More Dalinar Flashbacks

Incense burned in a brazier as large as a boulder. Dalinar sniffled as Evi threw a handful of tiny papers—each folded and inscribed with a very small glyph—into the brazier. Fragrant smoke washed over him, then whipped in the other direction as winds ripped through the warcamp, carrying windspren like lines of light.

Evi bowed her head before the brazier. She had strange beliefs, his betrothed. Among her people, simple glyphwards weren’t enough for prayers; you needed to burn something more pungent. While she spoke of Jezerezeh and Kelek, she said their names strangely: Yaysi and Kellai. And she made no mention of the Almighty—instead she spoke of something called the One, a heretical tradition the ardents told him came from Iri.

Dalinar bowed his head for a prayer. Let me be stronger than those who would kill me. Simple and to the point, the kind he figured the Almighty would prefer. He didn’t feel like having Evi write it out.

“The One watch you, near-husband,” Evi murmured. “And soften your temper.” Her accent, to which he was now accustomed, was thicker than her brother’s.

“Soften it? Evi, that’s not the point of battle.”

“You needn’t kill in anger, Dalinar. If you must fight, do it knowing that each death wounds the One. For we are all people in Yaysi’s sight.”

“Yeah, all right,” Dalinar said.

The ardents didn’t seem to mind that he was marrying someone half pagan. “It is wisdom to bring her to Vorin truth,” Jevena—Gavilar’s head ardent—had told him. Similar to how she’d spoken of his conquest. “Your sword will bring strength and glory to the Almighty.”

Idly, he wondered what it would take to actually earn the ardents’ displeasure.

“Be a man and not a beast, Dalinar,” Evi said, then pulled close to him, setting her head on his shoulder and encouraging him to wrap his arms around her.

He did so with a limp gesture. Storms, he could hear the soldiers snicker as they passed by. The Blackthorn, being consoled before battle? Publicly hugging and acting lovey?

Evi turned her head toward him for a kiss, and he presented a chaste one, their lips barely touching. She accepted that, smiling. And she did have a beautiful smile. Life would have been a lot easier for him if Evi would have just been willing to move along with the marriage. But her traditions demanded a long engagement, and her brother kept trying to get new provisions into the contract.

Dalinar stomped away. In his pocket he held another glyphward: one provided by Navani, who obviously worried about the accuracy of Evi’s foreign script. He felt at the smooth paper, and didn’t burn the prayer.

The stone ground beneath his feet was pocked with tiny holes—the pinpricks of hiding grass. As he passed the tents he could see it properly, covering the plain outside, waving in the wind. Tall stuff, almost as high as his waist. He’d never seen grass that tall in Kholin lands.

Across the plain, an impressive force gathered: an army larger than any they’d faced. His heart jumped in anticipation. After two years of political maneuvering, here they were. A real battle with a real army.

Win or lose, this was the fight for the kingdom. The sun was on its way up, and the armies had arrayed themselves north and south, so neither would have it in their eyes.

Dalinar hastened to his armorers’ tent, and emerged a short time later in his Plate. He climbed carefully into the saddle as one of the grooms brought his horse. The large black beast wasn’t fast, but it could carry a man in Shardplate. Dalinar guided the horse past ranks of soldiers—spearmen, archers, lighteyed heavy infantry, even a nice group of fifty cavalrymen under Ilamar, with hooks and ropes for attacking Shardbearers. Anticipationspren waved like banners among them all.

Dalinar still smelled incense when he found his brother, geared up and mounted, patrolling the front lines. Dalinar trotted up beside Gavilar.

“Your young friend didn’t show for the battle,” Gavilar noted.

“Sebarial?” Dalinar said. “He’s not my friend.”

“There’s a hole in the enemy line, still waiting for him,” Gavilar said, pointing. “Reports say he had a problem with his supply lines.”

“Lies. He’s a coward. If he’d arrived, he’d have had to actually pick a side.”

They rode past Tearim, Gavilar’s captain of the guard, who wore Dalinar’s extra Plate for this battle. Technically that still belonged to Evi. Not Toh, but Evi herself, which was strange. What would a woman do with Shardplate?

