Venli glanced toward Rlain and Hesina, but they’d apparently heard, for they covered up the crate of maps. It still looked suspicious to Venli, but she went to the door anyway. Fused wouldn’t knock.
Accordingly, she opened the door and let in a group of humans who bore water jugs on poles across their shoulders. Six workers—the same ones as always. That was good, for although Venli had permission from Raboniel to bring a human surgeon in to care for the fallen Radiants, she had lied in saying she’d gone to the clinic to recruit him.
Eventually, Lirin and Hesina would be recognized—but best to limit their exposure to as few people as possible. The water carriers delivered their burdens to the room’s large troughs, then helped with the daily watering of the patients. It demanded near-constant work to give broth and drink to so many unconscious people.
Venli checked the time by the Rhythm of Peace. She needed to visit Raboniel for translation duty soon—there were books in Thaylen that the Lady of Wishes wanted read to her.
She doesn’t care about anything other than her research, Venli thought. What could be so important?
“You there,” Lirin said. “What is that on your head?”
Venli turned to find the surgeon confronting one of the water bearers. Lirin pushed back the hair on the man’s head and pointed. She hummed to Irritation—the surgeon was generally calm, but once in a while something set him off. She strode over to settle the situation, to find that the water bearer—a short man with far too much hair on his body—had painted his forehead with some kind of ink.
“What is that?” Venli asked.
“Nothing, Brightness,” the man said, pulling out of Lirin’s grip. “Just a little reminder.” He moved on, but one of the other water carriers—a female this time—had a similar marking on her forehead.
“It’s a shash glyph,” Lirin said.
As soon as Venli knew it was writing, her powers interpreted it. “Dangerous? Why do they think they’re dangerous?”
“They don’t,” Lirin said—wearing his upset emotions on his face. “They’re fools.”
He turned to go, but Venli caught him by the arm and hummed to Craving. Which of course he couldn’t understand. So she asked, “What does it mean?”
“It’s the brand on … on the forehead of Kaladin Stormblessed.”
Ah … “He gives them hope.”
“That hope is going to get them killed,” Lirin said, lowering his voice. “This isn’t the way to fight, not with how brutal the Regals in the tower have started acting. My son may have gotten himself killed resisting them. Heralds send it isn’t true, but his example is going to cause trouble. Some of these might get the terrible idea of following in his steps, and that will inevitably provoke a massacre.”
“Maybe,” Venli said, letting him go. Timbre pulsed to an unfamiliar rhythm that echoed in her mind. What was it? She could swear she’d never heard it before. “Or maybe they simply need something to keep them going, surgeon. A symbol they can trust when they can’t trust their own hearts.”
The surgeon shook his head and turned away from the water carriers, instead focusing on his patients.
There was a time when others would approach me for help with a problem. A time when I was decisive. Capable. Even authoritative.
It was a crystalline day in Shadesmar as Adolin—guarded as always by two honorspren soldiers—climbed to the top of the walls of Lasting Integrity. During his weeks incarcerated in the fortress, he’d discovered that there were weather patterns in Shadesmar. They just weren’t the same type as in the Physical Realm.
When he reached the top of the wall, he could see a faint shimmer in the air. It was only visible if you could look a long distance. A kind of violet-pink haze. Crystalline, they called it. On days like these, plants in Shadesmar grew quickly enough to see the change with your eyes.
Other types of “weather” involved spren feeling invigorated or dreary, or certain types of smaller spren getting more agitated. It was never about temperature or precipitation.
From the top of the wall, he could really get a sense of the fortress’s size. Lasting Integrity was enormous, several hundred feet tall. It was also hollow, and had no roof. Rectangular and resting on the small side, all four of its walls were perfectly sheer, without windows. No human city would ever have been built this way; even Urithiru needed fields at its base and windows to keep the people from going mad.
