They will come you cannot stop their oaths look for those who survive when they should not that pattern will be your clue.
—From the Diagram, Coda of the Northwest Bottom Corner: paragraph 3
You have killed her. . . .
Kaladin couldn’t sleep.
He knew he should sleep. He lay in his dark barrack room, surrounded by familiar stone, comfortable for the first time in days. A soft pillow, a mattress as good as the one he’d had back home in Hearthstone.
His body felt wrung out, like a rag after the washing was done. He’d survived the chasms and brought Shallan home safely. Now he needed to sleep and heal.
You have killed her. . . .
He sat up in his bed, and felt a wave of dizziness. He gritted his teeth and let it pass. His leg wound throbbed inside his bandage. The camp surgeons had done a good job with that; his father would have been pleased.
The camp outside felt too quiet. After showering him with praise and enthusiasm, the men of Bridge Four had gone to join the army for its expedition, along with all of the other bridge crews, who would be carrying bridges for the army. Only a small force from Bridge Four would remain behind to guard the king.
Kaladin reached out in the darkness, feeling beside the wall until he found his spear. He took hold, then propped himself up and stood. The leg flared with immediate pain, and he gritted his teeth, but it wasn’t so bad. He’d taken fathom bark for the pain, and it was working. He’d refused the firemoss the surgeons had tried to give him. His father had hated using the addictive stuff.
Kaladin forced his way to the door of his small room, then shoved it open and stepped into the sunlight. He shaded his eyes and scanned the sky. No clouds yet. The Weeping, the worst part of the year, would roll in sometime tomorrow. Four weeks of ceaseless rain and gloom. It was a Light Year, so not even a highstorm in the middle. Misery.
Kaladin longed for the storm within. That would have awakened his mind, made him feel like moving.
“Hey, gancho?” Lopen said, popping up from where he sat beside the firepit. “You need something?”
“Let’s go watch the army leave.”
“You’re not supposed to be walking, I think. . . .”
“I’ll be fine,” Kaladin said, hobbling with difficulty.
Lopen rushed over to help him, getting up under Kaladin’s arm, lifting weight off the bad leg. “Why don’t you glow a bit, gon?” Lopen asked softly. “Heal that problem?”
He’d prepared a lie: something about not wanting to alert the surgeons by healing too quickly. He couldn’t force it out. Not to a member of Bridge Four.
“I’ve lost the ability, Lopen,” he said softly. “Syl has left me.”
The lean Herdazian fell unusually silent. “Well,” he finally said, “maybe you should buy her something nice.”
“Buy something nice? For a spren?”
“Yeah. Like . . . I don’t know. A nice plant, maybe, or a new hat. Yes, a hat. Might be cheap. She’s small. If a tailor tries to charge you full price for a hat that small, you thump him real good.”
“That’s the most ridiculous piece of advice I’ve ever been given.”
“You should rub yourself with curry and go prancing through the camp singing Horneater lullabies.”
Kaladin looked at Lopen, incredulous. “What?”
“See? Now the bit about the hat is only the second most ridiculous piece of advice you’ve ever been given, so you should try it. Women like hats. I have this cousin who makes them. I can ask her. You might not even need the actual hat. Just the spren of the hat. That’ll make it even cheaper.”
“You’re a very special kind of weird, Lopen.”
“Of course I am, gon. There’s only one of me.”
They continued through the empty camp. Storms, the place seemed hollow. They passed empty barrack after empty barrack. Kaladin walked with care, glad for Lopen’s help, but even this was draining. He shouldn’t be moving on the leg. Father’s words, the words of a surgeon, floated up from the depths of his mind.
Torn muscles. Bind the leg, ward against infection, and keep the subject from putting weight on it. Further tearing could lead to a permanent limp, or worse.
“You want to get a palanquin?” Lopen asked.
“Those are for women.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with being a woman, gancho,” Lopen said. “Some of my relatives are women.”
“Of course they . . .” He trailed off at Lopen’s grin. Storming Herdazian. How much of what he said was to deliberately sound obtuse? Well, Kaladin had heard men telling jokes about how stupid Herdazians were, but Lopen could talk rings around those men. Of course, half of Lopen’s own jokes were about Herdazians. He seemed to find those extra funny.
As they approached the plateaus, the dead silence gave way to the low roar of thousands of people assembled in a limited area. Kaladin and Lopen finally broke free of the barrack rows, emerging onto the natural terrace just above the parade grounds that debouched onto the Shattered Plains. Thousands of soldiers were gathered there. Spearmen in huge blocks, lighteyed archers in thinner ranks, officers prancing on horseback in gleaming armor.
Kaladin gasped softly.
“What?” Lopen asked.
