“All is withdrawn for me. I stand against the one who saved my life. I protect the one who killed my promises. I raise my hand. The storm responds.”
—Tanatanev 1173, 18 seconds pre-death. A darkeyed mother of four in her sixty-second year.
Navani pushed her way past the guards, ignoring their protests and the calls of her attending ladies. She forced herself to remain calm. She would remain calm! What she had heard was just rumor. It had to be.
Unfortunately, the older she grew, the worse she became at maintaining a brightlady’s proper tranquility. She hastened her step through Sadeas’s warcamp. Soldiers raised hands toward her as she passed, either to offer her aid or to demand she halt. She ignored both; they’d never dare lay a finger on her. Being the king’s mother gained one a few privileges.
The camp was messy and poorly laid out. Pockets of merchants, whores, and workers made their homes in shanties built on the leeward sides of barracks. Drippings of hardened crem hung from most leeward eaves, like trails of wax left to pour over the side of a table. It was a distinct contrast to the neat lines and scrubbed buildings of Dalinar’s warcamp.
He will be fine, she told herself. He’d better be fine!
It was a testament to her disordered state that she barely considered
constructing a new street pattern for Sadeas in her head. She made her way directly to the staging area, and arrived to find an army that hardly looked as if it had been to battle. Soldiers without any blood on their uniforms, men chatting and laughing, officers walking down lines and dismissing the men squad by squad.
That should have relieved her. This didn’t look like a force that had just suffered a disaster. Instead, it made her even more anxious.
Sadeas, in unmarred red Shardplate, was speaking with a group of officers in the shade of a nearby canopy. She stalked up to the canopy, but here a group of guards managed to bar her way, forming up shoulder to shoulder while one went to inform Sadeas of her arrival.
Navani folded her arms impatiently. Perhaps she should have taken a palanquin, as her attending ladies had suggested. Several of them, looking beleaguered, were just arriving at the staging area. A palanquin would be faster in the long run, they had explained, as it would leave time for messengers to be sent so Sadeas could receive her.
Once, she had obeyed such proprieties. She could remember being a young woman, playing the games expertly, delighting in ways to manipulate the system. What had that gotten her? A dead husband whom she’d never loved and a “privileged” position in court that amounted to being put out to pasture.
What would Sadeas do if she just started screaming? The king’s own mother, bellowing like an axehound whose antenna had been twisted? She considered it as the soldier waited for a chance to announce her to Sadeas.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed a youth in a blue uniform arriving in the staging area, accompanied by a small honor guard of three men. It was Renarin, for once bearing an expression other than calm curiosity. Wide-eyed and frantic, he hurried up to Navani.
“Mashala,” he pled in his quiet voice. “Please. What have you heard?”
“Sadeas’s army returned without your father’s army,” Navani said.
“There is talk of a rout, though it doesn’t look as if these men have been through one.” She glared at Sadeas, giving serious contemplation to throwing a fit. Fortunately, he finally spoke with the soldier and then sent him back.
“You may approach, Brightness,” the man said, bowing to her.
“About time,” she growled, shoving past and passing underneath the canopy. Renarin joined her, walking more hesitantly.
“Brightness Navani,” Sadeas said, clasping his hands behind his back,
imposing in his crimson Plate. “I had hoped to bring you the news at your son’s palace. I suppose that a disaster like this is too large to contain. I express my condolences at the loss of your brother.”
Renarin gasped softly.
Navani steeled herself, folding her arms, trying to quiet the screams of denial and pain that came from the back of her mind. This was a pattern. She often saw patterns in things. In this case, the pattern was that she could never possess anything of value for long. It was always snatched from her just when it began to look promising.
Quiet, she scolded herself. “You will explain,” she said to Sadeas, meeting his gaze. She’d practiced that look over the de cades, and was pleased to see that it discomfited him.
“I’m sorry, Brightness,” Sadeas repeated, stammering. “The Parshendi overwhelmed your brother’s army. It was folly to work together. Our change in tactics was so threatening to the savages that they brought every soldier they could to this battle, surrounding us.”
“And so you left Dalinar?”
“We fought hard to reach him, but the numbers were simply overpowering. We had to retreat lest we lose ourselves as well! I would have continued fighting, save for the fact that I saw your brother fall with my own eyes, swarmed by Parshendi with hammers.” He grimaced. “They began carrying away chunks of bloodied Shardplate as prizes. Barbaric monsters.”
Navani felt cold. Cold, numb. How could this happen? After finally— finally—making that stone-headed man see her as a woman, rather than as a
sister. And now… And now… She set her jaw against the tears. “I don’t believe it.”
“I understand that the news is difficult.” Sadeas waved for an attendant to fetch her a chair. “I wish I had not been forced to bring it to you. Dalinar and I… well, I have known him for many years, and while we did not always see the same sunrise, I considered him an ally. And a friend.” He cursed softly, looking eastward. “They will pay for this. I will see that they pay.”
