“Sure. But what if he just goes to more important men? Tells them to execute you?”
Kaladin grimaced. “Then there’s nothing I can do. But I don’t think he’d do that. It would make him look weak before his superiors.”
Besides, beheading was reserved for bridgemen who wouldn’t run at the Parshendi. So long as he ran, he wouldn’t be executed. In fact, the army leaders seemed hesitant to do much to punish bridgemen at all. One man had committed murder while Kaladin had been a bridgeman, and they’d strung the fool up in a highstorm. But other than that, all Kaladin had seen was a few men get their wages garnished for brawling, and a couple get whipped for being too slow during the early part of a bridge run.
Minimal punishments. The leaders of this army understood. The lives of bridgemen were as close to hopeless as possible; shove them down too much further, and the bridgemen might just stop caring and let themselves be killed.
Unfortunately, that also meant that there wouldn’t be much Kaladin could do to punish his own crew, even if he’d had that authority. He had to motivate them in another way. He crossed the lumberyard to where the carpenters were constructing new bridges. After some searching, Kaladin found what he wanted—a thick plank waiting to be fitted into a new portable bridge. A handhold for a bridgeman had been affixed to one side.
“Can I borrow this?” Kaladin asked a passing carpenter.
The man raised a hand to scratch a sawdust-powdered head. “Borrow it?”
“I’ll stay right here in the lumberyard,” Kaladin explained, lifting the board and putting it on his shoulder. It was heavier than he’d expected, and he was thankful for the padded leather vest.
“We’ll need it eventually…” the carpenter said, but didn’t offer enough of an objection to stop Kaladin from walking away with the plank.
He chose a level stretch of stone directly in front of the barracks. Then he began to trot from one end of the lumberyard to the other, carrying the board on his shoulder, feeling the heat of the rising sun on his skin. He went back and forth, back and forth. He practiced running, walking, and jogging. He practiced carrying the plank on his shoulder, then carrying it up high, arms stretched out.
He worked himself ragged. In fact, he felt close to collapsing several times, but every time he did, he found a reserve of strength from somewhere. So he kept moving, teeth gritted against the pain and fatigue, counting his steps to focus. The apprentice carpenter he’d spoken to brought a supervisor over. That supervisor scratched his head beneath his cap, watching Kaladin. Finally, he shrugged, and the two of them withdrew.
Before long, he drew a small crowd. Workers in the lumberyard, some soldiers, and a large number of bridgemen. Some from the other bridge crews called gibes, but the members of Bridge Four were more withdrawn. Many ignored him. Others—grizzled Teft, youthful-faced Dunny, several more—stood watching in a line, as if they couldn’t believe what he was doing.
Those stares—stunned and hostile though they were—were part of what kept Kaladin going. He also ran to work out his frustration, that boiling, churning pot of anger within. Anger at himself for failing Tien. Anger at the Almighty for creating a world where some dined in luxury while others died carrying bridges.
It felt surprisingly good to wear himself down in a way he chose. He felt as he had those first few months after Tien’s death, training himself on the spear to forget. When the noon bells rang—calling the soldiers to lunch—Kaladin finally stopped and set the large plank down on the ground. He rolled his shoulder. He’d been running for hours. Where had he found the strength?
He jogged over to the carpenter’s station, dripping sweat to the stones, and took a long drink from the water barrel. The carpenters usually chased off bridgemen who tried that, but none said a word as Kaladin slurped down two full ladles of metallic rainwater. He shook the ladle free and nodded to a pair of apprentices, then jogged back to where he’d left the plank.
Rock—the large, tan-skinned Horneater—was hefting it, frowning.
Teft noticed Kaladin, then nodded to Rock. “He bet a few of us a chip each that you’d used a lightweight board to impress us.”
If they could have felt his exhaustion, they wouldn’t have been so skeptical. He forced himself to take the plank from Rock. The large man let it go with a bewildered look, watching as Kaladin ran the plank back to where he’d found it. He waved his thanks to the apprentice, then trotted back to the small cluster of bridgemen. Rock was reluctantly paying out chips on his bet.
“You’re dismissed for lunch,” Kaladin told them. “We have afternoon bridge duty, so be back here in an hour. Assemble at the mess hall at last bell before sundown. Our camp chore today is cleaning up after supper. Last one to arrive has to do the pots.”
They gave him bemused expressions as he trotted away from the lumberyard. Two streets away, he ducked into an alleyway and leaned against the wall. Then, wheezing, he sank to the ground and stretched out.
He felt as if he’d strained every muscle in his body. His legs burned, and when he tried to make his hand into a fist, the fingers were too weak to fully comply. He breathed in and out in deep gasps, coughing. A passing soldier peeked in, but when he saw the bridgeman’s outfit, he left without a word.
