Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

The farther they got from the walls, the better things seemed to be in the city—fewer refugees, more sense of order. They passed a market that was actually open, and inside he finally spotted a policing force: a tight group of men wearing unfamiliar colors.

This area would have looked nice, under other circumstances. Ridges of shalebark along the street, manicured with a variety of colors: some like plates, others like knobby branches reaching upward. Cultivated trees—which rarely pulled in their leaves—sprouted in front of many of the buildings, gripping the ground with thick roots that melded into the stone.

Refugees huddled in family groups. Here, the buildings were built in large square layouts, with windows facing inward and courtyards at the centers. People crowded into these, turning them into improvised shelters. Fortunately, Kaladin saw no obvious starvation, so the city’s food stores hadn’t given out yet.

“Did you see that?” Shallan asked softly, joining him.

“What?” Kaladin asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Performers in that market over there, dressed in very odd clothing.” Shallan frowned, pointing down an intersecting street as they passed. “There’s another one.”

It was a man dressed all in white, with strips of cloth that streamed and fluttered as he moved. Head down, he stood on a street corner, leaping back and forth from one position to another. When he looked up and met Kaladin’s eyes, he was the first stranger that day who didn’t immediately look away.

Kaladin watched until a chull pulling a wagon of storm refuse blocked his view. Then, ahead of them, people started clearing the street.

“To the side,” Elhokar said. “I’m curious about what this could be.”

They joined the crowds pressed up against the buildings, Kaladin shoving his hands in his pack to protect the large number of spheres he had tucked away in a black purse there. Soon, a strange procession came marching down the center of the street. These men and women were also dressed like performers—their clothes augmented with brightly colored strips of red, blue, or green fabric. They walked past, calling out nonsense phrases. Words Kaladin knew, but which didn’t belong together.

“What in Damnation is happening in this city?” Adolin muttered.

“This isn’t normal?” Kaladin whispered.

“We have buskers and street performers, but nothing like this. Storms. What are they?”

“Spren,” Shallan whispered. “They’re imitating spren. Look, those are like flamespren, and the ones of white and blue with the flowing ribbons—windspren. Emotion spren too. There’s pain, that’s fear, anticipation…”

“So it’s a parade,” Kaladin said, frowning. “But nobody is having any fun.”

The heads of spectators bowed, and people murmured or … prayed? Nearby an Alethi refugee—wrapped in rags and holding a sniveling baby in her arms—leaned against a building. A burst of exhaustionspren appeared above her, like jets of dust rising in the air. Only these were bright red instead of the normal brown, and seemed distorted.

“This is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Syl said from Kaladin’s shoulder. “Oh … oh, that spren is from him, Kaladin.”

Shallan watched the rising not-exhaustionspren with widening eyes. She took Adolin by the arm. “Keep us moving,” she hissed.

He started pushing through the crowd toward a corner where they could cut away from the strange procession. Kaladin grabbed the king by the arm, while Drehy, Skar, and Shallan’s two guards instinctively formed up around them. The king let Kaladin pull him away, and a good thing too. Elhokar had been fishing in his pocket, perhaps for a sphere to give the exhausted woman. Storms! In the middle of the crowd!

“Not far now,” Adolin said once they had breathing room on the side street. “Follow me.”

He led them to a small archway, where the buildings had been built around a shared courtyard garden. Of course, refugees had taken shelter there, many of them huddled in blanket tents that were still wet from the storm the day before. Lifespren bobbed among the plants.

Adolin carefully wound his way through all the people to get to the door he wanted, and then knocked. It was the back door, facing the courtyard instead of the street. Was this a rich person’s winehouse, perhaps? It seemed more like a home though.

Adolin knocked again, looking worried. Kaladin stepped up beside him, then froze. On the door was a shiny steel plate with engraved numbers. In it, he could see his reflection.

“Almighty above,” Kaladin said, poking at the scars and bulges on his face, some with open sores. Fake teeth jutted from his mouth, and one eye was higher in his head than the other. His hair grew out in patches, and his nose was tiny. “What did you do to me, woman?”

“I’ve recently learned,” Shallan said, “that a good disguise can be memorable, so long as it makes you memorable for the wrong reason. You, Captain, have a way of sticking in people’s heads, and I worried you would do so no matter what face you wore. So I enveloped it with something even more memorable.”

“I look like some kind of hideous spren.”

“Hey!” Syl said.

The door finally opened, revealing a short, matronly Thaylen woman in an apron and vest. Behind her stood a burly man with a white beard, cut after the Horneater style.

“What?” she said. “Who are you?”

“Oh!” Adolin said. “Shallan, I’ll need…”

Shallan rubbed his face with a towel from her pack, as if to remove makeup—covering the transformation as his face became his own again. Adolin grinned at the woman, and her jaw dropped.

“Prince Adolin?” she said. “Hurry, hurry. Get in here. It’s not safe outside!”

She ushered them in and quickly shut the door. Kaladin blinked at the sphere-lit chamber, its walls lined with bolts of cloth and dummies with half-finished coats on them.

“What is this place?” Kaladin asked.

“Well, I figured we’d want someplace safe,” Adolin said. “We’d need to stay with someone I’d trust with my life, or more.” He looked at Kaladin, then gestured toward the woman. “So I brought us to my tailor.”





I wish to submit my formal protest at the idea of abandoning the tower. This is an extreme step, taken brashly.

—From drawer 2-22, smokestone

Secrets.

This city was brimming with them. It was stuffed with them, so tightly they couldn’t help but ooze out.

The only thing for Shallan to do, then, was punch herself in the face.

That was harder than it seemed. She always flinched. Come on, she thought, making a fist. With eyes squeezed shut, she braced herself, then smacked her freehand into the side of her head.

It barely hurt; she simply wasn’t capable of hitting herself hard enough. Maybe she could get Adolin to do it for her. He was in the back workroom of the tailor’s shop. Shallan had excused herself to step into the front showroom, as she figured the others would react poorly to her trying to actively attract a painspren.