“So what is your story?”
Sigzil smirked. “I wondered if you were going to ask. The others mentioned that you have pried into their origins.”
“I like to know the men I lead.”
“And if some of us are murderers?” Sigzil asked quietly.
“Then I’m in good company,” Kaladin said. “If it was a lighteyes you killed, then I might buy you a drink.”
“Not a lighteyes,” Sigzil said. “And he is not dead.”
“Then you’re not a murderer,” Kaladin said.
“Not for want of trying.” Sigzil’s eyes grew distant. “I thought for certain I had succeeded. It was not the wisest choice I made. My master…” He trailed off.
“Is he the one you tried to kill?”
“No.”
Kaladin waited, but no more information was forthcoming. A scholar, he thought. Or at least a man of learning. There has to be a way to use this.
Find a way out of this death trap, Kaladin. Use what you have. There has to be a way.
“You were right about the bridgemen,” Sigzil said. “We are sent to die. It is the only reasonable explanation. There is a place in the world. Marabethia. Have you heard of it?”
“No,” Kaladin said.
“It is beside the sea, to the north, in the Selay lands. The people are known for their great fondness for debate. At each intersection in the city they have small pedestals on which a man can stand and proclaim his arguments. It is said that everyone in Marabethia carries a pouch with an overripe fruit just in case they pass a proclaimer with whom they disagree.”
Kaladin frowned. He hadn’t heard so many words from Sigzil in all the time they’d been bridgemen together.
“What you said earlier, on the plateau,” Sigzil continued, eyes forward, “it made me think of the Marabethians. You see, they have a curious way of treating condemned criminals. They dangle them over the seaside cliff near the city, down near the water at high tide, with a cut sliced in each cheek. There is a particular species of greatshell in the depths there. The creatures are known for their succulent flavor, and of course they have gemhearts. Not nearly as large as the ones in these chasmfiends, but still nice. So the criminals, they become bait. A criminal may demand execution instead, but they say if you hang there for a week and are not eaten, then you can go free.”
“And does that often happen?” Kaladin asked.
Sigzil shook his head. “Never. But the prisoners almost always take the chance. The Marabethians have a saying for someone who refuses to see the truth of a situation. ‘You have eyes of red and blue,’ they say. Red for the blood dripping. Blue for the water. It is said that these two things are all the prisoners see. Usually they are attacked within one day. And yet, most still wish to take that chance. They prefer the false hope.”
Eyes of red and blue, Kaladin thought, imagining the morbid picture.
“You do a good work,” Sigzil said, rising, picking up his bowl. “At first, I hated you for lying to the men. But I have come to see that a false hope makes them happy. What you do is like giving medicine to a sick man to ease his pain until he dies. Now these men can spend their last days in laughter. You are a healer indeed, Kaladin Stormblessed.”
Kaladin wanted to object, to say that it wasn’t a false hope, but he couldn’t. Not with his heart in his stomach. Not with what he knew.
A moment later, Rock burst from the barrack. “I feel like a true alil’tiki’i again!” he proclaimed, holding aloft his razor. “My friends, you cannot know what you have done! Someday, I will take you to the Peaks and show you the hospitality of kings!”
Despite all of his complaining, he hadn’t shaved his beard off completely. He had left long, red-blond sideburns, which curved down to his chin. The tip of the chin itself was shaved clean, as were his lips. On the tall, oval-faced man, the look was quite distinctive. “Ha!” Rock said, striding up to the fire. He grabbed the nearest men there and hugged them both to him, causing Bisig to nearly spill his stew. “I will make you all family for this. A peak dweller’s humaka’aban is his pride! I feel like a true man again. Here. This razor belongs not to me, but to us all. Any who wishes to use it must do so. Is my honor to share with you!”
The men laughed, and a few took him up on the offer. Kaladin wasn’t one of them. It just…didn’t seem to matter to him. He accepted the bowl of stew Dunny brought him, but didn’t eat. Sigzil chose not to sit back down beside him, retreating to the other side of the campfire.
Eyes of red and blue, Kaladin thought. I don’t know if that fits us. For him to have eyes of red and blue, Kaladin would have to believe that there was at least a small chance the bridge crew could survive. This night, Kaladin had trouble convincing himself.
He’d never been an optimist. He saw the world as it was, or he tried to. That was a problem, though, when the truth he saw was so terrible.
Oh, Stormfather, he thought, feeling the crushing weight of despair as he stared down at his bowl. I’m falling back to the wretch I was. I’m losing my grip on this, on myself.
He couldn’t carry the hopes of all the bridgemen.
He just wasn’t strong enough.
FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
Kaladin pushed past the shrieking Laral and stumbled into the surgery room. Even after years working with his father, the amount of blood in the room was shocking. It was as if someone had dumped out a bucket of bright red paint.
