Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  Adolin shrugged, snatching a towel as Felt tossed it to him. “She remembers the times we’ve sparred together as man and Blade.”

  “She’s a deadeye,” Ua’pam said. “She was killed thousands of years ago. She doesn’t think. The trauma of her Radiant betraying her broke her mind.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it’s wearing off.”

  “We are spren. We are eternal. Our deaths do not merely ‘wear off.’”

  Adolin tossed the towel back to Felt. “And spren were never going to bond humans again—yet here you are, Zu’s companion spren. Words like ‘eternal’ and ‘forever’ aren’t as definitive as you all pretend.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Ua’pam said.

  “And that might just be why Maya and I are able to do things you think impossible.” Adolin glanced at Shallan. “We’re good to go into town?”

  “No hints of Fused activity,” she said. “Lots of caravans come through here—some are even camped outside the town—and humans aren’t unusual in them. The spren at this waystop won’t consider us odd. We merely need to tell everyone we’re traders.”

  “Right then,” Adolin said. “Let’s all get off this boat and stretch our legs. Stay together in groups though, and don’t make trouble.”

  * * *

  Shallan continued to have a hangover. Her brain pounded, incessant, angry. A kind of “How could you?” accusation. She worried that now that they had reached land, she might attract painspren—which could be dangerous.

  This is your fault, Veil, Radiant thought at her. How could you let us go to sleep without burning off the wine?

  I wasn’t thinking straight, Veil thought. That’s kind of the point of drinking.…

  She can’t use Stormlight very well, Shallan thought. Don’t blame her. At least the pain was fading. When she’d taken in Stormlight to put on her illusory face, it had healed some of the agony. Stormlight was precious, however, and she’d used only what she needed to get her illusion going.

  She probably could spare a little more.

  No, Radiant thought. We should suffer, as our punishment for abusing drink.

  It’s not Shallan’s fault, Veil complained. She shouldn’t have to hurt because of what I did.

  I had more than a few cups myself, Shallan thought. So let’s drop this.

  The others—eager to get out and see the town—broke up into teams, though Adolin waited for her. They walked onto the simple stone dock and into the town—though “town” was a generous term for it. She’d been able to walk through all four streets in under half an hour.

  Still, although small, the place presented a shocking variety of spren, most of them coming from the five or six caravans that were camped here at the moment. Even from her perspective now, she was able to spot six different varieties. She’d taken some Memories to continue her natural history—and intended to go back out and get a few more.

  Plus, some of those caravans had humans in them. Who were they? How had they found their way to this side? Were they from other lands, like Azure? She longed to get back out and do closer inspections.

  Except … Veil said. You know.

  She did. This might be a chance to—after two weeks of travel—finally have some time alone. Indeed, Unativi’s sailors were drawing lots to determine who had to stay on the barge to guard it. Perhaps …

  “Go on ahead,” Veil said, pulling her hat on—from where it had been hanging behind her neck by its laces—so Adolin knew who she was. “I’ve had a chance to stretch my legs; I think I’ll rest a little more.”

  “You should drink less,” Adolin said.

  She poked him on the shoulder. “You should stop sounding like your father.”

  “Low blow, Veil,” he said with a wince. “But point taken. Watch our things.”

  He went and got Maya, who followed when he asked. He likely thought she needed to get some exercise or something. He was a little strange about that spren.

  I think the way he cares for her is sweet, Shallan thought.

  Maybe it was. But it was strange too. Veil sauntered over to Unativi. “You can all go, if you want,” she said to the group of peakspren. “I’m going to stay behind anyway, so I can watch the barge.”

  Unativi studied her, the light of his molten interior growing brighter through the cracks in his skin. “You stay? Why?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve had a chance already today. You can all go; the boat doesn’t need more than one guard. It’s not like there’s any danger here, right?”

  “If there were,” Unativi said, “you are Radiant. Better at facing it than a peakspren!” He turned to his sailors, who seemed eager. A couple of weeks on the same barge could make anyone bored of the scenery, including sailors.