Give it to a husband, apparently. Tearim saluted. He was capable with Shards, having trained, as did many aspiring lighteyes, with borrowed sets.

“You’ve done well, Dalinar,” Gavilar said as they rode past. “That Plate will serve us today.”

Dalinar made no reply. Even though Evi and her brother had delayed and blow away. And…

“Ho!” one of the scouts called from a wooden mobile tower. She pointed, her voice distant. “Ho, there!”

Dalinar turned, expecting an advance attack from the enemy. But no, Kalanor’s army was still deploying. It wasn’t men that had attracted the scout’s attention, but horses. A small herd of them, eleven or twelve in number, galloping across the battlefield. Proud, majestic.

“Ryshadium,” Gavilar whispered. “It’s rare they roam this far east.”

Dalinar swallowed an order to round up the beasts. Ryshadium? Yes… he could see the spren trailing after them in the air. Musicspren, for some reason. Made no storming sense. Well, no use trying to capture the beasts. They couldn’t be held unless they chose a rider.

“I want you to do something for me today, Brother,” Gavilar said. “Highprince Kalanor himself needs to fall. As long as he lives, there will be resistance. If he dies, his line goes with him. His cousin, Loradar Vamah, can seize power.”

“Will Loradar swear to you?”

“I’m certain of it,” Gavilar said.

“Then I’ll find Kalanor,” Dalinar said, “and end this.”

“He won’t join the battle easily, knowing him. But he’s a Shardbearer. And so…”

“So we need to force him to engage.”

Gavilar smiled.

“What?” Dalinar said.

“I’m simply pleased to see you talking of tactics.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Dalinar growled. He always paid attention to the tactics of a battle; he simply wasn’t one for endless meetings and jaw wagging.

Though… even those seemed more tolerable these days. Perhaps it was familiarity. Or maybe it was Gavilar’s talk of forging a dynasty. It was the increasingly obvious truth that this campaign—now stretching over many years—was no quick bash and grab.

“Bring me Kalanor, Brother,” Gavilar said. “We need the Blackthorn today.”

“All you need do is unleash him.”

“Ha! As if anyone existed who could leash him in the first place.”

Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do? Dalinar thought immediately. Marrying me off, talking about how we have to be “civilized” now? Highlighting everything I do wrong as the things we must expunge?

He bit his tongue, and they finished their ride down the lines. They parted with a nod, and Dalinar rode over to join his elites.

“Orders, sir?” asked Rien.

“Stay out of my way,” Dalinar said, lowering his faceplate. The Shardplate helm sealed closed, and a hush fell over the elites. Dalinar summoned Oathbringer, the sword of a fallen king, and waited. The enemy had come to stop Gavilar’s continued pillage of the countryside; they would have to make the first move.

These last few months spent attacking isolated, unprotected towns had made for unfulfilling battles—but had also put Kalanor in a terrible position. If he sat back in his strongholds, he allowed more of his vassals to be destroyed. Already those started to wonder why they paid Kalanor taxes. A handful had preemptively sent messengers to Gavilar saying they would not resist.

The region was on the brink of flipping to the Kholins. And so, Highprince Kalanor had been forced to leave his fortifications to engage here. Dalinar shifted on his horse, waiting, planning. The moment came soon enough; Kalanor’s forces started across the plain in a cautious wave, shields raised toward the sky.

Gavilar’s archers released flights of arrows. Kalanor’s men were well trained; they maintained their formations beneath the deadly hail. Eventually they met Kholin heavy infantry: a block of men so armored that it might as well have been solid stone. At the same time, mobile archer units sprang out to the sides. Lightly armored, they were fast. If the Kholins won this battle—and Dalinar was confident of victory—it would be because of the newer battlefield tactics they’d been exploring.

The enemy army found itself flanked—arrows pounding the sides of their assault blocks. Their lines stretched, the infantry trying to reach the archers, but that weakened the central block, which suffered a beating from the heavy infantry. Standard spearman blocks engaged enemy units as much to position them as to do them harm.

