“It’s a wonderfully creative design, Tomor,” she said. “I sometimes miss the flexibility of a young mind—it truly does lead one to explore paths that we, in our aged wisdom, never think to notice. You’ve done well here.”
He beamed. Now, if she could get him to do what she’d actually asked—
“Try it!” he said.
Try it. Oh dear. She glanced at his animated smile, and didn’t miss Kristir—the head scholar on duty today—passing behind, hiding her own smile with a stack of papers as she walked. The other scholars in the room pretended to be busy amid their logicspren, but Navani could feel their eyes.
“I assume,” she said to Tomor, “you’ve tested this yourself.”
“Yes!” he said. “I’ve been doing it in here for days!”
Well, at least it was probably safe. Navani gave him a polite smile, then inspected the controls. Yes … so this fabrial held several separate rubies, each attached to a distant weight. You pointed the glove in the direction you wanted to go—presumably up, but it could move you laterally as well—then conjoined one of the rubies. Then you unhooked the weight with a different control, and the glove pulled you along—using the force of the falling weight.
She took a deep breath, then raised her hand in the air.
“Be sure to make a fist first!” Tomor said.
She did so, then conjoined the device. The glove locked into place. She released one of the distant weights, then carefully relaxed her fist, and the distant weight slowly moved down.
Navani went up. Pulled somewhat uncomfortably by her arm, she rose several feet into the air. Tomor let out a whoop, and a number of the watching scribes applauded.
Navani tightened her fist, halting her ascent. She floated there, dangling by her arm roughly four feet in the air, her fist nearly touching the ceiling.
“See!” Tomor said. “See!”
“And … exactly how does one get down, Tomor?” she asked.
“Um…” He ran to the side and grabbed a large stepstool by the wall. “I’ve been using this.…”
He placed it for her, and—thankfully—she was allowed to deactivate the device. She dropped a few inches onto the stepstool to further applause. Now they were just baiting her.
Still, Tomor was sincere. And maybe there could be some use for this device. If someone needed to reach a flying ship that had already taken off, for example.
“I like it,” she told Tomor. “It’s a little hard on the shoulder though. I wonder if it would be better as some kind of belt, instead of a glove.”
“A belt…” he said, eyes opening wide. “A flying belt.”
“Well, a levitating belt,” Navani said, unstrapping the device. “Our fabrials still have the problem that they can only move in one direction at a time.”
“Yes, but with two belts,” he said, “you could fly up high, then shoot off into the distance!”
“Only until the weight hits the bottom of the shaft and you stop moving,” Navani said. “Unless we want to use an entire chull rig with dozens of attendants to keep you going, like we do with the Fourth Bridge.”
“Hmm,” Tomor said. “So many knots to untangle…”
“I also suggest,” Navani said before he could get distracted by the belt idea, “changing the method of speeding up and slowing down. It is more natural to open your fist when surprised, I think, so that should halt the device. Make it so that there is a bar—like a throttle for opening a pressure valve—across the hand. Squeeze it to get speed.”
“Right, right…” He sat and began sketching. “I’ll keep it as a gauntlet for now, and iterate … And maybe the dial on the finger is too easy to shift by accident. Perhaps we give up single-handed manipulation in favor of more specific control.…”
Navani left him and walked over to Kristir. She was short of stature, but not of personality, and bore a smile on her rosy cheeks. Navani leaned in to whisper, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“We’ve had a pool going on whether you would actually try it out, Brightness,” Kristir whispered. “I won seven clearmarks.” She grinned. “You want me to point him back at making a lift, like he was supposed to be doing?”
“No,” Navani said. “Encourage him to keep going in this direction. I’d like to see what he comes up with.”
“Understood—though it would help us all immeasurably if you could break the altitude/lateral movement exclusivity problem for us.”