He seemed so earnest that Navani found herself wavering. Poor Renarin, pale-faced and wide-eyed, seemed stunned beyond the means to speak. When the chair arrived, Navani refused it, so Renarin sat, earning a glance of disapproval from Sadeas. Renarin grasped his head in his hands, staring at the ground. He was trembling.
He’s highprince now, Navani realized.
No. No. He was only highprince if she accepted the idea that Dalinar was dead. And he wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
Sadeas had all of the bridges, she thought, looking down at the lumberyard.
Navani stepped out into the late-afternoon sunlight, feeling its heat on her skin. She walked up to her attendants. “Brushpen,” she said to Makal, who carried a satchel with Navani’s possessions. “The thickest one. And my burn ink.”
The short, plump woman opened the satchel, taking out a long brushpen with a knob of hog bristles on the end as wide as a man’s thumb. Navani took it. The ink followed.
Around her, the guards stared as Navani took the pen and dipped it into the blood-colored ink. She knelt, and began to paint on the stone ground.
Art was about creation. That was its soul, its essence. Creation and order. You took something disorganized—a splash of ink, an empty page— and you built something from it. Something from nothing. The soul of creation.
She felt the tears on her cheeks as she painted. Dalinar had no wife and no daughters; he had nobody to pray for him. And so, Navani painted a prayer onto the stones themselves, sending her attendants for more ink. She paced off the size of the glyph as she continued its border, making it enormous, spreading her ink onto the tan rocks.
Soldiers gathered around, Sadeas stepping from his canopy, watching her paint, her back to the sun as she crawled on the ground and furiously dipped her brushpen into the ink jars. What was a prayer, if not creation?
Making something where nothing existed. Creating a wish out of despair, a plea out of anguish. Bowing one’s back before the Almighty, and forming humility from the empty pride of a human life.
Something from nothing. True creation.
Her tears mixed with the ink. She went through four jars. She crawled, holding her safehand to the ground, brushing the stones and smearing ink on her cheeks when she wiped the tears. When she finally finished, she knelt back on her knees before a glyph twenty paces long, emblazoned as if in blood. The wet ink reflected sunlight, and she fired it with a candle; the ink was made to burn whether wet or dry. The flames burned across the length of the prayer, killing it and sending its soul to the Almighty.
She bowed her head before the prayer. It was only a single character, but a complex one. Thath. Justice.
Men watched quietly, as if afraid of spoiling her solemn wish. A cold breeze began blowing, whipping at pennants and cloaks. The prayer went out, but that was fine. It wasn’t meant to burn long.
“Brightlord Sadeas!” an anxious voice called.
Navani looked up. Soldiers parted, making way for a runner in green. He hurried up to Sadeas, beginning to speak, but the highprince grabbed the man by the shoulder in a Shardplate grip and pointed, gesturing for his guards to make a perimeter. He pulled the messenger beneath the canopy.
Navani continued to kneel beside her prayer. The flames left a black scar in the shape of the glyph on the ground. Someone stepped up beside her— Renarin. He went to one knee, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Mashala.”
She nodded, standing, her freehand sprinkled with drops of red pigment.
Her cheeks were still wet with tears, but she narrowed her eyes, looking through the press of soldiers toward Sadeas. His expression was thunderous, face growing red, eyes wide with anger.
She turned and pushed her way through the press of soldiers, scrambling up to the rim of the staging field. Renarin and some of Sadeas’s officers joined her in staring out over the Shattered Plains.
And there they saw a creeping line of men limping back toward the warcamps, led by a mounted man in slate-grey armor.
Dalinar rode Gallant at the head of two thousand six hundred and fifty-three men. That was all that remained of his assault force of eight thousand.
The long trek back across the plateaus had given him time to think. His insides were still a tempest of emotions. He flexed his left hand as he rode; it was now encased by a blue-painted Shardplate gauntlet borrowed from Adolin. It would take days to regrow Dalinar’s own gauntlet. Longer, if the Parshendi tried to grow a full suit from the one he had left. They would fail, so long as Dalinar’s armorers fed Stormlight to his suit. The abandoned
gauntlet would degrade and crumble to dust, a new one growing for Dalinar.
For now, he wore Adolin’s. They had collected all of the infused gemstones among his twenty-six hundred men and used that Stormlight to recharge and reinforce his armor. It was still scarred with cracks. Healing as much damage as it had sustained would take days, but the Plate was in fighting shape again, if it came to that.
He needed to make certain it didn’t. He intended to confront Sadeas, and he wanted to be armored when he did. In fact, he wanted to storm up the incline to Sadeas’s warcamp and declare formal war on his “old friend.”
Perhaps summon his Blade and see Sadeas dead.
But he wouldn’t. His soldiers were too weak, his position too tenuous.
Formal war would destroy him and the kingdom. He had to do something else. Something that protected the kingdom. Revenge would come.
Eventually. Alethkar came first.
