He tapped the table. “Other men … other men, as they age, merely grow stranger. I fear that I am one of those. I am the bones of a foreign species left drying on the plain that was once, long ago, a sea. A curiosity, perhaps a reminder, that all has not always been as it is now.”
“You’re … old, aren’t you? Not a Herald, but as old as they are?”
He slid his boots off the chair and leaned forward, holding her eyes. He smiled in a kindly way. “Child, when they were but babes, I had already lived dozens of lifetimes. ‘Old’ is a word you use for worn shoes. I’m something else entirely.”
She trembled, looking into those blue eyes. Shadows played within them. Shapes moved, and were worn down by time. Boulders became dust. Mountains became hills. Rivers changed course. Seas became deserts.
“Storms,” she whispered.
“When I was young…” he said.
“Yes?”
“I made a vow.”
Shallan nodded, wide-eyed.
“I said I’d always be there when I was needed.”
“And you have been?”
“Yes.”
She breathed out.
“It turns out I should have been more specific, as ‘there’ is technically anywhere.”
“It … what?”
“To be honest, ‘there’ has—so far—been a random location that is of absolutely no use to anyone.”
Shallan hesitated. In an instant, whatever she seemed to have sensed in Wit was gone. She flopped back in her seat. “Why am I talking to you of all people?”
“Shallan!” he said, aghast. “If you were talking to someone else, they wouldn’t be me.”
“I happen to know plenty of people who aren’t you, Wit. I even like some of them.”
“Be careful. People who aren’t me are prone to spontaneous bouts of sincerity.”
“Which is bad?”
“Of course! ‘Sincerity’ is a word people use to justify their chronic dullness.”
“Well, I like sincere people,” Shallan said, raising her cup. “It’s delightful how surprised they look when you push them down the stairs.”
“Now, that’s unkind. You shouldn’t push people down the stairs for being sincere. You push people down the stairs for being stupid.”
“What if they’re sincere and stupid?”
“Then you run.”
“I quite like arguing with them instead. They do make me look smart, and Vev knows I need the help.…”
“No, no. You should never debate an idiot, Shallan. No more than you’d use your best sword to spread butter.”
“Oh, but I’m a scholar. I enjoy things with curious properties, and stupidity is most interesting. The more you study it, the further it flees—and yet the more of it you obtain, the less you understand about it!”
Wit sipped his drink. “True, to an extent. But it can be hard to spot, as—like body odor—you never notice your own. That said … put two smart people together, and they will eventually find their common stupidity, and in so doing become idiots.”
“Like a child, it grows the more you feed it.”
“Like a fashionable dress, it can be fetching in youth, but looks particularly bad on the aged. And unique though its properties may be, stupidity is frighteningly common. The sum total of stupid people is somewhere around the population of the planet. Plus one.”
“Plus one?” Shallan asked.
“Sadeas counts twice.”
“Um … he’s dead, Wit.”
“What?” Wit sat up straight.
“Someone murdered him. Er … we don’t know who.” Aladar’s investigators had continued hunting the culprit, but the investigation had stalled by the time Shallan left.
“Someone offed old Sadeas, and I missed it?”
“What would you have done? Helped him?”
“Storms, no. I’d have applauded.”
Shallan grinned and let out a deep sigh. Her hair had reverted to red—she’d let the illusion lapse. “Wit,” she said, “why are you here? In the city?”
“I’m not completely sure.”
“Please. Could you just answer?”
“I did—and I was honest. I can know where I’m supposed to be, Shallan, but not always what I’m supposed to do there.” He tapped the table. “Why are you here?”
“To open the Oathgate,” Shallan said. “Save the city.”
Pattern hummed.
“Lofty goals,” Wit said.
“What’s the point of goals, if not to spur you to something lofty?”
“Yes, yes. Aim for the sun. That way if you miss, at least your arrow will fall far away, and the person it kills will likely be someone you don’t know.”
The innkeeper chose that moment to arrive with some food. Shallan didn’t feel particularly hungry; seeing all those starving people outside had stolen her appetite.
The small plates held crumbly cakes of Soulcast grain topped with a single steamed cremling—a variety known as a skrip, with a flat tail, two large claws, and long antennae. Eating cremlings wasn’t uncommon, but it wasn’t particularly fine dining.
The only difference between Shallan’s meal and Wit’s was the sauce—hers sweet, his spicy, though his had the sauce in a cup at the side. Food supplies were tight, and the kitchen wasn’t preparing both masculine and feminine dishes.
The innkeeper frowned at her hair, then shook his head and left. She got the impression he was accustomed to oddities around Wit.
Shallan looked down at her food. Could she give this to someone else? Someone who deserved it more than she did?
“Eat up,” Wit said, rising and walking to the small window. “Don’t waste what you’re given.”
Reluctantly, she did as he instructed. It wasn’t particularly good, but it wasn’t terrible. “Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked.
“I’m smart enough not to follow my own advice, thank you very much.” He sounded distracted. Outside the window, a procession from the Cult of Moments was passing.
“I want to learn to be like you,” Shallan said, feeling silly as she said it.
“No you don’t.”
“You’re funny, and charming, and—”
“Yes, yes. I’m so storming clever that half the time, even I can’t follow what I’m talking about.”
“—and you change things, Wit. When you came to me, in Jah Keved, you changed everything. I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to change the world.”
He didn’t seem at all interested in his food. Does he eat? she wondered. Or is he … like some kind of spren?
“Who came with you to the city?” he asked her.
“Kaladin. Adolin. Elhokar. Some of our servants.”
“King Elhokar? Here?”
“He’s determined to save the city.”
“Most days, Elhokar has trouble saving face, let alone cities.”
“I like him,” Shallan said. “Despite his … Elhokarness.”
“He does grow on you, I suppose. Like a fungus.”