But Lasting Integrity didn’t follow normal laws of nature. You could walk on the interior walls. Indeed, to reach the top, Adolin had strolled vertically up the inside of the fortress wall. His body thought he had been walking on the ground. However, at the end of the path, he’d reached the battlements. Getting onto them had required stepping off what seemed to be the edge of the ground.
As he’d done so, gravity had caught his foot, then propelled him over so he was now standing at the very top of the fortress. He felt vertigo as he glanced down along a wall he’d recently treated as the ground. In fact, he could see all the way to the floor hundreds of feet below.
Thinking about it gave him a headache. So he looked outward across the landscape. And the view … the view was spectacular. Lasting Integrity overlooked a sea of churning beads lit by the cold sun so they shimmered and sparkled, an entire ocean of captured stars. Huge swells washed through the bay and broke into crashing falls of tumbling beads.
It was mesmerizing, made all the more interesting by the lights that congregated and moved in the near distance. Tukar and the people who lived there, reflected in the Cognitive Realm.
The other direction had its own less dramatic charms. Rocky obsidian shores gave way to growing forests of glass, lifespren bobbing among the trees. Lifespren were larger here, though still small enough that he wouldn’t have been able to see them save for the bright green glow they gave off.
These lights blinked off and on, a behavior that seemed unique to this region of Shadesmar. Watching, Adolin could swear there was a coordination to their glows. They’d blink in rippling waves, synchronized. As if to a beat.
He took it in for a moment. The view wasn’t why he’d come, however. Not fully. Once he’d spent time drinking in the beauty, he scanned the nearby coast.
Their camp was still there, tucked away a short walk into the highlands, nearer the trees. Godeke, Felt, and Malli waited for the results of his trial. With some persuasion, the honorspren had allowed Godeke to come in, given him a little Stormlight, and let him heal Adolin’s wound. The honorspren had expelled Godeke soon after, but permitted Adolin to communicate with his team via letters.
They’d traded—with his permission—a few of his swords to a passing caravan of Reachers for more food and water. Non-manifested weapons were worth a lot in Shadesmar. The Stump, Zu, and the rest of Adolin’s soldiers had left to bring word to his father. Though Adolin had initially anticipated a quick and dramatic end to his incarceration, the honorspren hadn’t wanted an immediate trial. He should have realized the punctilious spren would want time to prepare.
Though aspects of the delay were frustrating, the wait favored him. The longer he spent among the honorspren, the more chance he had to persuade them. Theoretically. So far, the spren of this fortress seemed about as easy to persuade as rocks.
One other oddity was visible from this high perch. Gathering on the coast nearby was an unusual group of spren. It had begun about two weeks ago as a few scattered individuals, but those numbers grew each day. At this point, there had to be two hundred of them. They stood on the coast all hours of the day, motionless, speechless.
Deadeyes.
“Storms,” said Vaiu. “There are so many.”
Vaiu was Adolin’s primary jailer for excursions like this. He was a shorter honorspren and wore a full beard, squared like that of an ardent. Unlike many others, Vaiu preferred to go about bare-chested, wearing only an old-style skirt a little like an Alethi takama. With his winged spear, he seemed like a depiction of a Herald from some ancient painting.
“What happened to the ones you let in?” Adolin asked.
“We put them with the others,” Vaiu explained. “Everything about them seems normal, for deadeyes. Though we don’t have space left for more. We never expected…” He shook his head. There were no lights of souls near those deadeyes; this wasn’t a gathering of Shardbearers in the Physical Realm. The deadeyes were moving of their own accord, coming up from the depths to stand out here. Silent. Watching.
The fortress had quarters for deadeyes. Though Adolin had little love for these honorspren and their stubbornness, he had to admit there was honor in the way they treated fallen spren. The honorspren had dedicated themselves to finding and caring for as many as they could. Though they’d taken Maya and put her in with the others, they let Adolin visit her each morning to do their exercises together. While they wouldn’t let her wander free, she was treated quite well.
