Words of Radiance

Kaladin wanted to press further, but Teft was entitled to his privacy. They’re not bridgemen anymore. They don’t have to spend all of their time together. They’ll start having lives again.

He wanted to encourage that. Still, it was disturbing. If he didn’t know where they all were, how could he make sure they were all safe?

He turned around to regard Bridge Seventeen—a motley crew. Some had been slaves, purchased for the bridges. Others had been criminals, though the crimes punishable by bridge duty in Sadeas’s army could be practically anything. Falling into debt, insulting an officer, fighting.

“You,” Kaladin said to the men, “are Bridge Seventeen, under the command of Sergeant Pitt. You are not soldiers. You may wear the uniforms, but they don’t fit you yet. You’re playing dress-up. We’re going to change that.”

The men shuffled and looked about. Though Teft had been working with them and the other crews for weeks now, these didn’t yet see themselves as soldiers. As long as that was true, they’d hold those spears at awkward angles, look around lazily when being addressed, and shuffle in line.

“The chasms are mine,” Kaladin said. “I give you leave to practice here. Sergeant Pitt!”

“Yes, sir!” Pitt said, standing at attention.

“This is a sloppy mess of stormleavings you’ve got to work with, but I’ve seen worse.”

“I find that hard to believe, sir!”

“Believe it,” Kaladin said, looking over the men. “I was in Bridge Four. Lieutenant Teft, they’re yours. Make them sweat.”

“Aye, sir,” Teft said. He began to call out orders as Kaladin picked up his spear and made his way farther down the chasms. It would be slow going, getting all twenty crews into shape, but at least Teft had successfully trained the sergeants. Heralds send that the same training worked on the common men.

Kaladin wished he could explain, even to himself, why he felt so anxious about getting these men ready. He felt he was racing toward something. Though what, he didn’t know. That writing on the wall… Storms, it had him on edge. Thirty-seven days.

He passed Syl sitting on the frond of a frillbloom growing from the wall. It pulled closed at Kaladin’s approach. She didn’t notice, but remained sitting in the air.

“What is it that you want, Kaladin?” she asked.

“To keep my men alive,” he said immediately.

“No,” Syl said, “that was what you wanted.”

“You’re saying I don’t want them to be safe?”

She slid down onto his shoulder, moving like a stiff breeze had blown her. She crossed her legs, sitting ladylike, skirt rippling as he walked.

“In Bridge Four, you dedicated everything you had to saving them,” Syl said. “Well, they’re saved. You can’t go about protecting every one like a… um… Like a…”

“Father kurl watches over his eggs?”

“Exactly!” She paused. “What’s a kurl?”

“A crustacean,” Kaladin said, “about the size of a small axehound. Looks kind of like a cross between a crab and a tortoise.”

“Ooooo…” Syl said. “I wanna see one!”

“They don’t live out here.”

Kaladin walked with his eyes forward, so she poked him in the neck until he looked at her. Then she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “So you admit that your men are relatively safe,” she said. “That means you haven’t really answered my question. What do you want?”

He passed piles of bones and wood, overgrown with moss. On one pile, rotspren and lifespren spun about one another, little motes of red and green glowing around the vines that sprouted incongruously from the mass of death.

“I want to beat that assassin,” Kaladin said, surprised by how vehemently he felt it.

“Why?”

“Because it’s my job to protect Dalinar.”

Syl shook her head. “That’s not it.”

“What? You think you’ve gotten that good at reading human intentions?”

“Not all humans. Just you.”

Kaladin grunted, stepping carefully around the edge of a dark pool. He’d rather not spend the rest of the day with soaked boots. These new ones didn’t hold out the water as well as they should.

“Maybe,” he said, “I want to beat that assassin because this is all his fault. If he hadn’t killed Gavilar, Tien wouldn’t have been drafted, and I wouldn’t have followed him. Tien wouldn’t have died.”

“And you don’t think Roshone would have found another way of getting back at your father?”

Roshone was the citylord of Kaladin’s hometown back in Alethkar. Sending Tien into the army had been an act of petty vengeance on his part, a way to get back at Kaladin’s father for not being a good enough surgeon to save Roshone’s son.

“He probably would have done something else,” Kaladin admitted. “Still, that assassin deserves to die.”

He heard the others before he reached them, their voices echoing down the cavernous chasm bottom.