Kal's home was near the outskirts. It was larger than most, built wide to accommodate the surgery room, which had its own entrance. The door was ajar, so Kal peeked in. He'd expected to see his mother cleaning, but instead found that his father had returned from Brightlord Wistiow's manor. Lirin sat on the edge of the operating table, hands in his lap, bald head bowed. He held his spectacles in his hand, and he looked exhausted.

"Father?" Kal asked. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

Lirin looked up. His face was somber, distant.

"Father?" Kal asked, growing more concerned.

"Brightlord Wistiow has been carried by the winds."

"He's dead?" Kal was so shocked he forgot his side. Wistiow had always been there. He couldn't be gone. What of Laral? "He was healthy just last week!"

"He has always been frail, Kal," Lirin said. "The Almighty calls all men back to the Spiritual Realm eventually."

"You didn't do anything?" Kal blurted out; he regretted the words immediately.

"I did all I could," his father said, rising. "Perhaps a man with more training than I…Well, there is no use in regrets." He walked to the side of the room, removing the black covering from the goblet lamp filled with diamond spheres. It lit the room immediately, blazing like a tiny sun.

"We have no citylord then," Kal said, raising a hand to his head. "He had no son…"

"Those in Kholinar will appoint us a new citylord," Lirin said. "Almighty send them wisdom in the choice." He looked at the goblet lamp. Those were the citylord's spheres. A small fortune.

Kal's father put the covering right back on the goblet, as if he hadn't just removed it. The motion plunged the room back into darkness, and Kal blinked as his eyes adjusted.

"He left these to us," Kal's father said.

Kal started. "What?"

"You're to be sent to Kharbranth when you turn sixteen. These spheres will pay your way-Brightlord Wistiow requested it be done, a last act to care for his people. You will go and become a true master surgeon, then return to Hearthstone."

In that moment, Kal knew his fate had been sealed. If Brightlord Wistiow had demanded it, Kal would go to Kharbranth. He turned and walked from the surgery room, passing out into the sunlight, not saying another word to his father.

He sat down on the steps. What did he want? He didn't know. That was the problem. Glory, honor, the things Laral had said…none of those really mattered to him. But there had been something there when he'd held the quarterstaff. And now, suddenly, the decision had been taken from him.

The rocks Tien had given him were still in his pocket. He pulled them out, then took his canteen off his belt and washed them with water. The first one he'd been given showed the white swirls and strata. It appeared the other one had a hidden design too.

It looked like a face, smiling at him, made of white bits in the rock. Kal smiled despite himself, though it quickly faded. A rock wasn't going to solve his problems.

Unfortunately, though he sat for a long while thinking, it didn't look like anything would solve his problems. He wasn't sure he wanted to be a surgeon, and he felt suddenly constricted by what life was forcing him to become.

But that one moment holding the quarterstaff sang to him. A single moment of clarity in an otherwise confusing world. Might I be quite frank? Before, you asked why I was so concerned. It is for the following reason: "He's old," Syl said with awe, flitting around the apothecary. "Really old. I didn't know men got this old. You sure he's not decayspren wearing a man's skin?"

Kaladin smiled as the apothecary shuffled forward with his cane, oblivious of the invisible windspren. His face was as full of chasms as the Shattered Plains themselves, weaving out in a pattern from his deeply recessed eyes. He wore a pair of thick spectacles on the tip of his nose, and was dressed in dark robes.

Kaladin's father had told him of apothecaries-men who walked the line between herbalists and surgeons. Common people regarded the healing arts with enough superstition that it was easy for an apothecary to cultivate an arcane air. The wooden walls were draped with cloth glyphwards styled in cryptic patterns, and behind the counter were shelves with rows of jars. A full human skeleton hung in the far corner, held together by wires. The windowless room was lit with bundles of garnet spheres hanging from the corners.

Despite all that, the place was clean and tidy. It had the familiar scent of antiseptic Kaladin associated with his father's surgery.

"Ah, young bridgeman." The short apothecary adjusted his spectacles. He stooped forward, running his fingers through his wispy white beard. "Come for a ward against danger, perhaps? Or maybe a young washwoman in the camp has caught your eye? I have a potion which, if slipped into her drink, will make her regard you with favor."

Kaladin raised an eyebrow.

Syl, however, opened her mouth in an amazed expression. "You should give that to Gaz, Kaladin. It would be nice if he liked you more."

I doubt that's what it's intended for, Kaladin thought with a smile.

"Young bridgeman?" the apothecary asked. "Is it a charm against evil you desire?"

Kaladin's father had spoken of these things. Many apothecaries purveyed supposed love charms or potions to cure all manner of ailments. They'd contain nothing more than some sugar and a few pinches of common herbs to give a spike of alertness or drowsiness, depending on the purported effect. It was all nonsense, though Kaladin's mother had put great stock in glyphwards. Kaladin's father had always expressed disappointment in her stubborn way of clinging to "superstitions."

"I need some bandages," Kaladin said. "And a flask of lister's oil or knobweed sap. Also, a needle and gut, if you have any."

The apothecary's eyes opened wide in surprise.

"I'm the son of a surgeon," Kaladin admitted. "Trained by his hand. He was trained by a man who had studied in the Great Concourse of Kharbranth."

"Ah," the apothecary said. "Well." He stood up straighter, setting aside his cane and brushing his robes. "Bandages, you said? And some antiseptic? Let me see…" He moved back behind the counter.

Kaladin blinked. The man's age hadn't changed, but he didn't seem nearly as frail. His step was firmer, and his voice had lost its whispering raspiness. He searched through his bottles, mumbling to himself as he read off his labels. "You could just go to the surgeon's hall. They would charge you far less."

"Not for a bridgeman," Kaladin said, grimacing. He'd been turned away. The supplies there were for real soldiers.

"I see," the apothecary said, setting a jar on the counter, then bending down to poke in some drawers.

Syl flitted over to Kaladin. "Every time he bends I think he'll snap like a twig." She was growing able to understand abstract thought, and at a surprisingly rapid pace.

I know what death is… He still wasn't certain whether to feel sorry for her or not.

Kaladin picked up the small bottle and undid the cork, smelling what was inside. "Larmic mucus?" He grimaced at the foul smell. "That's not nearly as effective as the two I asked for."

"But it's far cheaper," the old man said, coming up with a large box. He opened the lid, revealing sterile white bandages. "And you, as has been noted, are a bridgeman."

"How much for the mucus, then?" He'd been worried about this; his father had never mentioned how much his supplies cost.

"Two bloodmarks for the bottle."

"That's what you consider cheap?"

"Lister's oil costs two sapphire marks."

"And knobweed sap?" Kaladin said. "I saw some of reeds of it growing just outside of camp! It can't be that rare."

"And do you know how much sap comes from a single plant?" the apothecary asked, pointing.