This all happened on the scale of the battlefield. Dalinar had to climb off his horse and send for a groom to walk the animal as he waited. Inside, Dalinar fought back the Thrill, which urged him to ride in immediately.

Eventually, he picked a section of Kholin troops who were faring poorly against the enemy block. Good enough. He remounted and kicked his horse into a gallop. This was the right moment. He could feel it. He needed to strike now, when the battle was pivoting between victory and loss, to draw out his enemy.

Grass wriggled and pulled back in a wave before him. Like subjects bowing. This might be the end, his final battle in the conquest of Alethkar. What happened to him after this? Endless feasts with politicians? A brother who refused to look elsewhere for battle?

Dalinar opened himself to the Thrill and drove away such worries. He struck the line of enemy troops like a highstorm hitting a stack of papers. Soldiers scattered before him, shouting. Dalinar laid about with his Shardblade, killing dozens on one side, then the other.

Eyes burned, arms fell limp. Dalinar breathed in the joy of the conquest, the narcotic beauty of destruction. None could stand before him; all were tinder and he the flame. The soldier block should have been able to band together and rush him, but they were too frightened.

And why shouldn’t they be? People spoke of common men bringing down a Shardbearer, but surely that was a fabrication. A conceit intended to make men fight back, to save Shardbearers from having to hunt them down.

He grinned as his horse stumbled trying to cross the bodies piling around it. Dalinar kicked the beast forward, and it leaped—but as it landed, something gave. The creature screamed and collapsed, dumping him.

He sighed, shoving aside the horse and standing. He’d broken its back; Shardplate was not meant for such common beasts.

One group of soldiers tried a counterattack. Brave, but stupid. Dalinar felled them with broad sweeps of his Shardblade. Next, a lighteyed officer organized his men to come press and try to trap Dalinar, if not with their skill, then their weight of bodies. He spun among them, Plate lending him energy, Blade granting him precision, and the Thrill… the Thrill giving him purpose.

In moments like this, he could see why he had been created. He was wasted listening to men blab. He was wasted doing anything but this: providing the ultimate test of men’s abilities, proving them, demanding their lives at the edge of a sword. He sent them to the Tranquiline Halls primed and ready to fight.

He was not a man. He was judgment.

Enthralled, he cut down foe after foe, sensing a strange rhythm to the fighting, as if the blows of his sword needed to fall to the dictates of some unseen beat. A redness grew at the edges of his vision, eventually covering the landscape like a veil. It seemed to shift and move like the coils of an eel, trembling to the beats of his sword.

He was furious when a calling voice distracted him from the fight.

“Dalinar!”

He ignored it.

“Brightlord Dalinar! Blackthorn!”

That voice was like a screeching cremling, playing its song inside his helm. He felled a pair of swordsmen. They’d been lighteyed, but their eyes had burned away, and you could no longer tell.

“Blackthorn!”

Bah! Dalinar spun toward the sound.

A man stood nearby, wearing Kholin blue. Dalinar raised his Shardblade. The man backed away, raising hands with no weapon, still shouting Dalinar’s name.

I know him. He’s… Kadash? One of the captains among his elites. Dalinar lowered his sword and shook his head, trying to get the buzzing sound out of his ears. Only then did he see—really see—what surrounded him.

The dead. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, with shriveled coals for eyes, their armor and weapons sheared but their bodies eerily untouched. Almighty above… how many had he killed? He raised his hand to his helm, turning and looking about him. Timid blades of grass crept up among the bodies, pushing between arms, fingers, beside heads. He’d blanketed the plain so thoroughly with corpses that the grass had a difficult time finding places to rise.

Dalinar grinned in satisfaction, then grew chill. A few of those bodies with burned eyes—three men he could spot—wore blue. His own men, bearing the armband of the elites.

“Brightlord,” Kadash said. “Blackthorn, your task is accomplished!” He pointed toward a troop of horsemen charging across the plain. They carried the silver-on-red flag bearing a glyphpair of two mountains. Left no choice, Highprince Kalanor had committed to the battle. Dalinar had destroyed several companies on his own; only another Shardbearer could stop him.

