded her of what Jasnah had said, though, and Shallan found herself glancing at the woman.
“I know my cousin is intimidating,” Renarin whispered to her. “But you’re a Radiant too, Shallan. Don’t forget that. We could stand up to her if we wanted to.”
“Do we want to?”
Renarin grimaced. “Probably not. So often, she’s right, and you just end up feeling like one of the ten fools.”
“True, but … I don’t know if I can stand being ordered around like a child again. I’m starting to feel crazy. What do I do?”
Renarin shrugged. “I’ve found the best way to avoid doing what Jasnah says is to not be around when she’s looking for someone to give orders to.”
Shallan perked up. That made a lot of sense. Dalinar would need his Radiants to go do things, right? She needed to get away, just until she could figure things out. Go somewhere … like on that mission to Kholinar? Wouldn’t they need someone who could sneak into the palace and activate the device?
“Renarin,” she said, “you’re a genius.”
He blushed, but smiled.
Navani called the meeting together again, and they sat to continue discussing fabrials. Jasnah tapped Shallan’s notebook and she did a better job of taking the minutes, practicing her shorthand. It wasn’t nearly as irksome now, as she had an exit strategy. An escape route.
She was appreciating that when she noticed a tall figure striding through the door. Dalinar Kholin cast a shadow, even when he wasn’t standing in front of the light. Everyone immediately hushed.
“Apologies for my tardiness.” He glanced at his wrist, and the forearm timepiece that Navani had given him. “Please don’t stop because of me.”
“Dalinar?” Navani asked. “You’ve never attended a meeting of scribes before.”
“I just thought I should watch,” Dalinar said. “Learn what this piece of my organization is doing.” He settled down on a stool outside the ring. He looked like a warhorse trying to perch on a stand meant for a show pony.
They started up again, everyone obviously self-conscious. She’d have thought that Dalinar would know to stay away from meetings like this, where women and scribes …
Shallan cocked her head as she saw Renarin glance at his father. Dalinar responded with a raised fist.
He came so Renarin wouldn’t feel awkward, Shallan realized. It can’t be improper or feminine for the prince to be here if the storming Blackthorn decides to attend.
She didn’t miss the way that Renarin actually raised his eyes to watch the rest of the proceedings.
As the waves of the sea must continue to surge, so must our will continue resolute.
Alone.
The Voidbringers ca
His arms ached from being carried. Why hadn’t they used their powers to Lash him upward and make him lighter, as Kaladin would have?
He stretched his arms, looking around. He’d been to Revolar many times, working a regular caravan to Kholinar. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean he’d seen much of the city. Every city of size had a little huddle of buildings on the outskirts for people like him: modern-day nomads who worked caravans or ran deliveries. The people of the eaves, some had called them. Men and women who hovered close enough to civilization to get out of the weather when it turned bad, but who never really belonged.
From the looks of things, Revolar had quite the eaves culture now—too much of one. The Voidbringers seemed to have taken over the entire storming place, exiling the humans to the outskirts.
The Voidbringers left him without a word, despite having lugged him all this distance. The parshmen who took custody of him here looked like a hybrid between Parshendi warriors and the normal, docile parshmen he’d known from many a caravan run. They spoke perfect Alethi as they shoved him toward a group of humans in a little pen.
Moash settled in to wait. Looked like the Voidbringers had patrols scouting the area, grabbing human stragglers. Eventually, the parshmen herded him and the others toward one of the large storm bunkers outside the city—used for housing armies or multiple caravans during highstorms.
“Don’t make trouble,” a parshwoman said, specifically eyeing Moash. “Don’t fight, or you’ll be killed. Don’t run, or you’ll be beaten. You’re the slaves now.”
Several of the humans—homesteaders, from the looks of it—started weeping. They clutched meager bundles, which parshmen searched through. Moash could read the signs of their loss in their reddened eyes and ragged possessions. The Everstorm had wiped out their farm. They’d come to the big city looking for refuge.
He had nothing on him of value, not any longer, and the parshmen let him go in before the others. He walked into the bunker, feeling a surreal sense of … abandonment? He’d spent the trip here alternately assuming he’d be executed or interrogated. Instead, they’d made a common slave of him? Even in Sadeas’s army, he’d never technically been a slave. Assigned to bridge runs, yes. Sent to die. But he’d never worn the brands on his forehead. He felt at the Bridge Four tattoo under his shirt, on his left shoulder.
The vast, high-ceilinged storm bunker was shaped like a huge stone loaf. Moash ambled through it, hands stuffed in his coat pockets. Huddled groups of people regarded him with hostility, even though he was just another refugee.
He’d always been met with hostility, no matter where he storming went. A youth like him, too big and obviously too confident for a darkeyes, had been considered a threat. He’d joined the caravans to give himself something productive to do, encouraged by his grandparents. They’d been murdered for their kindly ways, and Moash … he’d spent his life putting up with looks like that.
A man on his own, a man you couldn’t control, was dangerous. He was inherently frightening, just because of who he was. And nobody would ever let him in.
Except Bridge Four.
Well, Bridge Four had been a special case, and he’d failed that test. Graves had been right to tell him to cut the patch off. This was who he really was. The man everyone looked at with distrust, pulling their children tight and nodding for him to move along.
He stalked down the middle of the structure, which was so wide it needed pillars to hold up the ceiling. Those rose like trees, Soulcast right into the rock below. The edges of the building were crowded with people, but the center was kept clear and patrolled by armed parshmen. They’d set up stations with wagons as perches, where parshmen were addressing crowds. Moash went over to one.