He lowered his blue-gauntleted fist, gripping Gallant’s reins. Adolin rode a short distance away. They’d repaired his armor as well, though he now lacked a gauntlet. Dalinar had refused the gift of his son’s gauntlet at first, but had given in to Adolin’s logic. If one of them was going to go without, it should be the younger man. Inside Shardplate, their differences in age didn’t matter—but outside of it, Adolin was a young man in his twenties and Dalinar an aging man in his fifties.
He still didn’t know what to think of the visions, and their apparent failure in telling him to trust Sadeas. He’d confront that later. One step at a time.
“Elthal,” Dalinar called. The highest-ranked officer who had survived the disaster, Elthal was a limber man with a distinguished face and a thin mustache. His arm was in a sling. He’d been one of those to hold the gap alongside Dalinar during the last part of the fight.
“Yes, Brightlord?” Elthal asked, jogging over to Dalinar. All of the horses save the two Ryshadium were carrying wounded.
“Take the wounded to my warcamp,” Dalinar said. “Then tell Teleb to bring the entire camp to alert. Mobilize the remaining companies.”
“Yes, Brightlord,” the man said, saluting. “Brightlord, what should I tell
them to prepare for?”
“Anything. But hopefully nothing.”
“I understand, Brightlord,” Elthal said, leaving to follow the orders.
Dalinar turned Gallant to march over to the group of bridgemen, still
following their somber leader, a man named Kaladin. They’d left their bridge as soon as they’d reached the permanent bridges; Sadeas could send for it eventually.
The bridgemen stopped as he approached, looking as tired as he felt, then arranged themselves in a subtly hostile formation. They clung to their spears, as if certain he’d try to take them away. They had saved him, yet they obviously didn’t trust him.
“I’m sending my wounded back to my camp,” Dalinar said. “You should go with them.”
“You’re confronting Sadeas?” Kaladin asked.
“I must.” I have to know why he did what he did. “I will buy your freedom when I do.”
“Then I’m staying with you,” Kaladin said.
“Me too,” said a hawk-faced man at the side. Soon all of the bridgemen were demanding to stay.
Kaladin turned to them. “I should send you back.”
“What?” asked an older bridgeman with a short grey beard. “You can risk yourself, but we can’t? We have men back in Sadeas’s camp. We need to get them out. At the very least, we need to stay together. See this through.”
The others nodded. Again, Dalinar was struck by their discipline. More and more, he was certain Sadeas had nothing to do with that. It was this man at their head. Though his eyes were dark brown, he held himself like a brightlord.
Well, if they wouldn’t go, Dalinar wouldn’t force them. He continued to ride, and soon close to a thousand of Dalinar’s soldiers broke off and marched south, toward his warcamp. The rest of them continued, toward Sadeas’s camp. As they drew closer, Dalinar noticed a small crowd gathering at the final chasm. Two figures in particular stood at their forefront. Renarin and Navani.
“What are they doing in Sadeas’s warcamp?” Adolin asked, smiling through his fatigue, edging Sureblood up beside Dalinar.
“I don’t know,” Dalinar said. “But the Stormfather bless them for coming.” Seeing their welcome faces, he began to feel it sink in—finally— that he had survived the day.
Gallant crossed the last bridge. Renarin was there waiting, and Dalinar rejoiced.
For once, the boy was displaying outright joy. Dalinar swung free from
the saddle and embraced his son.
“Father,” Renarin said, “you live!”
Adolin laughed, swinging out of his own saddle, armor clanking.
Renarin pulled out of the embrace and grabbed Adolin on the shoulder, pounding the Shardplate lightly with his other hand, grinning widely. Dalinar smiled as well, turning from the brothers to look at Navani. She stood with hands clasped before her, one eyebrow raised. Her face, oddly, bore a few small smears of red paint.
“You weren’t even worried, were you?” he said to her.
“Worried?” she asked. Her eyes met his, and for the first time, he noticed their redness. “I was terrified.”
And then Dalinar found himself grabbing her in an embrace. He had to be careful as he was in Shardplate, but the gauntlets let him feel the silk of her dress, and his missing helm let him smell the sweet floral scent of her perfumed soap. He held her as tightly as he dared, bowing his head and pressing his nose into her hair.
“Hmm,” she noted warmly, “it appears that I was missed. The others are
watching. They’ll talk.”
“I don’t care.”
“Hmm… It appears I was very much missed.”
“On the battlefield,” he said gruffly, “I thought I would die. And I realized it was all right.”
She pulled her head back, looking confused.
“I have spent too much of my time worrying about what people think, Navani. When I thought my time had arrived, I realized that all my worrying had been wasted. In the end, I was pleased with how I had lived my life.” He looked down at her, then mentally unlatched his right gauntlet, letting it drop to the ground with a clank. He reached up with that callused hand, cupping her chin. “I had only two regrets. One for you, and one for Renarin.”
“So, you’re saying you can just die, and it would be all right?”
“No,” he said. “What I’m saying is that I faced eternity, and I saw peace
there. That will change how I live.”
“Without all of the guilt?”
