Chapter Text
At first, when Kaladin told the story he began with the approach to the stronghold. Shallan maintained that this was as soulless as a military report. "We need the why," she said. Kaladin thought this was silly and impractical, but he also knew that she was better at this sort of thing than he was.
Why? Because someone had needed him-- had needed all six of them. And he'd first become aware of it when Leshwi had visited Urithiru, running errands for the Listeners, and the two of them had been talking…
It had started when she'd said, "It's strange to remember how I first heard of you."
Kaladin tilted his head, thinking. They were sitting on one of the balcony walls, their feet dangling thousands of feet above the ground, eating dusty chulls from the local Herdazian bakery. Kaladin had offered to buy them both lunch while they waited for the hourly Narak Oathgate transfer. "The skirmish over the Longbrow Straits?" It was the first time the Windrunners had properly faced the shanay-im in battle.
Leshwi hummed. It sounded almost like the Rhythm Rlain used when he thought something was funny, only faster and sharper. "No. Well before that. Your reputation precedes you, Stormblessed."
"I should have figured," Kaladin said. It was strange to think that the Fused had known about him back then. It was almost stranger that Leshwi was telling him about it. She had deserted Odium's forces, but she refused to be a traitor to them. Their conversations always steered clear of anything that might give the Coalition intel. Kaladin respected her tremendously for that.
Today, it seemed, she was willing to talk about the past. "It was shortly after I had been born into this body. When I returned to the main host of the Fused, everyone was in an uproar about the human captive who had used Radiant powers to escape."
Memories dug into Kaladin like fishhooks. Sah's frustration as he struggled to remember the rules of a game he'd watched his masters play countless times. Khen's initial distrust melting into a grudging respect. Vai asking him why the humans couldn't just leave them alone.
He looked up to see Leshwi watching him. "Something haunts you."
"The group of singers who captured me-- I watched them die in Kholinar. I failed them," he said. "Well, no. It's not good to think like that. I couldn't help them, but I wish I could have."
Leshwi tapped the side of the balcony, her Rhythm slow and halting. "You have a good heart, Stormblessed. Better than mine. It was the Fused who failed those singers, when we set them to hard labor and made them arrow fodder."
Kaladin looked up at her, startled. "You know who I'm talking about? Khen, and Sah, and his daughter--"
"I forgot he had a little one. I never met her; she'd already been sent away when I arrived."
"Sent away? They took her from him?" Storms, that had been shortly after Kaladin escaped. He'd imagined that Sah and Vai had at least had those last weeks together.
Leshwi set down her pastry and pushed herself off the wall like someone getting up from a bench. She hung motionless in the air, staring at the clouds below them, robes falling around her feet. "I know. It wasn't right." Her Rhythm changed, sounding frustrated. "That's all I have, Stormblessed. That's the pebble I've set against the winds of everything I let happen, pretending it's a stormwall. 'I know. It wasn't right.'"
"You stopped," Kaladin said. "You walked away. Do you know how incredible that is? After thousands of years, you chose something different." He had the sudden uncomfortable realization that this was how he sounded when he was in a dark mood. Huh. I guess anyone can sell themselves short.
"It doesn't seem right to praise myself for doing the bare minimum." She turned in midair and looked back at Kaladin. "Ado's Light, I don't know how to do this. The list of people I've hurt goes back seven thousand years. Is it wrong to regret what happened to that girl if I'm not thinking equally about the rest?"
Kaladin made himself weightless and levered himself upwards so he was standing next to her. "That doesn't seem like the right way to think about it. Journey before destination, you know?"
She hummed her amusement. "You're the Radiant, not me."
"You have the heart of one," Kaladin said, not quite sure what he meant by it.
Leshwi actually grinned. "I should be offended." Kaladin huffed a laugh. A comfortable silence settled between them.
"Venli would do it," Leshwi said to a slower, harder Rhythm. Her robes fluttered in the wind. "As would the other Listeners who have bonded Reachers. 'I will seek freedom for those in bondage.' Their oaths would not permit them to stand aside."
Kaladin took a careful bite of his dusty chull. Powdered sugar fell towards the distant ground like snow. "Is she in bondage?"
He seemed to have reminded Leshwi of her own pastry; she turned in the air and grabbed it off the wall top. "As good as. We-- the Fused have a school for orphaned children, or children whose parents have been deemed… unfit. They are fed and housed and educated, but they cannot leave."
"And what they're being taught…"
"Some of it is good-- reading, writing, mathematics, history. These children… there's so, so much catching up to do. They spent their early years suffering at human hands instead of playing and learning and growing."
Kaladin swallowed. "Yeah." I know. It wasn't right.
Leshwi finished off her pastry and wiped her mouth with the thin paper that had wrapped it. "But they are also taught deference to the Fused, and the glory of war, and the necessity of their service and sacrifice. Odium would have that little one spend her life to bring back someone like Lezian or Raboniel, and think it a low price."
His stomach tightened with nausea. "Do you think-- do you think she--"
"If she is in childform she is too young to be a host." Leshwi sank back down onto the wall. "But to be raised by people who see her as a thing to be used…"
"She just wanted a normal life with her father," Kaladin said dully. "She wanted to be left out of it. Like the Listeners. Like you. Is there really nothing we can do to help her?"
Leshwi was silent for a long moment. She crinkled the paper in a ball and passed it from one hand to the other. "Maybe there is," she finally said.