Kaladin started. “What?”
“People see in stories what they’re looking for, my young friend.” He reached behind his boulder, pulling out a pack and slinging it on his shoulder. “I have no answers for you. Most days, I feel I never have had any answers. I’ve come to your land to chase an old acquaintance, but I end up spending most of my time hiding from him instead.”
“You said… about me and responsibility…”
“Just an idle comment, nothing more.” He reached over, laying a hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. “My comments are often idle. I never can get them to do any solid work. Would that I could make my words carry stones. That would be something to see.” He held out the dark wood flute. “Here. I’ve carried her for longer than you’d believe, were I to tell you the truth. Take her for yourself.”
“But I don’t know how to play it!”
“Then learn,” Hoid said, pressing the flute into Kaladin’s hand. “When you can make the music sing back at you, then you’ve mastered it.” He began to walk away. “And take good care of that blasted apprentice of mine. He really should have let me know he was still alive. Perhaps he feared I’d come to rescue him again.”
“Apprentice?”
“Tell him I graduate him,” Hoid said, still walking. “He’s a full Worldsinger now. Don’t let him get killed. I spent far too long trying to force some sense into that brain of his.”
Sigzil, Kaladin thought. “I’ll give him the flute,” he called after Hoid.
“No you won’t,” Hoid said, turning, walking backward as he left. “It’s a gift to you, Kaladin Stormblessed. I expect you to be able to play it when next we meet!”
And with that, the storyteller turned and broke into a jog, heading off toward the warcamps. He didn’t move to go up into them, however. His shadowed figure turned to the south, as if he were intending to leave the camps. Where was he going?
Kaladin looked down at the flute in his hand. It was heavier than he had expected. What kind of wood was it? He rubbed its smooth length, thinking.
“I don’t like him,” Syl’s voice said suddenly, coming from behind. “He’s strange.”
Kaladin spun to find her on the boulder, sitting where Hoid had been a moment ago.
“Syl!” Kaladin said. “How long have you been here?”
She shrugged. “You were watching the story. I didn’t want to interrupt.” She sat with hands in her lap, looking uncomfortable.
“Syl—”
“I’m behind what is happening to you,” she said, voice soft. “I’m doing it.”
Kaladin frowned, stepping forward.
“It’s both of us,” she said. “But without me, nothing would be changing in you. I’m… taking something from you. And giving something in return. It’s the way it used to work, though I can’t remember how or when. I just know that it was.”
“I—”
“Hush,” she said. “I’m talking.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m willing to stop it, if you want,” she said. “But I would go back to being as I was before. That scares me. Floating on the wind, never remembering anything for longer than a few minutes. It’s because of this tie between us that I can think again, that I can remember what and who I am. If we end it, I lose that.”
She looked up at Kaladin, sorrowful.
He looked into those eyes, then took a deep breath. “Come,” he said, turning, walking back down the peninsula.
She flew over, becoming a ribbon of light, floating idly in the air beside his head. Soon they reached the place beneath the ridge leading to the warcamps. Kaladin turned north, toward Sadeas’s camp. The cremlings had retreated to their cracks and burrows, but many of the plants still continued to let their fronds float in the cool wind. When he passed, the grass pulled back in, looking like the fur of some black beast in the night, lit by Salas.
What responsibility are you avoiding….
He wasn’t avoiding responsibility. He took too much responsibility! Lirin had said it constantly, chastising Kaladin for feeling guilt over deaths he couldn’t have prevented.
Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn’t change anything. If a man was cursed, or if he believed he didn’t have to care, then he didn’t need to hurt when he failed. Those failures couldn’t have been prevented. Someone or something else had ordained them.
“If I’m not cursed,” Kaladin said softly, “then why do I live when others die?”
“Because of us,” Syl said. “This bond. It makes you stronger, Kaladin.”
“Then why can’t it make me strong enough to help the others?”
“I don’t know,” Syl said. “Maybe it can.”
If I get rid of it, I’ll go back to being normal. For what purpose… so I can die with the others?
He continued to walk in the darkness, passing lights above that made vague, faint shadows on the stones in front of him. The tendrils of fingermoss, clumped in bunches. Their shadows seemed arms.
He thought often about saving the bridgemen. And yet, as he considered, he realized that he often framed saving them in terms of saving himself. He told himself he wouldn’t let them die, because he knew what it would do to him if they did. When he lost men, the wretch threatened to take over because of how much Kaladin hated failing.
Was that it? Was that why he searched for reasons why he might be cursed? To explain his failure away? Kaladin began to walk more quickly.
He was doing something good in helping the bridgemen—but he also was doing something selfish. The powers had unsettled him because of the responsibility they represented.
