Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
“I’m going to try Talanor,” Adolin said, “and then Kalishor.”
“Neither full Shardbearers,” Navani said with a frown. “The first has only the Blade, the second only the Plate.”
“All of the full Shardbearers have refused me,” Adolin said with a shrug. “Those two are eager, thirsty for notoriety. One of them might agree where others haven’t.”
Kaladin folded his arms, leaning back against the wall. “And if you defeat them, won’t it scare off others from fighting you?”
“When I beat them,” Adolin said, glancing at Kaladin’s relaxed posture and frowning, “Father will maneuver others into agreeing to duels.”
“But it will have to stop sometime, right?” Kaladin asked. “Eventually the other highprinces will realize what’s happening. They’ll refuse to be goaded into further duels. It might be happening already. That’s why they don’t accept.”
“Someone will,” Adolin said, standing. “And once I start winning, others will begin to see me as a real challenge. They’ll want to test themselves.”
That seemed optimistic to Kaladin.
“Captain Kaladin is right,” Dalinar said.
Adolin turned toward his father.
“There’s no need to fight every Shardbearer in camp,” Dalinar said softly. “We need to narrow our attack, choose duels for you that point us toward the ultimate goal.”
“Which is?” Adolin asked.
“Undermining Sadeas.” Dalinar almost sounded regretful. “Killing him in a duel, if we have to. Everyone in camp knows the sides in this power struggle. This won’t work if we punish everyone equally. We need to show those in the middle, those deciding whom to follow, the advantages of trust. Cooperation on plateau runs. Help from one another’s Shardbearers. We show them what it’s like to be part of a real kingdom.”
The others grew quiet. The king turned away with a shake of his head. He didn’t believe, at least not fully, in what Dalinar wished to achieve.
Kaladin found himself annoyed. Why should he be? Dalinar had agreed with him. He stewed for a moment, and realized that he was probably still upset because someone had mentioned Amaram.
Even hearing the man’s name put Kaladin out of sorts. He kept thinking something should happen, something should change, now that such a murderer was in camp. Yet everything just kept on going. It was frustrating. Made him want to lash out.
He needed to do something about it.
“I assume we’ve waited long enough?” Adolin said to his father. “I can go?”
Dalinar sighed, nodding. Adolin pulled open the door and strode away; Renarin followed at a slower pace, hauling that Shardblade he was still bonding, sheathed in its protective strips. As they passed the group of guards Kaladin had put outside, Skar and three others broke off to follow them.
Kaladin walked to the door, doing a quick count of who was left. Four men total. “Moash,” Kaladin said, noticing the man yawning. “How long have you been on duty today?”
Moash shrugged. “One shift guarding Brightness Navani. One shift with the King’s Guard.”
I’m working them too hard, Kaladin thought. Stormfather. I don’t have enough men. Even with the leftover Cobalt Guard that Dalinar is sending to me. “Head back and get some sleep,” Kaladin said. “You too, Bisig. I saw you on shift this morning.”
“And you?” Moash asked Kaladin.
“I’m fine.” He had Stormlight to keep him alert. True, using Stormlight that way could be dangerous—it provoked him to act, to be more impulsive. He wasn’t sure he liked what it did to him when he used it outside of battle.
Moash raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be at least as tired as I am, Kal.”
“I’ll go back in a bit,” Kaladin said. “You need some time off, Moash. You’ll get sloppy if you don’t take it.”
“I have to pull two shifts,” Moash said, shrugging. “At least, if you want me to train with the King’s Guard as well as doing my regular guard duty.”
Kaladin drew his lips to a line. That was important. Moash needed to think like a bodyguard, and there was no better way than serving on an already-established crew.
“My shift here with the King’s Guard is almost over,” Moash noted. “I’ll head back after.”
“Fine,” Kaladin said. “Keep Leyten with you. Natam, you and Mart guard Brightness Navani. I’ll see Dalinar back to camp and post guards at his door.”
“Then you’ll get some sleep?” Moash asked. The others glanced at Kaladin. They were worried as well.
“Yes, fine.” Kaladin turned back to the room, where Dalinar was helping Navani to her feet. He’d walk her to her door, as he did most evenings.
Kaladin debated for a moment, then stepped up to the highprince. “Sir, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Can it wait until I’m done here?” Dalinar said.
“Yes, sir,” Kaladin said. “I’ll wait at the palace’s front doors, then will be your guard on the way back to camp.”
Dalinar led Navani away, joined by two bridgeman guards. Kaladin made his own way down the corridor, thinking. Servants had already come by to open the corridor windows, and Syl floated in through one as a spinning swirl of mist. Giggling, she spun around him a few times before going out another window. She always got more sprenlike during a highstorm.
The air smelled wet and fresh. The whole world felt clean after a highstorm, scrubbed by nature’s abrasive.
He reached the front of the palace, where a pair of the King’s Guard stood on watch. Kaladin nodded to them and got crisp salutes in return, then he fetched a sphere lantern from the guard post and filled it with his own spheres.
From the front of the palace, Kaladin could look out over all ten warcamps. As always after a storm, the Light of refreshed spheres sparkled everywhere, their gemstones ablaze with captured fragments of the tempest that had passed.
Standing there, Kaladin confronted what he needed to say to Dalinar. He rehearsed it silently more than once, but still wasn’t ready when the highprince emerged at last from the palace doors. Natam saluted from behind them, handing Dalinar off to Kaladin, then jogged back to join Mart outside Brightness Navani’s door.
The highprince started down the switchbacks of the side route down from the Pinnacle to the stables below. Kaladin fell in beside him. Dalinar appeared deeply distracted by something.
He hasn’t ever announced anything about his fits during highstorms, Kaladin thought. Shouldn’t he say something?
They’d talked about visions, earlier. What was it Dalinar saw, or thought he saw?
“So, soldier,” Dalinar said as they walked. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”
Kaladin took a deep breath. “A year ago, I was a soldier in Amaram’s army.”
“So that’s where you learned,” Dalinar said. “I should have guessed. Amaram is the only general in Sadeas’s princedom with any real leadership ability.”
“Sir,” Kaladin said, stopping on the steps. “He betrayed me and my men.”
Dalinar stopped and turned to look at him. “A poor battle decision, then? Nobody is perfect, soldier. If he sent your men into a bad situation, I doubt he intended to do so.”
Just push through it, Kaladin told himself, noticing Syl sitting on a shalebark ridge just to the right. She nodded at him. He has to know. It was just . . .
He’d never spoken of this, not in full. Not even to Rock, Teft, and the others.
“It wasn’t that, sir,” Kaladin said, meeting Dalinar’s eyes by spherelight. “I know where Amaram got his Shardblade. I was there. I killed the Shardbearer carrying it.”
“That can’t be the case,” Dalinar said slowly. “If you had, you’d hold the Plate and Blade.”
“Amaram took it for himself, then slaughtered everyone who knew the truth,” Kaladin said. “Everyone but a lone soldier who, in his guilt, Amaram branded a slave and sold rather than murdering.”
Dalinar stood in silence. From this angle,
“Amaram is one of the best men I know,” Dalinar said. “His honor is spotless. I’ve never even known him to take undue advantage of an opponent in a duel, despite cases when it would have been acceptable.”
Kaladin didn’t respond. He’d believed that too, at one point.
“Do you have any proof?” Dalinar asked. “You understand that I can’t take one man’s word on something of this nature.”
“One darkeyed man’s word, you mean,” Kaladin said, gritting his teeth.
“It’s not the color of your eyes that is the problem,” Dalinar said, “but the severity of your accusation. The words you speak are dangerous. Do you have any proof, soldier?”
“There were others there when he took the Shards. Men of his personal guard did the actual killing at his command. And there was a stormwarden there. Middle-aged, with a peaked face. He wore a beard like an ardent.” He paused. “They were all complicit in the act, but maybe . . .”
