Most of the other lighteyes had retired, leaving him on an island populated by servants and parshmen who cleared away food. A few master-servants, trusted for such duties, began to scoop the spheres out of the river with nets on long poles. Dalinar’s bridgemen, at his suggestion, were attacking the feast’s leftovers with the voracious appetite exclusive to soldiers who had been offered an unexpected meal.

A servant strolled by, then stopped, resting his hand on his side sword. Dalinar started, realizing he’d mistaken Wit’s black military uniform for that of a master-servant in training.

Dalinar put on a firm face, though inwardly he groaned. Wit? Now? Dalinar felt as if he’d been fighting on the battlefield for ten hours straight. Odd, how a few hours of delicate conversation could feel so similar to that.

“What you did tonight was clever,” Wit said. “You turned an attack into a promise. The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it.”

“Thank you,” Dalinar said.

Wit nodded curtly, following the king’s coach with his eyes as it vanished. “I found myself without much to do tonight. Elhokar was not in need of Wit, as few sought to speak to him. All came to you instead.”

Dalinar sighed, his strength seeming to drain away. Wit hadn’t said it, but he hadn’t needed to. Dalinar read the implication.

They came to you, instead of the king. Because essentially, you are king.

“Wit,” Dalinar found himself asking, “am I a tyrant?”

Wit cocked an eyebrow, and seemed to be looking for a clever quip. A moment later, he discarded the thought. “Yes, Dalinar Kholin,” he said softly, consolingly, as one might speak to a tearful child. “You are.”

“I do not wish to be.”

“With all due respect, Brightlord, that is not quite the truth. You seek for power. You take hold, and let go only with great difficulty.”

Dalinar bowed his head.

“Do not sorrow,” Wit said. “It is an era for tyrants. I doubt this place is ready for anything more, and a benevolent tyrant is preferable to the disaster of weak rule. Perhaps in another place and time, I’d have denounced you with spit and bile. Here, today, I praise you as what this world needs.”

Dalinar shook his head. “I should have allowed Elhokar his right of rule, and not interfered as I did.”

“Why?”

“Because he is king.”

“And that position is something sacrosanct? Divine?”

“No,” Dalinar admitted. “The Almighty, or the one claiming to be him, is dead. Even if he hadn’t been, the kingship didn’t come to our family naturally. We claimed it, and forced it upon the other highprinces.”

“So then why?”

“Because we were wrong,” Dalinar said, narrowing his eyes. “Gavilar, Sadeas, and I were wrong to do as we did all those years ago.”

Wit seemed genuinely surprised. “You unified the kingdom, Dalinar. You did a good work, something that was sorely needed.”

“This is unity?” Dalinar asked, waving a hand back toward the scattered remnants of the feast, the departing lighteyes. “No, Wit. We failed. We crushed, we killed, and we have failed miserably.” He looked up. “I receive, in Alethkar, only what I have demanded. In taking the throne by force, we implied—no we screamed—that strength is the right of rule. If Sadeas thinks he is stronger than I am, then it is his duty to try to take the throne from me. These are the fruits of my youth, Wit. It is why we need more than tyranny, even the benevolent kind, to transform this kingdom. That is what Nohadon was teaching. And that is what I’ve been missing all along.”

Wit nodded, looking thoughtful. “I need to read that book of yours again, it seems. I wanted to warn you, however. I’ll be leaving soon.”

“Leave?” Dalinar said. “You only just arrived.”

“I know. It’s incredibly frustrating, I must admit. I have discovered a place that I must be, though to be honest I’m not exactly sure why I need to be there. This doesn’t always work as well as I’d like it to.”

Dalinar frowned at him. Wit smiled back affably.

“Are you one of them?” Dalinar asked.

“Excuse me?”

“A Herald.”

Wit laughed. “No. Thank you, but no.”

“Are you what I’ve been looking for, then?” Dalinar asked. “Radiant?”

Wit smiled. “I am but a man, Dalinar, so much as I wish it were not true at times. I am no Radiant. And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.”

Dalinar frowned.

“I will do what I can to help,” Wit said, “and for that reason, I must go. I cannot risk too much, because if he finds me, then I become nothing—a soul shredded and broken into pieces that cannot be reassembled. What I do here is more dangerous than you could ever know.”

He turned to go.

“Wit,” Dalinar called.

“Yes?”

“If who finds you?”

“The one you fight, Dalinar Kholin. The father of hatred.” Wit saluted, then jogged off.

However, it seems to me that all things have been set up for a purpose, and if we—as infants—stumble through the workshop, we risk exacerbating, not preventing, a problem.

The Shattered Plains.

