floor of the chasm, which had been cleared of debris since the last time Kaladin had been here. Sigzil, Rock, and Lopen sat on boulders, waiting for him.
“Are you implying that the Assassin in White never really worked for the Parshendi?” Kaladin asked. “Or are you implying that the Parshendi lied about being as isolated as they claimed?”
“I’m not implying anything,” Sigzil said, turning toward Kaladin. “My master trained me to ask questions, so I’m asking them. Something doesn’t make sense about this whole matter. The Shin are extremely xenophobic. They rarely leave their lands, and you never find them working as mercenaries. Now this one goes about assassinating kings? With a Shardblade? Is he still working for the Parshendi? If so, why did they wait so long to unleash him against us again?”
“Does it matter who he’s working for?” Kaladin asked, sucking in Stormlight.
“Of course it does,” Sigzil said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a question,” he said, as if offended. “Besides, discovering his true employer might give us a clue to their goal, and knowing that might help us defeat him.”
Kaladin smiled, then tried to run up the wall.
After falling to the ground, ending up flat on his back, he sighed.
Rock’s head leaned in over him. “Is fun to watch,” he said. “But this thing, you are certain she can work?”
“The assassin walked on the ceiling,” Kaladin said.
“Are you sure he wasn’t just doing what we did?” Sigzil asked skeptically. “Using the Stormlight to stick one object to another? He could have sprayed the ceiling with Stormlight, then jumped up into it to stick there.”
“No,” Kaladin said, Stormlight escaping his lips. “He jumped up and landed on the ceiling. Then he ran down the wall and sent Adolin to the ceiling somehow. The prince didn’t stick there, he fell that way.” Kaladin watched his Stormlight rise and evaporate. “At the end of it all, the assassin . . . he flew away.”
“Ha!” Lopen said from his rock perch. “I knew it. When we have this figured out, the king of all Herdaz, he will say to me, ‘Lopen, you are glowing, and this is impressive. But you can also fly. For this, you may marry my daughter.’”
“The king of Herdaz doesn’t have a daughter,” Sigzil said.
“He doesn’t? I have been lied to all this time!”
“You don’t know your royal family?” Kaladin asked, sitting up.
“Gon, I haven’t been to Herdaz since I was a baby. There are as many Herdazians in Alethkar and Jah Keved these days as there are in our homeland. Flick my sparks, I’m practically an Alethi! Only not so tall and not so grouchy.”
Rock gave Kaladin a hand and pulled him to his feet. Syl had taken a perch on the wall.
“Do you know how this works?” Kaladin asked her.
She shook her head.
“But the assassin is a Windrunner,” Kaladin said.
“I think?” Syl said. “Something like you? Maybe?” She shrugged.
Sigzil followed the direction that Kaladin was looking. “I wish I could see it,” he mumbled. “It would be a— Gah!” He jumped backward, pointing. “It looks like a little person!”
Kaladin raised an eyebrow toward Syl.
“I like him,” she said. “Also, Sigzil, I’m a ‘she’ and not an ‘it,’ thank you very much.”
“Spren have genders?” Sigzil asked, amazed.
“Of course,” she said. “Though, technically, it probably has something to do with the way people view us. Personification of the forces of nature or some similar gobbletyblarthy.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Kaladin asked. “That you might be a creation of human perception?”
“You’re a creation of your parents. Who cares how we were born? I can think. That’s good enough.” She grinned in a mischievous way, then zipped down as a ribbon of light toward Sigzil, who had settled down on a rock with a stunned expression. She stopped right in front of him, returned to the form of a young woman, then leaned in and made her face look exactly like his.
“Gah!” Sigzil cried again, scrambling away, making her giggle and change her face back.
Sigzil looked toward Kaladin. “She talks . . . She talks like a real person.” He raised a hand to his head. “The stories say the Nightwatcher might be capable of that. . . . Powerful spren. Vast spren.”
“Is he calling me vast?” Syl said, cocking her head to the side. “Not sure what I think of that.”
“Sigzil,” Kaladin said, “could the Windrunners fly?”
The man gingerly sat back down, still staring at Syl. “Stories and lore aren’t my specialty,” he said. “I tell of different places, to make the world