He hesitated. “Being me, I doubt I’ll banish it entirely. The end was peace, but living… that is a tempest. Still, I see things differently now. It is time to stop letting myself be shoved around by lying men.” He looked up, toward the ridge above, where more soldiers in green were gathering. “I keep
thinking of one of the visions,” he said softly, “the latest one, where I met Nohadon. He rejected my suggestion that he write down his wisdom. There’s something there. Something I need to learn.”
“What?” Navani asked.
“I don’t know yet. But I’m close to figuring it out.” He held her close again, hand on the back of her head, feeling her hair. He wished for the Plate to be gone, to not be separated from her by the metal.
But the time for that had not yet come. Reluctantly, he released her, turning to the side, where Renarin and Adolin were watching them uncomfortably. His soldiers were looking up at Sadeas’s army, gathering on the ridge.
I can’t let this come to bloodshed, Dalinar thought, reaching down and putting his hand into the fallen gauntlet. The straps tightened, connecting to the rest of the armor. But I’m also not going to slink back to my camp without confronting him. He at least had to know the purpose of the betrayal. All had been going so well.
Besides, there was the matter of his promise to the bridgemen. Dalinar walked up the slope, bloodstained blue cloak flapping behind him. Adolin clanked up next to him on one side, Navani keeping pace on the other.
Renarin followed, Dalinar’s remaining sixteen hundred troops marching up as well.
“Father…” Adolin said, looking at the hostile troops.
“Don’t summon your Blade. This will not come to blows.”
“Sadeas abandoned you, didn’t he?” Navani asked quietly, eyes alight with anger.
“He didn’t just abandon us,” Adolin spat. “He set us up, then betrayed us.”
“We survived,” Dalinar said firmly. The way ahead was becoming clearer. He knew what he needed to do. “He won’t attack us here, but he might try to provoke us. Keep your sword as mist, Adolin, and don’t let our troops make any mistakes.”
The soldiers in green parted reluctantly, holding spears. Hostile. To the side, Kaladin and his bridgemen walked near the front of Dalinar’s force.
Adolin didn’t summon his Blade, though he regarded Sadeas’s troops around them with contempt. Dalinar’s soldiers couldn’t have felt easy about being surrounded by enemies once again, but they followed him onto the staging field. Sadeas stood ahead. The treacherous highprince waited with
arms folded, still wearing his Shardplate, curly black hair blowing in the breeze. Someone had burned an enormous thath glyph on the stones here, and Sadeas stood at its center.
Justice. There was something magnificently appropriate about Sadeas standing there, treading upon justice.
“Dalinar,” Sadeas exclaimed, “old friend! It appears that I overestimated the odds against you. I apologize for retreating when you were still in danger, but the safety of my men came first. I’m certain you understand.”
Dalinar stopped a short distance from Sadeas. The two faced each other, collected armies tense. A cold breeze whipped at a canopy behind Sadeas.
“Of course,” Dalinar said, his voice even. “You did what you had to do.”
Sadeas relaxed visibly, though several of Dalinar’s soldiers muttered at that. Adolin silenced them with pointed glances.
Dalinar turned, waving Adolin and his men backward. Navani gave him a raised eyebrow, but retreated with the others when he urged her. Dalinar looked back at Sadeas, and the man—looking curious—waved his own attendants back.
Dalinar walked up to the edge of the thath glyph, and Sadeas stepped forward until only inches separated them. They were matched in height.
Standing this close, Dalinar thought he could see tension—and anger—in Sadeas’s eyes. Dalinar’s survival had ruined months of planning.
“I need to know why,” Dalinar asked, too quietly for any but Sadeas to
hear.
“Because of my oath, old friend.”
“What?” Dalinar asked, hands forming fists.
“We swore something together, years ago.” Sadeas sighed, losing his flippancy and speaking openly. “Protect Elhokar. Protect this kingdom.”
“That’s what I was doing! We had the same purpose. And we were fighting together, Sadeas. It was working.”
“Yes,” Sadeas said. “But I’m confident I can beat the Parshendi on my own now. Everything we’ve done together, I can manage by splitting my army into two—one to race on ahead, a larger force to follow. I had to take this chance to remove you. Dalinar, can’t you see? Gavilar died because of his weakness. I wanted to attack the Parshendi from the start, conquer them.
He insisted on a treaty, which led to his death. Now you’re starting to act just like him. Those same ideas, the same ways of speaking. Through you they begin to infect Elhokar. He dresses like you. He talks of the Codes to me, and
of how perhaps we should enforce them through all the warcamps. He’s beginning to think of retreating.”
“And so you’d have me think this an act of honor?” Dalinar growled.
“Not at all,” Sadeas said, chuckling. “I have struggled for years to become Elhokar’s most trusted advisor—but there was always you, distracting him, holding his ear despite my every eff ort. I won’t pretend this was only about honor, though there was an element of that to it. In the end, I just wanted you gone.”
Sadeas’s voice grew cold. “But you are going insane, old friend. You may name me a liar, but I did what I did today as a mercy. A way of letting you die in glory, rather than watching you descend further and further. By letting the Parshendi kill you, I could protect Elhokar from you and turn you into a symbol to remind the others what we’re really doing here. Your death might have become what finally united us. Ironic, if you consider it.”