“Excellent,” Dalinar said. He pulled off his helm and took a cloth from Kadash, using it to wipe his face. A waterskin followed. Dalinar drank the entire thing.

Dalinar tossed away the empty skin, his heart racing, the Thrill thrumming within. “Pull back the elites. Do not engage unless I fall.” Dalinar pulled his helm back on, and felt the comforting tightness as the latches cinched it into place.

“Yes, Brightlord.”

“Gather those of us who… fell,” Dalinar said, waving toward the Kholin dead. “Make certain they, and theirs, are cared for.”

“Of course, sir.”

Dalinar dashed toward the oncoming force, his Shardplate crunching against stones. He felt sad to have to engage a Shardbearer, instead of continuing his fight against the ordinary men. No more laying waste; he now had only one man to kill.

He could vaguely remember a time when facing lesser challenges hadn’t sated him as much as a good fight against someone capable. What had changed?

His run took him toward one of the rock formations on the eastern side of the field—a group of enormous spires, weathered and jagged, like a row of stone stakes. As he entered the shadows, he could hear fighting from the other side. Portions of the armies had broken off and tried to flank each other by rounding the formations.

At their base, Kalanor’s honor guard split, revealing the highprince himself on horseback. His Plate was overlaid with a silver coloring, perhaps steel or silver leaf. Dalinar had ordered his Plate buffed back to its normal slate grey; he’d never understood why people would want to “augment” the natural majesty of Shardplate.

Kalanor’s horse was a tall, majestic animal, brilliant white with a long mane. It carried the Shardbearer with ease. A Ryshadium. Yet Kalanor dismounted. He patted the animal fondly on the neck, then stepped forward to meet Dalinar, Shardblade appearing in his hand.

“Blackthorn,” he called. “I hear you’ve been single-handedly destroying my army.”

“They fight for the Tranquiline Halls now.”

“Would that you had joined to lead them.”

“Someday,” Dalinar said. “When I am too old and weak to fight here, I’ll welcome being sent.”

“Curious, how quickly tyrants grow religious. It must be convenient to tell yourself that your murders belong to the Almighty instead.”

“They’d better not belong to him!” Dalinar said. “I worked hard for those kills, Kalanor. The Almighty can’t have them; he can merely credit them to me when weighing my soul!”

“Then let them weigh you down to Damnation itself.” Kalanor waved back his honor guard, who seemed eager to throw themselves at Dalinar. Alas, the highprince was determined to fight on his own. He swiped with his sword, a long, thin Shardblade with a large crossguard and glyphs down its length. “If I kill you, Blackthorn, what then?”

“Then Sadeas gets a crack at you.”

“No honor on this battlefield, I see.”

“Oh, don’t pretend you are any better,” Dalinar said. “I know what you did to rise to your throne. You can’t pretend to be a peacemaker now.”

“Considering what you did to the peacemakers,” Kalanor said, “I’ll count myself lucky.”

Dalinar leaped forward, falling into Bloodstance—a stance for someone who didn’t care if he got hit. He was younger, more agile than his opponent. He counted on being able to swing faster, harder.

Strangely, Kalanor chose Bloodstance himself. The two clashed, bashing their swords against one another in a pattern that sent them twisting about in a quick shuffle of footings—each trying to hit the same section of Plate repeatedly, to open a hole to flesh.

Dalinar grunted, batting away his opponent’s Shardblade. Kalanor was old, but skilled. He had an uncanny ability to pull back before Dalinar’s strikes, deflecting some of the force of the impact, preventing the metal from breaking.

After furiously exchanging blows for several minutes, both men stepped back, a web of cracks on the left sides of their Plate leaking Stormlight into the air.

“It will happen to you too, Blackthorn,” Kalanor growled. “If you do kill me, someone will rise up and take your kingdom from you. It will never last.”

Dalinar came in for a power swing. One step forward, then a twist all the way about. Kalanor struck him on the right side—a solid hit, but insignificant, as it was on the wrong side. Dalinar, on the other hand, came in with a sweeping stroke that hummed in the air. Kalanor tried to move with the blow, but this one had too much momentum.