  Soon, Veil was blessedly alone. So far this trip, she’d been alone only when using the chamber pot in the draped-off section beneath the tarp. Even that had been situated far too near everyone else for comfort. She—

  “Mmmmm…”

  She spun and found that of course Pattern was still there. Watching her. “Going to contact Mraize, Veil?” he asked with a peppy voice. “Mmm…”

  Yes, she was. All three were in agreement that they needed to talk to him, but it was uncomfortable how easily Pattern recognized this.

  “Stay here,” she said to him, “and make certain nobody interrupts me.”

  “Oh. I can’t listen?” His pattern slowed, seeming to almost wilt. “I like Mraize. He is very strange. Ha ha.”

  “It would be better if someone were to watch out for me,” Veil said. Then she sighed. “Though it might be good for you to listen to Mraize too. You might spot something untrue that he says.”

  “I do not think he says things that are fully untrue,” Pattern said. “Which makes his lies the best. Mmm. But I cannot tell automatically if something is a lie. I can simply appreciate them better than most, once I realize what they are.”

  Well, in Veil’s experience, he was more expert at noticing subterfuge than many humans. She waved for him to join her under the awning, still happy to be mostly alone.

  Part of her worried about that emotion. She’d lived a double life for basically the entire time she’d known Adolin—and it put a strain on Shallan. Worse, lying to herself was so ingrained it was becoming second nature.

  This is a problem, Shallan, Veil thought as she made her way back to her trunk.

  I’m getting better, Shallan retorted. No new personas in over a year now.

  And Formless? Radiant demanded.

  Formless isn’t real. Not yet, Shallan thought. We’re close to getting out of the Ghostbloods. One more mission, and we’re done. And Formless won’t manifest.

  Veil had her suspicions. And she had to admit, she was a big part of the problem herself. Shallan idealized how Veil was able to live so relaxed, without worrying about her past or the things she’d done. Indeed, Shallan conflated this attitude with the life the Ghostbloods lived. A life she was beginning to envy …

  Get answers, Shallan thought. Stop thinking about this. We need to contact Mraize before time runs out.

  Veil sighed, but positioned Pattern near the open front of the tarp enclosure. He would be able to hear the conversation with Mraize, but could warn her if someone came onto the barge. Then she unlocked her trunk of personal effects.

  Here she paused. Then she let Shallan take over for a few moments. Long enough to be certain.

  Yes, Shallan thought. It has been moved again.

  They’d checked it every day since that first time, and this was only the second time it had been moved. The night she’d gotten drunk. Inside, Radiant groaned in annoyance.

  Sorry, Veil thought, taking over. But we can’t watch it all the time. Besides, we want the spy to feel comfortable using it, right? So that we have more chances to catch them?

  Regardless, she couldn’t deny it felt creepy to know someone had snuck in and somehow used the cube while she was snoring a few feet away. She lifted the cube and
inspected it. Other than having been set so a different face was up, nothing about it seemed different.

  How did she activate it? Mraize had said to use his name. “I need to speak to Mraize. Um, that’s actually his title rather than his name.…”

  The cube’s corners began to shine from a bright light inside, as if the metal were thinner there.

  “I know him,” the cube said, making Veil start.

  “You can talk!” she said.

  It didn’t reply. She frowned, looking closely at the seams—the glow shimmered and changed. A short time later a strong voice came from inside, making the cube quiver in her hands.

  “Little knife,” Mraize said. “I’ve been waiting.”

  * * *

  Adolin kept to his own rules, and didn’t wander off alone. He and Maya stuck close to his soldiers and scribe, who walked the small town in a tight cluster, laughing too loudly as they chatted—as if trying to prove they were absolutely not nervous to be in such a strange location.

  Normally he would have joined in to put them at ease, but he found himself weighed down by the seriousness of the task ahead of him. His worries were resurfacing, now that the voyage was over. He needed to prove he could bring the honorspren to the coalition. After failing at Kholinar, he just … he needed to do this. Not for his father. For the coalition. For the war. For his homeland.

  He tried to focus on the next step, which involved getting supplies at this waystop. It was basically a market, meant to cater to caravans and merchant ships. Like in Celebrant—the other spren city he’d visited—most of the buildings were made up of a mishmash of types of stone, speckled a variety of colors. Manifested building materials. Real rock and metal were far more valuable here, as they had to be transported in through a portal like the Oathgates.

  There was no cohesive sense of architecture to the buildings. Azish influences were most common, but spren took what they could get, and so ended up with a patchwork of designs and styles. Most of the spren running the shops appeared to be cultivationspren. They called out offers in Azish or Alethi, offering fresh water or food supplies they knew humans might want.

  Browsing the goods were spren of all varieties. Of those, he found the ashspren the most transfixing. They looked like people, but their flesh would crumble off at times, exposing bone. As he passed one, she snapped her fingers, making all the ash of her hand blow away and vanish—then it quickly grew back. He even spotted a couple of highspren, like tears in reality in the shape of people. He gave them a wide berth, though they seemed to be just another pair of merchants.

  Spren clothing was as eclectic as their building materials. He passed one peakspren wearing a Veden uniform coat over a Tashikki wrap, of all things. It should have been garish—and certainly Adolin would never have worn any of it together—but he didn’t find himself bothered. They’d taken human clothing and made it their own; why should they follow the trends of kingdoms in another world?

  In that way, there was something fresh and interesting about the fashion here. Like the work of a talented but untrained artist. They came up with combinations that no member of Adolin’s culture could ever have dared imagine.

  Though, he thought, passing a tall willowy spren of a type he didn’t recognize, someone ought to tell that one what a protective cup is used for on our side.…

  His soldiers stopped to browse a weapon shop, though he’d warned them that they shouldn’t rely on manifested weapons. Still, it was difficult not to stare at the sheer variety of swords on display. In the Physical Realm a masterwork sword was an expensive purchase—and it often surprised people how valuable even an everyday side sword could be. Here though, manifesting a sword took roughly the same amount of Stormlight as manifesting a brick, so you could find them in barrels or stacked in piles outside shops.

  This bizarre economy would certainly fascinate Shallan. He’d heard they kept near-perfect gemstones in spren banks, storing vast amounts of Stormlight for future use. And of course, having so many humans nearby had attracted small emotion spren, Shadesmar’s equivalent of animals. Gloryspren darted overhead, and fearspren huddled in alleyways looking like large, multi-legged eels with long, globby antennae.

  A long flying spren with mustaches and a graceful body landed on the top of a building, then leaped off, ejecting an explosion of tiny crystalline shards that floated down and vanished. Was that a passionspren? He’d have to tell Shallan.

  He turned toward the distant barge, where Shallan remained. Maya dutifully stopped beside him, but just stared straight ahead with her scratched-out eyes.

  “I wonder why she stayed behind,” Adolin said. “It’s odd for her to want to rest when there’s so much to see.”

  Maya didn’t respond. That didn’t prevent him from talking to her. She had a … relaxing air about her.

  “Veil probably is in control,” Adolin said. “She’s worried about our things being stolen, I bet. Shallan says the other two exist to protect her or help her, and I see that. I want to understand. I don’t want to be like the others, who whisper about her being crazy and laugh.”

  He looked to Maya, who looked back.

  “It’s silly of me to be jealous of the time Veil controls her, isn’t it?” Adolin said. “Shallan created Veil as a tool. It’s just … I don’t know if I’m doing this right. I don’t know how to be supportive.”

  He wasn’t good with relationships. He never had been. He could admit that to himself now. He’d been in dozens, and they’d all fallen apart—so he had all kinds of experience doing this wrong, but very little doing it right.

  He wanted to do it right. He loved Shallan, in part because of her eccentricities. She felt alive in a different way from everyone else—she was also somehow more authentic. She was stuffed full of personas and covered in illusions. Yet incredibly, she felt more real because of them.

  Adolin lingered, not wanting to get ahead of the others, and wished he could shove his hands in his pockets. Unfortunately, this uniform’s pockets were sewn shut. The trousers looked better that way.

  He knew why he was feeling so off. Seeing another spren settlement reminded him of the last time they’d come to Shadesmar. When he’d been forced to leave Elhokar dead in his palace, the city fallen. Worse, Adolin had accidentally abandoned his troops to face the invasion while he ended up in Shadesmar.

  He wasn’t one to stew and brood … but storms, if there was a man who deserved his place in Damnation, it was the general who left his men to die.

  Adolin was drawn out of his brooding as he realized Maya was staring to the side, focused on something. That was odd enough, as she didn’t often pay much attention to her surroundings. But when he drew closer, he saw what had transfixed her. It was another deadeye.

  This deadeye was a Cryptic who stood beside a storefront. Cryptics didn’t have eyes, but there was no mistaking that the creature had suffered Maya’s fate: the pattern had halted completely, the normally graceful lines twisted and turned in jagged directions, like broken fingers. The same odd scraping marred its center.

  Maya released a kind of low whine from deep in her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” Adolin said. “I know it’s distressing. Let’s move on quickly.”

  She took his arm as he tried to walk off, which shocked him. It seemed to surprise her too, as she looked down at her hands holding his arm, then cocked her head. She held on and turned toward the deadeye Cryptic, pulling him. It was as if she wanted to say something.

  His men were still shopping, so Adolin turned in the direction Maya wanted, heading toward the store with the deadeye. Like most he’d seen here in Shadesmar, the shop was open-sided—an awning in front of a small building where the shopkeepers probably lived. There weren’t storms to worry about here, so structures tended to have open-air designs that left Adolin feeling exposed.

  The shopkeeper was an inkspren. Adolin had heard that there were fewer of them than there were of other varieties, and they kept to themselves. The creature was
jet black, even reflective, like he was made out of stone—but with an oil-on-water shimmer of color when the light hit him right. He sold books, which he kept carefully on shelves, not in stacks and piles like many other shops.

  “You are Alethi,” he said, inspecting Adolin. He spoke with a sharp nasal accent. “And you are male. You have no need for books. This is.”

  “I wanted to ask after your deadeye,” Adolin said, nodding to the Cryptic.

  “A friend she was,” the shopkeeper said, his voice terse.

  “Back when there were Radiants.”

  “No. A sooner time that was. My partner in business, once.” He frowned. “Do you know something of this, human? The danger that is?”

  “What danger?”

  “New deadeyes,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head. “Radiants should not have started again. Do you know that this thing is? In your kingdom it began, did it not?”

  “I don’t know of any Radiants betraying their oaths,” Adolin said. “You’re sure about this?”

  The inkspren waved to his friend. “She was my partner for many centuries. She left ten years ago to join others hunting for Radiants. Last year I found her like this, sitting alone on an island far to the east. She insisted on coming out this direction—at least, she walked this way incessantly. So I set up shop here.”

  “You’re sure,” Adolin said. “That she was afflicted like this recently.”

  “My memory is not flawed,” the inkspren said. “This is what you do, killing spren. You should feel ashamed.” He looked at Maya. “Is this another you killed?”

  “Of course not,” Adolin said. “I…” He trailed off, not wanting to say too much. He’d instructed everyone to be circumspect.

  But … a new deadeye? That seemed impossible. Maybe … maybe some young new Surgebinder out in the backwaters of Bavland could have been left without support or friends, and had broken their oaths. It wasn’t too outlandish; the more they learned, the more they realized that Kaladin, Jasnah, and Shallan hadn’t been unique in forming new Radiant bonds these last few years. A general revolution had been happening all across Roshar, with spren sensing the coming of the Everstorm, and some returning to bond with humans.