Dalinar breathed in and out. It was hard not to let his anger, his indignation, consume him. “Then tell me one thing. Why not pin the assassination attempt on me? Why clear me, if you were only looking to betray me later on?”
Sadeas snorted softly. “Bah. Nobody would really believe that you tried to kill the king. They’d gossip, but they wouldn’t believe it. Blaming you too quickly would have risked implicating myself.” He shook his head. “I think Elhokar knows who tried to kill him. He’s admitted as much to me, though he won’t give me the name.”
What? Dalinar thought. He knows? But… how? Why not tell us who?
Dalinar adjusted his plans. He wasn’t certain if Sadeas was telling the truth, but if he was, he could use this.
“He knows it wasn’t you,” Sadeas continued. “I can read that much in him, though he doesn’t realize how transparent he is. Blaming you would have been pointless. Elhokar would have defended you, and I might very well have lost the position of Highprince of Information. But it did give me a wonderful opportunity to make you trust me again.”
Unite them…. The visions. But the man who spoke to Dalinar in them had been dead wrong. Acting with honor hadn’t won Sadeas’s loyalty. It had just opened Dalinar up to betrayal.
“If it means anything,” Sadeas said idly, “I’m fond of you. I really am.
But you are a boulder in my path, and a force working—against its own knowledge— to destroy Gavilar’s kingdom. When the chance came along, I
took it.”
“It wasn’t simply a convenient opportunity,” Dalinar said. “You set this up, Sadeas.”
“I planned, but I’m often planning. I don’t always act on my options.
Today I did.”
Dalinar snorted. “Well, you’ve shown me something today, Sadeas— shown it to me by the very act of trying to remove me.”
“And what was that?” Sadeas asked, amused.
“You’ve shown me that I’m still a threat.”
The highprinces continued their low-pitched conversation. Kaladin stood to the side of Dalinar’s soldiers, exhausted, with the members of Bridge Four.
Sadeas spared a glance for them. Matal stood in the crowd, and had been watching Kaladin’s team the entire time, red-faced. Matal probably knew that he would be punished as Lamaril had been. They should have learned. They should have killed Kaladin at the start.
They tried, he thought. They failed.
He didn’t know what had happened to him, what had gone on with Syl and the words in his head. It seemed that Stormlight worked better for him now. It had been more potent, more powerful. But now it was gone, and he was so tired. Drained. He’d pushed himself, and Bridge Four, too far. Too hard.
Perhaps he and the others should have gone to Kholin’s camp. But Teft was right; they needed to see this through.
He promised, Kaladin thought. He promised he would free us from Sadeas.
And yet, where had the promises of lighteyes gotten him in the past?
The highprinces broke off their conference, separating, stepping back from one another.
“Well,” Sadeas said loudly, “your men are obviously tired, Dalinar. We can speak later about what went wrong, though I think it is safe to assume that our alliance has proven unfeasible.”
“Unfeasible,” Dalinar said. “A kind way of putting it.” He nodded toward the bridgemen. “I will take these bridgemen with me to my camp.”
“I’m afraid I cannot part with them.”
Kaladin’s heart sank.
“Surely they aren’t worth much to you,” Dalinar said. “Name your
price.”
“I’m not looking to sell.”
“I will pay sixty emerald broams per man,” Dalinar said. That drew gasps from the watching soldiers on both sides. It was easily twenty times the price of a good slave.
“Not for a thousand each, Dalinar,” Sadeas said. Kaladin could see the deaths of his bridgemen in those eyes. “Take your soldiers and go. Leave my property here.”
“Do not press me on this, Sadeas,” Dalinar said.
Suddenly, the tension was back. Dalinar’s officers lowered hands to swords, and his spearmen perked up, gripping the hafts of their weapons.
“Do not press you?” Sadeas asked. “What kind of threat is that? Leave my camp. It’s obvious that there is nothing more between us. If you try to steal my property, I will have every justification in attacking you.”
Dalinar stood in place. He looked confident, though Kaladin saw no reason why. And another promise dies, Kaladin thought, turning away. In the end, for all his good intentions, this Dalinar Kholin was the same as the
others.
Behind Kaladin, men gasped in surprise.
Kaladin froze, then spun around. Dalinar Kholin had summoned his massive Shardblade; it dripped beads of water from having just been summoned. His armor steamed faintly, Stormlight rising from the cracks.
Sadeas stumbled back, eyes wide. His honor guard drew their swords.
Adolin Kholin reached his hand to the side, apparently beginning to summon his own weapon.
Dalinar took one step forward, then drove his Blade point-first into the middle of the blackened glyph on the stone. He took a step back. “For the bridgemen,” he said.
Sadeas blinked. Muttering voices fell silent, and the people on the field
seemed too stunned, even, to breathe.
“What?” Sadeas asked.
