Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Like how you tell everyone you’re fine?” Adolin met his eyes. “This isn’t right, how she is. It hurts her. Over this last year I’ve seen her struggling, and I’ve seen hints that she’s sliding—if more slowly now—toward worse depths. She needs help, the kind I don’t know if I can give her.”

  Their table hummed. “You are right,” Pattern said. “She hides it, but things are still wrong.”

  “What does your surgeon’s knowledge say, Kal?” Adolin said. “What do I do?”

  “I don’t know,” Kaladin said. “We are trained in dealing with physical ailments, not in what to do when someone is sick in the mind, other than send them to the ardents.”

  “Seems wrong.”

  “Yeah, it does.” Kaladin frowned. He wasn’t totally certain what the ardents did with mentally ill patients.

  “Should I talk to them?” Pattern asked. “Ardents, for help?”

  “Maybe,” Kaladin said. “Wit might know some way to help too. He seems to know about all kinds of things like this.”

  “Surely you can give some advice, Kal,” Adolin said.

  “Let her know you care,” Kaladin said. “Listen to her. Be encouraging, but don’t try to force her to be happy. And don’t let her be alone, if you’re worried about her.…”

  He trailed off, then shot Adolin a glare.

  Adolin smirked. This hadn’t just been about Shallan. Damnation. Had he let Adolin outsmart him? Maybe he should get something stronger to drink.

  “I’m worried about you both,” Adolin said. “I’m going to find a way to help. Somehow.”

  “You’re a storming fool,” Kaladin said. “We need to get you a spren. Why hasn’t an order picked you up yet?”

  Adolin shrugged. “I’m not a good fit, I guess.”

  “It’s that sword of yours,” Kaladin said. “Shardbearers do better if they drop any old Shards. You need to get rid of yours.”

  “I’m not ‘getting rid’ of Maya.”

  “I know you’re attached to the sword,” Kaladin said. “But you’d have something better, if you became Radiant. Think about how it would feel to—”

  “I’m not getting rid of Maya,” Adolin said. “Leave it, bridgeboy.” The finality in his voice surprised Kaladin, but before he could push further, Jor showed up to introduce his new bride, Kryst, to Adolin.

  And, mark Kaladin as the fourth fool if Adolin didn’t immediately pull out a gift for the pair. Adolin hadn’t merely shown up at his favorite winehouse on the night of a wedding party, he’d come ready with a present.

  Veil eventually tired of her game and found her way back, more than a little tipsy. When Adolin joked about it, she made a wisecrack about being lucky she was Veil, “because Shallan really can’t hold her alcohol.”

  As the evening progressed, Syl returned to proclaim she wanted to take up gambling. Kaladin felt increasingly glad for what Adolin had done. Not because Kaladin felt better; he was still miserable. Yet the misery did lessen around others, and it required Kaladin to keep up a semblance. To pretend. It might be a front, but he’d found that sometimes the front worked even on himself.

  The balance lasted for a good two hours, until—as the wedding party started to wane—Rock stepped up. He must have spoken to Adolin and Veil earlier, as they slipped out of the booth as soon as they noticed him, leaving Rock and Kaladin to speak in private.

  The look on Rock’s face made Kaladin’s stomach churn. So, the time had arrived, had it? Of course it would happen today, of all days.

  “Lowlander,” Rock said. “My captain.”

  “Do we have to do this today, Rock?” Kaladin said. “I’m not at my best.”

  “Is what you said before,” Rock said. “And before that.”

  Kaladin braced himself, but nodded.

  “I have waited, as you asked, though these Shards from Amaram for my people gather dust in their box,” Rock said, his large hands pressed to the tabletop. “Was good suggestion. My family was tired from travel. Best to spend time, let them know my friends. And Cord, she wanted to train. Ha! She says Horneater traditions and Alethi traditions to be foolish. First Shardbearer among my people was not nuatoma, but young woman.”

  “It could have been you, Rock,” Kaladin said. “Either with those Shards you won, or as a Radiant with your own spren. We need you. I need you.”

  “You have had me. Now, I need me. It is time to return, my ula’makai. My captain.”

  “You just said your traditions were foolish.”

  “To my daughter.” Rock pointed to his heart. “Not to me, Kaladin. I lifted the bow.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “I made that choice because you are worth that sacrifice.” He reached across the table and rested his hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. “But it is no sacrifice unless I now go, as is right, to seek justice from my people. I would leave with your blessing. But I will leave either way.”

  “Alone?”

  “Ha! I would not have anyone to talk to! Song will go with me, and younger children. Cord and Gift, they wish to stay. Gift should not fight, but I fear he will. It is his choice. As this is my choice.”

  “Moash is out there, Rock. He might attack you. If you won’t fight … your family could be in danger.”

  This gave Rock pause, then he grinned. “Skar and Drehy both said they wanted to see my Peaks. Perhaps I will let them help fly my family, so we do not have to walk all across stupid lowlands. Then we will have protection, yes?”

  Kaladin nodded. It was the best he could do—send an escort. Rock seemed to wait for something … and Kaladin realized it might be an offer to go with them. To see the Horneater Peaks that Rock had so often bragged about. The large cook never could get his stories straight. Was the place a frigid wasteland or a lush and warm paradise?

  In any case … maybe Kaladin could go. Maybe he could fly off to adventure. Take Rock to his home, then stay—or simply run away, find a battle somewhere. Dalinar couldn’t stop him.

  No. Kaladin dismissed the thought immediately. Fleeing would be the action of a child. Plus, he couldn’t go with Rock. Not merely because of the temptation to flee, but because he doubted he could hold back if Rock gave himself up to justice. The Horneater had been deliberately quiet about what punishment his people might impose as a consequence for his actions, but Kaladin found their entire tradition of birth-order-based roles in life stupid. If Kaladin went, it would be to undermine his friend’s decision.

  “I give my blessing, Rock,” Kaladin said. “Both to you going, and to any who wish a short leave to accompany you. A Windrunner honor guard—you deserve that and more. And if you do encounter Moash…”

  “Ha,” Rock said, standing. “He should try to come for me. That will let me get close enough to put hands on his neck and squeeze.”

  “You don’t fight.”

  “That? Is not fighting. Is exterminating. Even cook can kill rat he finds in his grain.” He grinned, and Kaladin knew him well enough to realize it was a joke.

  Rock held out his arms for an embrace. “Come. Give me farewell.”

  Feeling like he was in a trance, Kaladin stood. “Will you return? If you can, after?”

  Rock shook his head. “This thing I have done here with all of you, he is the end. When we meet again, I suspect it shall not be in this world. This life.”

  Kaladin embraced his friend. One final, crushing Horneater hug. When they pulled apart, Rock was crying, but smiling. “You gave me back my life,” he said. “Thank you for that, Kaladin, bridgeleader. Do not be sad that now I choose to live that life.”

  “You go to imprisonment or worse.”

  “I go to the gods,” Rock said. He held up his finger. “There is one who lives here. One afah’liki. He is powerful god, but tricky. You should not have lost his flute.”

  “I … don’t think Wit is a god, Rock.”

  He tapped Kaladin’s head. “Airsick as always.” He grinned, bowing in a sweeping, deferential way Kaladin had never seen
from him before.

  Following that, Rock retreated to meet Song at the door, and left. Forever.

  Kaladin slumped into his seat. At least he wouldn’t be around to see Kaladin removed from his post. Rock could safely spend the rest of his days—short or long—pretending that his captain, his ula’makai, had remained strong all his days.

  Advanced fabrials are created using several different techniques. Conjoined fabrials require a careful division of the gemstone—and the spren inside. If performed correctly, the two halves will continue to behave as a single gemstone.

  Note that rubies and flamespren are traditional for this purpose— as they have proven the easiest to divide, and the quickest in response times. Other types of spren do not split as evenly, as easily, or at all.

  —Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175

  The morning after the wedding party, Shallan had to deal with Veil’s alcohol abuse. Again. Her head throbbed, and much of the late night was a blur in her mind. Storming woman.

