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 ma
n 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.
Shallan lay quietly in the bed of her little hospital room. She’d cried herself dry, then had actually retched into the bedpan, over what she had done. She felt miserable.
She’d betrayed Jasnah. And Jasnah knew. Somehow, disappointing the princess felt worse than the theft itself. This entire plan had been foolish from the start.
Beyond that, Kabsal was dead. Why did she feel so sick about that? He’d been an assassin, trying to kill Jasna
h, willing to risk Shallan’s life to achieve his goals. And yet, she missed him. Jasnah hadn’t seemed surprised that someone would want to kill her; perhaps assassins were a common part of her life. She likely thought Kabsal a hardened killer, but he’d been sweet with Shallan. Could that all really have been a lie?
He had to be somewhat sincere, she told herself, curled up on her bed. If he didn’t care for me, why did he work so hard to get me to take the jam?
He had handed Shallan the antidote first, rather than taking it himself.
And yet, he did take it eventually, she thought. He put that fingerful of jam into his mouth. Why didn’t the antidote save him?
This question began to haunt her. As it did, something else struck her, something she would have noticed earlier, had she not been distracted by her own betrayal.
Jasnah had eaten the bread.
Arms wrapped around herself, Shallan sat up, pulling back to the bed’s headboard. She ate it, but she wasn’t poisoned, she thought. My life makes no sense lately. The creatures with the twisted heads, the place with the dark sky, the Soulcasting… and now this.
How had Jasnah survived? How?
With trembling fingers, Shallan reached to the pouch on the stand beside her bed. Inside, she found the garnet sphere that Jasnah had used to save her. It gave off weak light; most had been used in the Soulcasting. It was enough light to illuminate her sketchpad sitting beside the bed. Jasnah probably hadn’t even bothered to look through it. She was so dismissive of the visual arts. Next to the sketchpad was the book Jasnah had given her. The Book of Endless Pages. Why had she left that?
Shallan picked up the charcoal pencil and flipped through to a blank page in her sketchbook. She passed several pictures of the symbol-headed creatures, some set in this very room. They lurked around her, always. At some times, she thought she saw them in the corners of her eyes. At others, she could hear them whispering. She hadn’t dared speak back to them again.
She began to draw, fingers unsteady, sketching Jasnah on that day in the hospital. Sitting beside Shallan’s bed, holding the jam. Shallan hadn’t taken a distinct Memory, and wasn’t as accurate as if she had, but she remembered well enough to draw Jasnah with her finger stuck into the jam. She had raised that finger to smell the strawberries. Why? Why put her finger into the jam? Wouldn’t raising the jar to her nose have been enough?