The Way of Kings (100 page)

Kaladin wanted to object, to say that it wasn’t a false hope, but he couldn’t. Not with his heart in his stomach. Not with what he knew.

A moment later, Rock burst from the barrack. “I feel like a true
alil’tiki’i
again!” he proclaimed, holding aloft his razor. “My friends, you cannot know what you have done! Someday, I will take you to the Peaks and show you the hospitality of kings!”

Despite all of his complaining, he hadn’t shaved his beard off completely. He had left long, red-blond sideburns, which curved down to his chin. The tip of the chin itself was shaved clean, as were his lips. On the tall, oval-faced man, the look was quite distinctive. “Ha!” Rock said, striding up to the fire. He grabbed the nearest men there and hugged them both to him, causing Bisig to nearly spill his stew. “I will make you all family for this. A peak dweller’s
humaka’aban
is his pride! I feel like a true man again. Here. This razor belongs not to me, but to us all. Any who wishes to use it must do so. Is my honor to share with you!”

The men laughed, and a few took him up on the offer. Kaladin wasn’t one of them. It just…didn’t seem to matter to him. He accepted the bowl of stew Dunny brought him, but didn’t eat. Sigzil chose not to sit back down beside him, retreating to the other side of the campfire.

Eyes of red and blue,
Kaladin thought.
I don’t know if that fits us.
For him to have eyes of red and blue, Kaladin would have to believe that there was at least a small chance the bridge crew could survive. This night, Kaladin had trouble convincing himself.

He’d never been an optimist. He saw the world as it was, or he tried to. That was a problem, though, when the truth he saw was so terrible.

Oh, Stormfather,
he thought, feeling the crushing weight of despair as he stared down at his bowl.
I’m falling back to the wretch I was. I’m losing my grip on this, on myself.

He couldn’t carry the hopes of all the bridgemen.

He just wasn’t strong enough.

FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

Kaladin pushed past the shrieking Laral and stumbled into the surgery room. Even after years working with his father, the amount of blood in the room was shocking. It was as if someone had dumped out a bucket of bright red paint.

The scent of burned flesh hung in the air. Lirin worked frantically on Brightlord Rillir, Roshone’s son. An evil-looking, tusklike thing jutted from the young man’s abdomen, and his lower right leg was crushed. It hung by only a few tendons, splinters of bone poking out like reeds from the waters of a pond. Brightlord Roshone himself lay on the side table, groaning, eyes squeezed shut as he held his leg, which was pierced by another of the bony spears. Blood leaked from his improvised bandage, flowed down the side of the table, and dripped to the floor to mix with his son’s.

Kaladin stood in the doorway gaping. Laral continued to scream. She clutched the doorframe as several of Roshone’s guards tried to pull her away. Her wails were frantic. “Do something! Work harder! He can’t! He was where it happened and I don’t care and let me go!” The garbled phrases degenerated into screeches. The guards finally got her away.

“Kaladin!” his father snapped. “I need you!”

Shocked into motion, Kaladin entered the room, scrubbing his hands then gathering bandages from the cabinet, stepping in blood. He caught a glimpse of Rillir’s face; much of the skin on the right side had been scraped off. The eyelid was gone, the blue eye itself sliced open at the front, deflated like the skin of a grape pressed for wine.

Kaladin hastened to his father with the bandages. His mother appeared at the doorway a moment later, Tien behind her. She raised a hand to her mouth, then pulled Tien away. He stumbled, looking woozy. She returned in a moment without him.

“Water, Kaladin!” Lirin cried. “Hesina, fetch more. Quickly!”

His mother jumped to help, though she rarely assisted in the surgery anymore. Her hands shook as she grabbed one of the buckets and ran outside. Kaladin took the other bucket, which was full, to his father as Lirin eased the length of bone from the young lighteyes’s gut. Rillir’s remaining eye fluttered, head quivering.

“What
is
that?” Kaladin asked, pressing the bandage to the wound as his father tossed the strange object aside.

“Whitespine tusk,” his father said. “Water.”

Kaladin grabbed a sponge, dunked it in the bucket, and used it to squeeze water into Rillir’s gut wound. That washed away the blood, giving Lirin a good look at the damage. He quested with his fingers as Kaladin got some needle and thread ready. There was already a tourniquet on the leg. Full amputation would come later.

Lirin hesitated, fingers inside the gaping hole in Rillir’s belly. Kaladin cleaned the wound again. He looked up at his father, concerned.

Lirin pulled his fingers out and walked to Brightlord Roshone. “Bandages, Kaladin,” he said curtly.

Kaladin hurried over, though he shot a look over his shoulder at Rillir. The once-handsome young lighteyes trembled again, spasming. “Father…”

“Bandages!” Lirin said.

“What are you doing, surgeon?” Roshone bellowed. “What of my son?” Painspren swarmed around him.

“Your son is dead,” Lirin said, yanking the tusk free from Roshone’s leg.

The lighteyes bellowed in agony, though Kaladin couldn’t tell if that was because of the tusk or his son. Roshone clenched his jaw as Kaladin pressed the bandage down on his leg. Lirin dunked his hands in the water bucket, then quickly wiped them with knobweed sap to frighten off rotspren.