“It’s what I always thought I’d find.”
“What? Today?”
“As a young man in Alethkar,” Kaladin said, unexpectedly emotional. “When I dreamed of the glory of war, this is what I imagined.” He hadn’t pictured the greenvines and barely capable soldiers that Amaram had trained in Alethkar. Neither had he pictured the crude, if effective, brutes of Sadeas’s army—or even the quick strike teams of Dalinar’s plateau runs.
He’d imagined this. A full army, arrayed for a grand march. Spears held high, banners fluttering, drummers and trumpeters, messengers in livery, scribes on horses, even the king’s Soulcasters in their own sectioned-off square, hidden from sight by walls of cloth carried on poles.
Kaladin knew the truth of battle now. Fighting was not about glory, but about men lying on the ground screaming and thrashing, tangled in their own viscera. It was about bridgemen thrown against a wall of arrows, or of Parshendi cut down while they sang.
Yet in this moment, Kaladin let himself dream again. He gave his youthful self—still there deep inside him—the spectacle he’d always imagined. He pretended that these soldiers were about something wonderful, instead of just another pointless slaughter.
“Hey, someone else is actually coming,” Lopen said, pointing. “Look at that.”
By the banners, Dalinar had been joined by only a single highprince: Roion. However, as Lopen pointed out, another force—not quite as large or as well organized—was flowing northward up the wide, open pathway along the eastern rim of the warcamps. At least one other highprince had responded to Dalinar’s call.
“Let’s find Bridge Four,” Kaladin said. “I want to see the men off.”
* * *
“Sebarial?” Dalinar asked. “Sebarial’s troops are joining us?”
Roion grunted, wringing his hands—as if wishing to wash them—as he sat in the saddle. “I guess we should be glad for any support at all.”
“Sebarial,” Dalinar said, dumbfounded. “He wouldn’t even send troops on close plateau runs, where there was no risk of Parshendi. Why would he send men now?”
Roion shook his head and shrugged.
Dalinar turned Gallant and trotted the horse toward the oncoming group, as did Roion. They passed Adolin, who rode just behind with Shallan, side by side, her guards and his following. Renarin was over with the bridgemen, of course.
Shallan was riding one of Adolin’s own horses, a petite gelding over which Sureblood towered. Shallan wore a traveling dress of the kind messenger women preferred, with the front and back slit all the way to the waist. She wore leggings—basically silk trousers, but women preferred other names—underneath.
Behind them rode a large group of Navani’s scholars and cartographers, including Isasik, the ardent who was the royal cartographer. These passed around the map Shallan had drawn, Isasik riding to the side, chin raised, as if pointedly ignoring the praise the women were giving Shallan’s map. Dalinar needed all these scholars, though he wished he didn’t. Each scribe he brought was another life he risked. That was made worse by Navani herself coming. He couldn’t dismiss her argument. If you think it’s safe enough for you to bring the girl, then it’s safe enough for me.
As Dalinar made his way toward Sebarial’s oncoming procession, Amaram rode up, wearing his Shardplate, his golden cloak trailing behind. He had a fine warhorse, the hulking breed used in Shinovar to pull heavy carts. It still looked like a pony beside Gallant.
“Is that Sebarial?” Amaram asked, pointing at the oncoming force.
“Apparently.”
“Should we send him away?”
“Why would we do that?”
“He’s untrustworthy,” Amaram said.
“He keeps his word, so far as I know,” Dalinar said. “That is more than I can say for most.”
“He keeps his word because he never promises anything.”
Dalinar, Roion, and Amaram trotted up to Sebarial, who stepped out of a carriage at the front of the army. A carriage. For a war procession. Well, it wouldn’t slow Dalinar any more than all of these scribes. In fact, he should probably have a few more carriages made ready. It would be nice for Navani to have a way to ride in comfort once the days wore long.
“Sebarial?” Dalinar asked.
“Dalinar!” the plump man said, shading his eyes. “You look surprised.”
“I am.”
“Ha! That’s reason enough to have come. Wouldn’t you say, Palona?”
Dalinar could barely make out the woman sitting in the carriage, wearing an enormous fashionable hat and a sleek gown.
“You brought your mistress?” Dalinar asked.
“Sure. Why not? If we fail out there, I’ll be dead and she’ll be out on her ear. She insisted, anyway. Storming woman.” Sebarial walked up right beside Gallant. “I’ve got a feeling about you, Dalinar old man. I think it’s wise to stay close to you. Something’s going to happen out there on the Plains, and opportunity rises like the dawn.”
Roion sniffed.
“Roion,” Sebarial said, “shouldn’t you be hiding under a table somewhere?”
“Perhaps I should, if only to get away from you.”
