The common sailors gave Kaza space, refusing to look her in the eyes. She pulled her hood up, unaccustomed to the gaze of ordinary people. She’d entered the stage where her … disfigurements were starkly obvious.
Kaza was, slowly, becoming smoke.
Vazrmeb took the helm himself, giving Droz a break. The lanky man stepped down from the poop deck, noting her by the side of the ship. He grinned at her, which she found curious. She hadn’t ever spoken to him. Now he sauntered over, as if intending to make small talk.
“So…” he said. “Up on deck? Through that? You’ve got guts.”
She hesitated, considering this strange creature, then lowered her hood.
He didn’t flinch, even though her hair, her ears, and now parts of her face were disintegrating. There was a hole in her cheek through which you could see her jaw and teeth. Lines of smoke rimmed the hole; the flesh seemed to be burning away. Air passed through it when she spoke, altering her voice, and she had to tip her head all the way back to drink anything. Even then, it dribbled out.
The process was slow. She had a few years left until the Soulcasting killed her.
Droz seemed intent on pretending nothing was wrong. “I can’t believe we got through that storm. You think it hunts ships, like the stories say?”
He was Liaforan like herself, with deep brown skin and dark brown eyes. What did he want? She tried to remember the ordinary passions of human life, which she’d begun to forget. “Is it sex you want?… No, you are much younger than I am. Hmmm…” Curious. “Are you frightened, and wishing for comfort?”
He started to fidget, playing with the end of a tied-off rope. “Um … So, I mean, the prince sent you, right?”
“Ah.” So he knew that she was the prince’s cousin. “You wish to connect yourself to royalty. Well, I came on my own.”
“Surely he let you go.”
“Of course he didn’t. If not for my safety, then for that of my device.” It was hers. She looked off across the too-still ocean. “They locked me up each day, gave me comforts they assumed would keep me happy. They realized that at any moment, I could literally make walls and bonds turn to smoke.”
“Does … does it hurt?”
“It is blissful. I slowly connect to the device, and through it to Roshar. Until the day it will take me fully into its embrace.” She lifted a hand and pulled her black glove off, one finger at a time, revealing a hand that was disintegrating. Five lines of darkness, one rising from the tip of each finger. She turned it, palm toward him. “I could show you. Feel my touch, and you can know. One moment, and then you will mingle with the air itself.”
He fled. Excellent.
The captain steered them toward a small island, poking from the placid ocean right where the captain’s map had claimed it would be. It had dozens of names. The Rock of Secrets. The Void’s Playground. So melodramatic. She preferred the old name for the place: Akinah.
Supposedly, there had once been a grand city here. But who would put a city on an island you couldn’t approach? For, jutting from the ocean here were a set of strange rock formations. They ringed the entire island like a wall, each some forty feet tall, resembling spearheads. As the ship drew closer, the sea grew choppy again, and she felt a bout of nausea. She liked that. It was a human feeling.
Her hand again sought her Soulcaster.
That nausea mixed with a faint sense of hunger. Food was something she often forgot about these days, as her body needed less of it now. Chewing was annoying, with the hole in her cheek. Still, she liked the scents from whatever the cook was stirring up below. Perhaps the meal would calm the men, who seemed agitated about approaching the island.
Kaza moved to the poop deck, near the captain.
“Now you earn your keep, Soulcaster,” he said. “And I’m justified in hauling you all the way out here.”
“I’m not a thing,” she said absently, “to be used. I am a person. Those spikes of stone … they were Soulcast there.” The enormous stone spearheads were too even in a ring about the island. Judging by the currents ahead, some lurked beneath the waters as well, to rip up the hulls of approaching vessels.
“Can you destroy one?” the captain asked her.
“No. They are much larger than you indicated.”
“But—”
“I can make a hole in them, Captain. It is easier to Soulcast an entire object, but I am no ordinary Soulcaster. I have begun to see the dark sky and the second sun, the creatures that lurk, hidden, around the cities of men.”
He shivered visibly. Why should that have frightened him? She’d merely stated facts.
“We need you to transform the tips of a few under the waves,” he said. “Then make a hole at least large enough for the dinghies to get in to the island beyond.”
“I will keep my word, but you must remember. I do not serve you. I am here for my own purposes.”
They dropped anchor as close to the spikes as they dared get. The spikes were even more daunting—and more obviously Soulcast—from here. Each would have required several Soulcasters in concert, she thought, standing at the prow of the ship as the men ate a hasty meal of stew.
The cook was a woman, Reshi from the looks of her, with tattoos all across her face. She pushed the captain to eat, claiming that if he went in hungry, he’d be distracted. Even Kaza took some, though her tongue no longer tasted food. It all felt like the same mush to her, and she ate with a napkin pressed to her cheek.
The captain drew anticipationspren as he waited—ribbons that waved in the wind—and Kaza could see the beasts beyond, the creatures that accompanied the spren.
The ship’s four dinghies were cramped, with rowers and officers all together, but they made space for her at the front of one. She pulled up her hood, which still hadn’t dried, and sat on her bench. What had the captain been planning to do if the storm hadn’t stopped? Would he seriously have tried to use her and a dinghy to remove these spears in the middle of a tempest?
They reached the first spike, and Kaza carefully unwrapped her Soulcaster, releasing a flood of light. Three large gemstones connected by chains, with loops for her fingers. She put it on, with the gemstones on the back of her hand. She sighed softly to feel the metal against her skin again. Warm, welcoming, a part of her.
She reached over the side into the chill water and pressed her hand against the tip of the stone spear—smoothed from years in the ocean. Light from the gemstones lit the water, reflections dancing across her robe.
She closed her eyes, and felt the familiar sensation of being drawn into the other world. Of another will reinforcing her own, something commanding and powerful, attracted by her request for aid.
The stone did not wish to change. It was content with its long slumber in the ocean. But … yes, yes, it remembered. It had once been air, until someone had locked it into this shape. She could not make it air again; her Soulcaster had only one mode, not the full three. She did not know why.
Smoke, she whispered to the stone. Freedom in the air. Remember? She tempted it, picking at its memories of dancing free.
Yes … freedom.
She nearly gave in herself. How wonderful would it be to no longer fear? To soar into infinity on the air? To be free of mortal pains?
The tip of the stone burst into smoke, sending an explosion of bubbles up around the dinghy. Kaza was shocked back into the real world, and a piece deep within her trembled. Terrified. She’d almost gone that time.