“It will take a better mind than mine to do that, Kristir,” Navani said. “Put our best mathematicians on it—but not Rushu. I have her thinking about how to protect the tower from—”
A shout came from outside the room. Navani turned and strode toward the door—but was stopped by a young soldier with his hand out toward her. He waved for the room’s guards to check the noise first. “Sorry, Brightness,” he said. “The Blackthorn would have my spheres if I let anything happen to you.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what this is, Lieutenant,” she said, but folded her arms and waited. The gathered scholars in the room behind her murmured in concerned tones. Navani peeked out into the hallway, where a couple of soldiers—men she’d assigned to Kalami’s investigation—were holding a struggling figure, surrounded by fearspren. Hopefully this wasn’t a false alarm.
“What is it?” the lieutenant asked as one of his guards jogged over.
“Not sure,” he said. “Those men say they’re working at Brightness Navani’s request.”
“I apologize, Brightness,” the lieutenant said, stepping back. He let her pass, though his soldiers maintained close proximity to her as she stepped into the hallway.
The man they’d captured was a wiry fellow, Alethi, but with skin on the paler side. He searched about, wild-eyed, struggling but not saying anything.
The bait had been her workstation, which she’d set up unoccupied across the hall, in the room used mostly for storing books and as a quiet reading nook. Her station there had been a tempting prospect, easy to reach from the door, and mostly ignored this last week.
Chananar—one of the soldiers she’d had secretly watching the workstation—stepped over to her and proffered half of a small ruby, illuminated faintly by the light of the spren trapped inside. A spanreed fabrial. The phantom spren in the tower had taken the bait. It had heard that she’d lost the previous spanreed, and had decided to send a replacement.
Navani plucked the ruby from the soldier’s hands and approached the captive. He looked around wildly, though he’d stopped struggling. “Who gave this to you?” Navani asked, holding the ruby before him. “Who told you to hide it among my things?”
He just stared at her and didn’t speak.
“Did you hide the other one too?” Navani asked. “The one in my traveling sphere? Speak, man. You’re in some serious trouble—but I will be lenient if you cooperate.”
The man trembled, but said nothing. The ruby started flashing in Navani’s fingers, indicating the phantom spren wished to talk with her. It might be a distraction, but in any case, she wanted to be in the presence of a Lightweaver when she replied this time—they had the ability to see spren in Shadesmar even when they were invisible to others.
“Bring him,” she said to the soldiers. “We’re going to my audience chamber for a proper interrogation. Isabi, please write to Kalami and have her meet me there.”
The young ward—who was among the increasingly large crowd of gawking scholars—hurried off. Navani gestured for the soldiers to tow the captive away, then moved to follow, but one of the other soldiers approached her.
“Brightness,” he whispered. “I think I recognize that fellow. He’s with the Radiants.”
“A squire?” Navani asked, surprised.
“More a servant, Brightness. He was there helping with meals when I tried out for the Windrunners last month.”
Well, that would explain how he’d gotten into her traveling sphere to place the first gemstone—the Windrunners often practiced with it, training to
keep the device in the air. Was she wrong about her phantom spren correspondent? Was it possible they were an honorspren? Many of those did have a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the current Knights Radiant. She tucked the blinking gemstone away in her glove’s wrist pouch. You can wait, she thought to the phantom spren. I’m in control of this conversation now.
Unfortunately, as she was leaving, Navani noticed Isabi taking a message from one of her spanreeds and looking anxious. Navani stepped over to the girl’s table, mentally preparing herself. What would it be this time? More tariff complaints from the Thaylens?
She leaned in, reading over Isabi’s shoulder, and got to the words “explosion” and “dead” before she snapped alert and realized this was not what she’d been expecting.
* * *
The Everstorm didn’t arrive like a highstorm.
Honor’s storm would come as a violent tempest, with a crashing stormwall full of wind and fury. It was an abrupt scream, a battle cry, an intense moment of exultation.
Odium’s storm came as a slow, inevitable crescendo. Clouds boiled from one another, ever expanding, creeping forward until they smothered the sunlight. Like a single spark that grows to consume a forest. The Everstorm was a trance of extended passion—an experience, not an event.