Sebarial laughed. “Well said, you old turtle! Maybe this trip won’t be a complete bore. Onward, then! To glory and some such nonsense. If we find riches, remember that I get my part! I got here before Aladar. That has to count for something.”
“Before . . .” Dalinar said with a start. He twisted around, looking back toward the warcamp bordering his own to the north.
There, an army wearing Aladar’s colors of white and dark green spilled out onto the Shattered Plains.
“Now that,” Amaram said, “I really didn’t expect.”
* * *
“We could try a coup,” Ialai said.
Sadeas turned in his saddle toward his wife. Their guards scattered the hills around them, distant enough to be out of earshot as the highprince and his wife enjoyed a gentle “ride through the hills.” In reality, the two of them had wanted a closer look at Sebarial’s expansions out here west of the warcamps, where he was setting up full-scale farming operations.
Ialai rode with eyes forward. “Dalinar will be gone from the camp, and with him Roion, his only supporter. We could seize the Pinnacle, execute the king, and take the throne.”
Sadeas turned his horse, looking eastward over the warcamps. He could just barely make out Dalinar’s army gathering distantly on the Shattered Plains.
A coup. One last step, a slap in the face of old Gavilar. He’d do it. Storm it, he would.
Except for the fact that he didn’t need to.
“Dalinar has committed to this foolish expedition,” Sadeas said. “He’ll be dead soon, surrounded and destroyed on those Plains. We don’t need a coup; if I’d known that he would actually do this, we wouldn’t have even needed your assassin.”
Ialai looked away. Her assassin had failed. She considered it a strong fault on her part, though the plan had been executed with exactness. These things were never certain. Unfortunately, now that they’d tried and failed, they’d need to be careful about . . .
Sadeas turned his horse, frowning as a messenger approached on horseback. The youth was allowed to pass the guards and proffered a letter to Ialai.
She read it, and her disposition darkened.
“You aren’t going to like this,” she said, looking up.
* * *
Dalinar kicked Gallant into motion, tearing across the landscape, startling plants into their dens. He passed his army in a few minutes of hard riding and approached the new force.
Aladar sat on horseback here, surveying his army. He wore a fashionable uniform, black with maroon stripes on the sleeves and a matching stock at the neck. Soldiers swarmed around him. He had one of the largest forces on the Plains—storms, with Dalinar’s numbers reduced, Aladar’s army might be the largest.
He was also one of Sadeas’s greatest supporters.
“How are we going to do this, Dalinar?” Aladar asked as Dalinar trotted up. “Do we all go out on our own, crossing different plateaus but meeting back up, or do we march in an enormous column?”
“Why?” Dalinar asked. “Why have you come?”
“You made such passionate arguments all along, and now you act surprised that someone listened?”
“Not someone. You.”
Aladar pressed his lips to a line, finally turning to meet Dalinar’s eyes. “Roion and Sebarial, the two biggest cowards in our midst, are marching to war. Am I to stay behind and let them seek the fulfillment of the Vengeance Pact without me?”
“The other highprinces seem content to do so.”
“I suspect they are better at lying to themselves than I am.”
Suddenly, all of Aladar’s vehement arguments—at the forefront of the faction against Dalinar—took on a different cast. He was arguing to convince himself, Dalinar thought. He was worried all along that I was right.
“Sadeas will not be pleased,” Dalinar said.
“Sadeas can storm off. He doesn’t own me.” Aladar fiddled with his reins for a moment. “He wants to, though. I can feel it in the deals he forces me to make, the knives he slowly places at everyone’s throats. He’d have us all as his slaves by the end of this.”
“Aladar,” Dalinar said, moving his horse right up alongside the other man’s so the two of them faced each other directly. He held Aladar’s eyes. “Tell me Sadeas didn’t put you up to this. Tell me this isn’t part of another plot to abandon or betray me.”
Aladar smiled. “You think I’d just tell you if it were?”
“I would hear a promise from your own lips.”
“And you’ll trust that promise? How well did that serve you, Dalinar, when Sadeas professed his friendship?”
“A promise, Aladar.”
Aladar met his eyes. “I think the things you say about Alethkar are naive at best, and undoubtedly impossible. Those delusions of yours aren’t a sign of madness, as Sadeas wants us to think—they’re just the dreams of a man who wants desperately to believe in something, something foolish. ‘Honor’ is a word applied to the actions of men from the past who have had their lives scrubbed clean by historians.” He hesitated. “But . . . storm me for a fool, Dalinar, I wish they could be true. I came for myself, not Sadeas. I won’t betray you. Even if Alethkar can’t ever be what you want, we can at least crush the Parshendi and avenge old Gavilar. It’s just the right thing to do.”