at them in annoyance. They’d insisted on remaining with Kaladin rather than going free, so why wouldn’t they learn?
They had needed to be invited. Not just with words.
“Yes, well,” Rock said. “Sigzil sent me. He wishes to know if you are ready to practice your abilities.”
Kaladin took a deep breath, glancing at Syl, then nodded. “Yes. Bring him. We can do it here.”
“Ha! Finally. I will fetch him.”
SIX YEARS AGO
The world ended, and Shallan was to blame.
“Pretend it never happened,” her father whispered. He wiped something wet from her cheek. His thumb came back red. “I’ll protect you.”
Was the room shaking? No, that was Shallan. Trembling. She felt so small. Eleven had seemed old to her, once. But she was a child, still a child. So small.
She looked up at her father with a shudder. She couldn’t blink; her eyes were frozen open.
Father started to whisper, blinking tears. “Now go to sleep in chasms deep, with darkness all around you . . .”
A familiar lullaby, one he always used to sing to her. In the room behind him, dark corpses stretched out on the floor. A red carpet once white.
“Though rock and dread may be your bed, so sleep my baby dear.”
Father gathered her into his arms, and she felt her skin squirming. No. No, this affection wasn’t right. A monster should not be held in love. A monster who killed, who murdered. No.
She could not move.
“Now comes the storm, but you’ll be warm, the wind will rock your basket . . .”
Father carried Shallan over the body of a woman in white. Little blood there. It was the man who bled. Mother lay facedown, so Shallan couldn’t see the eyes. The horrible eyes.
Almost, Shallan could imagine that the lullaby was the end to a nightmare. That it was night, that she had awakened screaming, and her father was singing her to sleep . . .
“The crystals fine will glow sublime, so sleep my baby dear.”
They passed Father’s strongbox set into the wall. It glowed brightly, light streaming from the cracks around the closed door. A monster was inside.
“And with a song, it won’t be long, you’ll sleep my baby dear.”
With Shallan in his arms, Father left the room and closed the door on the corpses.
But, understandably, we were focused on Sadeas. His betrayal was still fresh, and I saw its signs each day as I passed empty barracks and grieving widows. We knew that Sadeas would not simply rest upon his slaughters in pride. More was coming.
—From the journal of Navani Kholin, Jesesach 1174
Shallan awoke mostly dry, lying on an uneven rock that rose from the ocean. Waves lapped at her toes, though she could barely feel them through the numbness. She groaned, lifting her cheek from the wet granite. There was land nearby, and the surf sounded against it with a low roar. In the other direction stretched only the endless blue sea.
She was cold and her head throbbed as if she’d banged it repeatedly against a wall, but she was alive. Somehow. She raised her hand—rubbing at the itchy dried salt on her forehead—and hacked out a ragged cough. Her hair stuck to the sides of her face, and her dress was stained from the water and the seaweed on the rock.
How . . . ?
Then she saw it, a large brown shell in the water, almost invisible as it moved toward the horizon. The santhid.
She stumbled to her feet, clinging to the pointy tip of her rock perch. Woozy, she watched the creature until it was gone.
Something hummed beside her. Pattern formed his usual shape on the surface of the churning sea, translucent as if he were a small wave himself.
“Did . . .” She coughed, clearing her voice, then groaned and sat down on the rock. “Did anyone else make it?”
“Make?” Pattern asked.
“Other people. The sailors. Did they escape?”
“Uncertain,” Pattern said, in his humming voice. “Ship . . . Gone. Splashing. Nothing seen.”
“The santhid. It rescued me.” How had it known what to do? Were they intelligent? Could she have somehow communicated with it? Had she missed an opportunity to—
She almost started laughing as she realized the direction her thoughts were going. She’d nearly drowned, Jasnah was dead, the crew of the Wind’s Pleasure likely murdered or swallowed by the sea! Instead of mourning them or marveling at her survival, Shallan was engaging in scholarly speculation?
That’s what you do, a deeply buried part of herself accused her. You distract yourself. You refuse to think about