He broke into a jog. Before long, he was sprinting.
But if it wasn’t about him—if he wasn’t helping the bridgemen because he loathed failure, or because he feared the pain of watching them die— then it would be about them. About Rock’s affable gibes, about Moash’s intensity, about Teft’s earnest gruff ness or Peet’s quiet dependability. What would he do to protect them? Give up his illusions? His excuses?
Seize whatever opportunity he could, no matter how it changed him? No matter how it unnerved him, or what burdens it represented?
He dashed up the incline to the lumberyard.
Bridge Four was making their evening stew, chatting and laughing. The nearly twenty wounded men from other crews sat eating gratefully. It was gratifying, how quickly they had lost their hollow-eyed expressions and begun laughing with the other men.
The smell of spicy Horneater stew was thick in the air. Kaladin slowed his jog, coming to a stop beside the bridgemen. Several looked concerned as they saw him, panting and sweating. Syl landed on his shoulder.
Kaladin sought out Teft. The aging bridgeman sat alone below the barrack’s eaves, staring down at the rock in front of him. He hadn’t noticed Kaladin yet. Kaladin gestured for the others to continue, then walked over to Teft. He squatted down before the man.
Teft looked up in surprise. “Kaladin?”
“What do you know?” Kaladin said quietly, intense. “And how do you know it?”
“I—” Teft said. “When I was a youth, my family belonged to a secret sect that awaited the return of the Radiants. I quit when I was just a youth. I thought it was nonsense.”
He was holding things back; Kaladin could tell from the hesitation in his voice.
Responsibility. “How much do you know about what I can do?”
“Not much,” Teft said. “Just legends and stories. Nobody really knows what the Radiants could do, lad.”
Kaladin met his eyes, then smiled. “Well, we’re going to find out.”
“ReShephir, the Midnight Mother, giving birth to abominations with her essence so dark, so terrible, so consuming. She is here! She watches me die!”
—Dated Shashabev, 1173, 8 seconds pre-death. Subject: a darkeyed dock-worker in his forties, father of three.
“I have a serious loathing of being wrong.” Adolin reclined in his chair, one hand resting leisurely on the crystal-topped table, the other swirling wine in his cup. Yellow wine. He wasn’t on duty today, so he could indulge just a tad.
Wind ruffled his hair; he was sitting with a group of other young lighteyes at the outdoor tables of an Outer Market wineshop. The Outer Market was a collection of buildings that had grown up near the king’s palace, outside the warcamps. An eclectic mix of people passed on the street below their terraced seating.
“I should think that everyone shares your dislike, Adolin,” Jakamav said, leaning with both elbows on the table. He was a sturdy man, a lighteyes of the third dahn from Highprince Roion’s camp. “Who likes being wrong?”
“I’ve known a number of people who prefer it,” Adolin said thoughtfully. “Of course, they don’t admit that fact. But what else could one presume from the frequency of their error?”
Inkima—Jakamav’s accompaniment for the afternoon—gave a tinkling laugh. She was a plump thing with light yellow eyes who dyed her hair black. She wore a red dress. The color did not look good on her.
Danlan was also there, of course. She sat on a chair beside Adolin, keeping proper distance, though she’d occasionally touch his arm with her freehand. Her wine was violet. She did like her wine, though she seemed to match it to her outfits. A curious trait. Adolin smiled. She looked extremely fetching, with that long neck and graceful build wrapped in a sleek dress. She didn’t dye her hair, though it was mostly auburn. There was nothing wrong with light hair. In fact, why was it that they all were so fond of dark hair, when light eyes were the ideal?
Stop it, Adolin told himself. You’ll end up brooding as much as Father.
The other two—Toral and his companion Eshava—were both lighteyes from Highprince Aladar’s camp. House Kholin was currently out of favor, but Adolin had acquaintances or friends in nearly all of the warcamps.
“Wrongness can be amusing,” Toral said. “It keeps life interesting. If we were all right all the time, where would that leave us?”
“My dear,” his companion said. “Didn’t you once claim to me that you were nearly always right?”
“Yes,” Toral said. “And so if everyone were like me, who would I make sport of? I’d dread being made so mundane by everyone else’s competence.”
Adolin smiled, taking a drink of his wine. He had a formal duel in the arena today, and he’d found that a cup of yellow beforehand helped him relax. “Well, you needn’t worry about me being right too often, Toral. I was sure Sadeas would move against my father. It doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Positioning, perhaps?” Toral said. He was a keen fellow, known for his refined sense of taste. Adolin always wanted him along when trying wines. “He wants to look strong.”
“He was strong,” Adolin said. “He gains no more by not moving against us.”