20. Cords to Bind

Kaladin tends to wounded parshmen and teaches them practical survival skills while traveling with them. Sah confronts Kaladin about his role giving orders and teaching them, leading to a difficult conversation about freedom, inevitable conflict, and the moral complications of Kaladin's position between two sides. Syl senses an approaching highstorm and Kaladin realizes his growing investment in the parshmen's wellbeing poses a serious problem.

Kaladin bandages Khen's arm wound and teaches her proper wound care, emphasizing cleanliness to prevent infection. He then joins Sah, who is constructing a hatchet, and advises him to tighten the lashings. When Kaladin suggests they march at night and split into smaller groups, Sah resists, expressing frustration at being instructed by a human and feeling diminished by needing Kaladin's help. He also mentions a yellow spren the parshmen perceive, whom they find equally harsh. Kaladin reflects on freedom as illusory, bound by tradition and momentum. Sah becomes more direct, asking if Kaladin is worried about teaching parshmen to make weapons, since tools can become spears. Sah argues that conflict is inevitable given what humans have done to parshmen, and that merely proving they can think and speak as equals should not have been the precondition for their freedom. His anger stems from the implication that parshmen deserved enslavement while mindless but now deserve freedom because they can talk—placing the power to grant freedom in human hands. After Sah leaves, Syl appears and tells Kaladin she senses a highstorm coming within days. Kaladin realizes he is becoming emotionally invested in protecting the parshmen, which troubles him deeply. He fears that war is inevitable, the Voidspren will mobilize the parshmen, and his only way to fight the Voidbringers is to mentally separate the parshmen he must protect from those he must kill—a distinction he is losing as he grows closer to them.