“Storming Velalant is late,” Ved grumbled.
“A little more time,” Noro said. “We’ll be fine. The good people know this food goes to them eventually.”
Yes, after they wait hours in line at Velalant’s distribution stations.
Farther into the city—obscured by the gathering crowds—a group of people approached in stark violet, with masks obscuring their faces. Kaladin watched uncomfortably as they started whipping their own forearms. Drawing painspren, which climbed from the ground around them, like hands missing the skin. Except these were too large, and the wrong color, and … and didn’t seem human.
“I prayed to the spren of the night and they came to me!” a man at their forefront shouted, raising hands high. “They rid me of my pain!”
“Oh no…” Syl whispered.
“Embrace them! The spren of changes! The spren of a new storm, a new land. A new people!”
Kaladin took Noro by the arm. “Sir, we need to retreat. Get this grain back to the warehouse.”
“We have orders to…” Noro trailed off as he glanced at the increasingly hostile crowd.
Fortunately, a group of some fifty men in blue and red rounded a corner and began shoving aside refugees with rough hands and barked shouts. Noro’s sigh was almost comically loud. The angry crowd broke away as Velalant’s troops surrounded the grain shipment.
“Why do we do this in the daytime?” Kaladin asked one of their officers. “And why don’t you simply come to our warehouse and escort it from there? Why the display?”
A soldier moved him—politely, but firmly—back from the wagon. The troops surrounded it and marched it away, the crowd flowing after them.
When they got back to the wall, Kaladin felt like a man seeing land after swimming all the way to Thaylenah. He pressed his palm against the stone, feeling its cool, rough grain. Drawing a sense of safety from it, much as he would draw out Stormlight. It would have been easy to fight that crowd—they were basically unarmed. But while training prepared you for the mechanics of the fight, the emotions were another thing entirely. Syl huddled on his shoulder, staring back along the street.
“This is all the queen’s fault,” Beard muttered softly. “If she hadn’t killed that ardent…”
“Stop with that,” Noro said sharply. He took a deep breath. “My squad, we’re on the wall next. You have half an hour to grab a drink or a nap, then assemble at our station above.”
“And storms be praised for that!” Beard said, heading straight for the stairwell, obviously planning to get to the station above, then relax. “I’ll happily take some time staring down an enemy army, thank you very much.”
Kaladin joined Beard in climbing. He still didn’t know where the man had gotten his nickname. Noro was the only one in the squad who wore a beard, though his wasn’t exactly inspiring. Rock would have laughed it to shame and euthanized it with a razor and some soap.
“Why do we pay off the highlords, Beard?” Kaladin asked as they climbed. “Velalant and his type are pretty useless, from what I’ve seen.”
“Yeah. We lost the real highlords in the riots or to the palace. But the highmarshal knows what to do. I suspect that if we didn’t share with people like Velalant, we’d have to fight them off from seizing the grain. At least this way, people are eventually getting fed, and we can watch the wall.”
They talked like that a lot. Holding the city wall was their job, and if they looked too far afield—tried too hard to police the city or bring down the cult—they’d lose their focus. The city had to stand. Even if it burned inside, it had to stand. To an extent, Kaladin agreed. The army couldn’t do everything.
It still hurt.
“When are you going to tell me how we make all that food?” Kaladin whispered.
“I…” Beard looked around in the stairwell. He leaned in. “I don’t know, Kal. But first thing that Azure did when he took command? Had us attack the low monastery, by the eastern gates, away from the palace. I know men from other companies who were on that assault. The place had been overrun by rioters.”
“They had a Soulcaster, didn’t they?”
Beard nodded. “Only one in the city that wasn’t at the palace when it … you know.”
“But how do we use it without drawing the screamers?” Kaladin asked.
“Well,” Beard said, and his tone shifted. “I can’t tell you all the secrets, but…” He launched into a story about the time Beard himself had learned to use a Soulcaster from the king of Herdaz. Maybe he wasn’t the best source of information.
“The highmarshal,” Kaladin interrupted. “Have you noticed the odd thing about her Shardblade? No gemstone on the pommel or crossguard.”
Beard eyed him, lit by the stairwell’s window slits. Calling the highmarshal a “she” always provoked a response. “Maybe that’s why the highmarshal never dismisses it,” Beard said. “Maybe it’s broken somehow?”
“Maybe,” Kaladin said. Aside from his fellow Radiants’ Blades, he’d seen one Shardblade before that didn’t have a gemstone on it. The Blade of the Assassin in White. An Honorblade, which granted Radiant powers to whoever held it. If Azure held a weapon that let her have the power of Soulcasting, perhaps that explained why the screamers hadn’t found out yet.
They finally emerged onto the top of the wall, stepping into sunlight. The two of them stopped there, looking inward over the flowing city—with the breaching windblades and rolling hills. The palace, ever in gloom, dominated the far side. The Wall Guard barely patrolled the section of wall that passed behind it.
“Did you know anyone in the Palace Guard ranks?” Kaladin asked. “Are any of the men in there still in contact with families out here or anything?”
Beard shook his head. “I got close a little while back. I heard voices, Kal. Whispering to me to join them. The highmarshal says we have to close our ears to those. They can’t take us unless we listen.” He rested his hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. “Your questions are honest, Kal. But you worry too much. We need to focus on the wall. Best not to talk too much about the queen, or the palace.”
“Like we don’t talk about Azure being a woman.”
“Her secret”—Beard winced—“I mean, the highmarshal’s secret is ours to guard and protect.”
“We do a storming poor job of that, then. Hopefully we’re better at defending the wall.”
Beard shrugged, hand still on Kaladin’s shoulder. For the first time, Kaladin noticed something. “No glyphward.”
Beard glanced at his arm, where he wore the traditional white armband that you’d tie a glyphward around. His was blank. “Yeah,” he said, shoving his hand in his coat pocket.
“Why not?” Kaladin said.
Beard shrugged. “Let’s just say, I know a lot about telling which stories have been made up. Nobody’s watching over us, Kal.”
He trudged off toward their muster station: one of the tower structures that lined the wall. Syl stood up on Kaladin’s shoulder, then walked up—as if on invisible steps—through the air to stand even with his eyes. She looked after Beard, her girlish dress rippling in wind that Kaladin couldn’t feel. “Dalinar thinks God isn’t dead,” she said. “Just that the Almighty—Honor—was never actually God.”