mouth, and began shouting. “Hello! Please reply! We’re trapped in the chasms! Please reply!”
He walked for a time, shouting, then stopped to listen. Nothing came back. No questioning shouts echoing down from above, no signs of life.
They’ve probably all withdrawn into their cubbies by now, Kaladin thought. They’ve broken down their watchposts and are waiting for the highstorm.
He stared up with frustration at that slot of attenuated sky. So distant. He remembered this feeling, being down here with Teft and the others, longing to climb out and escape the horrible life of a bridgeman.
For the hundredth time, he tried drawing in the Stormlight of those spheres. He clutched the sphere until his hand and the glass were sweaty, but the Stormlight—the power within—did not flow to him. He couldn’t feel the Light anymore.
“Syl!” he yelled, tucking away the sphere, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Syl! Please! Are you there, anywhere . . . ?” He trailed off. “I still don’t know,” he said more softly. “Is this a punishment? Or is it something more? What is wrong?”
No reply. Surely if she were watching him, she wouldn’t let him die down here. Assuming she could think to notice. He had a horrible image of her riding the winds, mingling with the windspren, having forgotten herself and him—becoming terribly, blissfully ignorant of what she truly was.
She’d feared that. She’d been terrified of it.
Shallan’s boots scratched the ground as she walked up. “No luck?”
He shook his head.
“Well, onward, then.” She took a deep breath. “Through soreness and exhaustion we go. You wouldn’t be willing to carry me a little ways . . .”
He glared at her.
She shrugged with a smile. “Think how grand it would be! I could even get a reed to whip you with. You’d be able to go back and tell all the other guards what an awful person I am. It’ll be a wonderful opportunity for griping. No? Well, all right then. Off we go.”
“You’re a strange woman.”
“Thank you.”
He fell into step beside her.
“My,” she noted, “you’ve brewed another storm over your head, I see.”
“I’ve killed us,” he whispered. “I took the lead, and I got us lost.”
“Well, I didn’t notice we were going the wrong way either. I wouldn’t have done any better.”
“I should have thought to have you map our progress from the start today. I was too confident.”
“It’s done,” she said. “If I’d been more clear with you about how well I could draw these plateaus, then you’d probably have made better use of my maps. I didn’t, and you didn’t know, so here we are. You can’t blame yourself for everything, right?”
He walked in silence.
“Uh, right?”
“It’s my fault.”
She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “You are really intent on beating yourself up, aren’t you?”
His father had said the same thing time and time again. It was who Kaladin was. Did they expect him to change?
“We’ll be fine,” Shallan said. “You’ll see.”
That darkened his mood further.
“You still think I’m too optimistic, don’t you?” Shallan said.
“It’s not your fault,” Kaladin said. “I’d rather be like you. I’d rather not have lived the life I have. I would that the world was only full of people like you, Shallan Davar.”
“People who don’t understand pain.”
“Oh, all people understand pain,” Kaladin said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s . . .”
“The sorrow,” Shallan said softly, “of watching a life crumble? Of struggling to grab it and hold on, but feeling hope become stringy sinew and blood beneath your fingers as everything collapses?”
“Yes.”
“The sensation—it’s not sorrow, but something deeper—of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just . . . haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.”
He stopped in the chasm.
She turned and looked to him. “The crushing guilt,” she said, “of being powerless. Of wishing they’d hurt you instead of those around you. Of screaming and scrambling and hating as those you love are ruined, popped like a boil. And you have to watch their joy seeping away while you can’t do anything. They break the ones you love, and not you. And you plead. Can’t you just beat me instead?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Shallan nodded, holding his eyes. “Yes. It would be nice if nobody in the world knew of those things, Kaladin Stormblessed. I agree. With everything I have.”
He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed