POV: nomad
Summary
Walking into a storm is not something one did on Nomad's homeworld. Yet by now he has crossed enough of the cosmere to know that the fiercest storm on a foreign planet is nothing measured against the storms of Roshar — the wind here buffets but does not lift him off his feet, the rain pelts but does not scour the skin, lightning flashes but does not stalk him with the patient inevitability he remembers. The cold he feels has more to do with the inside of him than the outside.
He picks his way along Beacon's slick metal streets in the brief glow of the lightning, glad of his boots. A long-standing traveller's rule of his: skimp on shirts if you must, never on footwear. The hand-lanterns from earlier have all gone in; the city is hunkered down. People always do, on every world. He had come out here hoping the rain would feel like the embrace of an old friend and the wind's howl would sound like men chattering over stew at a fireside. Today, the wrong memories come. He had once been the kind of man who would have died before treating people the way he just treated the council. The storm offers no refuge. He likes the rain; the memories are too painful.
He arrives back at the hovercycle, locked into the side of Beacon as if it had always been part of the city — panels folded out over the seats to keep the cushions dry, the windshields stowed, Elegy already lifted out of her bonds and taken elsewhere. He crawls to the edge, careful not to be swept off into the dark, and reaches underneath. The rifle is still there. Aux had latched it onto the underside of the cycle for him during the bungled-looking drop earlier; the specialised claw he was holding it in place with dismisses now into his hand. Aux remarks acidly that he has, with great cleverness, acquired a weapon he is forbidden to fire — and soaked them both through to manage it. Nomad shrugs that he needed the shower anyway, runs a hand over the stubble left where the dawn fire had taken his hair, and turns the question on himself. Can he get the seat panels off the cycle? Does he want to?
Lightning shows him afterimages of the man he used to be. He does not want to go back to that man. Naive. Slavish to rule and number. Roped down by responsibility until anxiety had become barbed wire around his soul. But he is not proud of the man he is, either, who blunders into council rooms and puts his boots on the table. There has to be a third option — not putting his old self on a pedestal, not making himself a personified piece of garbage either.
He runs the alternative: climb on, fly out, vanish. What does that actually buy him? Here he has a small offer of trust from people who plainly need him more than he needs them. He had also noticed something in the council and on the docking strip — Beacon is not practised in violence. Refugees, yes; daring, yes; but they had flinched from the ember warriors with the panic of people who do not kill. In most places where survival is hard, what gets brought out of a population is its cruelty. Here the slow squeeze of the sun seems to have forged something else. Strong, but caring still for the lives around them. If he wants a power source big enough to Skip, he needs allies; he is reasonably sure the Cinder King would not be a good fit.
He steps back from the cycle with the rifle on his shoulder. Then something tugs at his insides — a strange warmth, a slackening of the storm around him. He almost rules it out. This is a common storm on a foreign world; the mythical tempest of his homeland does not happen here. Aux, abruptly attentive in his head, asks what they are doing now.
Light, off to his left along the rim. A figure stands there facing out into the darkness, holding something glowing in his fingers — a sphere. He wears a uniform. Drawn, Nomad walks toward it, haunted, wondering whether he is finally going mad. He calls a name into the storm: "Kal?" The figure turns. Hawkish face. An eminently punchable grin. "Aw, Damnation," Nomad says. "Wit? What the hell are you doing here?"