Venli couldn’t say which she preferred. The highstorm was violent, but somehow trustworthy. It had proved the listeners for generations, granting safe forms, fulfilling the Rider’s ancient promise to her people. Allegiances might have changed, but that couldn’t separate the souls of her people from the storm that—in the ancient songs—was said to have given them birth.
Yet she couldn’t help but feel a thrill at the arrival of the Everstorm, with its vivid red lightning and its persistent energy. She hated Odium for what he’d done to her people, and for the constant lure he—even now—could place in her mind. Voidlight, the emotions it stoked, and the beauty of crossing the landscape by the light of crackling red fire upon the sky …
Beneath those irregular eyes of an angry deity, Venli joined the others in a quick jog. Their several-week journey was at an end, their food stores exhausted. They’d spent this last day hiding in a forest, waiting for the Everstorm. As it arrived, the mountain landscape took on a nightmare cast.
The company of five hundred scrambled up the final incline.
Flash.
A glimpse of gnarled trees casting long, terrible shadows.
Flash.
Rubble and broken stone on the slope ahead. Stones doused in fire-red light.
Flash.
Skin with vibrant patterns and wicked carapace, loping alongside her.
Each burst of lightning seemed to catch a moment frozen in time. Venli ran near the front, and though her form wasn’t as athletic as some, she held her own as the strike force reached the top of the slope.
Here they were confronted by a cliff face, more sheer than a normal mountain should have allowed. They were far, far below the tower. From this angle, she couldn’t see the city. Perhaps it was above the black clouds. If so … storms. Until this moment, she hadn’t been able to fully conceive of something inhabitable being built so far up.
One of the Deepest Ones glided toward Venli and Raboniel, her feet sunken in rock. She moved with an unnatural grace, as if her bones weren’t completely solid. This was the scout Raboniel had sent ahead this morning to search for a proper incursion point.
“Come,” she said to Command.
Venli followed, joining Raboniel, Rothan, three Deepest Ones, and a soldier she didn’t know. Raboniel didn’t forbid Venli, and none of the others seemed to care that she was there. They made their way around the side of the mountain, passing a pile of what looked like rotting grain and some broken wood boxes. Did humans travel this way?
No, she realized. This must have fallen from above. Perhaps a shipment of food, coming via Oathgate to the city.
“Here,” the Deepest One said, bringing out a Stormlight sphere to light a particular patch of rock. She then sank her hand into the stone as if it were liquid. Or … no, that wasn’t exactly correct. When the Deepest One put her hand into the ground, she didn’t displace anything, and the stone seemed to meld to her skin.
“The ancient protections have not been maintained,” the scout said. “I can feel that the ralkalest has fallen from the walls of the tunnel below. How could they allow this oversight?”
“These new Radiants know nothing,” another Deepest One said to Craving. “Raboniel, Lady of Wishes, you are correct in pushing to strike now. Yours is wisdom that the Nine do not share. They have been too timid.”
Venli did not miss the Fused using Raboniel’s title. All of them had similar formal names; the Deepest One using Raboniel’s here—to the Rhythm of Craving—conveyed respect.
“The Nine,” Raboniel said, “are taking care to not lose our footing in this world. We have waited thousands of years for this chance; they do not wish to trip by running too fast.”
She said it, however, to Satisfaction. Her words were respectful, but the tone of the rhythm was clear. She appreciated the compliment, and she agreed.
The other Fused with them hummed to Subservience, something Venli almost never heard from their kind.
“The Sibling sleeps,” the scout said. “Just as the Midnight Mother felt. Perhaps the Sibling has truly died. Permanently made into an unthinking creature.”
“No,” said another. “The Sibling lives.”
Venli started. The one she’d mistaken for a soldier earlier, in the dark, was something more. A Fused malen with rippling patterns that shifted and changed on his skin. That was the mark of the mavset-im, Those Ones of Masks. The Masked Ones, illusionists, had the power to change how they appeared.
“My form is disrupted,” the Masked One said. “The ralkalest might have fallen from the wall, but that is a mere physical barrier. The tower’s spiritual protections are at least partially in effect—and as we determined months ago, the mavset-im cannot bear our many images while near Urithiru.”
“This is as we anticipated,” Raboniel said. “And we do not need your mask to proceed. As long as the Deepest Ones can move through the tunnels, our mission is viable. Go. We will meet you at the southwest opening.”
The Deepest Ones dropped their robes, exposing naked skin and carapace-covered privates. Then they slid into the rock, sinking as if into a dark ocean up to their necks. Then, eyes closed, they vanished beneath the stone.
* * *
“I feel blind,” Lirin explained as Kaladin sat with him. Today Hesina was taking Kaladin’s patients—the ones with battle shock—to see the tower stables. She insisted that taking care of animals would help, though Kaladin couldn’t fathom how being around those beasts could help anyone’s mood. Still, several of the patients had expressed eagerness at the idea of going riding.
“Blind?” Kaladin asked.
“I’ve had seven textbooks on sanity read to me over the last week,” Lirin said. “I hadn’t realized how little most of them would say. Mostly the same few quotes repeated over and over, traced to fewer sources. I can’t believe that we have spent so long knowing so little, documenting nothing!”
“It’s not so odd,” Kaladin said, building a tower of blocks for his little brother to knock down. “Surgeons are looked at with suspicion even in some of the larger cities. Half the population thinks mental illness is caused by staying out in storms, or by taunting deathspren, or some nonsense.”
Lirin rested a hand on the charts on his lap. Oroden laughed, walking among the blocks and kicking them.
“I spent my entire life trying to help,” Lirin said softly. “And I thought that the best way to help lunatics was to send them to the ardents. Storms, I did it a few times. Lakin’s son, remember? I assumed they’d be specialists.…”
“Nobody knows anything,” Kaladin said. “Because they don’t want to know. People like me scare them.”
“Don’t include yourself in that group, son,” Lirin said,
adjusting his spectacles as he held up a medical chart written in glyphs. His father read glyphs far better than Kaladin had ever known. Lirin used them like a stormwarden.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Kaladin asked, stacking blocks again.
“You’re not…” Lirin lowered the chart.
“Insane?” Kaladin asked. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? We don’t see them as our brothers, sisters, children. They make us feel helpless. We are afraid because we can’t bind a broken mind the way we do a broken finger.”
“So we pretend we’ve done the best we can by sending them away,” Lirin said. “Or we tell ourselves they’re not really hurt. Since we can’t see their wounds. You’re right, son. Thank you for challenging me.” He picked up another of his pages of notes, scribbled on in glyphs. Pictures, not letters, so it wasn’t actual writing.
Storms. This was wrong. Doctors couldn’t read about diagnoses on their own. Ardents were forced to take in patient after patient just so everyone else could breathe a little easier. Many people believed that seeing a surgeon was unnatural—that if the Almighty wanted them to heal, he’d see it done. The Edgedancers, ironically, were reinforcing that opinion.
“We need a medical revolution,” Kaladin said, starting another tower. Oroden stood hopping up and down, barely able to contain himself as it was built. “We need to change everything.”
“Change is hard, son,” Lirin said. “And little men like us don’t often get heard.…” He trailed off, perhaps realizing that excuse didn’t work any longer. Not when his son was one of the most powerful men alive—despite his retirement.
Kaladin could change things. He could get doctors some kind of religious appointment, so they could learn to read without feeling like they were breaking social mores. Everyone was saying it was okay for Dalinar because he was a Bondsmith, after all.
Kaladin could change the way people thought about those afflicted by battle shock or melancholia. Lirin’s textbooks listed no recommended medication other than sedatives. But no proper tests or research had been done to determine other options. There was so much here. So much to do. And as Kaladin thought about it, stacking block after block, it occurred to him that he was starting to see his oaths in a new way. He thought about that monastery with the sanitarium, and realized something chilling.
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