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It was gone in a moment, but she wrote her impressions anyway. Dalinar’s powers were related to the composition of Stormlight, the three realms, and—ultimately—the very nature of deity. There were secrets here to unlock.
Kaladin’s Light was renewed, wisps of it steaming off his skin, visible even in daylight. The spheres he carried would be renewed as well. Somehow Dalinar reached between realms to touch the Almighty’s own power, an ability once reserved solely for storms and the things that lived in them.
Appearing invigorated, the young Windrunner stepped across the deck. He knelt and rested his hand on the rectangular patch of wood that stood out from the rest—not newly cut, but dinged and marked from arrows. His old bridge had been embedded to be flush with the rest of the deck. The Bridge Four Windrunners all enacted this same wordless ritual when they left the airship. It took only a moment, then Kaladin launched into the air.
Navani finished her notes, covering a smile as she found Dalinar reading over her shoulder. That was still a decidedly odd experience, for all that she tried to encourage him.
“I’ve already let Jasnah make notes on what I do,” Dalinar said. “Yet each time, you pull out this notebook. What are you looking for, gemheart?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Something is odd about the nature of Urithiru, and I think Bondsmiths might be related to the tower, at least from what we read about the old Radiants.” She flipped to another page and showed him some schematics she’d drawn. The tower city of Urithiru had an enormous gemstone construction at its heart—a crystal pillar, a fabrial unlike any she’d ever seen. She was increasingly certain the tower had once been powered by that pillar, as this flying ship was powered by the gemstones her engineers had embedded within the hull. But the tower was broken, barely functioning.
“I tried infusing that pillar,” Dalinar said. “It didn’t work.” He could infuse Stormlight into ordinary spheres, but those tower gemstones had resisted.
“We must be approaching the problem in the wrong way. I can’t help thinking if I knew more about Stormlight, the solution would be simple.”
She shook her head. The Fourth Bridge was an extraordinary accomplishment, but she worried she was failing in a greater task. Urithiru was high in the mountains, where it was too cold to grow plants—yet the tower had numerous fields. People had not only survived up in that harsh environment, they had thrived.
How? She knew the tower had once been occupied by a powerful spren named the Sibling. A spren on the level of the Nightwatcher or the Stormfather—and capable of making a Bondsmith. She had to assume the spren, or perhaps something about its relationship with a human, had allowed the tower to function. Unfortunately, the Sibling had died during the Recreance. She wasn’t certain what level of “dead” that meant. Was the Sibling dead like the souls of Shardblades that still walked around? Some spren she interviewed said the Sibling was “slumbering,” but they treated that as final.
The answers weren’t clear, and that left Navani struggling to try to understand. She studied Dalinar and his bond with the Stormfather, hoping it would offer some further clue.
“So,” an accented voice said from behind them, “the Alethi really have learned to fly. I should have believed the stories. Only your kind are stubborn enough to bully nature herself.”
Navani started, though she was slower to respond than Dalinar, who spun—hand on his side sword—and immediately stepped between Navani and the strange voice. She had to peek around him to see the man who had spoken.
He was a short fellow, missing a tooth, with a flat nose and a jovial expression. His worn cloak and ragged trousers marked him as a refugee. He stood next to Navani’s engineer station, where he’d picked up the map that charted the Fourth Bridge’s course.
Velat, standing at the center of the desks, yelped when she saw him, then reached over to snatch the paper away.
“Refugees are to gather belowdecks,” Navani said, pointing the way back to the steps.
“Good for them,” the Herdazian man said. “Your flying boy says you’ve got a place for me here. Don’t know what I think of serving an Alethi. I’ve spent most of my life trying to stay away from them.” He eyed Dalinar. “You specifically, Blackthorn. No offense.”
Ah, Navani thought. She’d heard that the Mink wasn’t what people expected. She revised her assessment, then glanced toward the Cobalt Guardsmen who were belatedly rushing up from the sides of the ship. They appeared chagrined, but Navani waved them off. She’d ask some pointed questions later about why they’d been so lax as to let this man sneak up the steps to the command station.
“I find wisdom in men who knew to avoid the person I once was,” Dalinar said to the Mink. “But this is a new era, with new enemies. Our past squabbles are of no concern now.”
“Squabbles?” the man asked. “So that’s the Alethi word for them. Yes, yes. My mastery of your language, you see, is lacking. I’d been mistakenly referring to your actions as ‘raping and burning my people.’”
He pulled something from his pocket. Another of Velat’s maps. He glanced over his shoulder—to check that she wasn’t watching—then unrolled it and cocked his head, inspecting it.
“What remains of my army is secluded in four separate hollows between here and Herdaz,” he said. “I have only a few hundred left. Use your flying machine to rescue them, and we’ll talk. Alethi bloodlust has cost me many loved ones over the years, but I’d be a fool not to admit the value in pointing it—like the proverbial sword’s blade—at someone else.”
“It will be done,” Dalinar said.
Navani didn’t miss that—despite claiming earlier that the Fourth Bridge was her ship—he agreed to fly it per the Mink’s request without so much as consulting her. She tried not to let things like that bother her. It wasn’t that her husband didn’t respect her—he’d proven on numerous occasions that he did. Dalinar Kholin was simply accustomed to being the most important—and generally most capable—person around. That led a man to surge forward like an advancing stormwall, making decisions as the need arose.
Still, it irked her more than she’d ever admit out loud.
The first of the real refugees began to arrive down below, herded gently by the Edgedancers. Navani focused on the problem at hand: making certain each person was settled and comfortable in the most economical and orderly way possible. She’d drawn up a plan. Unfortunately, the welcome was interrupted as Lyn—a Windrunner woman with long dark hair worn in a braid—slammed down onto the deck.
“Incoming Fused, sir,” she reported to Dalinar. “Three full flights of them.”
“Kaladin was right, then,” he said. “Hopefully we can drive them away. Storms help us if they decide to harry the ship all the way to the Shattered Plains.”
That was Navani’s worst fear—that flying enemies would be able to strike at and even disable the transport. She had precautions in place to try to prevent that, and it looked like she’d get to witness their initial test firsthand.
To draw Stormlight out of a gemstone, I use the Arnist Method. Several large empty gemstones are brought close to the infused one while the spren is inspecting it. Stormlight is slowly absorbed from a small gemstone by a very large gemstone of the same type—and several together can draw the Light out quickly. The method’s limitation is, of course, the fact that you need not merely acquire one gemstone for your fabrial, but several larger ones to withdraw the Stormlight.
