of his lighteyed advisors, along with Drehy and Skar from Bridge Four, the day’s guards. With Moash promoted away and Kaladin . . . well, not there . . . Teft had taken over daily assignments. Nobody else would storming do it. They said he was in command now. Idiots.
“Brightlord,” Teft said, slapping his chest in salute.
“Adolin told me you men were coming here,” the highprince said. He spared a glance for Prince Renarin, who had also stood and saluted, as if this weren’t his own father. “A rotation, I understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Teft said, looking toward Sigzil. It was a rotation.
Teft was just on nearly every shift.
“You really think he’s alive out there, soldier?” Dalinar asked.
“He is, sir,” Teft said. “It’s not about what I or anyone thinks.”
“He fell hundreds of feet,” Dalinar said.
Teft continued to stand at attention. The highprince hadn’t asked a question, so Teft didn’t give a reply.
He did have to banish a few terrible images in his head. Kaladin having knocked his head while falling. Kaladin having been crushed by the falling bridge. Kaladin lying with a broken leg, unable to find spheres to heal himself. The fool boy thought he was immortal, sometimes.
Kelek. They all thought he was.
“He is going to come back, sir,” Sigzil said to Dalinar. “He’s going to come climbing right up out of that chasm right there. It will be well if we’re here to meet him. Uniforms on, spears polished.”
“We wait on our own time, sir,” Teft said. “Neither of us three are supposed to be anywhere else.” He blushed as soon as he said it. And here he’d been thinking about how Moash talked back to his betters.
“I didn’t come to order you away from your chosen task, soldier,” Dalinar said. “I came to make certain you were caring for yourselves. No men are to skip meals to wait here, and I don’t want you getting any ideas about waiting during a highstorm.”
“Er, yes, sir,” Teft said. He had used his morning meal break to put in duty here. How had Dalinar known?
“Good luck, soldier,” Dalinar said, then continued on his way, flanked by attendants, apparently off to inspect the battalion that was nearest to the eastern edge of camp. Soldiers there scurried like cremlings after a storm, carrying supply bags and piling them inside their barracks. The time for Dalinar’s full expedition onto the Plains was quickly approaching.
“Sir,” Teft called after the highprince.
Dalinar turned back toward him, his attendants pausing mid-sentence.
“You don’t believe us,” Teft said. “That he’ll come back, I mean.”
“He’s dead, soldier. But I understand that you need to be here anyway.” The highprince touched his hand to his shoulder, a salute to the dead, then continued on his way.
Well, Teft supposed that was all right, Dalinar not believing. He’d just be that much more surprised when Kaladin did return.
Highstorm tonight, Teft thought, settling back down on his rock. Come on, lad. What are you doing out there?
* * *
Kaladin felt like one of the ten fools.
Actually, he felt like all of them. Ten times an idiot. But most specifically Eshu, who spoke of things he did not understand in front of those who did.
Navigation this deep in the chasms was hard, but he could usually read directions by the way that the debris was deposited. Water blew in from the east to the west, but then it drained out the other way—so cracks on walls where debris was smashed in tight usually marked a western direction, but places where debris had been deposited more naturally—as water drained—marked where water had flowed east.
His instincts told him which way to go. They’d been wrong. He shouldn’t have been so confident. This far from the warcamps, the waterflows must be different.
Annoyed at himself, he left Shallan drawing and walked out a ways. “Syl?” he asked.
No response.
“Sylphrena!” he said, louder.
He sighed and walked back to Shallan, who knelt on the mossy ground—she’d obviously given up on protecting the once-fine dress from stains and rips—drawing on her sketchpad. She was another reason he felt like a fool. He shouldn’t let her provoke him so. He could hold in the retorts against other, far more annoying lighteyes. Why did he lose control when talking with her?
Should have learned my lesson, he thought as she sketched, her expression growing intense. She’s won every argument so far, hands down.
He leaned against a section of the chasm wall, spear in the crook of his arm, light shining from the spheres tied tightly at its