The Way of Kings

men are unreliable in many things. But if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s their greed.

“People are discord,” Syl said.

“What does that mean?”

“You all act differently and think differently. Nothing else is like that—animals act alike, and all spren are, in a sense, virtually the same individual. There’s harmony in that. But not in you—it seems that no two of you can agree on anything. All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that’s why you so often want to kill each other.”

“Authority doesn’t come from a rank,” Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket.

“Where does it come from?”

“From the men who give it to you. That’s the only way to get it.”

I realize that you are probably still angry. That is pleasant to know. Much as your perpetual health, I have come to rely upon your dissatisfaction with me. It is one of the cosmere’s great constants, I should think.

The hallmark of insecurity is bravado.

You must unite them, the strange, booming words had told him. You must prepare. Build of your people a fortress of strength and peace, a wall to resist the winds. Cease squabbling and unite. The Everstorm comes.

“We exist to be killed,” Kaladin said. He blinked, glancing at the other few members of Bridge Four sitting apathetically in the rain. “If we’re not dead already.”

But we are each many different people, and you can tell much about a person by what they carry with them.

“Too many of us,” she said, “take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes. Wouldn’t you say?”

But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack