Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)(24)

Shouldn’t the end of the storming world be more . . . dramatic? The war against the invaders felt depressingly like the war over the Shattered Plains. Sure, Lopen kept an upbeat attitude. That helped everyone. But he couldn’t help making the comparison in his head.

His side were the good guys. The Radiants. Urithiru. All of it. He’d decided they were, despite bad choices by some of the Radiants in the past.

But he thought about the Shattered Plains. And how stupid that battle had been, stretching all those years. How many good people had it killed? He couldn’t help worrying they were now headed into a mire of cremwater just as bad, if not worse.

“I wish,” he said, “that this ship could move faster. I wish we could be doing things. This is taking too long.”

“I’m doing things,” Huio said. He turned around in his seat at the desk, holding up the repaired spanreed. “See? It has been returned identically to its previous state.”

“Yeah? Does it still write?”

Huio made a few circular scribbles on a piece of paper from the satchel. The conjoined spanreed, in turn, jerked across the paper in a single line, back and forth.

“Uh . . .” Huio said.

“You person-who-has-rotten-fruit-for-a-head!” Lopen said, jumping to his feet. “You broke it.”

“Uh . . .” Huio repeated, then made another scribble. The pen reacted as before, moving left and right on the page in accordance with his motions, but it didn’t go up or down on the page when he moved his pen to the top or bottom. “Huh.”

“Great,” Lopen said. “Now I’m going to have to tell boss ardent-lady. And she will say, ‘Lopen, I can see that you are very careful, and often not breaking things, but I’d still rather your older cousin not have rotten fruit inside his skull instead of brains.’ And I’ll agree.”

“They have a ton of these things,” Huio said. “There’s at least, sure, twenty pairs in the storage they sent us. I doubt it will be an exceeding burden if one is malfunctioning.” He scribbled again. Same result. “Maybe I could—”

“Try to repair it?” Lopen said, skeptical. “I suppose. You’re, sure, super smart. But . . .”

“But I’d probably break it further.” Huio sighed. “I thought I had it figured out, younger-cousin. They don’t seem even as complicated as a clock.”

“And how many of those have you managed to put together correctly after taking them apart?”

“There was that once . . .” Huio said.

Lopen met his eyes, then they shared a grin.

Huio slapped him on the arm. “Return those to the ardent-lady. Tell her I will pay for the broken reed, if it’s a problem. It will have to be next month though.”

Lopen nodded. Both of them, along with Punio, gave most of their Radiant stipend to the family for helping out with the poorer cousins. A big chunk went to Rod’s family. Radiants were paid well, but there were a lot of cousins who needed help. It was their way—when Lopen had been the poor one, they’d always helped him.

Lopen walked out onto the deck, proud of how well he’d adapted to the swaying of the ship. However, he stopped as he noticed a large group of sailors congregating on the left side of the ship. The, uh, starboard side? He wandered over, and then Lashed himself upward to see over their heads.

Something was floating in the water nearby. Something large. And something that was very, very dead.





8





Rysn felt a sinking sense of dread as Nikli carried her to the side of the ship. The sailors had bunched up here, attended by anxietyspren—like twisting black crosses—and a few globs of fearspren. They made way for Rysn, and Plamry—Nikli’s Thaylen assistant—hurried forward and set down a high stool for her. She gripped the rail to steady herself as Nikli placed her on the stool, then she nodded for him to retreat.

That made room for the captain to step up and stand beside her. Sitting there, Rysn could peer over the side of the ship to see what the others had been whispering about: a dead santhid. A decaying shell and husk, flipped over on its side, its whited eye staring toward the sky. It was enormous, nearly a third as long as the ship itself.

The large marine creatures were incredibly rare. She had believed them extinct, but had enjoyed stories from her babsk about them. They supposedly rescued drowning sailors, or trailed ships for days, improving the moods of those on board. More spren than animal, they were somehow able to magnify peace and confidence.

Likely that was as much fancy as the Passions. But no sailor she’d ever met would speak ill of santhidyn, and meeting one was among the best omens in the ocean. She didn’t need to ask to know what finding a dead one would do to the mood of her crew.

The sailors sensed this was coming, she thought. They’ve been on edge these last few days, waiting. Perhaps, like Rysn, they’d noticed the pattern—and had expected a third, worst omen. To them, this would be proof the trip was cursed.

And, as she looked down at that large unnatural corpse—she found herself questioning. Sure, omens seemed like nonsense. But she’d assumed the Voidbringers were only stories, and they’d returned. Her mother had always laughed at the idea of Lost Radiants wandering the storms as spirits, but now she had two Radiants on her ship. Who was Rysn to say what was fact and what was myth?