The scent of burned flesh hung in the air. Lirin worked frantically on Brightlord Rillir, Roshone’s son. An evil-looking, tusklike thing jutted from the young man’s abdomen, and his lower right leg was crushed. It hung by only a few tendons, splinters of bone poking out like reeds from the waters of a pond. Brightlord Roshone himself lay on the side table, groaning, eyes squeezed shut as he held his leg, which was pierced by another of the bony spears. Blood leaked from his improvised bandage, flowed down the side of the table, and dripped to the floor to mix with his son’s.
Kaladin stood in the doorway gaping. Laral continued to scream. She clutched the doorframe as several of Roshone’s guards tried to pull her away. Her wails were frantic. “Do something! Work harder! He can’t! He was where it happened and I don’t care and let me go!” The garbled phrases degenerated into screeches. The guards finally got her away.
“Kaladin!” his father snapped. “I need you!”
Shocked into motion, Kaladin entered the room, scrubbing his hands then gathering bandages from the cabinet, stepping in blood. He caught a glimpse of Rillir’s face; much of the skin on the right side had been scraped off. The eyelid was gone, the blue eye itself sliced open at the front, deflated like the skin of a grape pressed for wine.
Kaladin hastened to his father with the bandages. His mother appeared at the doorway a moment later, Tien behind her. She raised a hand to her mouth, then pulled Tien away. He stumbled, looking woozy. She returned in a moment without him.
“Water, Kaladin!” Lirin cried. “Hesina, fetch more. Quickly!”
His mother jumped to help, though she rarely assisted in the surgery anymore. Her hands shook as she grabbed one of the buckets and ran outside. Kaladin took the other bucket, which was full, to his father as Lirin eased the length of bone from the young lighteyes’s gut. Rillir’s remaining eye fluttered, head quivering.
“What is that?” Kaladin asked, pressing the bandage to the wound as his father tossed the strange object aside.
“Whitespine tusk,” his father said. “Water.”
Kaladin grabbed a sponge, dunked it in the bucket, and used it to squeeze water into Rillir’s gut wound. That washed away the blood, giving Lirin a good look at the damage. He quested with his fingers as Kaladin got some needle and thread ready. There was already a tourniquet on the leg. Full amputation would come later.
Lirin hesitated, fingers inside the gaping hole in Rillir’s belly. Kaladin cleaned the wound again. He looked up at his father, concerned.
Lirin pulled his fingers out and walked to Brightlord Roshone. “Bandages, Kaladin,” he said curtly.
Kaladin hurried over, though he shot a look over his shoulder at Rillir. The once-handsome young lighteyes trembled again, spasming. “Father…”
“Bandages!” Lirin said.
“What are you doing, surgeon?” Roshone bellowed. “What of my son?” Painspren swarmed around him.
“Your son is dead,” Lirin said, yanking the tusk free from Roshone’s leg.
The lighteyes bellowed in agony, though Kaladin couldn’t tell if that was because of the tusk or his son. Roshone clenched his jaw as Kaladin pressed the bandage down on his leg. Lirin dunked his hands in the water bucket, then quickly wiped them with knobweed sap to frighten off rotspren.
“My son is not dead,” Roshone growled. “I can see him moving! Tend to him, surgeon.”
“Kaladin, get the dazewater,” Lirin ordered gathering his sewing needle.
Kaladin hurried to the back of the room, steps splashing blood, and threw open the far cupboard. He took out a small flask of clear liquid.
“What are you doing?” Roshone bellowed, trying to sit up. “Look at my son! Almighty above, look at him!”
Kaladin turned hesitantly, pausing as he poured dazewater on a bandage. Rillir was spasming more violently.
“I work under three guidelines, Roshone,” Lirin said, forcibly pressing the lighteyes down against his table. “The guidelines every surgeon uses when choosing between two patients. If the wounds are equal, treat the youngest first.”
“Then see to my son!”
“If the wounds are not equally threatening,” Lirin continued, “treat the worst wound first.”
“As I’ve been telling you!”
“The third guideline supersedes them both, Roshone,” Lirin said, leaning down. “A surgeon must know when someone is beyond their ability to help. I’m sorry, Roshone. I would save him if I could, I promise you. But I cannot.”
“No!” Roshone said, struggling again.
“Kaladin! Quickly!” Lirin said.
Kaladin dashed over. He pressed the bandage of dazewater to Roshone’s chin and mouth, just below the nose, forcing the lighteyed man to breathe the fumes. Kaladin held his own breath, as he’d been trained.
Roshone bellowed and screamed, but the two of them held him down, and he was weak from blood loss. Soon, his bellows became softer. In seconds, he was speaking in gibberish and grinning to himself. Lirin turned back to the leg wound while Kaladin went to throw away the dazewater bandage.
“No. Administer it to Rillir.” His father didn’t look away from his work. “It’s the only mercy we can give him.”
Kaladin nodded and used the dazewater bandage on the wounded youth. Rillir’s breathing grew less frantic, though he didn’t seem conscious enough to notice the effects. Then Kaladin threw the bandage with the dazewater into the brazier; heat negated the effects. The white, puffy bandage wrinkled and browned in the fire, steam streaming off it as the edges burst into flame.