But what would they do with so many? The honorspren had taken in the first group, but as more and more deadeyes arrived, the fortress had reluctantly shut its gates to them.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Vaiu said. “They should all be wandering the oceans, not congregating here. What provoked this behavior?”
“Has anyone tried asking them?” Adolin asked.
“Deadeyes can’t talk.”
Adolin leaned forward. Around his hands on the railing, pink crystal fuzz began to grow: the Shadesmar version of moss, spreading because of the crystalline day.
The distance was too great for him to distinguish one scratched-out face from another. However, he did notice when one vanished into mist. Those spren were Shardblades—hundreds of them, more than he’d known existed. When their owners summoned them, their bodies evaporated from Shadesmar. Why were they here? Deadeyes usually tried to keep close to their owners, wandering through the ocean of beads.
“There is a Connection happening,” Vaiu said. “Deadeyes cannot think, but they are still spren—bound to the spiritweb of Roshar herself. They can feel what is happening in this keep, that justice will finally be administered.”
“If you can call it justice,” Adolin said, “to punish a man for what his ancestors did.”
“You are the one who suggested this course, human,” Vaiu said. “You took their sins upon you. This trial cannot possibly make remediation for the thousands murdered, but the deadeyes sense what is happening here.”
Adolin glanced at his other guard, Alvettaren. She wore a breastplate and a steel cap—both formed from her substance, of course—above close-cropped hair. As usual she stared forward, her lips closed. She rarely had anything to add.
“It is time for today’s legal training,” Vaiu said. “You have very little time until the High Judge returns and your trial begins. You had best spend it studying instead of staring at the deadeyes. Let’s go.”
* * *
Veil was really starting to hate this fortress. Lasting Integrity was built like a storming monolith, a stupid brick of a building with no windows. It was impossible to feel anything other than trapped while inside these walls.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was how honorspren had no respect whatsoever for the laws of nature. Veil opened the door from the small building she shared with Adolin, looking out at what seemed to be an ordinary street. A walkway of worked stone led from her front door and passed by several other small buildings before dead-ending at a wall.
However, as soon as she stepped out, her brain started to panic. Another flat surface of stone hung in the air above her, instead of the sky. It was clustered with its own buildings—and people, mostly honorspren, walked along its pathways. To her left and right were two other surfaces, much the same.
The actual sky was behind her. She was walking on the inside surface of one of the walls of the fortress. It squeezed her mind, making her tremble. Shallan, Veil thought, you should be leading. You’d like the way this place looks.
Shallan did not respond. She huddled deep within, refusing to emerge. Ever since they’d discovered that Pattern had been lying to them, probably for years, she had become increasingly reclusive. Veil was able to coax her out now and then, but lately something … dangerous had come with her. Something they were calling Formless.
Veil wasn’t certain it was a new persona. If it wasn’t, would that be even worse?
Veil let Radiant take over. Radiant wasn’t so bothered by the strange geometry, and she took off down the path without feeling vertigo—though even she had trouble sometimes. The worst parts were the strange halfway zones at the corners where each plane met, where you had to step from one wall to another. The honorspren did it easily, but Radiant’s stomach did somersaults every time she had to.
Shallan, Radiant thought, you should sketch this place. We should carry drawings with us when we leave.
Nothing.
Honorspren liked to keep the hour exactly, so the bells told Radiant she was on time as she turned up the side of the wall toward the sky, passing various groups of spren going about their business. This wall of the fortress—the southern plane—was the most beautified, with gardens of crystalline plants of a hundred different varieties.
Fountains somehow flowed here, the only free water Radiant had seen in Shadesmar. She passed one fountain that surged and fell in powerful spouts; if a spray got beyond about fifteen feet high, the water would suddenly break off the top and stream down toward the actual ground rather than back toward the wall plane. Storms, this place didn’t make any kind of sense.
