“I might be broken,” the man said softly.
“Good, good! We don’t have a Thaylen yet, and lately it looks like we’re trying to collect one of everything. We even have a parshman!”
“I just ask?” the man said, then took a drink.
“Sure. Ask. Follow us around. Worked for Lyn. But you have to say the Words.”
“Words?”
“ ‘Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before pancakes.’ That’s the easy one. The hard one is, ‘I will protect those who cannot protect themselves,’ and—”
A sudden flash of coldness struck Lopen, and the gemstones in the room flickered, then went out. A symbol crystallized in frost on the stones around Lopen, vanishing under the cots. The ancient symbol of the Windrunners.
“What?” Lopen stood up. “What? Now?”
He heard a far-off rumbling, like thunder.
“NOW?” Lopen said, shaking a fist at the sky. “I was saving that for a dramatic moment, you penhito! Why didn’t you listen earlier? We were, sure, all about to die and things!”
He got a distinct, very distant impression.
YOU WEREN’T QUITE READY.
“Storm you!” Lopen made a double obscene gesture toward the sky—something he’d been waiting a long time to use properly for the first time. Rua joined him, making the same gesture, then grew two extra arms to give it more weight.
“Nice,” Lopen said. “Hey gancho! I’m a full Knight Radiant now, so you can start complimenting me.” Kaladin didn’t seem to have even noticed. “Just a moment,” Lopen said to the one-armed soldier, then stalked over to where Kaladin was speaking with a runner.
“You’re sure?” Kaladin said to the scribe. “Does Dalinar know about this?”
“He sent me, sir,” the woman said. “Here’s a map with the location the spanreed listed.”
“Gancho,” Lopen said. “Hey, did you—”
“Congratulations, Lopen, good job. You’re second-in-command after Teft until I return.”
Kaladin burst from the tent and Lashed himself to the sky, streaking away, the tent’s front flaps rustling in the wind of his passing.
Lopen put his hands on his hips. Rua landed on his head, then made a little squeal of angry delight while proffering toward Kaladin a double rude gesture.
“Don’t wear it out, naco,” Lopen said.
* * *
“Come on,” Ash said, holding Taln’s hand, pulling him up the last few steps.
He stared at her dully.
“Taln,” she whispered. “Please.”
The last glimmers of his lucidity had faded. Once, nothing would have kept him from the battlefield when other men died. Today, he had hidden and whimpered during the fighting. Now he followed her like a simpleton.
Talenel’Elin had broken like the rest of them.
Ishar, she thought. Ishar will know what to do. She fought down the tears—watching him fade had been like watching the sun go out. All these years, she’d hoped that maybe … maybe …
What? That he’d be able to redeem them?
Someone nearby cursed by her name, and she wanted to slap him. Don’t swear by us. Don’t paint pictures of us. Don’t worship at our statues. She’d stamp it all out. She would ruin every depiction. She …
Ash breathed in and out, then pulled Taln by the hand again, getting him into line with the other refugees fleeing the city. Only foreigners were allowed out right now, to prevent the Oathgate from being overworked. She’d get back to Azir, where their skin tones wouldn’t stand out.
What a gift you gave them! he’d said. Time to recover, for once, between Desolations. Time to progress …
Oh, Taln. Couldn’t he have just hated her? Couldn’t he have let her—
Ash stopped in place as something ripped inside of her.
Oh God. Oh, Adonalsium!
What was that? What was that?
Taln whimpered and collapsed, a puppet with cut strings. Ash stumbled, then sank to her knees. She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling. It wasn’t pain. It was something far, far worse. A loss, a hole inside of her, a piece of her soul being excised.
“Miss?” a soldier asked, jogging up. “Miss, are you all right? Hey, someone get one of the healers! Miss, what’s wrong?”
“They … they killed him somehow.…”
“Who?”
She looked up at the man, tears blurring her vision. This wasn’t like their other deaths. This was something horrible. She couldn’t feel him at all.
They’d done something to Jezrien’s soul.
“My father,” she said, “is dead.”
They caused a stir in the refugees, and someone detached themselves from the group of scribes up ahead. A woman in deep violet. The Blackthorn’s niece. She looked at Ash, then at Taln, then at a piece of paper she’d been carrying. It contained shockingly accurate sketches of the two of them. Not as they were presented in iconography, but real sketches. Who … why?
That’s his drawing style, a part of Ash noted. Why has Midius been giving away pictures of us?
The ripping sensation finally ended. So abruptly that—for the first time in thousands of years—Ash fell unconscious.
Yes, I began my journey alone, and I ended it alone.
But that does not mean that I walked alone.
—From The Way of Kings, postscript
Kaladin flew across the churning ocean. Dalinar had been able to summon the strength to overcharge him with Stormlight, though it was obviously exhausting to do so.
Kaladin had used up that charge getting to Kharbranth, where he’d stopped for a night’s sleep. Even Stormlight could only push the body so far. After a long flight the next day, he’d reached the Tarat Sea.
He flew now using gemstones requisitioned from the royal treasury in Kharbranth. Smoke rose from several places along the coast of Alethkar, where cities still resisted the parshman invasion. Kaladin’s map fluttered in his fingers, and he watched the coast for the rock formation the scribe had sketched for him.
By the time he spotted it, he worried he wouldn’t have enough Stormlight left to make it back to safety. He dropped there and continued on foot, per the instructions, crossing a cold and rocky land that reminded him of the Shattered Plains.
Along a dried-out river, he found a little group of refugees huddled by a cavern in the stone. A very small fire laced the air with smoke, and lit ten people in brown cloaks. Nondescript, like many others he’d passed during his search. The only distinctive feature was a small symbol they’d painted on an old tarp pinned up between two poles at the front of the camp.
The symbol of Bridge Four.
Two of the figures rose from the fire, pulling back hoods. Two men: one tall and lanky, the other short and scrappy, silver-haired at the temples.
Drehy and Skar.
They gave Kaladin a pair of sharp salutes. Drehy had old cuts on his face and Skar looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. They’d had to cover their foreheads in ash to hide their tattoos, an act that wouldn’t have worked in simpler times. It basically marked them as runaway slaves.
Syl let out a laugh of pure delight, zipping over to them—and from the way they reacted, it seemed she’d let them see her. Behind them, Shallan’s three servants emerged from their cloaks. Kaladin didn’t know the other people, but one of them would be the merchant they’d found—a man who still possessed a spanreed.