Rhythm of War (9781429952040)
Page 41
“Yes,” Adolin replied. “I brought all three. You think I’d bring seven different swords but forget your brushes?”
The horse made a kind of clicking sound with his mouth, something Sureblood had never done. Adolin wasn’t certain how to interpret it. Mirth?
“I’ll give you the fruit,” Adolin promised, continuing to brush, “but only after…”
He trailed off as he noticed Maya standing nearby. He’d settled her near the others earlier, but she’d apparently decided not to stay there.
Adolin continued brushing. She watched for a time. Then she tentatively held out her palm. Adolin handed her the brush and she stared at it. She seemed so baffled that he figured he must have misunderstood what she wanted.
Then she started brushing the horse as he had. From the top down the side, with the same exact motion Adolin had used.
Adolin chuckled. “You have to brush more than one section, Maya, or he’ll get annoyed.”
He showed her, brushing along Gallant’s flank in the direction of the hair growth. Long, slow, careful strokes. She soon got the hang of it, and Adolin stepped back to get a drink. He found two of the peakspren sailors watching him.
“Your deadeye,” one said, scratching at his stone head with a sound of rock on rock. “I’ve never seen one trained so well.”
“She’s not trained,” Adolin said. “She wanted to help, so I showed her how.”
One sailor looked to the other, then shook his head. They said something in a language Adolin didn’t understand, but they seemed unnerved by Maya, giving her a wide berth as they continued about their duties.
Adolin sipped from his canteen, watching as the pillar retreated. He could barely make out the glow of the tower city far above, dwindling as they moved.
I’ll do my part, Father, Adolin thought. I’ll give them your letters, but I’ll do more. I’ll find a way to persuade them to help us. And I’ll do it my way.
The trick, of course, was to discover what his way was in the first place.
* * *
Shallan knelt before her trunk as everyone else unpacked and Adolin brushed his horse. She tried not to panic. She failed. So she settled for seeming like she wasn’t panicking.
While packing her things, she’d taken a Memory of Mraize’s communication cube, packed away in her trunk. With her uncanny abilities, she could picture it precisely where she’d placed it. She’d wanted to be extra careful, but she hadn’t thought the Memory would be relevant so quickly.
Because the cube had been moved. Not just shifted in among her things; it had been picked up and rotated. The face that had been up when she’d packed had a few faint scratches on it. That face was now to the side. An imperceptible difference; someone without her abilities would never have noticed.
Someone had moved the cube. Somehow, between packing and arriving on the barge, someone had rifled through her things and used the cube.
She could come to only one conclusion. The spy was indeed on this mission—and they were using this very device to report to Mraize.
Much as you indicate, there is a division among the other Shards I would not have anticipated.
Kaladin pulled the bandage snug on the boy’s ankle. “Next time, Adin,” he said, “take the steps one at a time.”
The youth nodded solemnly. He was perhaps twelve or thirteen. “One at a time. Until I get my spren.”
“Oh? Your spren?”
“I’m gonna be a Windrunner,” the boy said. “Then I’ll float down steps.”
“That’s what it means to be a Radiant, is it?” Kaladin asked, standing. “Floating.”
“That, and you can stick your friends to the walls if they argue with you,” he said. “A Windrunner told me.”
“Let me guess. Short fellow. Herdazian. Big smile?”
“Yup.”
“Well, until then,” Kaladin said, “I need you to keep your weight off that foot.” He looked to the father, standing nearby, his trousers marked with potter’s crem. “That means a crutch if he has to walk somewhere. Come back and see me in a week; his progress will let us know for certain it didn’t fracture.”
The father helped his son with a thankful murmur. As they left, Kaladin dutifully washed his hands in the exam room’s basin. He’d picked up his father’s mannerisms in that regard. Wisdom of the Heralds, it was said. He’d met some of those Heralds now, and they didn’t seem so wise to him, but whatever.
