“How can you be a lighteyes without light eyes?” Teft said with a scowl.“By having dark eyes,” Rock said, as if it were obvious. “We do not pick our leaders this way. Is complicated. But do not interrupt story.” He milked another reed, tossing the husk into a pile beside him.“The nuatoma, they see our lack of Shards as great shame. They want these weapons very badly. It is believed that the nuatoma who first obtains a Shardblade would become king, a thing we have not had for many years. No peak would fight another peak where a man held one of the blessed Blades.”“So you came to buy one?” Kaladin asked. No Shardbearer would sell his weapon. Each was adistinctive relic, taken from one of the Lost Radiants after their betrayal.Rock laughed. “Ha! Buy? No, we are not so foolish as this. But my nuatoma, he knew of your tradition, eh? It says that if a man kills a Shardbearer, he may take the Blade and Plate as his own. Andso my nuatoma and his house, we made a grand procession, coming down to find and kill one of your Shardbearers.”Kaladin almost laughed. “I assume it proved more difficult than that.”“My nuatoma was not a fool,” Rock said, defensive. “He knew this thing would be difficult, but your tradition, it gives us hope, you see? Occasionally, a brave nuatoma will come down to duel aShardbearer. Someday, one will win, and we will have Shards.”

“Your insult has offended me. If we were at the Peaks, we would have to duel in traditional alil'tiki'i fashion.""Which is what?" Teft asked. "With spears?"Rock laughed. "No, no. We upon the Peaks are not barbarians like you down here.""How then?" Kaladin asked, genuinely curious."Well," Rock said, "is involving much mudbeer and singing."“How's that a duel?”"He who can still sing after the most drinks is winner. Plus, soon' everyone is so drunk that they forget what argument was about."Teft laughed. "Beats knives at dawn, I suppose.”

“I need you, Teft,” Kaladin said.“I said—”“Not your food. You. Your loyalty. Your allegiance.”The older man continued to eat. He didn’t have a slave brand, and neither did Rock. Kaladin didn’tknow their stories. All he knew was that these two had helped when others hadn’t. They weren’tcompletely beaten down.“Teft—” Kaladin began.“I’ve given my loyalty before,” the man said. “Too many times now. Always works out the same.”“Your trust gets betrayed?” Kaladin asked softly.Teft snorted. “Storms, no. I betray it. You can’t depend on me, son. I belong here, as abridgeman.”“I depended on you yesterday, and you impressed me.”“Fluke.”“I’ll judge that,” Kaladin said. “Teft, we’re all broken, in one way or another. Otherwise wewouldn’t be bridgemen. I’ve failed. My own brother died because of me.”“So why keep caring?”“It’s either that or give up and die.”“And if death is better?”It came back to this problem. This was why the bridgemen didn’t care if he helped the wounded ornot.“Death isn’t better,” Kaladin said, looking Teft in the eyes. “Oh, it’s easy to say that now. But whenyou stand on the ledge and look down into that dark, endless pit, you change your mind. Just likeHobber did. Just like I’ve done.” He hesitated, seeing something in the older man’s eyes. “I think you’veseen it too.”“Aye,” Teft said softly. “Aye, I have.”“So, are you with us in this thing?” Rock said, squatting down.Us? Kaladin thought, smiling faintly.Teft looked back and forth between the two of them. “I get to keep my food?”“Yes,” Kaladin said.Teft shrugged. “All right then, I guess. Can’t be any harder than sitting here and having a staringcontest with mortality.”

“You Americans are a very singular people," he later recalled to one of his friends. "I went with my automaton all over my own country—the Germans wondered and said nothing. In France they exclaimed, Magnifique! Merveilleux! Superbe! The English set themselves to prove—one that it could be, and another that it could not be, a mere mechanism acting without a man inside. But I had not been long in your country, before a Yankee came to see me and said, 'Mr Maelzel, would you like another thing like that? I can make you one for five hundred dollars.' I laughed at his proposition. A few months afterwards, the same Yankee came to see me again, and this time he said, 'Mr Maelzel, would you like to buy another thing like that? I have one already made for you.”

“Daniel, he said. I would have you follow me.Master!....I will fight for you to the end!.My loyal friend, he said, I would ask something much harder than that. Would you love for me to the end?...I don't understand, he said again, You tell people about the kingdom. Are we not to fight for it?The kingdom is only bought at a great price, Jesus said. There was one who came just yesterday and wanted to follow me. He was very rich, and when I asked him to give up his wealth, he went away.I will give you everything I have!....Riches are not keeping you from the kingdom, he said. You must give up your hate.”

“It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man-- that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times-- whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!”