Interlude 15

Y es, but will they keep to it?” Brakt asked, gesturing to the small stack of pages in her hand.

“They’re Alethi,” Ytredn replied. “If you get it on paper, it’s as good as an oath to them. I think they will keep to what they’ve promised. They must.”

The two stood with Rysn on the lift, heading up to the middle floors of Urithiru. Chiri-Chiri snuggled in her lap, as large as a small axehound these days. The larkin was constantly frustrated that she couldn’t hide in little boxes or pots of grass any longer. The number of times Rysn had been forced to yank her out of a hole she’d wedged herself into …

Those in the tower gave the creature curious looks, as well they should. Rysn had heard more than a few compare Chiri-Chiri to a chasmfiend with wings, though she was leaner than that, and had a segmented tail ending with a bulbous bit and then a pointed hook. She looked, really, like nothing else alive.

They gave Rysn’s floating chair equally odd looks, even if that technology was becoming well known. Though they didn’t know the half of it. For now, she didn’t show off its newer functions, and just rode the lift with the two senior members of the Thaylen Patent Office.

“Why do you question, Brakt?” Rysn asked as the lift locked into place on the appropriate floor. “If we have a contract, we have a contract, don’t we?”

The woman, with silvering hair and a stiff formal blue vest, walked beside Rysn—who moved her chair by touching a gemstone control on the armrest. It floated along, high enough for her to look people in the eyes.

“We have spent literally decades,” Brakt said, “trying to get the Alethi and the Azish to agree to our patent requirements. I find it … uncharacteristic of them to agree so suddenly to our demands.”

“They’re our allies now,” Ytredn said, waving with one hand, his eyebrows pulled back along his head and tied behind with a silver ribbon. “A lot of things are changing.”

That wasn’t quite what Rysn had heard. She’d heard that during the occupation of Urithiru, which had ended two weeks past, Navani had bullied several very important Thaylen artifabrians into sharing trade secrets—and they, after the occupation, had immediately bullied her into finally agreeing to Thaylen patent wording. Vstim said that Navani had signed—but under duress, during a time of great turmoil and stress in the tower following the occupation. Her babsk cursed the artifabrians who had pushed for it so quickly. He worried there might be legal precedent for getting the treaty thrown out.

He concurred, though, that it was better to test the treaty now. And so Rysn was here. Her homeland was under threat, but she could do nothing for them. War seemed constant these days, but life went on. She rested her hand on Chiri-Chiri, scratching at a small patch of skin between plates of carapace—which earned a buzzing of pleasure from the beast.

They reached the proper room, and she halted her chair outside to await the meeting time. Then, with her eyes closed, Rysn let herself feel.

She was growing better at controlling, or at least dealing with, the expanding powers given by … her special duty. Life sense, as the Sleepless called it, was the ability to feel living things—the bits of power that made up all of them, and constituted a soul. Sounds were different to Rysn now, as she could pick out notes exactly—and sometimes got lost in conversations because she was paying attention to the musicality of the language. And colors … she had finally managed to keep her mind from comparing shades of color the moment she looked at something, but it could still be distracting.

It all mixed to make life a little more overwhelming than it had been. The Sleepless called it “merely the surface-level gifts your duty bestows.” They said to appreciate and welcome them, so she tried.

“Time,” Brakt said.

Rysn felt the Alethi scholars join them before she opened her eyes, and could have placed each one distinctly. Together, they entered the meeting room, and the ardents gathered around her. Not Rushu or any that Rysn knew; these were more mid-level bureaucrats than scientists, though they administered Queen Navani’s various programs.

Rysn glanced from Brakt to Ytredn. Both of the patent officials nodded. So Rysn took out her list of demands and presented them to the gathered officials.

They’d been warned, but as they read her papers, they looked more and more indignant. “These are impossible,” one woman at the front said at last. “This is too much.”

“Your queen signed the deal,” Rysn said.

“It’s not retroactive,” the woman said. “We’re free to make use of the things you and your business partners invented before the formal patent agreement.”

“Well,” Rysn said, leaning forward, “I guess you’re not interested in the rest of our advances.”

The group fell silent.

“The rest of your advances?” one asked.

She engaged her chair, which hovered higher. The basic functions weren’t stunning anymore—artifabrians had been making things hover for years. The biggest and most difficult rock to crack had been how to have lateral movement when hovering, as the mechanics of conjoined fabrials had—up until recently—forbidden that. Rysn had been a big part of how that had been overcome, with the help of the Windrunner Huio, who was her business partner—and who was also named in her demands.