The Shardblade connected, destroying the section of Plate in an explosion of molten sparks. Kalanor grunted and stumbled to the side, nearly tripping. He lowered his hand to cover the hole in his armor, which continued to leak Stormlight at the edges. Half the breastplate had shattered.

“You fight like you lead, Kholin,” he growled. “Reckless.”

Dalinar ignored the taunt and charged instead.

Kalanor ran away, plowing through his honor guard in his haste, shoving some aside and sending them tumbling, bones breaking.

Dalinar almost caught him, but Kalanor reached the edge of the large rock formation. He dropped his Blade—it puffed away to mist—and sprang, grabbing hold of an outcropping. He started to climb.

He reached the base of the natural tower moments later. Boulders littered the ground nearby; in the mysterious way of the storms, this had probably been a hillside until recently. The highstorm had ripped most of it away, leaving this unlikely formation poking into the air. It would probably soon get blown down.

Dalinar dropped his Blade and leapt, snagging an outcropping, his fingers grinding on stone. He dangled before getting a footing, then proceeded to climb up the steep wall after Kalanor. The other Shardbearer tried to kick rocks down, but they bounced off Dalinar harmlessly.

By the time Dalinar caught up, they had climbed some fifty feet. Down below, soldiers gathered and stared, pointing.

Dalinar reached for his opponent’s leg, but Kalanor yanked it out of the way and then—still hanging from the stones—summoned his Blade and began swiping down. After getting battered on the helm a few times, Dalinar growled and let himself slide down out of the way.

Kalanor gouged a few chunks from the wall to send them clattering at Dalinar, then dismissed his Blade and continued upward.

Dalinar followed more carefully, climbing along a parallel route to the side. He eventually reached the top and peeked over the edge. The summit of the formation was some flat-topped, broken peaks that didn’t look terribly sturdy. Kalanor sat on one of them, Blade across one leg, his other foot dangling.

Dalinar climbed up a safe distance from his enemy, then summoned Oathbringer. Storms. There was barely enough room up here to stand. Wind buffeted him, a windspren zipping around to one side.

“Nice view,” Kalanor said. Though the forces had started out with equal numbers, below them were far more fallen men in silver and red strewn across the grassland than there were men in blue. “I wonder how many kings get such prime seating to watch their own downfall.”

“You were never a king,” Dalinar said.

Kalanor stood and lifted his Blade, extending it in one hand, point toward Dalinar’s chest. “That, Kholin, is all tied up in bearing and assumption. Shall we?”

Clever, bringing me up here, Dalinar thought. Dalinar had the obvious edge in a fair duel—and so Kalanor brought random chance into the fight. Winds, unsteady footing, a plunge that would kill even a Shardbearer.

At the very least, this would be a novel challenge. Dalinar stepped forward carefully. Kalanor changed to Windstance, a more flowing, sweeping style of fighting. Dalinar chose Stonestance for the solid footing and straightforward power.

They traded blows, shuffling back and forth along the line of small peaks. Each step scraped chips off the stones, sending them tumbling down. Kalanor obviously wanted to draw out this fight, to maximize the time for Dalinar to slip.

Dalinar tested back and forth, letting Kalanor fall into a rhythm, then broke it to strike with everything he had, battering down in overhand blows. Each fanned something burning inside of Dalinar, a thirst that his earlier rampage hadn’t sated. The Thrill wanted more.

Dalinar scored a series of hits on Kalanor’s helm, backing him up to the edge, one step away from a fall. The last blow destroyed the helm entirely, exposing an aged face, clean-shaven, mostly bald.

Kalanor growled, teeth clenched, and struck back at Dalinar with unexpected ferocity. Dalinar met it Blade with Blade, then stepped forward to turn it into a shoving match—their weapons locked, neither with room to maneuver.

Dalinar met his enemy’s gaze. In those light grey eyes, he saw something. Excitement, energy. A familiar bloodlust.

Kalanor felt the Thrill too.

Dalinar had heard others speak of it, this euphoria of the contest. The secret Alethi edge. But seeing it right there, in the eyes of a man trying to kill him, made Dalinar furious. He should not have to share such an intimate feeling with this man.

