7

“Does something about the crew seem strange to you?” Lopen asked as he lounged in the air about three feet off the deck, hands behind his head, floating beside Cord.

The sturdy Horneater was mixing something that smelled good. It was pungent with the spices that he associated with Rock’s cooking—which wasn’t spicy hot, just . . . full of other flavors. Interesting ones. This dish, though, also had an oceany scent she said came from seaweed. Who ate weeds? Weren’t her people supposed to eat shells?

“Strange?” she asked Lopen. “Crew?”

“Yeah. Strange.” He watched several of the sailors go tromping past, and they kept shooting him looks. Rua trailed after them in the air, invisible to everyone but Lopen and Cord, who, like her father, could see all spren.

“You all strange,” she admitted. Each word was hesitant, but her Alethi was progressing well.

“So long as I’m the strangest,” Lopen said. “It’s, sure, one of my more endearing traits.”

“You are . . . very strange.”

“Excellent.”

“Very much strange.”

“Says the woman who likes to munch on weeds,” Lopen said. “That’s not food, misra, it’s what food eats.” He frowned as several more sailors passed by, and a couple made strange Thaylen gestures toward him. “See that! They cheered when we came on board. Now they’ve gotten all weird.”

Things had been better after the stop in Hexi to sell that grain, and Lopen approved of the jerky. But now, as they were reaching the halfway point in their journey, everything had gotten odd. There was a strange tone to every interaction, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it meant.

He glanced up as Huio streaked in overhead, then lowered himself down to the deck. He delivered a letter to Cord—from her parents, most likely—and tucked a few others into the inner pocket of his uniform coat for Rysn, who had asked him to visit a nearby island and receive letters for the day.

“Thank you,” Cord said to Huio, lifting up the letter. “Is happiness to hold him.”

“Welcome,” Huio said. “Was easy. Not problem.”

Watching them interact in Alethi was amusing. Why were there so many languages, and why didn’t everyone just learn Herdazian? It was a great language. It had names for all the different kinds of cousins.

“Huio,” Lopen said in Alethi, so as to not leave Cord out, “has the crew been treating you strangely?”

“No,” he said. “Um, no sure?”

“Not sure?” Lopen said.

“Yes. Not sure.” He set down his satchel, which carried spanreeds and other equipment. He reached in and brought out the small box of aluminum plates and foils that Rushu had sent with him, to use in some experiments trying to communicate back to her on the ship. “You know this?” Huio asked of them.

“Aluminum,” Lopen said, still floating above the deck a few feet. “Yeah, it’s weird stuff. Can block a Shardblade, Rua tells me, if it’s thick enough. They get it from Soulcasting, though only a few can make it, so it’s pretty rare.”

“Can get from trade,” Cord said. “In Peaks. We trade.”

“Trade?” Huio said. “Who trade?”

“People in spren world,” Cord said.

Huio cocked his head, rubbing his chin.

“He is strange metal,” Cord said. “Does strange things to spren.”

“Strange,” Huio agreed. He packed up the materials in his satchel and went wandering off. Hopefully he’d deliver them to Rushu, rather than playing with them. Huio sometimes got himself into trouble that way.

“Your people, Cord,” Lopen said, turning in the air like he was lounging on a sofa. “They have water up in those peaks. How? It’s cold, right?”

“Cold away from town,” she said. “Warm near town.”

“Huh. That sounds interesting.”

“He is.” She smiled. “I love him, our land. Didn’t want leave. Had leave with Mother. To find Father.”

“You could return, if you wanted,” Lopen said. “Wouldn’t take much to have a Windrunner fly you.”

“Yes,” she said. “But now, out here, he is dangerous. Good dangerous. I not wish to go. Too love of home, yes? But now that I see him, I cannot return. Not with danger here, for people. Danger that will go my home.” She turned from her mashing and looked across the ocean. “I was scared of places not home. And now . . . I find things that make scared are also things that make interesting. I like dangerous things. I did not know this.”

Lopen nodded. What an interesting way to see the world. Mostly he enjoyed listening—he liked the way Cord’s accent made a cadence of her words, and the way she drew out some vowel sounds. Plus she was tall, and tall women were best. He’d been very curious to find she was only a few years younger than he was. He hadn’t expected that.

Alas, he had stuck Huio to the wall for her on three separate occasions, and Cord had not seemed to find it impressive. He’d also cooked her chouta, but she already made it better than he did. Next he’d have to find a way to show her how good he was at cards.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “You like things you’re afraid of?”

“Yes. But I did not realize this thing. Afraid thing. Yes?”

“You didn’t realize that something fearsome, something different, could be so intoxicating. I think I get what you’re saying.” He thought for a moment, drinking the Light from a big garnet gemstone. The others called him silly, but he thought the different colors tasted different.

He eyed Cord. Was she impressed by how casually he floated? No way to know without pointing it out, which was the opposite of being casual. So he put his hands behind his head, and thought more about what she’d said.

