Shen continued to stare at him.
“Is there something you wanted?” Kaladin asked.
“Am I really Bridge Four?” Shen asked.
“Of course you are.”
“Where is my spear?”
Kaladin looked Shen in the eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think that I am not Bridge Four,” Shen said, taking time to think with each word. “I am Bridge Four’s slave.”
It was like a punch to Kaladin’s gut. He’d hardly heard a dozen words out of the man during their time together, and now this?
The words smarted either way. Here was a man who, unlike the others, wasn’t welcome to leave and make his way in the world. Dalinar had freed the rest of Bridge Four—but a parshman . . . he’d be a slave no matter where he went or what he did.
What could Kaladin say? Storms.
“I appreciate your help when we were scavenging. I know it was difficult for you to see what we did down there sometimes.”
Shen waited, still squatting, listening. He regarded Kaladin with those impenetrable, solid black parshman eyes of his.
“I can’t start arming parshmen, Shen,” Kaladin said. “The lighteyes barely accept us as it is. If I gave you a spear, think of the storm it would cause.”
Shen nodded, face displaying no hint of his emotions. He stood up straight. “A slave I am, then.”
He withdrew.
Kaladin knocked his head back against the stone behind him, staring up at the sky. Storming man. He had a good life, for a parshman. Certainly more freedom than any other of his kind.
And were you satisfied with that? a voice inside him asked. Were you happy to be a well-treated slave? Or did you try to run, fight your way to freedom?
What a mess. He mulled over those thoughts, digging into his stew. He got two bites down before Natam—one of the men who’d been guarding at the palace—came stumbling into their camp, sweating, frantic, and red-cheeked from running.
“The king!” Natam said, puffing. “An assassin.”
Nightform predicting what will be,
The form of shadows, mind to foresee.
As the gods did leave, the nightform whispered.
A new storm will come, someday to break.
A new storm a new world to make.
A new storm a new path to take, the nightform listens.
—From the Listener Song of Secrets, 17th stanza
The king was fine.
One hand on the doorframe, Kaladin stood gasping from his run back to the palace. Inside, Elhokar, Dalinar, Navani, and both of Dalinar’s sons spoke together. Nobody was dead. Nobody was dead.
Stormfather, he thought, stepping into the room. For a moment, I felt like I did on the plateaus, watching my men charge the Parshendi. He hardly knew these people, but they were his duty. He hadn’t thought that his protectiveness could apply to lighteyes.
“Well, at least he ran here,” the king said, waving off the attentions of a woman who was trying to bandage a gash on his forehead. “You see, Idrin. This is what a good bodyguard looks like. I bet he wouldn’t have let this happen.”
The captain of the King’s Guard stood near the door, red-faced. He looked away, then stalked out into the hallway. Kaladin raised a hand to his head, bewildered. Comments like that one from the king were not going to help his men get along with Dalinar’s soldiers.
Inside the room, a mess of guards, servants, and members of Bridge Four stood around, looking confused or embarrassed. Natam was there—he’d been on duty with the King’s Guard—as was Moash.
“Moash,” Kaladin called. “You’re supposed to be back in the camp asleep.”
“So are you,” Moash said.
Kaladin grunted, trotting over, speaking more softly. “Were you here when it happened?”
“I’d just left,” Moash said. “Finishing my shift with the King’s Guard. I heard yelling, and came back as quickly as I could.” He nodded toward the open balcony door. “Come have a look.”
They walked out onto the balcony, which was a circular stone pathway that ran around the peak rooms of the palace—a terrace cut into the stone itself. From such a height, the balcony offered an unparalleled view overlooking the warcamps and the Plains beyond. Some members of the King’s Guard stood here, inspecting the balcony railing with sphere lamps. A section of the ironwork structure had twisted outward and hung precariously over the drop.
“From what we’ve figured,” Moash said, pointing, “the king came out here to think, as he likes to do.”
Kaladin nodded, walking with Moash. The stone floor beneath was still wet from highstorm rain. They reached the place where the railing was ripped, several guards making way for them. Kaladin looked down over the side. The drop was a good hundred feet onto the rocks below. Syl drifted through the air down there, making lazy glowing circles.
“Damnation, Kaladin!” Moash said, taking his arm. “Are you trying to make me panic?”
I wonder if I could survive that fall. . . . He’d dropped half that once before, filled with Stormlight, and had landed without trouble. He stepped back for Moash’s sake, though even before gaining his special abilities, heights had fascinated him. It felt liberating to be up so high. Just you and the air itself.
He knelt down, looking at the places where the footings of the iron railing had been mortared into holes in the stone. “The railing pulled free of its mountings?” he asked, poking his finger into a hole, then pulling it out with mortar dust on his fingers.