“The Blade,” Dalinar said, firm voice carrying in the air. “In exchange
for your bridgemen. All of them. Every one you have in camp. They become mine, to do with as I please, never to be touched by you again. In exchange, you get the sword.”
Sadeas looked down at the Blade, incredulous. “This weapon is worth
fortunes. Cities, palaces, kingdoms.”
“Do we have a deal?” Dalinar asked.
“Father, no!” Adolin Kholin said, his own Blade appearing in his hand.
“You—”
Dalinar raised a hand, silencing the younger man. He kept his eyes on Sadeas. “Do we have a deal?” he asked, each word sharp.
Kaladin stared, unable to move, unable to think.
Sadeas looked at the Shardblade, eyes full of lust. He glanced at Kaladin, hesitated just briefly, then reached and grabbed the Blade by the hilt.
“Take the storming creatures.”
Dalinar nodded curtly, turning away from Sadeas. “Let’s go,” he said to his entourage.
“They’re worthless, you know,” Sadeas said. “You’re of the ten fools, Dalinar Kholin! Don’t you see how mad you are? This will be remembered as the most ridiculous decision ever made by an Alethi highprince!”
Dalinar didn’t look back. He walked up to Kaladin and the other members of Bridge Four. “Go,” Dalinar said to them, voice kindly. “Gather your things and the men you left behind. I will send troops with you to act as guards. Leave the bridges and come swiftly to my camp. You will be safe there. You have my word of honor on it.”
He began to walk away.
Kaladin shook off his numbness. He scrambled after the highprince, grabbing his armored arm. “Wait. You— That— What just happened?”
Dalinar turned to him. Then, the highprince laid a hand on Kaladin’s shoulder, the gauntlet gleaming blue, mismatched with the rest of his slate- grey armor. “I don’t know what has been done to you. I can only guess what your life has been like. But know this. You will not be bridgemen in my
camp, nor will you be slaves.”
“But…”
“What is a man’s life worth?” Dalinar asked softly.
“The slavemasters say one is worth about two emerald broams,” Kaladin
said, frowning.
“And what do you say?”
“A life is priceless,” he said immediately, quoting his father.
Dalinar smiled, wrinkle lines extending from the corners of his eyes.
“Coincidentally, that is the exact value of a Shardblade. So today, you and your men sacrificed to buy me twenty-six hundred priceless lives. And all I had to repay you with was a single priceless sword. I call that a bargain.”
“You really think it was a good trade, don’t you?” Kaladin said, amazed.
Dalinar smiled in a way that seemed strikingly paternal. “For my honor?
Unquestionably. Go and lead your men to safety, soldier. Later tonight, I will have some questions for you.”
Kaladin glanced at Sadeas, who held his new Blade with awe. “You said you’d take care of Sadeas. This was what you intended?”
“This wasn’t taking care of Sadeas,” Dalinar said. “This was taking care of you and your men. I still have work to do today.”
Dalinar found King Elhokar in his palace sitting room.
Dalinar nodded once more to the guards outside, then closed the door.
They seemed troubled. As well they should; his orders had been irregular.
But they would do as told. They wore the king’s colors, blue and gold, but they were Dalinar’s men, chosen specifically for their loyalty.
The door shut with a snap. The king was staring at one of his maps, wearing his Shardplate. “Ah, Uncle,” he said, turning to Dalinar. “Good. I had wanted to speak with you. Do you know of these rumors about you and my mother? I realize that nothing untoward could be happening, but I do worry about what people think.”
Dalinar crossed the room, booted feet thumping on the rich rug. Infused diamonds hung in the corners of the room, and the carved walls had been set with tiny chips of quartz to sparkle and reflect the light.
“Honestly, Uncle,” Elhokar said, shaking his head. “I’m growing very intolerant of your reputation in camp. What they are saying reflects poorly on me, you see, and…” He trailed off as Dalinar stopped about a pace from him.
“Uncle? Is everything all right? My door guards reported some kind of mishap with your plateau assault today, but my mind was full of thoughts.
Did I miss anything vital?”
“Yes,” Dalinar said. Then he raised his leg and kicked the king in the chest.
The strength of the blow tossed the king backward against his desk. The fine wood shattered as the heavy Shardbearer crashed through it. Elhokar hit the floor, his breastplate cracked just faintly. Dalinar stepped up to him, then delivered another kick to the king’s side, cracking the breastplate again.
Elhokar began shouting in panic. “Guards! To me! Guards!”
Nobody came. Dalinar kicked again, and Elhokar cursed, catching his boot. Dalinar grunted, but bent down and grabbed Elhokar by the arm, then yanked him to his feet, tossing him toward the side of the room. The king stumbled on the rug, crashing through a chair. Round lengths of wood scattered, splinters spraying out.
Wide-eyed, Elhokar scrambled to his feet. Dalinar advanced on him.
“What has gone wrong with you, Uncle?” Elhokar yelled. “You’re mad!
Guards! Assassin in the king’s chamber! Guards!” Elhokar tried to run for the door, but Dalinar threw his shoulder against the king, tossing the younger man to the ground again.
