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Indeed, the Regal gestured his attendants toward the first exam room. Two moved out soon after, carrying the fallen Stoneward between them. They shoved Lirin aside as they carted her off down the hallway.
Syl came zipping back to Kaladin, agitated as she moved into the room with him. “They don’t seem to know about you. Only that the surgeon has a couple of fallen Radiants.”
Kaladin nodded, though he’d grown tense.
“I can care for these far better than you can,” Lirin said. “Removing them like this could be dangerous to their health, even deadly.”
“Why would we care?” the Regal said, both tone and rhythm sounding amused. Two of his soldiers took the Stoneward’s squires, one each, and hauled them out of the second exam room. “I think we should throw them all off the tower and rid ourselves of a huge problem. The Fused want us to collect them though. Guess they want to have the fun of killing these themselves.”
He’s posturing, Kaladin thought. The Fused wouldn’t go to the effort of taking the Radiants captive only to kill them. Would they?
Did it matter?
They were going to take Teft.
The Regal moved into the first exam room, and Kaladin’s father followed, making more objections. Kaladin stood with one hand on the wall, one hand on the door, breathing deeply. Wind surged through the window behind, brushing past him, bearing with it two twisting windspren that moved as lines of light.
A hundred objections held him. His father’s arguments. His soul in fragments. The knowledge that he was probably too tired to be making decisions. The fact that the queen had decided it was best to end hostilities.
So many reasons to stay where he was. But one reason to move.
They were going to take Teft.
Kaladin pulled open the door and stepped into the hallway, feeling the inevitable shift of a boulder perched on the top of a slope. Just. Beginning. To tip.
“Kaladin…” Syl said, landing on his shoulder.
“It was a nice dream, wasn’t it, Syl?” he asked. “That we could escape? Find peace at long last?”
“Such a wonderful dream,” she whispered.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
She nodded, and he stepped into the doorway of the exam room. Two enemy soldiers remained in the room: one warform and the stormform Regal. The Regal had helped get Teft up onto the regular soldier’s shoulders.
Lirin looked straight at Kaladin, then shook his head urgently, his eyes going wide.
“You will put him down,” Kaladin said to the singers. “And leave quietly. Send one of the Fused to get him, if they’re so insistent.”
The two froze, and the Regal sized him up. “Go back to bed, boy,” he eventually said. “You don’t want to try my patience today.”
Lirin dashed forward, trying to push Kaladin out of the room. With a quick pivot to the side, Kaladin sent his father tumbling into the hall—and hopefully out of danger. He stepped back into the doorway.
“Why not go for reinforcements?” Kaladin said to the two singers. Almost more a plea than a request. “Don’t press this issue right now.”
The Regal gestured for his companion to set Teft back onto the exam table, and for a moment Kaladin thought they might actually do what he said. Then the Regal unhooked the axe from its sheath at his side.
“No!” Lirin said from behind. “Don’t do this!”
In response, Kaladin drew in a breath of Stormlight. His body came alight with the inner storm, and wisps of luminescent smoke began to curl from his skin.
That gave the two singers pause, until the warform pointed. “That’s him, Brightlord! The one the Pursuer is searching for! He matches the description exactly!”
The Regal grinned. “You’re going to make me very rich, human.” Dark red lightning crackled across his skin. The warform shied away, hitting the counter and causing surgery implements to clink against one another.
Lirin grabbed Kaladin from behind.
Kaladin stood quietly on that precipice. Balanced.
The Regal leaped forward, swinging his axe.
And Kaladin stepped off the edge.
He shook free of his father’s grip and shoved him backward with one hand, then caught the Regal’s arm with his other before the axe could fall. Kaladin braced himself for the jolt of energy that shot through him at touching a stormform—he’d fought these before. It stunned him for a moment nonetheless, so he wasn’t ready to guard as the Regal cuffed him across the face, ripping his cheek with the barbed carapace on the back of his hand.
Stormlight would heal that. Kaladin got his other hand up, preventing another punch while continuing to hold back the axe. The two struggled for a moment, then Kaladin managed to get the advantage, tipping their center of balance forward so he could twist and ram his shoulder into the Regal.
Storms it hurt. That carapace was no joke. Still, the maneuver put his opponent momentarily off balance, so Kaladin was able to control the fight, spinning his enemy around and slamming the creature’s hand into the corner of an exam table. A resounding snap split the air, and the carapace on the hand cracked.
The Regal hissed in pain and dropped the axe. But then he pivoted hard and rammed his side into Kaladin’s chest, shoving him against the counter. Kaladin’s father was shouting, but the warform—instead of helping—remained by the opposite wall. He didn’t seem eager to attack a Radiant.
Without Stormlight, Kaladin wouldn’t have been able to withstand the constant jolts of energy from the stormform’s touch. As it was, he was able to hold on—not letting the enemy force him back too much—until the Regal tried another punch. At the windup, Kaladin hooked his leg around the foot of his opponent, then sent them both to the ground.
He landed with a grunt and tried to roll into position to choke his opponent unconscious. If the fight ended without bloodshed, perhaps his father would forgive him.
Unfortunately, Kaladin hadn’t done a lot of wrestling. He knew enough to keep himself from being pinned easily, but the Regal was stronger than he was, and that carapace kept jabbing in surprising places and interfering with his holds. The Regal leveraged his superior weight and strength, twisting Kaladin around with a grunt. Then—with Kaladin pinned beneath him—the creature began pummeling him in the face with his good fist, the one that hadn’t cracked.
Kaladin breathed in a gasp of Stormlight, draining the spheres on the counter. He brought his fist up and slammed it into the back of the hand that had cracked earlier. His enemy flinched, and Kaladin was able to kick free, throwing the Regal off—though both slammed into the counters in the tight confines as he did so.
Kaladin scrambled to find his feet so he could attack his enemy from above—but the Regal began to glow red. The hairs on Kaladin’s arms stood up, and he had a fraction of a second to duck to the side as a flash of light—and an earsplitting crack—filled the room.
He hit the ground, blinded and deafened, the sharp scent of a lightning strike filling his nostrils. Strange and distinctive, it was a scent he associated with rainfall. Kaladin didn’t think he’d been struck directly—stormforms had trouble aiming their lightning—but it took a moment for Kaladin’s Stormlight to heal his ears and restore his vision.
A shadow moved over him, swinging its axe down. Kaladin twisted to the side just in time. The axe clanged against the ground.
