Yes, he thought, glancing down at his bloodied and burned uniform. He vaguely remembered stumbling up to the ship with Renarin’s help, then barking at the flood of Windrunners who came to fawn over him. They kept offering him Stormlight, but he had plenty. It surged in his veins now, but for once the extra energy it lent seemed … wan. Faded.
Stop, he thought forcibly. You’ve held yourself together in rougher winds than this, Kaladin. Breathe deeply. It will pass. It always does.
He sipped his drink, which turned out to be broth. He welcomed its warmth, especially as the ship gained elevation. Many of the townspeople gathered near the sides, awespren bursting around them. Kaladin forced out a smile as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, trying to recapture the wondrous feeling of taking to the air those first few times.
Instead, he found himself reliving other darker times. When Tien had died, and when he’d failed Elhokar. Foolish though it was, the second one hurt almost as much as the first. He hadn’t particularly liked the king. Yet somehow, seeing Elhokar die as he nearly spoke the first Radiant Ideal …
Kaladin opened his eyes as Syl flew up in the form of a miniature Fourth Bridge. She often took the shape of natural things, but this one seemed extra odd. It didn’t belong in the sky. One might argue that Kaladin didn’t either.
She re-formed into the shape of a young woman, wearing her more stately dress, and landed at eye level. She waved toward the gathered Windrunners. “They’re congratulating Laran,” Syl explained. “She spoke the Third Ideal while we were in that burning building.”
Kaladin grunted. “Good for her.”
“Are you going to congratulate her?”
“Later,” Kaladin said. “Don’t want to force my way through the crowd.” He sighed, pressing his head back against the railing again.
Why didn’t I kill him? he thought. I’ll kill parshmen and Fused for existing, but when I face Moash, I lock up? Why?
He felt so stupid. How had he been so easy to manipulate? Why hadn’t he simply rammed his spear into Moash’s too-confident face and saved the world a whole ton of hassle? At the least it would have shut the man up. Stopped the words that dripped from his mouth like sludge …
They’re going to die … Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They’re all going to die anyway. There’s nothing you can do about it.
I can take away the pain.…
Kaladin forced his eyes open and found Syl standing before him wearing her more usual dress—the flowing, girlish one that faded to mist around her knees. She seemed smaller than normal.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said softly. “To help you.”
He glanced down.
“The darkness in you is better some times, worse others,” she said. “But lately … it’s grown into something different. You seem so tired.”
“I just need some good rest,” Kaladin said. “You think I’m bad now? You should’ve seen me after Hav made me hike at double time across … across…”
He turned away. Lying to himself was one thing. Lying to Syl was harder.
“Moash did something to me,” he said. “Put me into some kind of trance.”
“I don’t think he did, Kaladin,” she whispered. “How did he know about the Honor Chasm? And what you nearly did there?”
“I told him a lot of things, back during better days. In Dalinar’s army, before Urithiru. Before…”
Why couldn’t he remember those times, the warm times? Sitting at the fire with real friends?
Real friends including a man who had just tried to persuade him to go kill himself.
“Kaladin,” Syl said, “it’s getting worse. This … distance to your expression, this fatigue. It happens whenever you run out of Stormlight. As if … you can only keep going while it’s in you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“You freeze whenever you hear reports of lost Windrunners.”
When he heard of his soldiers dying, he always imagined running bridges again. He heard the screams, felt the arrows in the air.…
“Please,” she whispered. “Tell me what to do. I can’t understand this about you. I’ve tried so hard. I can’t seem to make sense of how you feel or why you feel that way.”
“If you ever do figure it out,” he said, “explain it to me, will you?”
Why couldn’t he simply shrug off what Moash had said? Why couldn’t he stand up tall? Stride toward the sun like the hero everyone pretended he was?
He opened his eyes and took a sip of his broth, but it had gone cold. He forced it down anyway. Soldiers couldn’t afford to be picky about nourishment.
Before long, a figure broke from the crowd of Windrunners and ambled toward him. Teft’s uniform fit neatly and his beard was trimmed, but he seemed like an old stone now that he wasn’t glowing anymore. The type of mossy stone you found sitting at the base of a hill, marked by rain and the winds of time; it left you wondering what it had seen in its many days.
Teft started to sit next to Kaladin.
“I don’t want to talk,” Kaladin snapped. “I’m fine. You don’t need to—”
“Oh, shut up, Kal,” Teft said, sighing as he settled down. He was in his early fifties, but sometimes acted like a grandfather some twenty years older. “In a minute here, you’re going to go congratulate that girl for saying her Third Ideal. It was rough on her, like it is on most of us. She needs to see your approval.”
A protest died on Kaladin’s lips. Yes, he was highmarshal now. But the truth was, every officer worth his chips knew there was a time to shut your mouth and do what your sergeant told you. Even if he wasn’t your sergeant anymore; even if there wasn’t a squad anymore.
Teft looked up at the sky. “So, the bastard is still alive, is he?”
“We had a confirmed sighting of him two months ago, at that battle on the Veden border,” Kaladin said.
“Aye, two months ago,” Teft said. “But I figured someone on their side would have killed him by now. Have to assume they can’t stand him either.”
“They gave him an Honorblade,” Kaladin said. “If they can’t stand him, they have an odd way of showing it.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were all going to die,” Kaladin said.
“Ha? Empty threats? He’s gone crazy, that one has.”
“Yeah,” Kaladin said. “Crazy.”
It wasn’t a threat though, Kaladin thought. I am going to lose everyone eventually. That’s how it works. That’s how it always works.…
“I’ll tell the others he’s sniffing around,” Teft said. “He might try to attack some of us in the future.” Teft eyed him. “Renarin said he found you kneeling there. No weapon in hand. Like you’d frozen in battle.”
Teft left the sentence dangling, implying a little more. Like you’d frozen in battle. Again. It hadn’t happened that often. Only this time, and that time in Kholinar. And the time when Lopen had nearly died a few months back. And … well, a few others.
“Let’s go talk to Laran,” Kaladin said, standing up.