Elhokar rolled, but got a hand under himself and climbed to his knees, the other hand to the side. A puff of mist appeared in it as he summoned his Blade.
Dalinar kicked the king’s hand just as the Shardblade dropped into it.
The blow knocked the Blade free, and it dissolved back to mist immediately.
Elhokar frantically swung a fist at Dalinar, but Dalinar caught it, then reached down and hauled the king to his feet. He pulled Elhokar forward and slammed his fist into the king’s breastplate. Elhokar struggled, but Dalinar repeated the move, smashing his gauntlet against the Plate, cracking the steel casings around his fingers, making the king grunt.
The next blow shattered Elhokar’s breastplate in an explosion of molten shards.
Dalinar dropped the king to the floor. Elhokar struggled to rise again, but the breastplate was a focus for the Shardplate’s power. Missing it left arms and legs heavy. He went to one knee beside the squirming king.
Elhokar’s Shardblade formed again, but Dalinar grabbed the king’s wrist and smashed it against the stone floor, knocking the Blade free yet again. It vanished into mist.
“Guards!” Elhokar squealed. “Guards, guards, guards!”
“They won’t come, Elhokar,” Dalinar said softly. “They’re my men, and I left them with orders not to enter—or let anyone else enter—no matter what they heard. Even if that included pleas for help from you.”
Elhokar fell silent.
“They are my men, Elhokar,” Dalinar repeated. “I trained them. I placed them there. They’ve always been loyal to me.”
“Why, Uncle? What are you doing? Please, tell me.” He was nearly weeping.
Dalinar leaned down, getting close enough to smell the king’s breath.
“The girth on your horse during the hunt,” Dalinar said quietly. “You cut it
yourself, didn’t you?”
Elhokar’s eyes grew wider.
“The saddles were switched before you came to my camp,” Dalinar said.
“You did that because you didn’t want to ruin your favorite saddle when it flew free of the horse. You were planning for it to happen, you made it happen. That’s why you’ve been so certain that the girth was cut.”
Cringing, Elhokar nodded. “Someone was trying to kill me, but you wouldn’t believe! I… I worried it might be you! So I decided… I…”
“You cut your own strap,” Dalinar said, “to create a visible, obvious- seeming attempt on your life. Something that would get me or Sadeas to
investigate.”
Elhokar hesitated, then nodded again.
Dalinar closed his eyes, breathing out slowly. “Don’t you realize what you did, Elhokar? You brought suspicion on me from across the camps! You gave Sadeas an opportunity to destroy me.” He opened his eyes, looking down at the king.
“I had to know,” Elhokar whispered. “I couldn’t trust anyone.” He groaned beneath Dalinar’s weight.
“What of the cracked gemstones in your Shardplate? Did you place
those too?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you did uncover something,” Dalinar said with a grunt. “I
guess you can’t be completely blamed.”
“Then you’ll let me up?”
“No.” Dalinar leaned down farther. He laid a hand against the king’s chest. Elhokar stopped struggling, looking up in terror. “If I push,” Dalinar said, “you die. Your ribs crack like twigs, your heart is smashed like a grape.
Nobody would blame me. They all whisper that the Blackthorn should have taken the throne for himself years ago. Your guard is loyal to me. There would be nobody to avenge you. Nobody would care.”
Elhokar breathed out as Dalinar pressed his hand down just slightly.
“Do you understand?” Dalinar asked quietly.
“No!”
Dalinar sighed, then released the younger man and stood up. Elhokar inhaled with a gasp.
“Your paranoia may be unfounded,” Dalinar said, “or it may be well founded. Either way, you need to understand something. I am not your enemy.”
Elhokar frowned. “So you’re not going to kill me?”
“Storms, no! I love you like a son, boy.”
Elhokar rubbed his chest. “You… have very odd paternal instincts.”
“I spent years following you,” Dalinar said. “I gave you my loyalty, my devotion, and my counsel. I swore myself to you—promising myself, vowing to myself, that I would never covet Gavilar’s throne. All to keep my heart loyal. Despite this, you don’t trust me. You pull a stunt like that one with the girth, implicating me, giving your own enemies position against you without knowing it.”
Dalinar stepped toward the king. Elhokar cringed.
“Well, now you know,” Dalinar said, voice hard. “If I’d wanted to kill you, Elhokar, I could have done it a dozen times over. A hundred times over.
It appears you won’t accept loyalty and devotion as proof of my honesty.
Well, if you act like a child, you get treated like one. You know now, for a fact, that I don’t want you dead. For if I did, I would have crushed your chest and been done with it!”
He locked eyes with the king. “Now,” Dalinar said, “do you
understand?”
Slowly, Elhokar nodded.
“Good,” Dalinar said. “Tomorrow, you’re going to name me Highprince
of War.”
“What?”
“Sadeas betrayed me today,” Dalinar said. He walked over to the broken desk, kicking at the pieces. The king’s seal rolled out of its customary drawer. He picked it up. “Nearly six thousand of my men were slaughtered.
Adolin and I barely survived.”