It felt strange to be wearing a white surgeon’s apron. Lirin had always wanted one of these; he’d said white clothing made people calm. The traveling butchers or barbers—men who often did surgery or tooth work in small towns—tended to be dirty and bloody. Seeing a surgeon wearing white instantly proclaimed, “This isn’t that sort of place.”
He sent Hawin—the town girl who was reading for him today—to fetch the next patient. He dried his hands. Then, standing in the center of the small exam room, he released a long breath.
“Are you happy?” Syl asked, flitting into the room from the one next door, where she’d been watching his father work.
“I’m not sure,” Kaladin said. “I worry about the rest of them out there, going into battle without me. But it’s good to do something, Syl. Something that helps, but doesn’t wring me out like an old washrag.”
Near the end of his time as a Windrunner, he’d found even simple sparring to be emotionally taxing. Daily activities, like assigning duties, had required so much effort that they’d left him with a pounding headache. He couldn’t explain why.
This work—rememorizing medical texts, seeing patients, dealing with difficult parents or lighteyes—should have been worse. It wasn’t. Busy, but not overwhelmed, Kaladin never saw anyone who was hurt too badly—those went for Regrowth. So while there was tension to his work, there wasn’t immediacy.
Was he happy?
He wasn’t sad.
For now, he’d accept “not sad.”
Hawin led in the next patient, then excused herself to run to the privy. This patient was an older man with a patchwork beard and a friendly face. Kaladin recognized him; Mil never had been able to grow that beard out like he wanted. While the clinic drew mostly from the people who had lived in Hearthstone, his little town had sprouted significantly in the last few years. Most of the refugees hadn’t been Herdazian, but Alethi from villages closer to the border. So while Kaladin felt he should know all of his patients, many were strangers.
It was good to see Mil again. He’d always been less mean to Kaladin’s family than some others. The old man was complaining of persistent headaches. And indeed, the same painspren from earlier in the day wiggled back up from the floor. After ruling out the easy causes—dehydration, lack of sleep—Kaladin had him describe where the pain generally originated from, and whether the headaches affected his vision.
“Hawin,” Kaladin said, “read me the list of migraine prodromes please. You’ll find them at the divider between head and neck…” He trailed off, remembering his reader had left.
A moment later though, a different voice said, “Um, prodromes. Right … Uh, just a sec.”
He looked toward the reading desk to find Syl laboriously lifting pages and flipping them over. She didn’t have much strength in the Physical Realm, but ignoring gravity—walking up into the air to tow the page by its corner—helped, and the book wasn’t far from the appropriate page.
She found it and landed on the large tome, kneeling to read the words one at a time. “Neck stiffness,” she said. “Um … conster … cons—”
“Constipation,” Kaladin said.
She giggled, then kept reading. “Mood changes, cravings, thirst, um, I think that says frequent need to pee. Storms. Stuff goes out of you, and it’s bad. Stuff doesn’t go out of you and it’s bad. How do you live like this?”
He ignored that, chatting with Mil about his pains. He suggested visiting the Edgedancers for Regrowth—but Mil’s pains had been around for months, so it was unlikely that they could do anythi
ng.
Fortunately, there were medicines that could help, and—with Jasnah capable of Soulcasting a wide range of substances—they had access to rare medications. Though Kaladin and the queen didn’t often see eye to eye, it said a great deal about her that she was willing to take time to make medicine.
Kaladin gave Mil a requisition chit to get some from the medical quartermaster, and told him to spend a month recording each and every headache, with signs he’d noticed of it coming on. It wasn’t much, but Mil grinned ear to ear. Often people just wanted to know they weren’t fools or weaklings for coming in. They wanted to know their pains were real, and that there was something—even something small—they could do about the problem. Simple affirmation could be worth more than medication.
He waved farewell to Mil, grateful that—despite several lifetimes’ worth of tragedy squeezed into the years between then and now—much of his surgeon’s training remained. He walked over to Syl, who had settled down with her legs over the side of the book. Today she was wearing something akin to what his mother often wore: an unassuming skirt and a buttoned blouse, faintly Thaylen in style.
