Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Author:Brandon Sanderson [Sanderson, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2017-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

I returned to the tower to find squabbling children, instead of proud knights. That’s why I hate this place. I’m going to go chart the hidden undersea caverns of Aimia; find my maps in Akinah.

—From drawer 16-16, amethyst

Veil enjoyed being in a proper city again, even if it was half feral.

Most cities lived on the very edge of civilization. Everyone talked about towns and villages out in the middle of nowhere as if they were uncivilized, but she’d found people in those places pleasant, even-tempered, and comfortable with their quieter way of life.

Not in cities. Cities balanced on the edge of sustainability, always one step from starvation. When you pressed so many people together, their cultures, ideas, and stenches rubbed off on one another. The result wasn’t civilization. It was contained chaos, pressurized, bottled up so it couldn’t escape.

There was a tension to cities. You could breathe it, feel it in every step. Veil loved it.

Once a few streets from the tailor’s shop, she pulled down the brim of her hat and held up a page from her sketchbook as if consulting a map. This covered her as she breathed out Stormlight, transforming her features and hair to match those of Veil, instead of Shallan.

No spren came, screaming to warn of what she’d done. So Lightweaving was different from using fabrials. She’d been fairly certain it was safe, as they’d worn disguises into the city, but she’d wanted to be away from the tailor’s shop in case.

Veil strolled down the thoroughfare, long coat rippling around her calves. She decided immediately that she liked Kholinar. She liked how the city rolled across its hills, a lumpy blanket of buildings. She liked how it smelled of Horneater spices in one gust of wind, then of Alethi steamed crabs in the next. Admittedly, those probably weren’t proper crabs today, but cremlings.

That part she didn’t like. These poor people. Even in this more affluent area, she could barely walk a quarter block without having to weave around huddles of people. The midblock courtyards were clogged with what had probably been normal villagers not long ago, but who were now impoverished wretches.

There wasn’t much wheeled traffic on the streets. Some palanquins ringed by guards. No carriages. Life, however, did not stop for a war—or even for a second Aharietiam. There was water to draw, clothes to clean. Women’s work mostly, as she could see from the large groups of men standing around. With no one really in charge in the city, who would pay men to work forges? To clean streets or chip crem? Even worse, in a city this size, much of the menial labor would have been done by parshmen. Nobody would be eager to leap in to take their place.

The bridgeboy is right though, Veil thought, loitering at an intersection. The city is still being fed. A place like Kholinar could consume itself quickly, once the food or water ran out.

No, cities were not civilized places. No more than a whitespine was domesticated just because it had a collar around its neck.

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