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“The spanreed!” Falilar said. “Oh, Brightness!”
“Damnation,” she said. “That’s terrible.”
Kalami eyed her, walking up. Navani smothered a smile.
“Falilar,” Navani said. “Gather a team to see if they can recover that. I need to take better care.”
“Yes, Brightness,” he said.
Of course if they did find it, the team would have discreet directions to break the ruby as if from the fall. And of course they would be instructed to speak loudly of the tragedy of it among her scholars in the tower.
Navani had a budding suspicion as to the identity of this spren who had contacted her. She wanted to make sure that it, and its agent, heard of the lost spanreed.
Let’s see what you do now, Navani thought, strolling back into the tower.
I have begun searching for a pathway out of this conundrum by seeking the ideal person to act on my behalf. Someone who embodies both Preservation and Ruin. A … sword, you might say, who can both protect and kill.
Adolin glanced up as he heard the call from the watchpost at the front of the barge. Land sighted.
Finally, he thought, giving Gallant a firm pat on the neck. The animal nickered in anticipation.
“Trust me,” he said to the Ryshadium, “I’m as happy to land as you are.” Adolin had always been fond of traveling—feeling the open breeze on your face, the welcoming sky overhead. Who knew what exotic tastes and fashions you’d find at your destination? Taking a ship, though, was excruciating. No space to run, no good sparring grounds. A ship was a cage without bars.
He left Gallant and rushed up to the barge’s prow. A dark strip of obsidian broke the sea ahead, with quiet lights shimmering above. Not souls, but actual candles in the windows of small structures. In Shadesmar, spren could manifest the beads that represented the soul of a fire—and in so doing, create flames that provided light, but very little heat.
Others gathered at the sides of the barge, and Godeke joined Adolin on the small upper deck. The lanky Edgedancer seemed as eager as Adolin to be off the boat; Adolin had seen Godeke pacing more than once these last few days.
Unfortunately, the responsible side of Adolin—drilled into him over years with his father—made him call for caution. “We don’t know the situation in this town yet,” he said to the others. “Last time I was in Shadesmar, the first town we entered ended up being held by the Fused. We should send some of the Lightweavers in, wearing disguises, to scout.”
“You will not find danger here,” Ua’pam promised, rubbing his knuckles together in a curious gesture, making a sound like two rocks grinding. “These are free lands. Neither honorspren nor Fused control this outpost.”
“Still,” Adolin said, looking to the others. “Humans, under the tarp until we’ve done some basic scouting.”
Grumbling, they gathered their horses and moved into the large “room” under the tarps. Shallan was resting here already; most of them had opted to place their bedrolls here, where the tall boxes of cargo had been stacked to make various nooks and cubbies.
Adolin nudged her. “Shallan? You all right?”
The dark lump that was his wife stirred. “Might have had a little too much to drink last night.”
Adolin smiled. The trip had been genuinely relaxing, save for his worry about their destination. It had been good to spend time with Shallan—and he had enjoyed even the appearances of Veil and Radiant. The latter made an excellent sparring partner, and the former knew a seemingly infinite number of card games. Some of which were good Vorin games, and others … well, they had too much randomness for propriety, but were more fun than Adolin had expected.
It had culminated with Shallan pulling out an excellent Thaylen violet, Kdisln vintage, last night. As usual, she’d had a few more cups than Adolin. Shallan had a strange relationship with drink, one that varied based on her persona. But since she could burn off the effects using Stormlight, she theoretically could never be drunk unless she wanted to be. It baffled him why she would sometimes go to sleep like she did, risking the morning hangover.
“I want someone to scout the town before we go in,” Adolin said. “You want me to send—”
“I’ll go,” she said, climbing out of her bedroll. “Give me a few minutes.”
True to her word, she was ready a short time later, wearing a Lightweaving that made her look like a cultivationspren. She took Vathah in a similar disguise, and the two of them disembarked with Ua’pam and his cousin to walk through the town.
The rest of them waited under the tarp. Godeke fished in his pockets and brought out a few spheres. His personal money seemed to mostly have been chips—which had gone dun by this point. They’d seen a highstorm several times—storms manifested here as shimmering lights in the sky—but the spheres hadn’t been recharged.
“Even the broam I brought is starting to fade,” Godeke noted, holding up the amethyst to give light to the darkness under the tarp. “The larger gemstones we brought probably won’t last until we reach the fortress, Brightlord.”
Adolin nodded. They’d gone over the Stormlight budget a dozen times leading up to leaving. No matter how they’d been able to spin it, there wasn’t a way to reach Lasting Integrity with any Stormlight remaining. So the gifts they’d brought were things Syl said would be appreciated: newly written books, puzzles made of iron that could engage the mind for hours, and some weapons.
There was one way they might have brought Stormlight that lasted longer. The Thaylens owned gemstones that were—because of their near-perfect structures—capable of retaining Stormlight over long time periods. The best of those had been used a year ago to capture one of the Unmade, and Jasnah wanted the others for experiments.
Jasnah had mentioned something else about these near-flawless gemstones that troubled her. She found it odd that the gemstones in circulation as spheres were always so flawed that they lost Light quickly. She said that they should vary, and more perfect ones should be found on occasion—but that wasn’t the case.
Why was she concerned by that? He pondered the question as he waited for Shallan, and tried to trace Jasnah’s thoughts. What if someone had been in the know, while everyone else thought gemstones were all basically the same? If you knew the supreme value of gemstones that could hold Stormlight over long trips through Shadesmar, you could spend years gathering them.
He frowned, considering it. Finally, he glanced at Godeke, who was holding up one of his fading broams.
“When you’re free to go into the city,” Adolin told him, “take most of our remaining Stormlight and do as we discussed. Trade it for supplies to use on the next leg of our trip—then spend the remainder to load up the barge.”
Ua’pam’s cousin would wait at the town to guard their supplies. Adolin’s group only needed to carry enough to get to and from Lasting Integrity.
Assuming everything went well with Shallan’s investigation of the town. As they waited, Adolin found himself feeling increasingly anxious. He felt like something was going to drop on him. Had the trip here been too easy?
He passed the time checking on his soldiers and scribe. As they were in good spirits, Adolin checked on Maya. She sat in a little nook at the rear of the room, and Adolin had to pull out a gemstone—a thick sapphire, big as his thumb—to get enough light to see her.
