The Way of Kings

“Kaladin, this is important!” He felt a slight jolt of energy on his eyelid. It was a very strange sensation. He grumbled, opening his eyes and forcing himself to sit. She walked in the air, as if circumnavigating an invisible sphere, until she was standing up in the right direction.

“I have decided,” Syl declared, “that I’m glad you kept your word to Gaz, even if he is a disgusting person.”

It took Kaladin a moment to realize what she was talking about. “The spheres?”

She nodded. “I thought you might break your word, but I’m glad you didn’t.”

“All right. Well, thank you for telling me, I guess.”

“Kaladin,” she said petulantly, making fists at her side. “This is important.”

“I…” He trailed off, then rested his head back against the wall. “Syl, I can barely breathe, let alone think. Please. Just tell me what’s bothering you.”

“I know what a lie is,” she said, moving over and sitting on his knee. “A few weeks ago, I didn’t even understand the concept of lying. But now I’m happy that you didn’t lie. Don’t you see?”

“No.”

“I’m changing.” She shivered – it must have been an intentional action, for her entire figure fuzzed for a moment. “I know things I didn’t just a few days ago. It feels so strange.”

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I mean, the more you understand, the better. Right?”

She looked down. “When I found you near the chasm after the highstorm yesterday,” she whispered, “you were going to kill yourself, weren’t you?”

Kaladin didn’t respond. Yesterday. That was an eternity ago.

“I gave you a leaf,” she said. “A poisonous leaf. You could have used it to kill yourself or someone else. That’s what you were probably planning to use it for in the first place, back in the wagons.” She looked back up into his eyes, and her tiny voice seemed terrified. “Today, I know what death is. Why do I know what death is, Kaladin?”

Kaladin frowned. “You’ve always been odd, for a spren. Even from the start.”

“From the very start?”

He hesitated, thinking back. No, the first few times she’d come, she’d acted like any other windspren. Playing pranks on him, sticking his shoe to the floor, then hiding. Even when she’d persisted with him during the months of his slavery, she’d acted mostly like any other spren. Losing interest in things quickly, flitting around.

“Yesterday, I didn’t know what death was,” she said. “Today I do. Months ago, I didn’t know I was acting oddly for a spren, but I grew to realize that I was. How do I even know how a spren is supposed to act?” She shrank down, looking smaller. “What’s happening to me? What am I?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know what I am either. A bridgeman? A surgeon? A soldier? A slave? Those are all just labels. Inside, I’m me. A very different me than I was a year ago, but I can’t worry about that, so I just keep moving and hope my feet take me where I need to go.”

“You aren’t angry at me for bringing you that leaf?”

“Syl, if you hadn’t interrupted me, I’d have stepped off into the chasm. That leaf was what I needed. It was the right thing, somehow.”

She smiled, and watched as Kaladin began to stretch. Once he finished, he stood and stepped out onto the street again, mostly recovered from his exhaustion. She zipped into the air and rested on his shoulder, sitting with her arms back and her feet hanging down in front, like a girl on the side of a cliff. “I’m glad you’re not angry. Though I do think that you’re to blame for what’s happening to me. Before I met you, I never had to think about death or lying.”

“That’s how I am,” he said dryly. “Bringing death and lies wherever I go. Me and the Nightwatcher.”

She frowned.

“That was–” he began.

“Yes,” she said. “That was sarcasm.” She cocked her head. “I know what sarcasm is.” Then she smiled deviously. “I know what sarcasm is!”

Stormfather, Kaladin thought, looking into those gleeful little eyes. That strikes me as ominous.

“So, wait,” he said. “This sort of thing has never happened to you before?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything farther back than about a year ago, when I first saw you.”

“Really?”

“That’s not odd,” Syl said, shrugging translucent shoulders. “Most spren don’t have long memories.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why I know that.”

“Well, maybe this is normal. You could have gone through this cycle before, but you’ve just forgotten it.”

“That’s not very comforting. I don’t like the idea of forgetting.”

“But don’t death and lying make you uncomfortable?”

“They do. But, if I were to lose these memories…” She glanced into the air, and Kaladin traced her movements, noting a pair of windspren darting through the sky on a gusting breeze, uncaring and free.

“Scared to go onward,” Kaladin said, “but terrified to go back to what you were.”

She nodded.

“I know how you feel,” he said. “Come on. I need to eat, and there are some things I want to pick up after lunch.”

15 The Decoy