He grunted and—in a surge of strength—tossed Kalanor back. The man stumbled, then slipped. He instantly dropped his Shardblade and, in a frantic motion, managed to grab the rock lip as he fell.

Helmless, Kalanor dangled. The sense of the Thrill in his eyes faded to panic. “Mercy,” he whispered.

“This is a mercy,” Dalinar said, then struck him straight through the face with his Shardblade.

Kalanor’s eyes burned from grey to black as he dropped off the spire, trailing twin lines of black smoke. The corpse scraped rock before hitting far below, on the far side of the rock formation, away from the main army.

Dalinar breathed out, then sank down, wrung out. Shadows stretched long across the land as the sun met the horizon. It had been a fine fight. He’d accomplished what he’d wanted. He’d conquered all who stood before him.

And yet he felt empty. A voice within him kept saying, “That’s it? Weren’t we promised more?”

Down below, a group in Kalanor’s colors made for the fallen body. The honor guard had seen where their brightlord had fallen? Dalinar felt a spike of outrage. That was his kill, his victory. He’d won those Shards!

He scrambled down in a reckless half-climb. The descent was a blur; he was seeing red by the time he hit the ground. One soldier had the Blade; others were arguing over the Plate, which was broken and mangled.

Dalinar attacked, killing six in moments, including the one with the Blade. Two others managed to run, but they were slower than he was. Dalinar caught one by the shoulder, whipping him around and smashing him down into the stones. He killed the last with a sweep of Oathbringer.

More. Where were more? Dalinar saw no men in red. Only some in blue—a beleaguered set of soldiers who flew no flag. In their center, however, walked a man in Shardplate. Gavilar rested here from the battle, in a place behind the lines, to take stock.

The hunger inside of Dalinar grew. The Thrill came upon him in a rush, overwhelming. Shouldn’t the strongest rule? Why should he sit back so often, listening to men chat instead of war?

There. There was the man who held what he wanted. A throne… a throne and more. The woman Dalinar should have been able to claim. A love he’d been forced to abandon, for what reason?

No, his fighting today was not done. This was not all!

He started toward the group, his mind fuzzy, his insides feeling a deep ache. Passionspren—like tiny crystalline flakes—dropped around him.

Shouldn’t he have passion?

Shouldn’t he be rewarded for all he had accomplished?

Gavilar was weak. He intended to give up his momentum and rest upon what Dalinar had won for him. Well, there was one way to make certain the war continued. One way to keep the Thrill alive.

One way for Dalinar to get everything he deserved.

He was running. Some of the men in Gavilar’s group raised hands in welcome. Weak. No weapons presented against him! He could slaughter them all before they knew what had happened. They deserved it! Dalinar deserved to—

Gavilar turned toward him, pulling free his helm and smiling an open, honest grin.

Dalinar pulled up, stopping with a lurch. He stared at Gavilar, his brother.

Oh, Stormfather, Dalinar thought. What am I doing?

He let the Blade slip from his fingers and vanish. Gavilar strode up, unable to read Dalinar’s horrified expression behind his helm. As a blessing, no shamespren appeared, though he should have earned a legion of them in that moment.

“Brother!” Gavilar said. “Have you seen? The day is won! Highprince Ruthar brought down Gallam, winning Shards for his son. Talanor took a Blade, and I hear you finally drew out Kalanor. Please tell me he didn’t escape you.”

“He…” Dalinar licked his lips, breathing in and out. “He is dead.” Dalinar pointed toward the fallen form, visible only as a bit of silvery metal shining amid the shadows of the rubble.

“Dalinar, you wonderful, terrible man!” Gavilar turned toward his soldiers. “Hail the Blackthorn, men. Hail him!” Gloryspren burst around Gavilar, golden orbs that rotated around his head like a crown.

Dalinar blinked amid their cheering, and suddenly felt a shame so deep he wanted to crumple up. This time, a single spren—like a falling petal from a blossom—drifted down around him.

He had to do something. “Blade and Plate,” Dalinar said to Gavilar urgently. “I won them both, but I give them to you. A gift. For your children.”