Kaladin did not claim these lands as he did the chasms, where his men had found safety. Kaladin remembered all too well the pain of bloodied feet on his first run, battered by this broken stone wasteland. Barely anything grew out here, only the occasional patch of rockbuds or set of enterprising vines draping down into a chasm on the leeward side of a plateau. The bottoms of the cracks were clogged with life, but up here it was barren.

The aching feet and burning shoulders from running a bridge had been nothing compared to the slaughter that had awaited his men at the end of a bridge run. Storms . . . even looking across the Plains made Kaladin flinch. He could hear the hiss of arrows in the air, the screams of terrified bridgemen, the song of the Parshendi.

I should have been able to save more of Bridge Four, Kaladin thought. If I’d been faster to accept my powers, could I have done so?

He breathed in Stormlight to reassure himself. Only it didn’t come. He stood, dumbfounded, while soldiers marched across one of Dalinar’s enormous mechanical bridges. He tried again. Nothing.

He fished a sphere from his pouch. The firemark glowed with its customary light, tinting his fingers red. Something was wrong. Kaladin couldn’t feel the Stormlight inside as he once had.

Syl flitted across the chasm high in the air with a group of windspren. Her giggling laughter rained down upon him, and he looked up. “Syl?” he asked quietly. Storms. He didn’t want to look like an idiot, but something deep within him was panicking like a rat caught by its tail. “Syl!”

Several marching soldiers glanced at Kaladin, then up toward the air. Kaladin ignored them as Syl zipped down in the form of a ribbon of light. She swirled around him, still giggling.

The Stormlight returned to him. He could feel it again, and he greedily sucked it from the sphere—though he did have the presence of mind to clutch the sphere in a fist and hold it to his chest to make the process less obvious. The Light of one mark wasn’t enough to expose him, but he felt far, far better with that Stormlight raging inside of him.

“What happened?” Kaladin whispered to Syl. “Is something wrong with our bond? Is it because I haven’t found the Words soon enough?”

She landed on his wrist and took the form of a young woman. She peered at his hand, cocking her head. “What’s inside?” she asked with a conspiratorial whisper.

“You know what this is, Syl,” Kaladin said, feeling chilled, as if he’d been hit by a wave of stormwater. “A sphere. Didn’t you see it just now?”

She looked at him, face innocent. “You are making bad choices. Naughty.” Her features mimicked his for a moment and she jumped forward, as if to startle him. She laughed and zipped away.

Bad choices. Naughty. So, this was because of his promise to Moash that he’d help assassinate the king. Kaladin sighed, continuing forward.

Syl couldn’t see why his decision was the right one. She was a spren, and had a stupid, simplistic morality. To be human was often to be forced to choose between distasteful options. Life wasn’t clean and neat like she wanted it to be. It was messy, coated with crem. No man walked through life without getting covered in it, not even Dalinar.

“You want too much of me,” he snapped at her as he reached the other side of the chasm. “I’m not some glorious knight of ancient days. I’m a broken man. Do you hear me, Syl? I’m broken.”

She zipped up to him and whispered, “That’s what they all were, silly.” She streaked away.

Kaladin watched as the soldiers filed across the bridge. They weren’t doing a plateau run, but Dalinar had brought plenty of soldiers anyway. Going out onto the Shattered Plains was entering a war zone, and the Parshendi were ever a threat.

Bridge Four tromped across the mechanical bridge, carrying their smaller one. Kaladin wasn’t about to leave the camps without that. These mechanisms Dalinar employed—the massive, chull-pulled bridges that could be ratcheted down into place—were amazing, but Kaladin didn’t trust them. Not nearly as much as he did a good bridge on his shoulders.

Syl flitted by again. Did she really expect him to live according to her perception of what was right and wrong? Was she going to yank his powers away every time he did something that risked offending her?

That would be like living with a noose around his neck.

Determined to not let his worries ruin the day, he went to check on Bridge Four. Look at the open sky, he told himself. Breathe the wind. Enjoy the freedom. After so much time in captivity, these things were wonders.

He found Bridge Four beside their bridge at parade rest. It was odd to see them with their old padded-shoulder leather vests on over their new uniforms. It transformed them into a weird mix of what they had been and what they were now. They saluted him together, and he saluted back.

“At ease,” he told them, and they broke formation, laughing and joking with one another as Lopen and his assistants distributed waterskins.

“Ha!” Rock said, settling down on the side of the bridge to drink. “This thing, it is not so hard as I remember it being.”

“It’s because we’re going slower,” Kaladin said, pointing at Dalinar’s mechanical bridge. “And because you’re remembering the early days of bridge carries, not the later ones when we were well-fed and well-trained. It got easier then.”

“No,” Rock said. “The bridge is light because we have defeated Sadeas. Is the proper way of things.”