  Fortunately, with some Stormlight and some herbs for headaches, she was feeling better by the time she finished meetings with her accountants and ministers. She was wife to a highprince, and though their lands in Alethkar were under enemy control, she and Adolin had a tenth of Urithiru to tend.

  Considering Shallan’s Radiant duties, they’d put several trustworthy women in control of finances—their husbands overseeing police and guards. The meeting mostly involved Radiant dispensing a few decisions and Shallan auditing the accounts. She’d have more work to do in the future, but for now things were in hand. Adolin said she was supposed to be taking some time off following the mission anyway.

  He was using that time to go ride horses. Once the scribes withdrew from her audience chamber, Shallan found herself alone—and for the first time in weeks, she didn’t have a role to play. She went through her letters and spanreed communications for a while, and eventually froze on a certain one that had arrived a day before she returned.

  The deal is set and arranged. The spren will come.

  She held this one for a moment, then burned it. Feeling a chill, she decided she didn’t want to be alone in her room any longer—so went to visit her brothers.

  Their quarters weren’t far from hers. Jushu was the only one there when she arrived, but he let her in and chatted with her about her mission. Then, as usually happened when she visited, Shallan found her way to the room’s hearth to draw. It felt … natural. Visiting her brothers didn’t necessarily mean talking to them the entire time.

  She nestled in the blankets beside the hearth, and for a blessed few minutes could imagine she was home in Jah Keved. In her fantasy, a fire crackled in the hearth. Nearby, her stepmother and her father chatted together with some visiting ardents—men and women of the church, which meant her father was being well-behaved.

  Shallan was allowed her sketchbook, as Father loved to show off her skill. Eyes closed, she drew the hearth—each brick engraved in her mind from the many times she’d drawn here. Good days. Warm days.

  “Hey, what’re you drawing?” Jushu asked. “Is it the hearth from home?”

  She smiled, and though the real Jushu had spoken, she incorporated him into her mental image. One of her four older brothers—because in this memory, she still had four. Jushu and Wikim were twins, though Jushu laughed more than Wikim did. Wikim was thoughtful. And Balat, he would sit in the chair nearby, pretending to be confident. Helaran was back, and Balat always puffed up when the eldest Davar brother was around.

  She opened her eyes and glanced at the little creationspren gathering around her, imitating mundane things. Her mother’s teakettle. The fireplace poker. Objects from her home in Jah Keved, not objects here—somehow they responded to her imaginings. One in particular made her feel cold. A necklace chain slinking across the ground.

  In truth, those days at home had been terrible times. Times of tears, and screams, and a life unraveling. It was also the last time she could remember her entire family together.

  Except … no, that wasn’t the entire family. This memory had happened after … after Shallan had killed her mother.

  Confront it! she thought at herself, angry. Don’t ignore it! Pattern moved across the floor of the room here in Urithiru, spinning among the dancing creationspren.

  She’d been only eleven years old. Seven years ago now—and if that timeline was correct, she must have begun seeing Pattern as a young child. Long before Jasnah had first encountered her spren. Shallan didn’t remember her first experiences with Pattern. Other than the distinct image of summoning her Shardblade to protect herself as a child, she had excised all such memories.

  No, they’re here, Veil thought. Deep within, Shallan.

  She couldn’t see those memories; didn’t want to see them. As she shied away from them, something dark shifted inside her, growing stronger. Formless. Shallan didn’t want to be the person who had done those things. That … that person could not … not be loved.…

  She gripped her pencil in tight fingers, the drawing half-finished in her lap. She’d buckled down and forced herself to read studies on other people with fragmented personas. She’d found only a handful of mentions in medical texts, though the accounts implied people like her were treated as freaks even by the ardents. Oddities to be locked away in the darkness for their own good, studied by academics who found the cases “novel in their bizarre nature” and “giving insight to the addled mind of the psychotic.” It was clear that going to such experts with her problems was not an option.

  Memory loss was apparently common to these cases, but the rest of what Shallan experienced seemed distinctly different. Importantly, she wasn’t experiencing continued memory loss. So maybe she was fine. She’d stabilized.