“Ha!” Gavilar said. “Jasnah? What would she do with Shards? No, no. You—”

“Keep them,” Dalinar pled, grabbing his brother by the arm. “Please.”

“Very well, if you insist,” Gavilar said. “I suppose you do already have Plate to give your heir.”

“If I have one.”

“You will!” Gavilar said, sending some men to recover Kalanor’s Blade and Plate. “Ha! Toh will have to agree, finally, that we can protect his line. I suspect the wedding will happen within the month!”

As would, likely, the official re-coronation where—for the first time in centuries—all ten highprinces of Alethkar would bow before a single king.

Dalinar sat down on a stone, pulling free his helm and accepting water from a young messenger woman. Never again, he swore to himself. I give way for Gavilar in all things. Let him have the throne, let him have love.

I must never be king.

...

Dalinar cursed as smoke billowed out of the fireplace. He shoved his weight against the lever and managed to budge it, reopening the chimney flue. He coughed, backing up and waving smoke away from his face.

“We are going to need to see that replaced,” Evi said from the sofa where she was doing needlework.

“Yeah,” Dalinar said, thumping down to the floor before the fire.

“At least you got to it quickly. Today we will not need to scrub the walls, and the life will be as white as a sun at night!”

Evi’s native idioms didn’t always translate well into Alethi.

The fire’s heat was welcome, as Dalinar’s clothing was still damp from the rains. He tried to ignore the ever-present sound of the Weeping’s rain outside, instead watching a pair of flamespren dance along one of the logs. These seemed vaguely human, with ever-shifting figures. He followed one with his eyes as it leaped toward the other.

He heard Evi rise, and thought she might be off to seek the privy again. She instead settled down next to him and took his arm, then sighed in contentment.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Dalinar said.

“And yet you are doing it.”

“I’m not the one who is…” He looked at her belly, which had begun to round.

Evi smiled. “My condition does not make me so frail that I risk breaking by sitting on the floor, beloved.” She pulled his arm tighter. “Look at them. They play so eagerly!”

“It’s like they’re sparring,” Dalinar said. “I can almost see the little blades in their hands.”

“Must everything be fighting to you?”

He shrugged.

She leaned her head on his arm. “Can’t you just enjoy it, Dalinar?”

“Enjoy what?”

“Your life. You went through so much to make this kingdom. Can’t you be satisfied, now that you’ve won?”

He stood up, pulling his arm from her grip, and crossed the chamber to pour himself a drink.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you act,” Evi said. “Perking up whenever the king speaks of the smallest conflict beyond our borders. Having the scribes read to you of great battles. Always talking about the next duel.”

“I’m not to have that much longer,” Dalinar grumbled, then took a sip of wine. “Gavilar says it’s foolish to endanger myself, says someone is bound to try to use one of those duels as a ploy against him. I’ll have to get a champion.” He stared at his wine.

He’d never had a high opinion of dueling. It was too fake, too sanitized. But at least it was something.

“It’s like you’re dead,” Evi said.

Dalinar looked over at her.

“It’s like you only live when you can fight,” she continued. “When you can kill. Like a blackness from old stories. You live only by taking lives from others.”

With that pale hair and light golden skin, she was like a glowing gemstone. She was a sweet, loving woman who deserved better than the treatment he gave her. He forced himself to go back and sit down beside her.

“I still think the flamespren are playing,” she said.

“I’ve always wondered,” Dalinar said. “Are they made of fire themselves? It looks like they are, and yet what of emotion spren? Are angerspren then made of anger?”

Evi nodded absently.

“And what of gloryspren?” Dalinar said. “Made of glory? What is glory? Could gloryspren appear around someone who is delusional, or perhaps very drunk—who only thinks they’ve accomplished something great, while everyone else is standing around mocking them?”

“A mystery,” she said, “sent by Shishi.”

“But don’t you ever wonder?”

“To what end?” Evi said. “We will know eventually, when we return to the One. No use troubling our minds now about things we cannot understand.”

Dalinar narrowed his eyes at the flamespren. That one did have a sword. A miniature Shardblade.