“Cord,” he said, “your father. Is he really in danger because of what he did? Saving Kaladin? Killing Amaram?”

It had been several months since the event, and Kaladin had persuaded Rock to remain in Urithiru for the time being. Mostly to give his family a season to rest from their extended trip. However, that wouldn’t last forever. Rock was increasingly intent on returning to his homeland to face judgment.

“Yes,” Cord said softly. “But because of him. His doing. His wanting.”

“He made the choice to help Kaladin,” Lopen said, “but he didn’t choose his birth order.”

“But his choice to go back. His choice to ask for . . . I do not know word. Ask for choice?”

“Judgment?”

“Yes, maybe.” She smiled at him. “Do not afraid for my father, Lopen. He will choose his choice. If he must go home, I will stay. And Gift will stay. We will do his work. We will see for him.”

“See,” Lopen said. “See spren, you mean?”

She nodded.

“Are there any around now?” Lopen asked.

“Rua,” she said, pointing as Lopen’s spren came darting over in the shape of a fanciful flying ship. “And Caelinora.” Huio’s spren. She rarely appeared to Lopen. “Windspren in the air, wavespren in the water. Anxietyspren trailing the ship, almost unseeable. And . . .” She shook her head.

“And what?” Lopen asked.

“Odd things. Good gods, but uncommon. Apaliki’tokoa’a.” She struggled to find the right words, then took out a piece of paper—she often carried some—and did a quick sketch.

“A luckspren,” Lopen said, recognizing the arrowhead shape.

“Five,” she said. “Was none. Then was three. Then four. More each few day.”

Huh. Well, he was glad she was watching—she’d been hesitant to come on the trip, as she hadn’t thought she would be of any use. He’d encouraged her, since he knew she wanted to see the world more. And here she was, seeing interesting spren.

“I don’t know if luckspren are something to be worried about,” he said, “but I’ll have Rushu report it anyway. Queen Jasnah or one of the others might think something of them.”

Cord nodded, so he cut his Lashing. That made him land on the deck with a thump, a little harder than he’d intended. He patted the wood and grinned, feeling foolish. Too bad Huio hadn’t been watching. He’d have enjoyed that.

Lopen jogged off to find his cousin—who, as Lopen had feared, was in their cabin poking at Ardent Rushu’s spanreeds. He appeared to have completely disassembled one.

“Lopen,” Huio said in Herdazian. “This aluminum has fascinating properties; I believe the captive spren are reacting to its presence, almost like prey react to a predator. When I touch this foil to the stone, they push to the other side of their confines. I hypothesize that the aluminum interferes with their ability to sense not only my thoughts of them, but the thoughts of their conjoined half.”

“You know, cuz,” Lopen said in the same language, “those spanreeds are way more valuable than the locks you used to break apart. You could get into trouble.”

“Perhaps,” Huio said, tinkering with a small screwdriver to undo part of the gemstone’s housing, “but I am certain I can reassemble it. The ardent-lady will be completely unaware of my investigation.”

Lopen flopped down on his bunk. He’d asked for a hammock, like the crew used, but they’d acted like he was crazy. Apparently beds were in short supply on a ship. Which made sense. Everyone else got storming hammocks! Who’d want a bed?

“Something feels wrong about this entire mission,” Lopen said.

“You’re merely bored, younger-cousin,” Huio said, “because the crew are too busy with their work to be entertained by your unruly antics.”

“Nah, it’s not that,” Lopen said, staring at the ceiling. “And maybe it’s not even this trip. Things are just . . . off lately, you know?”

“Oddly—though everyone always expects me to be able to decipher what you’re saying—I find myself at a loss most of the time. And not only when you’re speaking in Alethi. Fortunately, you’re usually around to explain. At length. With lots of adjectives.”

“You know, Cord is getting pretty good with Alethi.”

“Good for her. Maybe she can learn Herdazian next, and then someone will finally interpret for me when I’m lost.”

“You’ll pick it up eventually, older-cousin,” Lopen said. “You’re, sure, the smartest person in our family.”

Huio grunted. His inability with the Alethi language was a sore spot with him. It didn’t click in his head, he said. Years of trying, and he hadn’t made much progress. But that was all right. It had taken Lopen, sure, years to learn how to grow an arm back after he lost one.

So what was bothering Lopen? Was it the things Cord had said? He took his rubber ball out of his pocket and practiced infusing it, then sticking it to the ceiling, then catching it again when it dropped.

The Voidbringers had come back. But they weren’t actually the Voidbringers. They were just parshmen, but different. And the war had started, like in the old stories. There was a new storm, and the world had basically ended. It all seemed so intense.

But in reality, it was so storming slow.

They’d been fighting for months and months, and lately it seemed like they were making less progress than Huio on his Alethi. Kill some of those new singers with the strange powers—they were called Fused—and they’d get reborn. Fight and fight and fight, and maybe capture, sure, a few dozen feet of ground. What a party. Do that for a million centuries, and maybe they’d have an entire kingdom.

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.