Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,135

offering for Syl. That was silly, since Syl didn’t eat. She turned into a tuber anyway and rolled around on the counter to say thanks.

That music though. The storm. She could hardly contain herself. It was coming!

She rolled off the counter and zipped over to examine Cord’s Shardplate stacked neatly in the corner. The young Horneater woman was never without it. She was the first of her people in … well, a very, very long time to have a Shard.

It was pretty. Maybe Syl should have hated it, as she did Shardblades, but she didn’t. It was kind of a corpse—well, lots of corpses—but not as offensive. The difference, she supposed, was attitude. She could sense contentment, not pain, from the Plate.

Cord began making noise with her pot, and Syl found herself darting that direction to watch what was being dumped into the water. Sometimes Syl felt like she had two brains. One was the responsible brain; it had driven her to defy the other honorspren and her father in seeking out Kaladin and forming a Radiant bond. This was the brain that she wanted to control her. It cared about important things: people, the fate of the world, figuring out what it truly meant to be of Honor.

She had a different brain too. The brain that was fascinated by the world—the brain that acted like it belonged to a small child. A loud noise? Better go see what caused it! Music on the horizon? Dart back and forth, eager with anticipation! A strange cremling on the wall? Mimic its shape and crawl along to see what it feels like!

Thoughts bombarded her. What did it feel like to be a tuber being cut? How long had it taken Rock and Song to come up with Cord’s name? Should Syl have a name that was a poem? Maybe they had a name for her among the Horneaters. Did they have names for every spren, or just important ones?

On and on and on. She could deal with it. She always had. It wasn’t an honorspren thing though. The others weren’t like her, except maybe Rua.

Puffs of steam rose from the cook pot, and Syl became the same shape: a puff of steam rising toward the ceiling. When that got boring—it took only a few seconds—she soared up into the air to listen to the music. The storm wasn’t near enough yet. She wouldn’t be able to see it.

Still, she zipped out onto the balcony and flitted along the outside of the tower, searching for Kaladin’s room.

The tower was dead. She barely remembered the place from before, when she’d bonded her old wonderful knight. He’d spent most of his life traveling to little villages, using her as a Shardblade to cut cisterns or aqueducts for the people. She remembered coming to Urithiru with him once … and the tower had been bright with lights.… A strange kind of light …

She stopped in the air, realizing she’d flown up seventeen stories. Silly spren. Don’t let the child be in charge. She darted down and found Kaladin’s window, then squeezed through the shutters, which had just enough space between them for her to enter.

In the dark room beyond, he slept. She didn’t need to come look to know that. She’d have felt if he’d woken. But …

He has two brains too, she thought. A light brain and a dark brain. She wished she could understand him. He needed help. Maybe this new duty would be all he needed. She so profoundly hoped that it would. But she worried it wouldn’t be enough.

He needed her help, and she couldn’t give it. She couldn’t understand.

The storm! The storm was here.

She slipped back outside, though the responsible brain managed to keep her attention. Kaladin. She needed to help Kaladin. Perhaps he would be satisfied as a surgeon, and it would be good for him to not have to kill anymore. However, there was a reason he’d had difficulties as a surgeon in the past. He would continue to have the dark brain. This wasn’t a solution. She needed a solution.

She kept hold of that idea, not letting it evaporate like steam above a cauldron. She held to it even as the stormwall hit, washing around the base of the tower from the east. Hundreds of windspren flew before it in a multitude of shapes. She joined them, laughing and becoming like them. She loved her little cousins for their joy, their simple excitement.

As always, small thoughts bombarded her