An Emerald Broam
POV: kaladin
Summary
A week after losing Dunny, Bridge Four arrives first to a plateau and gets the unusual experience of watching the Alethi day's work from the sidelines: Sadeas's assault soldiers cutting a chasmfiend chrysalis open in something approaching peace, with no Parshendi in sight on the eastern plateaus. The crew sits in the lee of the bridge and rests, which is itself a thing they have almost never done on a plateau.
Kaladin uses the lull to firm up the escape plan. Rock has, it turns out, secretly built him a working bow — Horneater knowledge of horn-laminate construction that is, Rock notes with great dignity, *is secret* of his people and not to be shared with the camp. Lopen will buy a length of rope of the proper length and weight through one of his many uncounted cousins who serve in the camp's quartermaster. *A man can never have enough cousins, gancho.* Kaladin hands Lopen an emerald broam of his apothecary money for the rope; he will, Lopen promises, bring back change.
The plan firms by one more notch in the long afternoon. Bow, rope, leather armor, a guard post hit at night, a flight east into the Plains where the camp riders cannot easily follow. They will need three more weeks to put the last pieces together. Kaladin watches the soldiers across the plateau prise the gemheart out of the chasmfiend chrysalis to wild cheering. He thinks — without saying it to anyone — that he is going to lead these men off this plateau alive, and then he is going to lead them off the Plains alive, and then he is going to find whatever of his own life is still recoverable when this is done.