“The Sibling contacted us,” she said, still sitting on the floor. “That’s why Dabbid tried to wake you. Another node has been found—inside the well in the market. The enemy is there already.”
“Storms!” Kaladin said. “We need to go.” He reached for Navani’s fabrial and his pouch of gems. He found the latter, but the fabrial was gone.
“Dabbid?” Kaladin demanded.
“You were huddled there muttering,” Syl said, finally lifting into the air. “And you didn’t seem to be able to see me. The Sibling is terrified. I could hear them while sitting on Dabbid’s shoulder. And so…”
Kaladin grabbed the bag of gems and dashed out of the room, Syl following as a ribbon of light. He caught up with Dabbid at the first stairwell—just two hallways over. The shorter bridgeman stood with the spear and fabrial held close to his chest, staring down with a panicked expression.
He jumped as he saw Kaladin, then let out a loud relieved sigh. Kaladin took the fabrial.
“You were going to go try to stop the Fused,” Kaladin said. “Because I didn’t get up.”
Dabbid nodded.
“Dabbid, you barely know how to use a spear,” Kaladin said, quickly strapping on the fabrial. He’d had only four days of practice with the device. It would have to be enough.
Dabbid didn’t respond, of course. He helped Kaladin strap the fabrial on, then held out the spear.
Kaladin took it, then gave the Bridge Four salute.
Dabbid returned it. Then, remarkably, said something, in a voice soft and gravelly. “Life. Before. Death.”
Storms. Those were the first words Kaladin had ever heard from the man. He grinned, gripping Dabbid by the shoulder. “Life before death, Dabbid.”
Dabbid nodded. There wasn’t time for more; Kaladin turned away from the stairwell and began running again. Screams from the nightmare echoed in his head, but he didn’t have time for weakness. He had to stop the corruption of that gemstone—and barring that, he had to destroy the node. That was the only way to buy Navani the time she needed.
He had to get there quickly, which meant he couldn’t use the stairs. He’d have to go straight down through the atrium.
* * *
“I need to see the Lady of Wishes immediately!” Navani proclaimed to the guard. “I’ve made a discovery of incalculable value! It cannot wait for—”
The guard—a Regal stormform—simply started walking and gestured for her to follow. He didn’t even need the full explanation.
“Excellent,” Navani said, joining him in the hallway. “I’m glad you see the urgency.”
The guard walked her to the large stairwell that led up to the ground floor. A Deepest One stood here, her fingers laced before her. “What is it?” she asked in heavily accented Alethi. “A sudden illness?”
“No,” Navani said, taken aback. “A discovery. I think I’ve found what the Lady of Wishes was searching for.”
“But of course you can’t share it with anyone but Raboniel herself,” the Fused said, a faintly amused rhythm to her voice.
“Well, I mean…” Navani trailed off.
“I’ll see if I can reach her via spanreed,” the Fused said. “I’ll tell her it is most urgent.”
Storms. They were expecting an attempted distraction from Navani. That thought was reinforced as the Fused glided to a cabinet that had been set up by the wall. She carefully, but slowly, selected a spanreed from the collection stored there.
It was a reverse distraction. They’d known Navani would attempt something like this. But how had they known that she would know that …
She stepped back, her eyes widening as the terrible implications struck her. Kaladin was in serious danger.
* * *
Barefoot and armed with a spear, Kaladin burst out onto the walkway around the atrium, then hurled himself out into the open space eleven stories in the air. Full of Stormlight—hoping it would save him in case this didn’t work—he pointed his hand directly beneath him and engaged Navani’s fabrial.
As soon as it was activated, he lurched to a halt in the air, hovering—his muscles straining as he was basically doing a handstand with one hand. But as long as the counterweight in the distant shaft was held motionless, Kaladin would be as well.
He gripped the bar across his left hand and began to fall downward, almost as if he were Lashed. In fact, he was counting on it seeming like nothing was wrong with his powers—that he was a full Windrunner ready for battle. He wouldn’t be able to keep up such a facade for long, but perhaps it would gain him an advantage.
His descent—at a speed a notch below insane—gave him a view out the enormous atrium window, running all the way up the wall to his right. Strangely, it was dark outside, though Syl had said it was midday. He didn’t have to ask for clarification, as a flash of lightning bespoke the truth. A highstorm. He still found it incredible that he could be so deep within a tower that one could be going on without him realizing it. Even in the best stormshelters, you usually felt the rumbles of thunder or the anger of the wind.
His fall certainly drew attention. Heavenly Ones dressed in long robes turned from their midair meditations. Shouts rose from Regals or singers along the various levels. He wasn’t certain if Leshwi was among them or not, as he passed too quickly.
Using the fabrial, he slowed himself before he hit the ground, then deactivated the device entirely and fell the last five feet or so. Stormlight absorbed that drop, and he startled dozens of people—many of them human—who hadn’t heard the disturbance above. Commerce was now allowed and encouraged by the Fused, and the atrium floor had become a secondary market—though a more transient one than the Breakaway a short distance off. That was where he would find the well.
Kaladin’s luminescence would be starkly visible against the dark window, lit in flashes. The shouts of alarm above were swallowed in the voluminous atrium as Kaladin oriented himself, then ran for a stack of crates. He took a few steps up them to launch into the air some ten feet high, then he pointed his left hand and engaged Navani’s device.
He flew like a Windrunner, his body upright, left arm held at chest height, elbow bent. It might look like he was using Lashings. Though Windrunners sometimes dove and flew headfirst like they were swimming, just as often they would fly “standing” up straight—like he did now.
He did tuck his legs up as he went soaring over the heads of the people, who ducked. Syl zipped along beside him, imitating a stormcloud. People cried out, surprised—but also excited—and Kaladin worried about what he was showing them. He didn’t want to inspire a revolt that would get hundreds killed.
The best he could hope for was to get in, destroy the fabrial, and get out alive. That goal whispered of a much larger problem. Navani had said there were four nodes. Today, he’d try to destroy the third. At this rate, the last one would fall in a few days, and then what?
He pushed that thought out of his mind as he flew along the top of a corridor, inches from the textured stone ceiling. He didn’t have time for second-guessing, or for dwelling on the crippling darkness and anxiety that continued to scratch at his mind. He had to ignore that, then deal with the effects later. Exactly as he’d been doing far too long now.