Kaladin pulled the leather vest over his head and dropped it to the ground with a splash, then left the sandals in a puddle. That left him in a dirty shirt and stiff brown trousers, both taken off a dead man.
Kaladin walked through the storm to the east side of the lumberyard. A low thundering rumbled from the west. The pathway down to the Shattered Plains was familiar to him now. He’d run this way a dozen times with the bridge crews. There wasn’t a battle every day—perhaps one in every two or three—and not every bridge crew had to go on every run. But many of the runs were so draining, so horrific, that they left the bridgemen stunned, almost unresponsive, for the days between.
Many bridgemen had trouble making decisions. The same happened to men who were shocked by battle. Kaladin felt those effects in himself. Even deciding to come to the chasm had been difficult.
But the bleeding eyes of that unnamed boy haunted him. He wouldn’t make himself go through something like that again. He couldn’t.
He reached the base of the slope, wind-driven rain pelting his face as if trying to shove him back toward the camp. He kept on, walking up to the nearest chasm. The Honor Chasm, the bridgemen called it, for it was the place where they could make the one decision left to them. The “honorable” decision. Death.
They weren’t natural, these chasms. This one started narrow, but as it ran toward the east, it grew wider—and deeper—incredibly quickly. At only ten feet long, the crack was already wide enough that it would be difficult to jump. A group of six rope ladders with wooden rungs hung here, affixed to spikes in the rock, used by bridgemen sent down to salvage from corpses that had fallen into the chasms during bridge runs.
Kaladin looked out over the plains. He couldn’t see much through the darkness and rain. No, this place wasn’t natural. The land had been broken. And now it broke the people who came to it. Kaladin walked past the ladders, a little farther along the edge of the chasm. Then he sat down, legs over the side, looking down as the rain fell around him, the droplets plunging into the dark depths.
To his sides, the more adventurous cremlings had already left their lairs, scuttling about, feeding on plants that lapped up the rainwater. Lirin had once explained that highstorm rains were rich with nutrients. Stormwardens in Kholinar and Vedenar had proven that plants given storm water did better than those given lake or river water. Why was it that scientists were so excited to discover facts that farmers had known for generations and generations?
Kaladin watched the drops of water streaking down toward oblivion in the crevasse. Little suicidal jumpers. Thousands upon thousands of them. Millions upon millions. Who knew what awaited them in that darkness? You couldn’t see it, couldn’t know it, until you joined them. Leaping off into the void and letting the wind bear you down…
“You were right, Father,” Kaladin whispered. “You can’t stop a storm by blowing harder. You can’t save men by killing others. We should all become surgeons. Every last one of us….”
He was rambling. But, oddly, his mind felt clearer now than it had in weeks. Perhaps it was the clarity of perspective. Most men spent their entire lives wondering about the future. Well, his future was empty now. So he turned backward, thinking about his father, about Tien, about decisions.
Once, his life had seemed simple. That was before he’d lost his brother, before he’d been betrayed in Amaram’s army. Would Kaladin go back to those innocent days, if he could? Would he prefer to pretend everything was simple?
No. He’d had no easy fall, like those drops. He’d earned his scars. He’d bounced off walls, bashed his face and hands. He’d killed innocent men by accident. He’d walked beside those with hearts like blackened coals, adoring them. He’d scrambled and climbed and fallen and stumbled.
And now here he was. At the end of it all. Understanding so much more, but somehow feeling no wiser. He climbed to his feet on the lip of that chasm, and could feel his father’s disappointment looming over him, like the thunderheads above.
He put one foot out over the void.
“Kaladin!”
He froze at the soft but piercing voice. A translucent form bobbed in the air, approaching through the weakening rain. The figure lunged forward, then sank, then surged higher again, like it was bearing something heavy. Kaladin brought his foot back and held out his hand. Syl unceremoniously alighted upon it, shaped like a skyeel clutching something dark in its mouth.
She switched to the familiar form of a young woman, dress fluttering around her legs. She held in her hands a narrow, dark green leaf with a point divided in three. Blackbane.
“What is this?” Kaladin asked.
She looked exhausted. “These things are heavy!” She lifted the leaf. “I brought it for you!”
He took the leaf between two fingers. Blackbane. Poison. “Why did you bring this to me?” he said harshly.
“I thought…” Syl said, shying back. “Well, you kept those other leaves so carefully. Then you lost them when you tried to help that man in the slave cages. I thought it would make you happy to have another one.”
Kaladin almost laughed. She had no concept of what she’d done, fetching him a leaf of one of Roshar’s most deadly natural poisons because she’d wanted to make him happy. It was ridiculous. And sweet.
“Everything seemed to go wrong when you lost that leaf,” Syl said in a soft voice. “Before that, you fought.”
“I failed.”
She cowered down, kneeling on his palm, misty skirt around her legs, drops of rainwater passing through her and rippling her form. “You don’t like it then? I flew so far…I almost forgot myself. But I came back. I came back, Kaladin.”
“Why?” he pled. “Why do you care?”
“Because I do,” she said, cocking her head. “I watched you, you know. Back in that army. You’d always find the young, untrained men and protect them, even though it put you into danger. I can remember. Just barely, but I do.”
“I failed them. They’re dead now.”
“They would have died more quickly without you. You made it so they had a family in the army. I remember their gratitude. It’s what drew me in the first place. You helped them.”
“No,” he said, clutching the blackbane in his fingers. “Everything I touch withers and dies.” He teetered on the ledge. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“Those men in the bridge crew,” Syl whispered. “You could help them.”
“Too late.” He closed his eyes, thinking of the dead boy earlier in the day. “It’s too late. I’ve failed. They’re dead. They’re all going to die, and there’s no way out.”
“What is one more try, then?” Her voice was soft, yet somehow stronger than the storm. “What could it hurt?”
He paused.
“You can’t fail this time, Kaladin. You’ve said it. They’re all going to die anyway.”
He thought of Tien, and his dead eyes staring upward.
“I don’t know what you mean most of the time when you speak,” she said. “My mind is so cloudy. But it seems that if you’re worried about hurting people, you shouldn’t be afraid to help the bridgemen. What more could you do to them?”
“I…”