“So,” he said, “when did you learn to read?”
“Last week.”
“You learned to read in a week.”
“It’s not as hard as it seemed at first. I figured you’d need someone to read for you, as a surgeon. I think I might be able to become surgery tools too. I mean, not a scalpel since, you know, I don’t actually cut flesh. But your father was using a little hammer the other day…”
“For testing reflexes,” Kaladin said. “It’s best with a cloth wrap on the front, or rubber. Can you become things other than metal? I’d love to not have to share the stethoscope with Father.” Another expensive tool that Taravangian’s surgeons had provided for them upon request.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like … I feel like there is a lot to explore with our powers, Kaladin. Things that in the past maybe they didn’t have the time or resources to think about. Because they were always fighting.”
He nodded, thoughtful. Syl got a far-off look in her eyes, and when she noticed him watching, she plastered a smile on her face. That struck him as fake; she seemed to be trying a little too hard today. Or maybe he was projecting.
He stretched, then stepped out and peeked into the waiting room. Only a handful of people remained today. So Kaladin had time for a short break.
He walked along the hallway into the family room, which had a door out onto the communal balcony. As he’d hoped when they’d come here, that wide balcony now served as a general-purpose meeting place for the people of Hearthstone, like a town square. Laundry flapped on lines to one side. Children ran and played. People sat and chatted.
Kaladin trailed out to the edge of the balcony. Below he could see Dalinar’s armies gathering for the trip to Azir. He forced himself to look and to acknowledge he wasn’t going with them.
A figure in blue streaked by, soaring through the air. Leyten must have seen Kaladin, because a short time later a larger group of Windrunners hovered up near the balcony. Most everyone stopped their activities, children running to the balcony’s edge.
As one, the Windrunners saluted. The Bridge Four salute; though most had never been in Bridge Four and didn’t use the salute to one another, they always gave it to him and other members of the original Windrunners.
He returned the Bridge Four salute to them all, tapping his wrists together.
The fifty-odd Windrunners turned and streaked back down. Below, light flashed in a circle around the Oathgate, making an entire battalion of troops vanish. They’d learned that how much Stormlight was expended for a transfer depended on the Radiant operating the device—the more experienced the Radiant, the less Stormlight required. Jasnah was probably operating today; she could do things with her powers that were well beyond the rest of them. Though she didn’t show it off, she’d plainly sworn the Fourth Ideal. The one Kaladin would never reach.
“They’re all going away,” Syl said softly, landing on his shoulder.
“Not all of them,” Kaladin said. “Around twenty will stay to guard the tower.”
“But none of our friends.”
It was true. All the former members of Bridge Four were going with Dalinar. Maybe Rlain would stay behind, and work on the fields? Though he often chose to go with the Windrunner support staff, to help out there, with Dabbid and a few squire hopefuls.
Watching them all fly off, it was impossible not to feel so very alone.
Remember the peace you have felt this last week, Kaladin thought. Don’t be sorry for yourself. Be excited for the new path forward you’re making.
The thoughts didn’t work; it still hurt to see them all leave. Hurt to know Shallan and Adolin had gone off to Shadesmar without him. He had his parents and his new brother, and he appreciated that. But the men and women of Bridge Four had become equally important to him.
That part of his life was over. Best not to dwell on it. Kaladin returned to the exam room. Hawin was waiting, so he sent her for the next patient.
He settled into a rhythm, seeing patients, occasionally sticking his head into the next exam room to ask his father for advice on a diagnosis or remedy. He dealt with an unusual number of coughs. Apparently there was something moving through the tower—a sickness that left people with mucus in their lungs and an overall feeling of aches. He’d never encountered anything like it. His father had been tracking it though, and said that Kharbranthian surgeons reported it wasn’t deadly. A plague from the West that, when all was said and done, didn’t live up to its reputation. The sickness barely attracted any plaguespren—though there didn’t seem to be many around the tower to attract, so that would be part of it.