  Everything was getting better. Surely it was.

  “Storms,” Jushu said. “Shallan, that’s some … some weird stuff you’ve drawn.”

  She focused on the sketch—which she’d drawn poorly, since her eyes had been closed. It took her a second to notice that in the fireplace back home, she’d drawn burning souls. One might have mistaken them for flamespren, but for the fact that they looked so similar to her and her three brothers.…

  She snapped the sketchbook closed. She wasn’t back in Jah Keved. The hearth before her now had no flames; it was a depression with a heating fabrial resting in it, set into the wall of a Urithiru room.

  She had to live in the present. Jushu was no longer the plump, readily smiling boy from her memories. He was an overweight man with a full beard who had to be watched almost constantly, lest he steal something and try to pawn it for gambling money. They’d twice caught him trying to remove the heating fabrial.

  The way he smiled at her was a lie. Or maybe he was simply trying the best he could to remain upbeat. Almighty knew she understood that.

  “Nothing to say?” he asked. “No quip? You almost never make wisecracks anymore.”

  “You aren’t around enough for me to make sport of,” she said. “And no one else is quite as inspiring in their incompetence.”

  He smiled, but winced, and Shallan immediately felt ashamed. The joke was too accurate. She couldn’t act like when they’d been kids; then, their father had been a great unifying enemy, making their gallows humor a way to cope.

  She worried about them drifting apart. So she visited, almost defiantly.

  Jushu rose to get some food, and Shallan wanted to try another joke. She let him go instead. With a sigh, she rummaged in her satchel and brought out Ialai’s little notebook. She was piecing some of its meanings together. For instance, Ialai’s spies had caught members of the Ghostbloods talking about a new route through the Sea of Lost Lights. That was the place she and the others had traveled in Shadesmar a year back. Indeed, an entire three pages were filled with locations from the mysterious world of the spren.

  I saw a map, Ialai had written, in the things of the Ghostblood we captured—and shou
ld have thought to copy it, for it was lost in the fire. Here is what I remember.

  Shallan made some notes at the bottom of Ialai’s crude map. Whatever skills in politics the woman had possessed, they had been offset by a dearth of artistic ability. But perhaps Shallan could find some actual maps of Shadesmar and compare?

  The door opened, admitting Balat and a friend returning from their duties as guardsmen, though Shallan’s back was to the group. From the quiet voices, Eylita—Balat’s wife—had met them somewhere in the hallway, and was laughing at something Balat said. Over the last year, Shallan had grown surprisingly fond of the young woman. As a child, Shallan remembered being jealous of anyone who might take her brothers away—but as an adult, she saw better. Eylita was kind and genuine. And it took a special person to love a member of the Davar family.

  Shallan continued her study of the book, listening with half an ear as Balat and Eylita chatted with their friend. Eylita had encouraged Balat to find an occupation, though Shallan wasn’t certain becoming a guardsman was the best match for him. Balat had a tendency to enjoy the pain of other creatures a little too much.

  Balat, Eylita, and his friend made their way to the other room, where a cooling fabrial kept some meats and curries chilled for meals. Their life was growing so convenient, and it could be even more so. Shallan’s elevation to wife of a highprince could have awarded this home dozens of servants.

  Her brothers, however, had grown distrustful of servants—and they had grown accustomed to living without in the lean days. Besides, these fabrials did the work of a dozen people. No need for someone to chop or carry wood, no need for a fresh trip to the tower kitchens each day. Almost, Shallan feared, Navani’s artifabrians would make them all lazy.

  As if having servants hasn’t already made most lighteyes lazy, Shallan thought. Focus. Why are the Ghostbloods so interested in Shadesmar? Veil, any thoughts?

  Veil frowned, absently turned around to put her back to the wall, then tucked her foot through the strap of her satchel to prevent it from being pulled away. When she became Veil, the colors in the room … muted. The colors didn’t change, but her perception shifted. Shallan would have described those strata lines as rust colored, but to Veil they were just red.