to Dalinar. “Brightlord Dalinar sent a couple of the men to the servants’ quarters to move everyone out. He thought that if the assassin came back, he might start killing indiscriminately. Figured the more people who left the palace, the fewer casualties there would be.”
Kaladin nodded, taking a sphere lamp and moving out into the hallway. “Hold here. I need to do something.”
* * *
Adolin slumped in his seat as the bridgeboy left. Kaladin gave no explanation, of course, and didn’t ask the king for permission to withdraw. Storming man seemed to consider himself above lighteyes. No, the storming man seemed to consider himself above the king.
He did fight alongside you, part of him said. How many men, lighteyed or dark, would stand so firm against a Shardbearer?
Troubled, Adolin stared up at the ceiling. He couldn’t have seen what he thought he had. He’d been dazed from his fall from the ceiling. Surely the assassin hadn’t actually cut Kaladin through the arm with his Shardblade. The arm seemed perfectly fine now, after all.
But why was the sleeve missing?
He fell with the assassin, Adolin thought. He fought, and looked like he was wounded, but it turns out he wasn’t. Could this all be part of some ruse?
Stop it, Adolin thought at himself. You’ll get as paranoid as Elhokar. He glanced at the king, who was staring—face pale—at his empty wine cup. Had he really gone through everything in the pitcher? Elhokar walked toward his bedroom, where there would be more waiting for him, and pulled open the door.
Navani gasped, causing the king to freeze in place. He turned toward the door. The back side of the wood had been scratched with a knife, jagged lines forming a series of glyphs.
Adolin stood up. Several of those were numbers, weren’t they?
“Thirty-eight days,” Renarin read. “The end of all nations.”
* * *
Kaladin moved tiredly through the palace hallways, retracing the route he’d led them along only a short time before. Down toward the kitchens, into the hallway with the hole cut out into the air. Past the place where Dalinar’s blood spotted the floor, to the intersection.
Where Beld’s corpse lay. Kaladin knelt down, rolling the body over. The eyes were burned out. Above those dead eyes remained the tattoos of freedom that Kaladin had designed.
Kaladin closed his own eyes. I’ve failed you, he thought. The balding, square-faced man had survived Bridge Four and the rescue of Dalinar’s armies. He’d survived Damnation itself, only to fall here, to an assassin with powers he should not have.
Kaladin groaned.
“He died protecting.” Syl’s voice.
“I should be able to keep them alive,” Kaladin said. “Why didn’t I just let them go free? Why did I bring them to this duty, and more death?”
“Someone has to fight. Someone has to protect.”
“They’ve done enough! They’ve bled their share. I should banish them all. Dalinar can find different bodyguards.”
“They made the choice,” Syl said. “You can’t take that from them.”
Kaladin knelt, struggling with his grief.
You have to learn when to care, son. His father’s voice. And when to let go. You’ll grow calluses.
He never had. Storm him, he never had. It was why he’d never made a good surgeon. He couldn’t lose patients.
And now, now he killed? Now he was a soldier? How did that make any sense? He hated how good he was at killing.
He took a deep breath, regaining control, with effort. “He can do things I can’t,” he finally said, opening his eyes and looking toward Syl, who stood in the air near him. “The assassin. Is it because I have more Words to speak?”
“There are more,” Syl said. “You’re not ready for them yet, I don’t think. Regardless, I think you could already do what he does. With practice.”
“But how is he Surgebinding? You said that the assassin had no spren.”
“No honorspren would give that creature the means to slaughter as he does.”
“Perspectives can be different among humans,” Kaladin said, trying to keep the emotion from his voice as he turned Beld facedown so he wouldn’t have to see those shriveled, burned-out eyes. “What if the honorspren thought this assassin was doing the right thing? You gave me the means to slaughter Parshendi.”
“To protect.”
“In their eyes, the Parshendi are protecting their kind,” Kaladin said. “To them, I’m the aggressor.”
Syl sat down, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I don’t know. Maybe. But no other honorspren are doing what I do. I am the only one who disobeyed. But his Shardblade . . .”
“What of it?” Kaladin asked.
“It was