Eventually, Kaladin felt a light touch on his chest. He opened his eyes and found Syl lying prone in the air, face toward his. Her feet were toward the wall, but her posture—indeed, the way her dress hung—made it seem as if she were standing upright, not face toward the ground.
“Kaladin,” she said, “I have something to tell you.”
He closed his eyes again.
“Kaladin, this is important!” He felt a slight jolt of energy on his eyelid. It was a very strange sensation. He grumbled, opening his eyes and forcing himself to sit. She walked in the air, as if circumnavigating an invisible sphere, until she was standing up in the right direction.
“I have decided,” Syl declared, “that I’m glad you kept your word to Gaz, even if he is a disgusting person.”
It took Kaladin a moment to realize what she was talking about. “The spheres?”
She nodded. “I thought you might break your word, but I’m glad you didn’t.”
“All right. Well, thank you for telling me, I guess.”
“Kaladin,” she said petulantly, making fists at her side. “This is important.”
“I…” He trailed off, then rested his head back against the wall. “Syl, I can barely breathe, let alone think. Please. Just tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I know what a lie is,” she said, moving over and sitting on his knee. “A few weeks ago, I didn’t even understand the concept of lying. But now I’m happy that you didn’t lie. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“I’m changing.” She shivered—it must have been an intentional action, for her entire figure fuzzed for a moment. “I know things I didn’t just a few days ago. It feels so strange.”
“Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I mean, the more you understand, the better. Right?”
She looked down. “When I found you near the chasm after the highstorm yesterday,” she whispered, “you were going to kill yourself, weren’t you?”
Kaladin didn’t respond. Yesterday. That was an eternity ago.
“I gave you a leaf,” she said. “A poisonous leaf. You could have used it to kill yourself or someone else. That’s what you were probably planning to use it for in the first place, back in the wagons.” She looked back up into his eyes, and her tiny voice seemed terrified. “Today, I know what death is. Why do I know what death is, Kaladin?”
Kaladin frowned. “You’ve always been odd, for a spren. Even from the start.”
“From the very start?”
He hesitated, thinking back. No, the first few times she’d come, she’d acted like any other windspren. Playing pranks on him, sticking his shoe to the floor, then hiding. Even when she’d persisted with him during the months of his slavery, she’d acted mostly like any other spren. Losing interest in things quickly, flitting around.
“Yesterday, I didn’t know what death was,” she said. “Today I do. Months ago, I didn’t know I was acting oddly for a spren, but I grew to realize that I was. How do I even know how a spren is supposed to act?” She shrank down, looking smaller. “What’s happening to me? What am I?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know what I am either. A bridgeman? A surgeon? A soldier? A slave? Those are all just labels. Inside, I’m me. A very different me than I was a year ago, but I can’t worry about that, so I just keep moving and hope my feet take me where I need to go.”
“You aren’t angry at me for bringing you that leaf?”
“Syl, if you hadn’t interrupted me, I’d have stepped off into the chasm. That leaf was what I needed. It was the right thing, somehow.”
She smiled, and watched as Kaladin began to stretch. Once he finished, he stood and stepped out onto the street again, mostly recovered from his exhaustion. She zipped into the air and rested on his shoulder, sitting with her arms back and her feet hanging down in front, like a girl on the side of a cliff. “I’m glad you’re not angry. Though I do think that you’re to blame for what’s happening to me. Before I met you, I never had to think about death or lying.”
“That’s how I am,” he said dryly. “Bringing death and lies wherever I go. Me and the Nightwatcher.”
She frowned.
“That was—” he began.
“Yes,” she said. “That was sarcasm.” She cocked her head. “I know what sarcasm is.” Then she smiled deviously. “I know what sarcasm is!”
Stormfather, Kaladin thought, looking into those gleeful little eyes. That strikes me as ominous.
“So, wait,” he said. “This sort of thing has never happened to you before?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything farther back than about a year ago, when I first saw you.”
“Really?”
“That’s not odd,” Syl said, shrugging translucent shoulders. “Most spren don’t have long memories.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why I know that.”
“Well, maybe this is normal. You could have gone through this cycle before, but you’ve just forgotten it.”
“That’s not very comforting. I don’t like the idea of forgetting.”
“But don’t death and lying make you uncomfortable?”
“They do. But, if I were to lose these memories…” She glanced into the air, and Kaladin traced her movements, noting a pair of windspren darting through the sky on a gusting breeze, uncaring and free.
“Scared to go onward,” Kaladin said, “but terrified to go back to what you were.”
She nodded.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “Come on. I need to eat, and there are some things I want to pick up after lunch.”