Chapter Two
It took entirely too long for the Kholin army to make its way to the plateau with Sadeas's camp for Lana's taste. But when they finally did make it, Lana made sure she was one of the first people her family encountered. Renarin gave a hug to Dalinar while Lana rushed to where Adolin was climbing out of his saddle, pulling him into a hug as soon as both his feet were on the ground.
"Lana! I'm so glad to see you!" Adolin beamed at her as he eagerly returned the hug. "I hope you didn't miss me too much" he added in a teasing tone.
"I always miss you," Lana replied softly, hoping he wouldn't be able to tell how close the darkness was to swallowing her. A normal person wouldn't feel that way anymore. The joy of having their family back would push those negative feelings away, but it didn't work like that for Lana. Once the darkness had any sort of hold on her soul, it didn't stop until she gave into it and let it destroyed another small piece of her. Like a high storm weathered away land formations bit by bit, the darkness was wearing away her soul a little at a time.
"Is that so? I'll have to remember that for the next time you tell me to leave you alone and give some lame excuse about important stuff you have to do," Adolin said, and Lana could practically see the infuriating smirk on his face without having to look up at him.
"I need you, Adolin. Who else would I be able to make fun of for going through courting partners almost as quickly as they go through new clothes?" Lana replied with a small smile. She wished she could feel more of the happiness that came from making fun of her brother. He laughed at her as he hugged her a little tighter and oh how glorious that laugh sounded to her.
Lana and Adolin weren't particularly good at following Alethi customs when it came to physical touch. Their mother had been from a different culture entirely, one that valued physical touch. It often led the pair to hugging or other touches that made people around them mildly uncomfortable. They got away with it though on account of them being siblings. Today however, they were not the ones to make everyone uncomfortable as Dalinar and Navani embraced in a very intimate hug, even in Lana's eyes. Refusing to break the embrace with her brother, Lana studied Dalinar and Navani.
Their relationship had confused her at first but at her core, Lana was a phycologist. While she had technically chosen linguistics as her calling, phycology is what she actually enjoyed the most. Lana loved discovering what made up a person. What made them get up in the morning? What scared them more than anything else? What would it take to break them? These were among some of Lana's most asked questions when she studied someone.
Over the weeks, Lana had discovered that Dalinar and Navani had likely had feelings for one another for years, if not decades. The way they seemed to tense then relax into interactions with each other spoke of a long time they were forced to deny those kinds of interactions. Beyond that, Lana had been surprised to see how much they cared about each other. A person could say anything, do anything but their eyes would almost always speak a truth. And the truth she found in the couple's eyes every time they looked at each other was one of long-awaited love. That love was especially present as Dalinar dropped one of his gauntlets and placed his hand on the back of Navani's head and the two conversed quietly, seemingly unaware of the many eyes around them.
Finally, Lana pulled herself out of Adolin's arms and started looking him over for wounds. Starting with his unhelmed head, she turned his face side to side to check everywhere she could see for any blood or bruising that might be concerning.
"I'm fine Lana," Adolin chuckled at her.
"Says the one barely able to stay upright in a very beat up set of shardplate," she responded with only a slight glare as she poked his breastplate which was leaking some stormlight.
"I am not. I always walk with the kind of strength and grace that makes others envy me," Adolin retorted back with a teasing smile as Renarin finally stepped up to them.
Renarin was not as into physical touch as Lana and Adolin were, so he chose to place a hand on Adolin's shoulder and smiled broadly at him instead of going in for a hug like Lana had. To the side, Dalinar finally let go of Navani, reaching down to replace the gauntlet he had placed on the ground.
Lana didn't go over to her father, but she did give him a nod when he met her eyes, and he returned the gestured. Their relationship wasn't the closest and honestly, they hadn't ever been very close. In her youth, Lana had tried to strengthen their relationship with everything she could think of. All that had changed ten years ago after a mistake her father had made that Lana wasn't sure she could ever forgive him for. Dalinar of course didn't know of her hard feelings. The black thorn didn't exactly know how to have a daughter and likely didn't think anything of the distance between them. Part of that had been by design though. Lana had spent years, especially the ones spent on the shattered plains, carefully interacting with her father in a way that hid her resentment towards him. She had decided long ago that she wouldn't let her feelings get in the way of protecting her family, no matter how painful those feelings might be.
"Father…" Adolin said while eyeing the hostile soldiers in forest green at the top of the slope.
"This isn't going to come to blows so keep you blade as mist Adolin," Dalinar said while sending Lana a look that clearly asked her to make sure he did so. She nodded in assurance to him.