The Alethi, of course, had immediately taken her design and weaponized it—that was the Alethi way. The flying machine, the Fourth Bridge, was the result. But it had limitations.

Rysn flipped a switch on her chair, and it hovered sideways. Then she made it do a little circle of the room. She was no scientist herself, but deep down every merchant was a bit of a showman. So, using her control stick, she soared the chair upward while moving sideways, then down in a little dip and bump. Finally, she came to rest in front of the scholars, hovering a foot off the ground.

“That is …” the lead ardent said, “admittedly far smoother than anything we’ve managed. How are you so quickly switching between gemstones? What’s powering such calm and steady movement on that small of a scale?”

“No chull track, I’ll tell you that,” Rysn said. “We’ve achieved speeds—without me in the seat, of course—of up to seventy-three knots.”

Their eyes bulged at this.

“How?” one of the other ardents asked.

Rysn looked to her companions.

“So, you want to be in business or not?” Brakt asked, stepping forward. “If you do, we need to talk about how this time you’re not going to infringe my client’s patents, and how the Alethi and Urithiru governments owe her and her business partner—one Huio of Calipa—the demanded royalties upon every device they’ve begun creating that uses her proprietary designs.”

“You’d put a price on scientific advancement?” a male ardent demanded. “You’d lock such valuable information behind a wall of filthy mercantilism?”

Rysn sighed. Fortunately, the other two were used to dealing with this sort of thing.

“Before the implementation of a patent system in Thaylenah,” Ytredn said, right hand to his breast in a kind of salute, “each important discovery was held back by the inventor, for fear of their ideas being poached. Even still, we have problems with guilds maintaining secrets far beyond what is beneficial.

“A fair and reasonable patent system exists not to lock discoveries away, but to encourage them to come into the light; we assure inventors that their ideas will be valued and respected. We do not hide information. We encourage its sharing, just as any good legal code encourages good behavior.”

The lead ardent huffed. But the creation of the Fourth Bridge was indeed a sign that sharing information could lead to much greater discovery. As long as she had a say in how it went. With the military in charge, she doubted time would ever be devoted to such a presumably low-level need as mobility devices.

But with the patent in her control, she’d make it happen. She settled back in her chair as the officials slowly talked the bureaucrats into signing a ratification of the treaty—something Vstim said would strengthen their case. Then, with Rysn’s permission, they began laying out the schematics for the intricate gemstone-changing device that let her chair have such smooth flight. That included the specifics of the gravity-and ocean-wave-based propellant prototypes, both of which were far more efficient than simply having a track of chulls move your ship.

Rysn laced her fingers, listening, pleased. She’d dreamed of being a merchant captain, and now had her own ship. She’d been trained to negotiate trades around the world by one of the best. Who would have thought that her actual fortune would come not from the delivery of goods, but as a result of wanting to be able to move her own chair on the ship’s deck?

All was going well until Dalinar Kholin walked through the door. And the power inside her went haywire.

A surging ran through her, like a sudden storm on deck. The power of the Dawnshard, her duty and her secret, started vibrating with a discordant note.

Dalinar’s eyes locked on hers. His jaw dropped, and his image fuzzed briefly. She immediately knew this was not actually the Blackthorn of legend. Someone was imitating him.

“Out,” the person imitating Dalinar said. “Everyone but the woman in the hovering chair. Now. ”

“Brightlord?” an ardent said.

“ Now, ” he repeated.

“Go,” Rysn said to her attendants, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Storms. The power felt like it was screaming. “I have business with … with the Blackthorn. Private negotiations. I will be well.”

They seemed confused and concerned by this, with good reason. But they did go, leaving Rysn in the chamber with the man who looked like Brightlord Kholin—until the door closed. Then his illusion fell apart, revealing a shorter Shin man with white hair.

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

“I ask the same,” she replied. “You are not a Fused—which is good, as a Masked One almost killed me a year back. But what … why …”

He was another one. Like her.

He held one of the things, the duty and power. The man before her was a Dawnshard.

But they were not supposed to be anywhere near one another. No two had been placed on the same planet, and for very good reason.

“I felt you the moment you entered the tower,” he said, “but didn’t know exactly what you were until now. You’ve found it? But how? And where was it? And …” He trailed off as Nikli poured out of the air duct nearby, forming from hundreds of cremlings into the shape of a human being. “Oh. You were involved. Of course.”

