closer, leaning in. “Your men waited for you, Stormblessed. They skipped meals, pulled triple shifts. I half think they’d have sat out here, at the head of the chasms, through the highstorm itself if I hadn’t intervened.”
“They are good men,” Kaladin said.
“It’s more than that. They knew you would return. What is it they understand about you that I don’t?”
Kaladin met his eyes.
“I’ve been searching for you, haven’t I?” Dalinar said. “All this time, without seeing it.”
Kaladin looked away. “No, sir. Maybe once, but . . . I’m just what you see, and not what you think. I’m sorry.”
Dalinar grunted, inspecting Kaladin’s face. He had almost thought . . . But perhaps not.
“Give him anything he wants or needs,” Dalinar said to the surgeons, letting them approach. “This man is a hero. Again.”
He withdrew, letting the bridgemen crowd around—which, of course, started the surgeons cursing at them again. Where had Amaram gone? The man had been here just a few minutes ago. As the palanquin arrived for Shallan, Dalinar decided to follow and find out just what it was that Kaladin said the girl knew.
* * *
One hour later, Shallan snuggled into a nest of warm blankets, wet hair on her neck, smelling of flowered perfume. She wore one of Navani’s dresses—which was too big for her. She felt like a child in her mother’s clothing. That was, perhaps, exactly what she was. Navani’s sudden affection was unexpected, but Shallan would certainly accept it.
The bath had been glorious. Shallan wanted to curl up on this couch and sleep for ten days. For the moment, however, she let herself revel in the distinctive feeling of being clean, warm, and safe for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.
“You can’t take her, Dalinar.” Navani’s voice came from Pattern on the table beside Shallan’s couch. She didn’t feel a moment’s guilt for sending him to spy on the two of them while she bathed. After all, they had been talking about her.
“This map . . .” Dalinar’s voice said.
“She can draw you a better map and you can take it.”
“She can’t draw what she hasn’t seen, Navani. She’ll need to be there, with us, to draw out the center of the pattern on the Plains once we penetrate in that direction.”
“Someone else—”
“Nobody else has been able to do this,” Dalinar said, sounding awed. “Four years, and none of our scouts or cartographers saw the pattern. If we’re going to find the Parshendi, I’m going to need her. I’m sorry.”
Shallan winced. She was not doing a very good job of keeping her drawing ability hidden.
“She just got back from that terrible place,” Navani’s voice said.
“I won’t let a similar accident occur. She will be safe.”
“Unless you all die,” Navani snapped. “Unless this entire expedition is a disaster. Then everything will be taken from me. Again.” Pattern stopped, then spoke further in his own voice. “He held her at this point, and whispered some things I did not hear. From there, they got very close and made some interesting noises. I can reproduce—”
“No,” Shallan said, blushing. “Too private.”
“Very well.”
“I need to go with them,” Shallan said. “I need to complete that map of the Shattered Plains and find some way to correlate it with the ancient ones of Stormseat.”
It was the only way to find the Oathgate. Assuming it wasn’t destroyed in whatever shattered the Plains, Shallan thought. And, if I do find it, will I even be able to open it? Only one of the Knights Radiant was said to be able to open the pathway.
“Pattern,” she said softly, clutching a mug of warmed wine, “I’m not a Radiant, right?”
“I do not think so,” he said. “Not yet. There is more to do, I believe, though I cannot be certain.”
“How can you not know?”
“I was not me when the Knights Radiant existed. It is complex to explain. I have always existed. We are not ‘born’ as men are, and we cannot truly die as men do. Patterns are eternal, as is fire, as is the wind. As are all spren. Yet, I was not in this state. I was not . . . aware.”
“You were a mindless spren?” Shallan said. “Like the ones that gather around me when I draw?”
“Less than that,” Pattern said. “I was . . . everything. In everything. I cannot explain it. Language is insufficient. I would need numbers.”
“Surely there are others among you, though,” Shallan said. “Older Cryptics? Who were alive back then?”
“No,” Pattern said softly. “None