Words of Radiance

The ardents nodded and wrote, via spanreed, to the workers below. Navani noticed with annoyance that a figure in blue Shardplate had wandered onto the engineering grounds, helm under arm, exposing a messy mop of blond hair speckled black. The guards were supposed to have kept people out, but such prohibitions would not apply to the highprince’s heir. Well, Adolin would know to keep his distance. She hoped.

She turned back to the wooden tower. Ardents at the top had activated the fabrials there, and now climbed down the ladders at the sides, unhooking latches as they went. Once they were down, workers carefully pulled the sides away on their rollers. Those were the only things that had been holding the top of the tower in place. Without them, it should fall.

The top of the platform, however, remained in place—hanging impossibly in the air. Navani’s breath caught. The only thing connecting it to the ground was a set of two pulleys and ropes, but those offered no support. That square, thick section of wood now hung in the air completely unsupported.

The ardents around her murmured in excitement. Now for the real test. Navani waved, and the men below worked the cranks on the pulleys, pulling down the floating section of wood. The archer parapet nearby shook, wobbled, then began to rise into the air in a motion exactly opposite to the square’s.

“It’s working!” Rushu exclaimed.

“I don’t like that wobble,” said Falilar. The ancient engineer scratched at his ardent’s beard. “That ascent should be smoother.”

“It’s not falling,” Navani said. “I’ll settle for that.”

“Winds willing, I’d have been up there,” Rushu said, raising a spyglass. “I can’t see even a sparkle from the gemstones. What if they’re cracking?”

“Then we’ll find out eventually,” Navani said, though in truth she wouldn’t have minded being on top of the rising parapet herself. Dalinar would have had a heart attack if he’d learned of her doing such a thing. The man was a dear, but he was a touch overprotective. In the way a highstorm was a touch windy.

The parapet wobbled its way upward. It acted as if it were being hoisted, though it had no support at all. Finally, it peaked. The square of wood that had been hanging in the air before was now down against the ground and tied in place. The round parapet hung in the air instead, slightly off-kilter.

It did not fall.

Adolin clomped up the steps to her viewing platform, rattling and shaking the entire thing with that Shardplate of his. By the time he reached her, the other scholars were chattering among themselves and furiously making notes. Logicspren, in the shape of tiny stormclouds, rose around them.

It had worked. Finally

.

“Hey,” Adolin said. “Is that platform flying?”

“And you only just now noticed this, dear?” Navani asked.

He scratched his head. “I’ve been distracted, Aunt. Huh. That… That’s really odd.” He seemed troubled.

“What?” Navani asked him.

“It’s, it’s like…”

Him. The assassin, who had—according to both Adolin and Dalinar—somehow manipulated gravityspren.

Navani looked to the scholars. “Why don’t you all go down and have them lower the platform? You can inspect the gemstones and see if any broke.”

The others heard it as a dismissal and went down the steps in an excited bunch, though Rushu—dear Rushu—remained. “Oh!” the woman said. “It would be better to watch from up here, in case—”

“I will speak with my nephew. Alone, please.” Sometimes, working with scholars, you had to be a touch blunt.

Rushu finally blushed, then bobbed a bow and hastened away. Adolin stepped up to the railing. It was difficult to not feel dwarfed by a man wearing Plate, and when he reached out to hold the railing, she thought she could hear the wood groan from the strength of that grip. He could have snapped that rail without a second thought.

I will figure out how to make more of that, she thought. While she was no warrior, there might be things she could do to protect her family. The more she understood the secrets of technology and the power of spren locked within gemstones, the closer she grew to finding what she sought.

Adolin was staring at her hand. Oh, so he’d finally noticed that, had he?

“Aunt?” he said, voice strained. “A glove?”

“Far more practical,” she said, holding up her safehand and wiggling the fingers. “Oh, don’t look like that. Darkeyed women do it all the time.”

“You’re not darkeyed.”

“I’m the dowager queen,” Navani said. “Nobody cares what in Damnation I do. I could prance around completely nude, and they’d all just shake their heads and talk about how eccentric I am.”

Adolin sighed, but let the matter drop, instead nodding toward the platform. “How did you do it?”

“Conjoined fabrials,” Navani said. “The trick was finding a way to overcome the structural weaknesses of the gemstones, which succumb easily to the multiplied strain of simultaneous infusion drain and physical stress. We…”