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He rubbed his face, and flakes of dried blood cracked free and fluttered toward the ground. Gash on his head, bloodied nose, split lip. Syl landed on his chest, feet planted on his sternum, hands clasped before her. “Kaladin?”
“I’m alive,” he mumbled, words slurred by his swollen lip. “What happened?”
“You were beaten by those soldiers,” she said, seeming to grow smaller. “I’ve gotten back at them. I made one of them trip three times today.” She looked concerned.
He found himself smiling. How long could a man hang like this, blood going to his head?
“There was a lot of yelling,” Syl said softly. “I think several men were demoted. The soldier, Lamaril, he…”
“What?”
“He was executed,” Syl said, even more quietly. “Highprince Sadeas did it himself, the hour the army got back from the plateau. He said something about the ultimate responsibility falling on the lighteyes. Lamaril kept screaming that you had promised to absolve him, and that Gaz should be punished instead.”
Kaladin smirked ruefully. “He shouldn’t have had me beaten senseless. Gaz?”
“They left him in his position. I don’t know why.”
“Right of responsibility. In a disaster like this, the lighteyes are supposed to take most of the blame. They like to make a show of obeying old precepts like that, when it suits them. Why am I still alive?”
“Something about an example,” Syl said, wrapping her translucent arms around herself. “Kaladin, I feel cold.”
“You can feel temperature?” Kaladin said, coughing.
“Not usually. I can now. I don’t understand it. I…I don’t like it.”
“It’ll be all right.”
“You shouldn’t lie.”
“Sometimes it’s all right to lie, Syl.”
“And this is one of those times?”
He blinked, trying to ignore his wounds, the pressure in his head, trying to clear his mind. He failed on all counts. “Yes,” he whispered.
“I think I understand.”
“So,” Kaladin said, resting his head back, the parietal knob of his skull resting against the wall, “I’m to be judged by the highstorm. They’ll let the storm kill me.”
Hanging here, Kaladin would be exposed directly to the winds and everything they would throw at him. If you were prudent and took appropriate action, it was possible to survive outside in a highstorm, though it was a miserable experience. Kaladin had done it on several occasions, hunkered down, taking shelter in the lee of a rock formation. But hanging on a wall facing directly stormward? He’d be cut to ribbons and crushed by stones.
“I’ll be right back,” Syl said, dropping off his chest, taking the form of a falling stone, then changing into windblown leaves near the ground and fluttering away, curving to the right. The lumberyard was empty. Kaladin could smell the crisp, chill air, the land bracing for a highstorm. The lull, it was called, when the wind fell still, the air cold, the pressure dropping, the humidity rising right before a storm.
A few seconds later, Rock poked his head around the wall, Syl on his shoulder. He crept up to Kaladin, a nervous Teft following. They were joined by Moash; despite the latter’s protests that he didn’t trust Kaladin, he looked almost as concerned as the other two.
“Lordling?” Moash said. “You awake?”
“I’m conscious,” Kaladin croaked. “Everyone get back from the battle all right?”
“All of our men, sure enough,” Teft said, scratching at his beard. “But we lost the battle. It was a disaster. Over two hundred bridgemen dead. Those who survived were only enough to carry eleven bridges.”
Two hundred men, Kaladin thought. That’s my fault. I protected my own at the cost of others. I was too hasty.
Bridgemen aren’t supposed to survive. There’s something about that. He wouldn’t be able to ask Lamaril. That man had gotten what he deserved, though. If Kaladin had the ability to choose, such would be the end of all lighteyes, the king included.
“We wanted to say something,” Rock said. “Is from all of the men. Most wouldn’t come out. Highstorm coming, and—”
“It’s all right,” Kaladin whispered.
Teft nudged Rock to continue.
“Well, is this. We will remember you. Bridge Four, we won’t go back to how we were. Maybe all of us will die, but we’ll show the new ones. Fires at night. Laughter. Living. We’ll make a tradition out of it. For you.” Rock and Teft knew about the knobweed. They could keep earning extra money to pay for things.
“You did this for us,” Moash put in. “We’d have died on that field. Perhaps as many as died in the other bridge crews. This way, we’re only going to lose one.”
“I say it isn’t right, what they’re doing,” Teft said with a scowl. “We talked about cutting you down….”
“No,” Kaladin said. “That would only earn you a similar punishment.”
The three men shared glances. It seemed they’d come to the same conclusion.
“What did Sadeas say?” Kaladin asked. “About me.”
“That he understood how a bridgeman would want to save his life,” Teft said, “even at others’ expense. He called you a selfish coward, but acted like that was all that could be expected.”
“He says he’s letting the Stormfather judge you,” Moash added. “Jezerezeh, king of Heralds. He says that if you deserve to live, you will….” He trailed off. He knew as well as the others that unprotected men didn’t survive highstorms, not like this.
“I want you three to do something for me,” Kaladin said, closing his eyes against the blood trickling down his face from his lip, which he’d cracked open by speaking.
“Anything, Kaladin,” Rock said.
“I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm. Tell them to look up at me tied here. Tell them I’ll open my eyes and look back at them, and they’ll know that I survived.”
The three bridgemen fell silent.
“Yes, of course, Kaladin,” Teft said. “We’ll do it.”
“Tell them,” Kaladin continued, voice firmer, “that it won’t end here. Tell them I chose not to take my own life, and so there’s no way in Damnation I’m going to give it up to Sadeas.”
Rock smiled one of those broad smiles of his. “By the uli’tekanaki, Kaladin. I almost believe you’ll do it.”
“Here,” Teft said, handing him something. “For luck.”
Kaladin took the object in a weak, bloodstained hand. It was a sphere, a full skymark. It was dun, the Stormlight gone from it. Carry a sphere with you into the storm, the old saying said, and at least you’ll have light by which to see.
“It’s all we were able to save from your pouch,” Teft said. “Gaz and Lamaril got the rest. We complained, but what were we to do?”
“Thank you,” Kaladin said.
Moash and Rock retreated to the safety of the barrack, Syl leaving Rock’s shoulder to stay with Kaladin. Teft lingered too, as if thinking to spend the storm with Kaladin. He eventually shook his head, muttering, and joined the others. Kaladin thought he heard the man calling himself a coward.