"Sadeas abandoned you, didn't he?" Lana asked as she turned back to Adolin.
"Not just that. He set us up then betrayed us," Adolin spat in response.
Dalinar started up the incline and Navani fell in on one side of him with Adolin then Lana on the other side and Renarin behind them. Over a thousand of Dalinar's soldiers followed.
On the staging field, Sadeas was standing in the middle of the thath glyph Lana and Navani had made. How fitting. Some lame line about being sorry was given by Sadeas to which Dalinar responded calmly that the high prince had just done what he needed to. It twisted Lana's insides how much the response made the other man relax.
Without saying anything, Dalinar waved all of them back and walked up to the edge of the glyph. Sadeas, looking intrigued, waved his men back too and met Dalinar. The men stood only inches away and started conversing in low voices.
"How did you guys make it back if Sadeas betrayed you?" Lana asked Adolin in a hushed voice. "Didn't he take all the bridges with him?"
"He did. But one bridge crew came back," Adolin said, nodding to the other side of Lana.
Turning her head, Lana saw a group of maybe thirty men standing in a slightly hostile looking group. They all wore the typical bridgemen outfits of short trousers and open leather vests. One particular man stood out to her. A full head taller than Lana with shoulder length black wavy hair, the man stood watching the two high princes with a hard look on his face. Lana felt an immediate sense of uneasiness towards the man that increased as she noticed slave brands peeking out from under his hair. A small breeze moved his hair just enough for her to make out the shash brand but not the original brands marking where he was made a slave. That was all the confirmation she needed to not trust the man.
Deciding she would have to keep an eye on that one, Lana narrowed her eyes at him. Informants she had all over the war camps indicated that a bridgeman had been strung up for drastically changing tactics on a bridge run but had gone on to survive a while back. Recently she had also been told of a bridge crew that had started to wear carapace from dead Parshendi as armor which had then spread to other bridgecrews due to its apparent success at distracting the enemy. Something told Lana that this man was probably right in the center of both incidents.
The man took his eyes off the high princes long enough to look towards a group of Sadeas's men. Following his eyes, Lana found a man nearly as tall as the bridgemen in a forest green officer's uniform glaring red faced at the group of bridgemen. It wasn't hard for Lana to put together that this must have been the officer in charge of the bridgemen and seeing him brought up the troubling question she had been avoiding. How exactly did the bridgemen turn back for the Kholin army? The whole situation put her on edge. On one hand, Lana wanted to believe the men didn't want her family dead since they had saved them. On the other, she had to acknowledge that they may be working for someone who wanted to work against Sadeas for now while planning to deal with her family in a different way. As Lana turned her gaze back to the bridgeman with the long black hair, she knew she couldn't rule these men out as liaisons to one of her enemies. She just had to hope that if they were, she would be able to find out what they were planning in time to stop them.
The man turned his eyes away from the officer and for some reason looked right at Lana. His dark eyes were filled with more hostility than she had expected. And more exhaustion perhaps? It was usually pretty easy for Lana to see what hid behind people's eyes, but this man's eyes were so full of emotion that it was actually difficult.
Yeah, I'm definitely not trusting that one, Lana thought to herself as she held the man's gaze, refusing to look away first. The man also didn't seem inclined to look away first, so they held eye contacts for several heart beats.
Movement from the two high princes finally caused the man to look away. Lana prepared herself as the two men stepped away from one another. This could get ugly real fast, and she had to make sure her family walked away from this, no matter what.
A figure behind Sadeas caught Lana's attention. Ialai Sadeas. The two women's eyes met with cold hatred. Hate for this woman ran deep inside Lana. The older woman embodied everything Lana hated about high born light eyed society. Ialai was the kind of person who schemed for her own benefit and didn't care who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted. Well today Lana was determined to do everything she could to keep that from happening.
First, Lana had to find out what the Sadeas couple would want now that their plans had been foiled so soundly. Lana had to admit to a small part of herself that she did have the bridgemen to thank for that, even if she didn't trust their motives. The best part of dealing with these cremlings was the fact that they knew what she was capable of. That meant Lana might not even have to do anything directly right now. A threat might work just as well in this moment.
"Don't summon your blade," Lana sternly told Adolin. When he turned to argue with her, he stopped short as he saw her glare. He would know to listen to her. There was a trust between the two siblings that was stronger than most people ever got to experience. That trust had saved both of their lives on several occasions so Lana knew that Adolin wouldn't go against what she said.
