the bars. “I might need to. Breaking out would be against the law, though.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m no highspren. Laws don’t matter; what’s right matters.”
“On that point, we agree.”
“But you came willingly,” Syl said. “Why would you leave now?”
“I won’t let them execute me.”
“They’re not going to,” Syl said. “You heard Dalinar.”
“Dalinar can go rot. He let this happen.”
“He tried to—”
“He let it happen!” Kaladin snapped, turning and slamming his hands against the bars. Another storming cage. He was right back where he’d begun! “He’s the same as the others,” Kaladin growled.
Syl zipped over to him, coming to rest between the bars, hands on hips. “Say that again.”
“He . . .” Kaladin turned away. Lying to her was hard. “All right, fine. He’s not. But the king is. Admit it, Syl. Elhokar is a terrible king. At first he lauded me for trying to protect him. Now, at the snap of his fingers, he’s willing to execute me. He’s a child.”
“Kaladin, you’re scaring me.”
“Am I? You told me to trust you, Syl. When I jumped down into the arena, you said this time things would be different. How is this different?”
She looked away, seeming suddenly very small.
“Even Dalinar admitted that the king had made a big mistake in letting Sadeas wiggle out of the challenge,” Kaladin said. “Moash and his friends are right. This kingdom would be better off without Elhokar.”
Syl dropped to the floor, head bowed.
Kaladin walked back to his bench, but was too stirred up to sit. He found himself pacing. How could a man be expected to live trapped in a little room, without fresh air to breathe? He wouldn’t let them leave him here.
You’d better keep your word, Dalinar. Get me out. Soon.
The disturbance, whatever it had been, quieted. Kaladin asked the servant about it when she came with his food, pushing it through the small opening at the bottom of the bars. She wouldn’t speak to him, and scurried off like a cremling before a storm.
Kaladin sighed, retrieving the food—steamed vegetables, dribbled with a salty black sauce—and flopping back on his bench. They gave him food he could eat with his fingers. No forks or knives for him, just in case.
“Nice place you have here, bridgeboy,” Wit said. “I considered moving in here myself on several occasions. The rent might be cheap, but the price of admission is quite steep.”
Kaladin scrambled up to his feet. Wit sat on a bench by the far wall, outside the cell and under the spheres, tuning some kind of strange instrument on his lap made of taut strings and polished wood. He hadn’t been there a moment ago. Storms . . . had the bench even been there before?
“How did you get in?” Kaladin asked.
“Well, there are these things called doors . . .”
“The guards let you?”
“Technically?” Wit asked, plucking at a string, then leaning down to listen as he plucked another. “Yes.”
Kaladin sat back down on the bench in his cell. Wit wore his black-on-black, his thin silver sword undone from his waist and sitting on the bench beside him. A brown sack slumped there as well. Wit leaned down to tune his instrument, one leg crossed over the other. He hummed softly to himself and nodded. “Perfect pitch,” Wit said, “makes this all so much easier than it once was. . . .”
Kaladin sat, waiting, as Wit settled back against the wall. Then did nothing.
“Well?” Kaladin asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Are you going to play music for me?”
“No. You wouldn’t appreciate it.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I like visiting people in prison. I can say whatever I want to them, and they can’t do anything about it.” He looked up at Kaladin, then rested his hands on his instrument, smiling. “I’ve come for a story.”
“What story?”
“The one you’re going to tell me.”
“Bah,” Kaladin said, lying back down on his bench. “I’m in no mood for your games today, Wit.”
Wit plucked a note on his instrument. “Everyone always says that—which, first off, makes it a cliche. I am led to wonder. Is anyone ever in the mood for my games? And if they are, would that not defeat the point of my type of game in the first place?”
Kaladin sighed as Wit continued to pluck out notes. “If I play along today,” Kaladin asked, “will that get rid of you?”
“I will leave as soon as the story is done.”
“Fine. A man went to jail. He hated it there. The end.”
“Ah . . .” Wit said. “So it’s a story about