“Rysn,” Nikli said, stepping between her and the strange man, “do not speak with this one. He isn’t what you think. He walked away from his duty centuries ago. He held a Dawnshard once, but now merely bears echoes of it—”

“No, Nikli,” Rysn said. “He is one. I can feel it. He is one of four that you said should never meet. We are here. And we’re together.”

Nikli looked at her, then back to the strange man.

“This is a secret,” the strange man noted, “that I’ve worked very hard to keep.”

“You took it up again? ” Nikli demanded, stepping toward him. “You … That’s why no one can find it. You gave it up, but then took it again at some point, hiding it—because the signs would be dismissed as lingering aftereffects of your long-standing tenure. Then … you brought it here to Roshar? Why in all the cosmere would you do something so reckless? Even you should know better.”

Nikli’s shape unraveled a little like it did when he was upset, the legs of the cremling-like creatures that made him up poking through his skin.

Rysn hovered to the side, studying the man with the white hair.

“How did I completely miss you?” he said, still meeting her eyes. “Who are you? How did this happen? Something this momentous should have shown up in …”

He trailed off as the powers within them started to align. The Sleepless had explained to her what she held: a Dawnshard, one of the four core forces by which a god had been Shattered. Something beyond common Surges. Something primal.

The four had been divided up, never to be brought together, lest …

Lest this happen. The two started to pull toward one another. Rysn gasped, gripping the armrests of her chair as the power sought to pull her across the room to smash into the force from the other man. She knew, instantly, this would destroy her—she’d be made a flesh pulp by the contortion of the forces in motion.

She strained, but was pulled out of the chair to the floor, dumping Chiri-Chiri from her lap with a click of annoyance. The room began to vibrate. Nikli, and her other Sleepless guard who had been sneaking up behind the strange man, unraveled. Their separate hordelings lost cohesion as they fell into mounds of scrambling bits. Chiri-Chiri writhed on the floor, the awful vibration making her screech.

Rysn scrambled to hold to the ground as she was pulled across the floor toward where the man with the white hair was glowing. He closed his eyes, then held his hands before him and made a gesture with his index fingers and thumbs extended.

A sound like a gong in her head was followed by a perspective of … vastness. Time stretching in all directions, forward, back, even to the sides. And at the center of it, that man, with white hair flaring up from his head and light coming from his core.

He snapped his eyes open and spoke.

“ No . ”

The vibrating ceased. The sound went out. The light faded. Rysn was left on the floor, Chiri-Chiri climbing onto her back and crying out, trembling. Two Sleepless in piles.

“I will ensure that we never meet again,” the man said, then restored his illusion of Dalinar and left.

Storms. Rysn slumped on the ground, waiting for the two Sleepless to recover. She had to hold to Chiri-Chiri, who pulled against her in a panic. That awful vibration continued to echo in her soul, and she knew she’d been mere moments from being completely annihilated as the two powers merged.

Eventually, Nikli and Alalhawithador restored themselves. They settled down beside her, and Nikli helped Rysn sit up.

“Well,” Rysn said, wiping the sweat from her brow, “what do we make of that?”

“I can think of few people worse in all the cosmere to have discovered us,” Alalhawithador said. “But it is not your fault. He should never have taken up a Dawnshard again. He, who was there when they were used …”

“That creature is not one of the gods,” Nikli said. “We’re hidden still from Odium and the rest. The Mythwalker will not share a secret like this with anyone.”

“But he will keep it,” Alalhawithador said. “And will use it against us.” She looked to Rysn. Over the time that Rysn had borne this burden, she thought maybe she’d started to earn their respect. That was manifest now, as Alalhawithador—who had once been harsh to her—spoke in a kindly way. “What would you like to do, Bearer?”

Rysn had Nikli help her back into her seat. She took a deep breath, again wiping sweat from her brow. “We need to go into hiding, don’t we? I have … I have to abandon my ship. My crew. Everything.”

The two looked down. Then Alalhawithador nodded.

The Dawnshards could not be combined, and she could not remain in this land knowing she’d been discovered. She had to leave. Perhaps forever.

Unless …

There was something she’d been planning. More a fanciful imagining than a true expedition. But perhaps … with her ship’s new capacities …

“It appears,” Rysn said, “I will not be able to enjoy the exploitation of my patent, but perhaps I do not have to abandon ship or crew. What happened here was not my fault, but it is my responsibility nonetheless. I will go into hiding. But please consider letting it be in a specific way …”

As she explained it, they agreed. It was a dangerous suggestion, but exciting nonetheless. She hated being forced into it, but that was that. She would have to go. So, just when everything looked like it was finally building back up and coming together for her, Rysn prepared to say goodbye.