He recommended lots of rest, fluids, and handwashing. The day stretched long, and the patients slowed to a trickle. One woman stood out to him. She was a refugee, and while getting treated for her coughs, she asked if Kaladin had seen her uncle. She’d heard of someone matching his description arriving in Hearthstone immediately before the evacuation.
Kaladin had her wait and went looking for his father. Lirin’s exam room was empty, but Hesina’s voice rose from the waiting room, so Kaladin walked out to ask her about the refugee’s uncle.
Right before he arrived, Kaladin heard a familiar voice that made him freeze in place.
“—always been like this,” the gruff voice said. “Been clean for … what, six months now? Storm me. Six months. That’s something. Can’t stand the battle though, not any longer. It’s gotten inside me, see. Itches at my brain.”
Kaladin burst into the waiting room to find Teft chatting with his mother. The older man was out of uniform, wearing common trousers and shirt, his grey beard trimmed. Not as short as an ardent’s beard, but not distinctively long either. There was no sign of his spren, Phendorana, though she generally preferred to hide from sight.
“Teft?” Kaladin said. “You were mobilized. Why aren’t you with everyone else?”
“Can’t go,” Teft said. “Too much wrong with my brain. Went and spoke to the Blackthorn, and he said it would be a good idea for me to step down.”
“You … Teft, you’re doing better. You have no reason to step down from duty.”
Teft shrugged. “Felt like it was time. Got a bit of a cough too. And an ache in my knee, even when there aren’t storms. War’s for young kids, not old dried-up pieces of bark.”
Hesina cocked her head, seeming confused—but Syl landed on Kaladin’s shoulder and gasped at seeing Teft, then clapped excitedly.
“Rock is gone,” Teft said, “and Moash … Moash is worse than gone. Sigzil needs to lead the rest of them, without me being baggage to bother him. You and I were the start of this though. Figure we ought to stick together.”
“Teft,” Kaladin said softer, stepping forward. “You can’t follow me here.”
Teft lifted his chin, defiant.
“I order you to go back to duty,” Kaladin said.
Kaladin looked to his mother, feeling helpless.
She shrugged. “You shouldn’t force someone into war, Kaladin. Not unless you want to be like Amaram.”
“You’re taking Teft’s side?” Kaladin asked.
“Lad,” Teft said softly, “you ain’t the only one with a mind full of horrors. You ain’t the only one whose hands shake now and then, thinking of it all. I need a rest too. That’s Kelek’s own truth.”
He was exaggerating. Kaladin knew he was. The man—while prone to addictive and self-destructive behavior—was not battle shocked. That wasn’t something you could easily prove, however. Especially when the man in question was as obstinate as Teft.
Teft unfolded his arms, then folded them again, as if to make the gesture more firmly. His clothing was neat and clean, but there was always something a little frayed about Teft. You got the sense that the uniform never quite fit him, as if Teft was half a size between standard measurements.
That said, he was—to his core—a military man. If there was one thing a good sergeant knew, it was to never let your officer go into an unknown situation alone. Who knew what trouble a lighteyes would get into without his common sense tagging along? Teft took ideas like that to heart. And Kaladin knew, meeting Teft’s eyes, that the man was never going to budge.
“Fine,” Kaladin said.
Teft leaped to his feet, gave Kaladin’s mother a little salute, then fell into step behind Kaladin as they walked toward the exam room.
“So, what are we doing?” Teft asked.
“You said you wanted a diagnosis,” Kaladin said, stopping outside the door.
“Nah. Know I’m crazy already. You going to poke at me until I snap? Skip that part. What are we doing today? Binding wounds?”
Kaladin gave him a level stare. Teft just stared back, stubborn as a storm. Well, Kaladin had trained them all as surgeon’s assistants, with knowledge of basic field medicine. He could do worse than Teft as an aide.