“Three of sixteen ruled, but now the Broken One reigns.”
—Collected: Chachanan, 1173, 84 seconds pre-death. Subject: a cutpurse with the wasting sickness, of partial Iriali descent.
The highstorm eventually subsided. It was the dusk of the day the boy had died, the day Syl had left him. Kaladin slid on his sandals—the same ones he’d taken from the leathery-faced man on that first day—and stood up. He walked through the crowded barrack.
There were no beds, just one thin blanket per bridgeman. One had to choose whether to use it for cushioning or warmth. You could freeze or you could ache. Those were a bridgeman’s options, though several of the bridgemen had found a third use for the blankets. They wrapped them around their heads, as if to block out sight, sound, and smell. To hide from the world.
The world would find them anyway. It was good at these kinds of games.
Rain fell in sheets outside, the wind still stiff. Flashes lit the western horizon, where the center of the storm flew onward. This was an hour or so before the riddens, and was as early as one would want to go out in a highstorm.
Well, one never wanted to go out in a highstorm. But this was about as early as it was safe to go out. The lightning had passed; the winds were manageable.
He passed through the dim lumberyard, hunched against the wind. Branches lay scattered about like bones in a whitespine’s lair. Leaves were plastered by rainwater to the rough sides of barracks. Kaladin splashed through puddles that chilled and numbed his feet. That felt good; they were still sore from the bridge run earlier.
Waves of icy rain blew across him, wetting his hair, dripping down his face and into his scruffy beard. He hated having a beard, particularly the way the whiskers itched at the corners of his mouth. Beards were like axehound pups. Boys dreamed of the day they’d get one, never realizing how annoying they could be.
“Out for a stroll, Your Lordship?” a voice said.
Kaladin looked up to find Gaz huddled in a nearby hollow between two of the barracks. Why was he out in the rain?
Ah. Gaz had fastened a small metal basket on the leeward wall of one of the barracks, and a soft glowing light came from within. He left his spheres out in the storm, then had come out early to retrieve them.
It was a risk. Even a sheltered basket could get torn free. Some people believed that the shades of the Lost Radiants haunted the storms, stealing spheres. Perhaps that was true. But during his time in the army, Kaladin had known more than one man who had been wounded sneaking around during full storm, looking for spheres. No doubt the superstition was due to more worldly thieves.
There were safer ways to infuse spheres. Moneychangers would exchange dun spheres for infused ones, or you could pay them to infuse yours in one of their safely guarded nests.
“What are you doing?” Gaz demanded. The short, one-eyed man clutched the basket to his chest. “I’ll have you strung up if you’ve stolen anyone’s spheres.”
Kaladin turned away from him.
“Storm you! I’ll have you strung up anyway! Don’t think you can run away; there are still sentries. You—”
“I’m going to the Honor Chasm,” Kaladin said quietly. His voice would barely be audible over the storm.
Gaz shut up. The Honor Chasm. He lowered his metal basket and made no further objections. There was a certain deference given to men who took that road.
Kaladin continued to cross the courtyard. “Lordling,” Gaz called.
Kaladin turned.
“Leave the sandals and vest,” Gaz said. “I don’t want to have to send someone down to fetch them.”
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…”
“One more try, Kaladin,” Syl whispered. “Please.” One more try….
The men huddled in the barrack with barely a blanket to call their own. Frightened of the storm. Frightened of each other. Frightened of what the next day would bring.
One more try….
He thought of himself, crying at the death of a boy he hadn’t known. A boy he hadn’t even tried to help.
One more try.
Kaladin opened his eyes. He was cold and wet, but he felt a tiny, warm candle flame of determination come alight inside him. He clenched his hand, crushing the blackbane leaf inside, then dropped it over the side of the chasm. He lowered the other hand, which had been holding Syl.
She zipped up into the air, anxious. “Kaladin?”
He stalked away from the chasm, bare feet splashing in puddles and stepping heedlessly on rockbud vines. The incline he’d come down was covered with flat, slatelike plants that had opened like books to the rain, ruffled lacy red and green leaves connecting the two halves. Lifespren— little green blips of light, brighter than Syl but small as spores—danced among the plants, dodging raindrops.
Kaladin strode up, water streaming past him in tiny rivers. At the top, he returned to the bridge yard. It was still empty save for Gaz, who was tying a ripped tarp back into place.
Kaladin had crossed most of the distance to the man before Gaz noticed him. The wiry sergeant scowled. “Too cowardly to go through with it, Your Lordship? Well, if you think I’m giving back—”
He cut off with a gagging noise as Kaladin lunged forward, grabbing Gaz by the neck. Gaz lifted an arm in surprise, but Kaladin batted it away and swept the man’s legs out from under him, slamming him down to the rocky ground, throwing up a splash of water. Gaz’s eyes opened wide with shock and pain, and he began to strangle under the pressure of Kaladin’s grip on his throat.
“The world just changed, Gaz,” Kaladin said, leaning in close. “I died down at that chasm. Now you’ve got my vengeful spirit to deal with.”