Radiant turned away from the fountain and tried to focus on the people she was passing. She hadn’t expected to find anyone other than honorspren in here, considering how strict the fortress was, but apparently its xenophobic policy had only been instituted a year ago. Any other people then living inside the fortress were allowed to stay, though they’d be forbidden reentry if they left.
That meant ambassadorial delegations from the other spren nations—as well as some tradespeople and random wanderers—had been grandfathered into the honorspren lockdown. Most importantly, seventeen humans lived here.
Without direction from Shallan, and with the honorspren taking their time preparing their trial, Radiant and Veil had reached a compromise. They’d find Restares, the person Mraize had sent them to locate. They wouldn’t take any actions against him unless they could get Shallan to decide, but Radiant was perfectly willing to locate him. This man, the phantom leader of the Sons of Honor, was a key part of this entire puzzle—and she was intensely curious why Mraize wanted him so badly.
Restares was, according to Mraize, a human male. Radiant carried a description of the man in her pocket, though none of the honorspren Veil had asked knew the name. And unfortunately, the description was rather vague. A shorter human with thinning hair. Mraize said Restares was a secretive type, and would likely be using an alias and perhaps a disguise.
He was supposedly paranoid, which made perfect sense to Radiant. Restares led a group of people who had worked to restore the singers and the Fused. The coming of the Everstorm had led to the fall of multiple kingdoms, the deaths of thousands, and the enslavement of millions. The Sons of Honor were deplorable for seeking these things. True, it wasn’t clear their efforts had in fact influenced the Return, but she could understand why they wanted to hide.
Upon first entering the fortress, she’d asked to be introduced to the other humans residing in the place. In response, the honorspren had given her the full list of all humans living here. With limited locations to search, she’d assumed her task would be easy. Indeed, it had started out that way. She’d started with the largest group of people: a caravan of traders from a kingdom called Nalthis, a place out in the darkness beyond the edges of the map. Veil had chatted with them at length, discovering that Azure—who had moved on from the fortress by now—was from the same land.
Radiant had trouble conceptualizing what it meant for there to be kingdoms out away from the continent. Did Azure’s people live on islands in the ocean?
No, Veil thought. We’re avoiding the truth, Radiant. It means something else. Like Mraize told us. Those people came from another land. Another world.
Radiant’s mind reeled at the thought. She took a deep breath, slowing near a group of trees—real ones from the Physical Realm, kept alive with Stormlight instead of sunlight—that were the centerpieces of this park. The tops were so high that when leaves fell off, they drifted down toward the real ground, through the middle of the fortress.
Shallan, Radiant thought. You could come and talk to people from other worlds. This is too big for Veil and me.
Shallan stirred, but as she did, that darkness moved with her. She quickly retreated.
Let’s focus on today’s mission, Radiant, Veil said.
Radiant agreed, and forced Veil to emerge. She could handle the strange geography; she had to. She put her head down and continued. None of the travelers from Nalthis looked like Restares, or seemed likely to be him in disguise. The next handful on her list had been Horneaters; apparently there was a clan of them who lived in Shadesmar. She’d doubted any were Restares, but she’d interviewed each of them just in case.
That done, Veil had been left with five people. Four turned out to be wanderers. None had been open about their pasts, but over the weeks she’d met with them one by one. After conversing with each, she had reported on them to Mraize. He had eliminated each of those as possibilities.
Now, only a single name remained on her list. This person was the most reclusive of them all—but was male, and the descriptions of him from the honorspren indicated that he was probably her quarry. Today she would finally catch a glimpse of him. With the subject confirmed she could call Mraize, find out what message she was supposed to deliver to Restares, then be done with this mission.
The target called himself “Sixteen.” He supposedly came out of his home once every sixteen days exactly—the regularity of it amused the honorspren, who suffered the odd fellow because of the novelty. No one knew how he survived without food, and no one reported a terrible stench or anything like that from him—though he didn’t ever seem to bathe or empty a chamber pot. Indeed, the more she’d learned about him, the more Veil was certain this mysterious man was her target.
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