“In case we missed any,” the parshman shouted, “experienced farmers should report to Bru at the front end of the chamber. He will assign you a plot of land to work. Today, we also need workers to carry water in the city, and more to clear debris from the last storm. I can take twenty of each.”
Men started calling out their willingness, and Moash frowned, leaning toward a man nearby. “They offer us work? Aren’t we slaves?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Slaves who don’t eat unless they work. They let us choose what we want to do, though it’s not much of a storming choice. One kind of drudgery or another.”
With a start, Moash realized that the man had pale green eyes. Yet he still raised his hand and volunteered to carry water—something that had once been parshman work. Well, that was a sight that couldn’t help but brighten a man’s day. Moash shoved hands back in pockets and continued through the room, checking each of the three stations where parshmen offered jobs.
Something about these parshmen and their perfect Alethi unsettled him. The Voidbringers were what he’d expected, with their alien accents and dramatic powers. But the ordinary parshmen—many of them looked like Parshendi now, with those taller builds—seemed almost as bewildered at their reversal in fortune as the humans were.
Each of the three stations dealt with a different category of labor. The one at the far end was looking for farmers, women with sewing skill, and cobblers. Food, uniforms, boots. The parshmen were preparing for war. Asking around, Moash learned they’d already grabbed the smiths, fletchers, and armorers—and if you were found hiding skill in any of these three, your whole family would be put on half rations.
The middle station was for basic labor. Hauling water, cleaning, cooking food. The last station was the most interesting to Moash. This was for hard labor.
He lingered here, listening to a parshman ask for volunteers to pull wagons of supplies with the army when it marched. Apparently, there weren’t enough chulls to move wagons for what was coming.
Nobody raised their hands for this one. It sounded like ghastly work, not to mention the fact that it would mean marching toward battle.
They’ll need to press the people into this, Moash thought. Maybe they can round up some lighteyes and make them trudge across the rock like beasts of burden. He’d like to see that.
As he left this last station, Moash spotted a group of men with long staffs, leaning against the wall. Sturdy boots, waterskins in holsters tied to their thighs, and a walking kit sewn into the trousers on the other side. He knew from experience what that would carry. A bowl, spoon, cup, thread, needle, patches, and some flint and tinder.
Caravaneers. The long staffs were for slapping chull shells while walking beside them. He’d worn an outfit like that many times, though many of the caravans he’d worked had used parshmen to pull wagons instead of chulls. They were faster.
“Hey,” he said, strolling over to the caravaneers. “Is Guff still around?”
“Guff?” one of the caravaneers said. “Old wheelwright? Half a reed tall? Bad at cussing?”
“That’s him.”
“I think he’s over there,” the young man said, pointing with his staff. “In the tents. But there ain’t work, friend.”
“The shellheads are marching,” Moash said, thumbing over his shoulder. “They’ll need caravaneers.”
“Positions are full,” another of the men said. “There was a fight to see who got those jobs. Everyone else will be pulling wagons. Don’t draw too much attention, or they’ll slap a harness on you. Mark my words.”
They smiled in a friendly way to Moash, and he gave them an old caravaneers’ salute—close enough to a rude gesture that everyone else mistook it—and strode in the direction they’d pointed. Typical. Caravaneers were a big family—and, like a family, prone to squabbling.
The “tents” were really some sections of cloth that had been stretched from the wall to poles driven into buckets of rocks to keep them steady. That made a kind of tunnel along the wall here, and underneath, a lot of older people coughed and sniffled. It was dim, with only the occasional chip on an overturned box giving ligh
He picked out the caravaneers by their accents. He asked after Guff—who was one of the men he’d known back in the day—and was allowed to penetrate deeper along the shadowy tent tunnel. Eventually, Moash found old Guff sitting right in the middle of the tunnel, as if to keep people from going farther. He had been sanding a piece of wood—an axle, by the looks of it.
He squinted as Moash stepped up. “Moash?” he said. “Really? What storming storm brought you here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Moash said, squatting down beside the old man.
“You were on Jam’s caravan,” Guff said. “Off to the Shattered Plains; gave you all up for dead. Wouldn’t have bet a dun chip on you returning.”
“A wise enough bet,” Moash said. He hunched forward, resting his arms on his knees. In this tunnel, the buzz of people outside seemed a distant thing, though only cloth separated them.
“Son?” Guff asked. “Why you here, boy? What do you want?”
“I just need to be who I was.”
“That makes as much sense as the storming Stormfather playing the flute, boy. But you wouldn’t be the first to go off to those Plains and come back not all right. No you wouldn’t. That’s the Stormfather’s storming own truth, that storming is.”
“They tried to break me. Damnation, they did break me. But then he made me again, a new man.” Moash paused. “I threw it all away.”
“Sure, sure,” Guff said.
“I always do that,” Moash whispered. “Why must we always take something precious, Guff, and find ourselves hating it? As if by being pure, it reminds us of just how little we deserve it. I held the spear, and I stabbed myself with it.…”
“The spear?” Guff asked. “Boy, you a storming soldier?”
Moash looked at him with a start, then stood up, stretching, showing his patchless uniform coat.
Guff squinted in the darkness. “Come with me.” The old wheelwright rose—with difficulty—and set his piece of wood on his chair. He led Moash with a rickety gait farther into the cloth tunnel, and they entered a portion of the tented area that was more roomlike, the far corner of the large bunker. Here, a group of maybe a dozen people sat in furtive conversation, chairs pulled together.