“My son
is not dead
,” Roshone growled. “I can see him moving! Tend to him, surgeon.”

“Kaladin, get the dazewater,” Lirin ordered gathering his sewing needle.

Kaladin hurried to the back of the room, steps splashing blood, and threw open the far cupboard. He took out a small flask of clear liquid.

“What are you doing?” Roshone bellowed, trying to sit up. “Look at my son! Almighty above,
look
at him!”

Kaladin turned hesitantly, pausing as he poured dazewater on a bandage. Rillir was spasming more violently.

“I work under three guidelines, Roshone,” Lirin said, forcibly pressing the lighteyes down against his table. “The guidelines every surgeon uses when choosing between two patients. If the wounds are equal, treat the youngest first.”

“Then see to my son!”

“If the wounds are not equally threatening,” Lirin continued, “treat the worst wound first.”

“As I’ve been
telling you
!”

“The third guideline supersedes them both, Roshone,” Lirin said, leaning down. “A surgeon must know when someone is beyond their ability to help. I’m sorry, Roshone. I would save him if I could, I promise you. But I cannot.”

“No!” Roshone said, struggling again.

“Kaladin! Quickly!” Lirin said.

Kaladin dashed over. He pressed the bandage of dazewater to Roshone’s chin and mouth, just below the nose, forcing the lighteyed man to breathe the fumes. Kaladin held his own breath, as he’d been trained.

Roshone bellowed and screamed, but the two of them held him down, and he was weak from blood loss. Soon, his bellows became softer. In seconds, he was speaking in gibberish and grinning to himself. Lirin turned back to the leg wound while Kaladin went to throw away the dazewater bandage.

“No. Administer it to Rillir.” His father didn’t look away from his work. “It’s the only mercy we can give him.”

Kaladin nodded and used the dazewater bandage on the wounded youth. Rillir’s breathing grew less frantic, though he didn’t seem conscious enough to notice the effects. Then Kaladin threw the bandage with the dazewater into the brazier; heat negated the effects. The white, puffy bandage wrinkled and browned in the fire, steam streaming off it as the edges burst into flame.

Kaladin returned with the sponge and washed out Roshone’s wound as Lirin prodded at it. There were a few shards of tusk trapped inside, and Lirin muttered to himself, getting out his tongs and razor-sharp knife.

“Damnation can take them all,” Lirin said, pulling out the first sliver of tusk. Behind him, Rillir fell still. “Isn’t sending half of us to war enough for them? Do they have to seek death even when they’re living in a quiet township? Roshone should never have gone looking for the storming whitespine.”

“He was
looking
for it?”

“They went hunting it,” Lirin spat. “Wistiow and I used to joke about lighteyes like them. If you can’t kill men, you kill beasts. Well, this is what you found, Roshone.”

“Father,” Kaladin said softly. “He’s not going to be pleased with you when he awakes.” The brightlord was humming softly, lying back, eyes closed.

Lirin didn’t respond. He yanked out another fragment of tusk, and Kaladin washed out the wound. His father pressed his fingers to the side of the large puncture, inspecting it.

There was one more sliver of tusk, jutting from a muscle inside the wound. Right beside that muscle thumped the femoral artery, the largest in the leg. Lirin reached in with his knife, carefully cutting free the sliver of tusk. Then he paused for a moment, the edge of his blade just hairs from the artery.

If that were cut…
Kaladin thought. Roshone would be dead in minutes. He was only alive right now because the tusk had missed the artery.

Lirin’s normally steady hand quivered. Then he glanced up at Kaladin. He withdrew the knife without touching the artery, then reached in with his tongs to pull the sliver free. He tossed it aside, then calmly reached for his thread and needle.

Behind them, Rillir had stopped breathing.

That evening, Kaladin sat on the steps to his house, hands in his lap.

Roshone had been returned to his estate to be cared for by his personal servants. His son’s corpse was cooling in the crypt below, and a messenger had been sent to request a Soulcaster for the body.

On the horizon, the sun was red as blood. Everywhere Kaladin looked, the world was red.

The door to the surgery closed, and his father—looking as exhausted as Kaladin felt—tottered out. He eased himself down, sighing as he sat beside Kaladin, looking at the sun. Did it look like blood to him too?

They didn’t speak as the sun slowly sank before them. Why was it most colorful when it was about to vanish for the night? Was it angry at being forced belong the horizon? Or was it a showman, giving a performance before retiring?

Why was the most colorful part of people’s bodies—the brightness of their blood—hidden beneath the skin, never to be seen unless something went wrong?

No,
Kaladin thought.
The blood isn’t the most colorful part of a body. The eyes can be colorful too.
The blood and the eyes. Both representations of one’s heritage. And one’s nobility.

“I saw inside a man today,” Kaladin finally said.

“Not for the first time,” Lirin said, “and certainly not for the last. I’m proud of you. I expected to find you here crying, as you usually do when we lose a patient. You’re learning.”

“When I said I saw inside a man,” Kaladin said, “I wasn’t talking about the wounds.”