Dalinar sighed softly in the night. “Have you spoken this accusation to anyone else?”
“No,” Kaladin said.
“Continue to hold your tongue. I’ll talk to Amaram. Thank you for telling me of this.”
“Sir,” Kaladin said, taking a step closer to Dalinar. “If you really believe in justice, you—”
“That’s enough for the moment, son,” Dalinar cut in, voice calm but cool. “You’ve had your say, unless you can offer me anything else by way of evidence.”
Kaladin forced down his immediate burst of anger. It was difficult.
“I appreciated your input when we were talking about my son’s duels earlier,” Dalinar said. “This is the second time you’ve added something important to one of our conferences, I believe.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But soldier,” Dalinar said, “you’re walking quite a line between helpfulness and insubordination in the way you treat me and mine. You have a chip on your shoulder the size of a boulder. I ignore it, because I know what was done to you, and I can see the soldier beneath. That’s the man I hired for this job.”
Kaladin ground his teeth, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now run along.”
“Sir, but I must escort—”
“I think I’ll return to the palace,” Dalinar said. “I don’t think I’ll get much sleep tonight, so I might want to pester the dowager with my thoughts. Her guards can watch over me. I’ll take one with me when I return to my camp.”
Kaladin let out a long breath. Then saluted. Fine, he thought, continuing down the dark, damp path. When he reached the bottom, Dalinar was still standing up above, now just a shadow. He seemed lost in thought.
Kaladin turned and walked back toward Dalinar’s warcamp. Syl flitted up and landed on his shoulder. “See,” she said. “He listened.”
“No he didn’t, Syl.”
“What? He replied and said—”
“I told him something he didn’t want to hear,” Kaladin said. “Even if he does look into it, he’ll find plenty of reasons to dismiss what I said. In the end, it will be my word against Amaram’s. Stormfather! I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You’d let it go, then?”
“Storms, no,” Kaladin said. “I’d find my own justice.”
“Oh . . .” Syl settled on his shoulder.
They walked for a long while, eventually approaching the warcamp.
“You’re not a Skybreaker, Kaladin,” Syl finally said. “You’re not supposed to be like this.”
“A what?” he asked, stepping over scuttling cremlings in the dark. They came out in force after a storm, when plants unfolded to lap up the water. “That was one of the orders, wasn’t it?” He did know some little of them. Everyone did, from the legends.
“Yes,” Syl said, voice soft. “I’m worried about you, Kaladin. I thought things would be better, once you were free from the bridges.”
“Things are better,” he said. “None of my men have been killed since we were freed.”
“But you . . .” She didn’t seem to know what else to say. “I thought you might be like the person you were before. I can remember a man on a field of battle . . . A man who fought . . .”
“That man is dead, Syl,” Kaladin said, waving to the guards as he entered the warcamp. Once again, light and motion surrounded him, people running quick errands, parshmen repairing buildings damaged by the storm. “During my time as a bridgeman, all I had to worry about was my men. Now things are different. I have to become someone. I just don’t know who yet.”
When he reached Bridge Four’s barrack, Rock was dishing out the evening stew. Far later than usual, but some of the men were on odd shifts. The men weren’t limited to stew any longer, but they still insisted on it for the evening meal. Kaladin took a bowl gratefully, nodding to Bisig, who was relaxing with several of the others and chatting about how they actually missed carrying their bridge. Kaladin had instilled in them a respect for it, much as a soldier respected his spear.
Stew. Bridges. They spoke so fondly of things that had once been emblems of their captivity. Kaladin took a bite, then stopped, noticing a new man leaning against a rock beside the fire.
“Do I know you?” he asked, pointing at the bald, muscular man. He had tan skin, like an Alethi, but he didn’t seem to have the right face shape. Herdazian?
“Oh, don’t mind Punio,” Lopen called from nearby. “He’s my cousin.”
“You had a cousin on the bridge crews?” Kaladin asked.
“Nah,” Lopen said. “He just heard my mother say we needed more guards, so he came to help. I got him a uniform and things.”
The newcomer, Punio, smiled and raised his spoon. “Bridge Four,” he said with a thick Herdazian accent.
“Are you a soldier?” Kaladin asked him.
“Yes,” the man said. “Brightlord Roion army. Not worry. I swore to Kholin instead, now. For my cousin.” He smiled affably.
“You can’t just leave your army, Punio,” Kaladin said, rubbing his forehead. “It’s called desertion.”
“Not for us,” Lopen called. “We’re Herdazian—nobody can tell us apart anyway.”
“Yes,” Punio said. “I leave for the homeland once a year. When I come back, nobody remembers me.” He shrugged. “This time, I come here.”
Kaladin sighed, but the man looked like he knew his way around a spear, and Kaladin did need more men. “Fine. Just pretend you were one of the bridgemen from the start, all right?”
“Bridge Four!” the man said enthusiastically.
Kaladin passed him and found his customary place by the fire to relax and think. He didn’t get that chance, however, as someone stepped up and squatted down before him. A man with marbled skin and a Bridge Four uniform.
“Shen?” Kaladin asked.
“Sir.”
Shen continued to stare at him.
“Is there something you wanted?” Kaladin asked.
“Am I really Bridge Four?” Shen asked.
“Of course you are.”
“Where is my spear?”
Kaladin looked Shen in the eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think that I am not Bridge Four,” Shen said, taking time to think with each word. “I am Bridge Four’s slave.”
It was like a punch to Kaladin’s gut. He’d hardly heard a dozen words out of the man during their time together, and now this?
The words smarted either way. Here was a man who, unlike the others, wasn’t welcome to leave and make his way in the world. Dalinar had freed the rest of Bridge Four—but a parshman . . . he’d be a slave no matter where he went or what he did.
What could Kaladin say? Storms.
“I appreciate your help when we were scavenging. I know it was difficult for you to see what we did down there sometimes.”
Shen waited, still squatting, listening. He regar
“I can’t start arming parshmen, Shen,” Kaladin said. “The lighteyes barely accept us as it is. If I gave you a spear, think of the storm it would cause.”
Shen nodded, face displaying no hint of his emotions. He stood up straight. “A slave I am, then.”
He withdrew.
Kaladin knocked his head back against the stone behind him, staring up at the sky. Storming man. He had a good life, for a parshman. Certainly more freedom than any other of his kind.
And were you satisfied with that? a voice inside him asked. Were you happy to be a well-treated slave? Or did you try to run, fight your way to freedom?
What a mess. He mulled over those thoughts, digging into his stew. He got two bites down before Natam—one of the men who’d been guarding at the palace—came stumbling into their camp, sweating, frantic, and red-cheeked from running.
“The king!” Natam said, puffing. “An assassin.”
Nightform predicting what will be,
The form of shadows, mind to foresee.
As the gods did leave, the nightform whispered.
A new storm will come, someday to break.
A new storm a new world to make.
A new storm a new path to take, the nightform listens.
—From the Listener Song of Secrets, 17th stanza
The king was fine.
One hand on the doorframe, Kaladin stood gasping from his run back to the palace. Inside, Elhokar, Dalinar, Navani, and both of Dalinar’s sons spoke together. Nobody was dead. Nobody was dead.
Stormfather, he thought, stepping into the room. For a moment, I felt like I did on the plateaus, watching my men charge the Parshendi. He hardly knew these people, but they were his duty. He hadn’t thought that his protectiveness could apply to lighteyes.
“Well, at least he ran here,” the king said, waving off the attentions of a woman who was trying to bandage a gash on his forehead. “You see, Idrin. This is what a good bodyguard looks like. I bet he wouldn’t have let this happen.”
The captain of the King’s Guard stood near the door, red-faced. He looked away, then stalked out into the hallway. Kaladin raised a hand to his head, bewildered. Comments like that one from the king were not going to help his men get along with Dalinar’s soldiers.