“What?” Elhokar said, forcing himself up to a sitting position. “That’s impossible!”
“Far from it,” Dalinar said, looking at his nephew. “He saw a chance to pull out, letting the Parshendi destroy us. So he did it. A very Alethi thing to do. Ruthless, yet still allowing him to feign a sense of honor or morality.”
“So… you expect me to bring him to trial?”
“No. Sadeas is no worse, and no better, than the others. Any of the highprinces would betray their fellows, if they saw a chance to do it without risking themselves. I intend to find a way to unite them in more than just name. Somehow. Tomorrow, once you name me Highprince of War, I will give my Plate to Renarin to fulfill a promise. I’ve already given away my Blade to fulfill a different one.”
He walked closer, meeting Elhokar’s eyes again, then gripped the king’s seal in his hand. “As Highprince of War, I will enforce the Codes in all ten camps. Then I’ll coordinate the war eff ort directly, determining which armies get to go on which plateau assaults. All gemhearts will be won by the Throne, then distributed as spoils by you. We’ll change this from a competition to a real war, and I’ll use it to turn these ten armies of ours— and their leaders—into real soldiers.”
“Stormfather! They’ll kill us! The highprinces will revolt! I won’t last a week!”
“They won’t be pleased, that’s for certain,” Dalinar said. “And yes, this will involve a great deal of danger. We’ll have to be much more careful with our guard. If you’re right, someone is already trying to kill you, so we should be doing that anyway.”
Elhokar stared at him, then looked at the broken furniture, rubbing his chest. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He tossed the seal to Elhokar. “You’re going to have your scribes draw up my appointment right after I leave.”
“But I thought you said it was wrong to force men to follow the Codes,”
Elhokar said. “You said that the best way to change people was to live right, and then let them be influenced by your example!”
“That was before the Almighty lied to me,” Dalinar said. He still didn’t know what to think of that. “Much of what I told you, I learned from The Way of Kings. But I didn’t understand something. Nohadon wrote the book at the end of his life, after creating order—after forcing the kingdoms to unite, after rebuilding lands that had fallen in the Desolation.
“The book was written to embody an ideal. It was given to people who already had momentum in doing what was right. That was my mistake.
Before any of this can work, our people need to have a minimum level of honor and dignity. Adolin said something to me a few weeks back, something profound. He asked me why I forced my sons to live up to such high expectations, but let others go about their errant ways without condemnation.
“I have been treating the other highprinces and their lighteyes like adults. An adult can take a principle and adapt it to his needs. But we’re not ready for that yet. We’re children. And when you’re teaching a child, you require him to do what is right until he grows old enough to make his own choices. The Silver Kingdoms didn’t begin as unified, glorious bastions of honor. They were trained that way, raised up, like youths nurtured to maturity.”
He strode forward, kneeling down beside Elhokar. The king continued to rub his chest, his Shardplate looking strange with the central piece missing.
“We’re going to make something of Alethkar, nephew,” Dalinar said softly. “The highprinces gave their oaths to Gavilar, but now ignore those oaths. Well, it’s time to stop letting them. We’re going to win this war, and we’re going to turn Alethkar into a place that men will envy again. Not because of our military prowess, but because people here are safe and because justice reigns. We’re going to do it—or you and I are going to die in
the attempt.”
“You say that with eagerness.”
“Because I finally know exactly what to do,” Dalinar said, standing up straight. “I was trying to be Nohadon the peacemaker. But I’m not. I’m the Blackthorn, a general and a warlord. I have no talent for back-room politicking, but I am very good at training troops. Starting tomorrow, every man in each of these camps will be mine. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all
raw recruits. Even the highprinces.”
“Assuming I make the proclamation.”
“You will,” Dalinar said. “And in return, I promise to find out who is trying to kill you.”
Elhokar snorted, beginning to remove his Shardplate piece by piece.
“After that announcement goes out, discovering who’s trying to kill me will become easy. You can put every name in the warcamps on the list!”
Dalinar’s smile widened. “At least we won’t have to guess, then. Don’t be so glum, nephew. You learned something today. Your uncle doesn’t want
to kill you.”
“He just wants to make me a target.”
“For your own good, son,” Dalinar said, walking to the door. “Don’t fret too much. I’ve got some plans on how, exactly, to keep you alive.” He opened the door, revealing a nervous group of guards keeping at bay a nervous group of servants and attendants.
“He’s just fine,” Dalinar said to them. “See?” He stepped aside, letting the guards and servants in to attend their king.
Dalinar turned to go. Then he hesitated. “Oh, and Elhokar? Your mother and I are now courting. You’ll want to start growing accustomed to that.”
Despite everything else that had happened in the last few minutes, this got a look of pure astonishment from the king. Dalinar smiled and pulled the door closed, walking away with a firm step.
Most everything was still wrong. He was still furious at Sadeas, pained by the loss of so many of his men, confused at what to do with Navani, dumbfounded by his visions, and daunted by the idea of bringing the warcamps to unity.
But at least now he had something to work with.