Squirming, Gaz looked about frantically for help that wasn’t there. Kaladin didn’t have trouble holding him down. There was one thing about running bridges: If you survived long enough, it built up the muscles.
Kaladin let up slightly on Gaz’s neck, allowing him a gasping breath. Then Kaladin leaned down further. “We’re going to start over new, you and
I. Clean. And I want you to understand something from the start. I’m
already dead. You can’t hurt me. Understand?”
Gaz nodded slowly and Kaladin gave him another breath of frigid, humid air.
“Bridge Four is mine,” Kaladin said. “You can assign us tasks, but I’m bridgeleader. The other one died today, so you have to pick a new leader anyway. Understand?”
Gaz nodded again.
“You learn quickly,” Kaladin said, letting the man breathe freely. He stepped back, and Gaz hesitantly got to his feet. There was hatred in his eyes, but it was veiled. He seemed worried about something—something more than Kaladin’s threats.
“I want to stop paying down my slave debt,” Kaladin said. “How much do bridgemen make?”
“Two clearmarks a day,” Gaz said, scowling at him and rubbing his neck.
So a slave would make half that. One diamond mark. A pittance, but Kaladin would need it. He’d also need to keep Gaz in line. “I’ll start taking
my wages,” Kaladin said, “but you get to keep one mark in five.” Gaz started, glancing at him in the dim, overcast light.
“For your efforts,” Kaladin said. “For what efforts?”
Kaladin stepped up to him. “Your efforts in staying the Damnation out of my way. Understood?”
Gaz nodded again. Kaladin walked away. He hated to waste money on a bribe, but Gaz needed a consistent, repetitive reminder of why he should avoid getting Kaladin killed. One mark every five days wasn’t much of a reminder—but for a man who was willing to risk going out in the middle of a highstorm to protect his spheres, it might be enough.
Kaladin walked back to Bridge Four’s small barrack, pulling open the thick wooden door. The men huddled inside, just as he’d left them. But something had changed. Had they always looked that pathetic?
Yes. They had. Kaladin was the one who had changed, not they. He felt a strange dislocation, as if he’d allowed himself to forget—if only in part— the last nine months. He reached back across time, studying the man he had been. The man who’d still fought, and fought well.
He couldn’t be that man again—he couldn’t erase the scars—but he could learn from that man, as a new squadleader learned from the victorious generals of the past. Kaladin Stormblessed was dead, but Kaladin Bridgeman was of the same blood. A descendant with potential.
Kaladin walked to the first huddled figure. The man wasn’t sleeping— who could sleep through a highstorm? The man cringed as Kaladin knelt beside him.
“What’s your name?” Kaladin asked, Syl flitting down and studying the man’s face. He wouldn’t be able to see her.
The man was older, with drooping cheeks, brown eyes, and close- cropped, white-salted hair. His beard was short and he didn’t have a slave mark.
“Your name?” Kaladin repeated firmly. “Storm off,” the man said, rolling over.
Kaladin hesitated, then leaned in, speaking in a low voice. “Look, friend. You can either tell me your name, or I’ll keep pestering you. Continue refusing, and I’ll tow you out into that storm and hang you over the chasm by one leg until you tell me.”
The man glanced back over his shoulder. Kaladin nodded slowly, holding the man’s gaze.
“Teft,” the man finally said. “My name’s Teft.”
“That wasn’t so hard,” Kaladin said, holding out his hand. “I’m Kaladin. Your bridgeleader.”
The man hesitated, then took Kaladin’s hand, wrinkling his brow in confusion. Kaladin vaguely remembered the man. He’d been in the crew for a while, a few weeks at least. Before that, he’d been on another bridge crew. One of the punishments for bridgemen who committed camp infractions was a transfer to Bridge Four.
“Get some rest,” Kaladin said, releasing Teft’s hand. “We’re going to have a hard day tomorrow.”
“How do you know?” Teft asked, rubbing his bearded chin.
“Because we’re bridgemen,” Kaladin said, standing. “Every day is hard.”
Teft hesitated, then smiled faintly. “Kelek knows that’s true.”
Kaladin left him, moving down the line of huddled figures. He visited each man, prodding or threatening until the man gave his name. They each resisted. It was as if their names were the last things they owned, and wouldn’t be given up cheaply, though they seemed surprised—perhaps even encouraged—that someone cared to ask.
He clutched to these names, repeating each one in his head, holding them like precious gemstones. The names mattered. The men mattered. Perhaps Kaladin would die in the next bridge run, or perhaps he would break under the strain, and give Amaram one final victory. But as he settled down on the ground to plan, he felt that tiny warmth burning steadily within him.
It was the warmth of decisions made and purpose seized. It was responsibility.
Syl alighted on his leg as he sat, whispering the names of the men to himself. She looked encouraged. Bright. Happy. He didn’t feel any of that. He felt grim, tired, and wet. But he wrapped himself in the responsibility he had taken, the responsibility for these men. He held to it like a climber clung to his last handhold as he dangled from a cliffside.
He would find a way to protect them.
THE END OF