Turning back to the high princes, Lana listened intently as Dalinar offered to pay a ridiculous amount for the bridgemen to which Sadeas promptly refused. That gave Lana an opening. She might not trust the bridgemen but the fact that Sadeas didn't want to sell them for easily twenty times what they were worth said that he cared about keeping the men. That meant Lana would have to make sure those men did not stay here.
Kaladin stood there listening to yet another light eyed promise crumble to dust. Before he could turn around to walk off, he noticed the woman that was staring at him before start walking around the edge of the circle of onlookers.
The woman had a full head of black hair that was put back in a bun that was almost militaristic in style. While every other light eyed woman had her hair pulled back in intricate braids, this woman only had a few small subtle braids that ran back into a bun. Also, instead of wearing a traditional Havah like the other light eyed women, she wore a Kholin blue riding dress with very little embroidery. Her emerald green eyes had seemed to overflow with the kind of arrogance Kaladin hated in the light eyes.
In the end, it hadn't been hard to figure out who she was. The hard look on her face as they had held eye contact looked exactly like the one Dalinar wore while talking with Sadeas. This had to be none other than Lana Kholin, the black thorn's own daughter.
She seemed to almost prowl around the edge of the crowd, like a whitespine finding the perfect place to attack from. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find once she was standing in front of him and the other bridgemen for she stopped there. Kaladin tensed, not sure what the woman was planning to do.
Sadeas spared a glance for Lana and seemed to pail slightly. The high prince looked back at another woman behind him whose face was controlled, almost too controlled.
Turning back to Dalinar, Sadeas told him to leave for the last time but he didn't seem as confident as before. The red-faced man barely finished his sentence however before everyone gasped at the massive shardblade that formed in Dalinar's hands.
Everything in Lana told her to move, to stop what was coming but she held herself back. Her father had seemed so confident that this wouldn't come to blows. Surely, he wouldn't change his mind just because Sadeas wouldn't let go of his bridgemen. So, Lana forced herself to remain in place, hands held behind her straightened back, eyes locked on Ialai. Even the shardblade hadn't broken the woman's composure. But Lana could see the strain in the older woman's eyes as she evidently fought down whatever emotions tried to take over.
Ramming the blade into the stone between himself and Sadeas, Dalinar offered the blade itself in exchange for every bridgeman in Sadeas's camp. It was incredibly unexpected. Only years of training herself to keep her composure kept Lana's jaw from dropping to the ground in shock. That training kicked in again as Sadeas tried to glace at the bridgemen and Lana took a small step forward without really thinking about it. She tried to make it seem like she was in on what Dalinar was doing and if Sadeas didn't agree then her hand would be forced. Although, that probably wasn't necessary. Lana had seen the hunger on the man's face more than once when a blade was summoned near him.
Sadeas eagerly took the blade and Dalinar turned to walk towards the rest of them. Instead of keeping his dignity, Sadeas decided to call after Dalinar about what a fool he was and how they were worthless even though that hadn't been what he had thought when being offered nearly a fortune for the men a moment ago. Storming cremling of a man, Lana thought to herself as her father walked towards where she was standing.
A quick nod was exchanged between the two as Dalinar passed Lana and stepped up to the bridgemen. All Lana could do was watch dumbfounded as her father kindly told the bridgemen to retrieve their belongings and the other bridgemen and come to the Kholin war camp swiftly. The bridgeman who had caught her eye before seemed completely shocked. Storms, the man made even an emotion that was described by the lack of being able to talk or think seem passionate. If this was his baseline of passion, what would he be like when feeling a powerful emotion like anger? A part of Lana yearned to find out. Everyone major nowadays in politics on the shattered plains were boring to Lana. By now, she could easily read when people were hiding something, especially if that something was an emotion. This man though, he presented a unique opportunity to study someone who wore emotions other than indifference on his face.
Don't get sucked in too deep, Lana reprimanded herself. He can't be trusted.
Dalinar started to walk away which finally seemed to break the bridgeman out of his daze as he shook himself and followed after Dalinar. The two men were still close enough for Lana to make out their conversation and she found herself shocked at how sincere Dalinar seemed. In response to the bridgeman's question of why, Dalinar asked the younger man what a person's life was worth. Unsurprisingly, the other man responded with what a slaver would charge for a slave, but upon further prodding by Dalinar, he answered that a life was priceless. He even seemed to believe it. Storms, this man was either incredibly naive and way too open or a master at pretending to be so. There was so much he could hide behind his passion. That worried Lana.
