when your crew was sent out instead of mine. I remember hoping you’d fail, since you dared to walk with your chin up . . . I—”
“It’s all right, Pitt,” Kaladin said. “It wasn’t your fault. You can blame Sadeas.”
“I suppose.” Pitt got a distant look on his face. “He broke us right good, didn’t he, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Turns out, though, men can be reforged. I wouldn’t have thought that.” Pitt looked over his shoulder. “I’m going to have to go do this for the other lads of Bridge Seventeen, aren’t I?”
“With Teft’s help, yes, but that’s the hope,” Kaladin said. “Do you think you can do it?”
“I’ll just have to pretend to be you, sir,” Pitt said. He smiled, then moved on, taking a bowl of stew and joining the others.
These forty would be ready soon, ready to become sergeants to their own teams of bridgemen. The transformation had happened more quickly than Kaladin had hoped. Teft, you marvelous man, he thought. You did it.
Where was Teft, anyway? He’d gone on the patrol with them, and now he’d vanished. Kaladin glanced over his shoulder but didn’t see him; perhaps he’d gone to check on some of the other bridge crews. He did catch Rock shooing away a lanky man in an ardent’s robe.
“What was that?” Kaladin asked, catching the Horneater as he passed.
“That one,” Rock said. “Keeps loitering here with sketchbook. Wants to draw bridgemen. Ha! Because we are famous, you see.”
Kaladin frowned. Strange actions for an ardent—but, then, all ardents were strange, to an extent. He let Rock return to his stew and stepped away from the fire, enjoying the peace.
Everything was so quiet out there, in the camp. Like it was holding its breath.
“The patrol seems to have worked out,” Sigzil said, strolling up to Kaladin. “Those men are changed.”
“Funny what a couple of days spent marching as a unit can do to soldiers,” Kaladin said. “Have you seen Teft?”
“No, sir,” Sigzil said. He nodded toward the fire. “You’ll want to get some stew. We won’t have much time for chatting tonight.”
“Highstorm,” Kaladin realized. It seemed like too soon since the last one, but they weren’t always regular—not in the way he thought of it. The stormwardens had to do complex mathematics to predict them; Kaladin’s father had made a hobby of it.
Perhaps that was what he was noticing. Was he suddenly predicting highstorms because the night seemed too . . . something?
You’re imagining things, Kaladin thought. Shrugging off his fatigue from the extended ride and march, he went over to get some stew. He’d have to eat quickly—he’d want to go join the men guarding Dalinar and the king during the storm.
The men from the patrol cheered him as he filled his bowl.
* * *
Shallan sat on the rattling wagon and moved her hand over the sphere on the seat beside her, palming it and dropping another.
Tyn raised an eyebrow. “I heard the replacement hit.”
“Drynets!” Shallan said. “I thought I had it.”
“Drynets?”
“It’s a curse,” Shallan said, blushing. “I heard it from the sailors.”
“Shallan, do you have any idea at all what that means?”
“Like . . . for fishing?” Shallan said. “The nets are dry, maybe? They haven’t been catching any fish, so it’s bad?”
Tyn grinned. “Dear, I’m going to do my very best to corrupt you. Until then, I think you should avoid using sailor curses. Please.”
“All right.” Shallan passed her hand over the sphere again, swapping the spheres. “No clink! Did you hear that? Or, um, did you not hear that? It didn’t make a noise!”
“Nice,” Tyn said, getting out a pinch of some kind of mossy substance. She began rubbing it between her fingers, and Shallan thought she saw smoke rising from the moss. “You are getting better. I also feel like we should figure out some way to use that drawing talent of yours.”
Shallan already had an inkling of how it would come in handy. More of the former deserters had asked her for pictures.
“You’ve been working on your accents?” Tyn asked, eyes glazing as she rubbed the moss.
“I have indeed, my good woman,” Shallan said with a Thaylen accent.
“Good. We’ll get around to costuming once we have more resources. I, for one, am going to be very amused to watch your face when you have to go out in public with that hand of yours uncovered.”
Shallan immediately pulled her safehand up to her breast. “What!”
“I warned you about difficult things,” Tyn said, smiling in a devious way. “West of Marat, almost all women go