Finally, Dalinar started to walk towards the Kholin war camp and the bridgeman turned back towards the rest of the bridgemen. Towards Lana. Their eyes met once again, and he didn't seem nearly as hostile towards her as he had before. He almost seemed to be searching for something in Lana's eyes, but she didn't give him anything. Keeping a look of being perfectly in control but neutral was something she had mastered long ago, and he was not going to break that. Fascinatingly, the man's eyes seemed to darken after a moment. The scholar in Lana begged her to give him a different look, just to see how he would react, but she didn't.
Adolin walked up to Lana before her or the bridgeman had given up the staring contest.
"Come on Lana. You can intimidate the bridgemen later, seeing as father paid more than a kingdom is worth for them," Adolin said in his regular cheery voice of his as he grabbed Lana's forearm and pulled her behind him towards the Kholin camp.
Instead of making a comment on how clearly unintimidating Lana had been as she expected, the bridgeman just glared at her as she walked by then turned to his men and started talking with them.
In a way, Lana was disappointed that the man hadn't made a comment. It would have given her something to work with to discover his true motives. Instead, she would have to think back on what she saw from the man. She had noticed that the man carried himself as if he were a light eyes himself and she hadn't heard him say her father's title the whole time they were talking. That seemed to imply that he likely had a problem with authority. Good. Lana could use that to her advantage if she gave in to the temptation to push then study the man. Which she wouldn't do of course. He wasn't that tempting. Not at all.
"Hey Lana?" Adolin asked, pulling Lana out of her musings about the bridgeman.
"Yeah?" she responded.
"I wanted to make sure you're doing okay," Adolin said in a lowered voice. "I can't imagine what it was like for you standing on that plateau, not knowing if we were alive or not…" he trailed off.
The darkness pressed in a little more as Lana was reminded of the distress she had felt before seeing the Kholin army marching back. She couldn't let that show though.
"You guys are back safe. That's all that matters," Lana replied in a way she hoped was reassuring enough. Adolin didn't seem too convinced, but he didn't argue. It was a long moment before he said anything.
"Would you like me to stay with you tonight?" he asked softly as they made their way to the edge of Sadeas's war camp. Sometimes when Adolin was particularly worried for her safety or well-being, he would sleep on the floor in her room to keep an eye on her and to be close by if she needed him. With a stab of pain, she was yet again reminded by the darkness that he was a better brother than she deserved.
"I'll be okay," she responded with a small smile. Before he could respond, two Ryshadium trotted up to them.
Sureblood was pure white and stood tall, even next to Adolin in his shardplate. Skullcrusher on the other hand was a dusty brown and was a little smaller than Sureblood. Lana didn't like calling the horse Skullcrusher, but it was the only name the storming creature would respond to. Bonding a Ryshadium wasn't something Lana ever planned to do growing up and it had happened by complete accident. She had been with Adolin to help support him as he tried to bond a Ryshadium. Instead, Skullcrusher had chosen her.
Lana smiled to herself while patting Skullcrusher's neck, thinking about the two weeks she had spent trying to convince the horse to choose her brother instead of her. Thankfully Adolin had gotten another chance and bonded Sureblood shortly after that. Lana likely would have continued fighting with the horse if he hadn't. She knew now that it would have been useless, however. A horse as stubborn as she was had chosen her and there wasn't anything she could do to change that. Still, on occasion Lana half-jokingly told Skullcrusher she should choose someone else. A solider perhaps so she could actually crush skulls. It was a running joke between them but to be honest, Lana didn't feel like she deserved the horse. A Ryshadium was a major advantage in war and what did Lana use the rare creature for? Riding between war camps mostly.
Pulling herself into Skullcrusher's saddle, Lana prepared herself for one of her favorite feelings in the world. Once Skullcrusher was in a full trot towards the Kholin war camp, Lana reveled in the feeling of the wind rushing by her. For a few minutes, she was able to push aside the darkness and just enjoy the feeling of riding. The main advantage of riding a Ryshadium compared to other horses was the fact that Lana didn't have to guide the horse or even pick up the reigns, if she had been wearing any. Skullcrusher knew where to go and what to do and that left Lana completely free to enjoy the open air. When Skullcrusher trotted at her fastest speed, it felt like Lana was flying in a way. Out of everyone in the war camps, Lana didn't feel like she deserved the opportunity to feel this, but she treasured it none the less.
There were still a lot of things to deal with and even more things to worry about once she got back, but it could wait. For now, Lana was going to try to enjoy the ride and the knowledge that her family wasn't dead. That was enough for now. It had to be enough for now.