“This is why you brood so often, husband,” Evi said. “It isn’t healthy to have a stone curdling in your stomach, still wet with moss.”

“I… What?”

“You must not think such strange thoughts. Who put such things into your mind anyway?”

He shrugged, but thought of two nights before, staying up late and drinking wine beneath the rain canopy with Gavilar and Navani. She’d talked and talked about her research into spren, and Gavilar had simply grunted, while making notations in glyphs on a set of his maps. She’d spoken with such passion and excitement, and Gavilar had ignored her.

“Enjoy the moment,” Evi told him. “Close your eyes and contemplate what the One has given you. Seek the peace of oblivion, and bask in the joy of your own sensation.”

He closed his eyes as she suggested, and tried to simply enjoy being here with her. “Can a man actually change, Evi? Like those spren change?”

“We are all different aspects of the One.”

“Then can you change from one aspect to another?”

“Of course,” Evi said. “Is not your own doctrine about transformation? About a man being Soulcast from crass to glorious?”

“I don’t know if it’s working.”

“Then petition the One,” she said.

“In prayer? Through the ardents?”

“No, silly. Yourself.”

“In person?” Dalinar asked. “Like, at a temple?”

“If you wish to meet the One in person, you must travel to the Valley,” she said. “There you can speak with the One, or to his avatar, and be granted—”

“The Old Magic,” Dalinar hissed, opening his eyes. “The Nightwatcher. Evi, don’t say things like that.” Storms, her pagan heritage popped up at the strangest times. She could be talking good Vorin doctrine, then out came something like that.

Fortunately, she spoke of it no more. She closed her eyes and hummed softly. Finally, a knock came at the outer door to his rooms.

Hathan, his room steward, would answer that. Indeed, Dalinar heard the man’s voice outside, and that was followed by a light rap on the chamber door. “It is your brother, Brightlord,” Hathan said through the door.

Dalinar leaped, opening the door and passing the short master-servant. Evi followed, trailing along with one hand touching the wall, a habit of hers. They passed open windows that looked down upon a sodden Kholinar, flickering lanterns marking where people moved through the streets.

Gavilar waited in the sitting room, dressed in one of those new suits with the stiff jacket and buttons up the sides of the chest. His dark hair curled to his shoulders, and was matched by a fine beard.

Dalinar hated beards; they got caught in your helm. He couldn’t deny its effect on Gavilar though. Looking at Gavilar in his finery, one didn’t see a backwater thug—a barely civilized warlord who had crushed and conquered his way to the throne. No, this man was a king.

Gavilar rapped a set of papers against the palm of his hand.

“What?” Dalinar asked.

“Rathalas,” Gavilar said, shoving the papers toward Evi as she entered.

“Again!” Dalinar said. It had been years since he’d visited the Rift, that giant trench where he’d won his Shardblade.

“They’re demanding your Blade back,” Gavilar said. “They claim that Tanalan’s heir has returned, and deserves the Shard, as you never won it in a true contest.”

Dalinar felt cold.

“Now, I know this to be patently false,” Gavilar said, “because when we fought at Rathalas all those years ago, you said you dealt with the heir. You did deal with the heir, did you not, Dalinar?”

He remembered that day. He remembered darkening that doorway, the Thrill pulsing inside him. He remembered a weeping child holding a Shardblade. The father, lying broken and dead behind. That soft voice, pleading.

The Thrill had vanished in a moment.

“He was a child, Gavilar,” Dalinar said, his voice hoarse.

“Damnation!” Gavilar said. “He’s a descendant of the old regime. That was… storms, that was a decade ago. He’s old enough to be a threat! The whole city is going into rebellion, the entire region. If we don’t act, the whole Crownlands could break off.”

Dalinar smiled. The emotion shocked him, and he quickly stifled the grin. But surely… surely someone would need to go and rout the rebels.

He turned and caught sight of Evi. She was beaming at him, though he’d have expected her to be indignant at the idea of more wars. Instead, she stepped up to him and took his arm. “You spared the child.”

“I… He could barely lift the Blade. I gave him to his mother, and told her to hide him.”

“Oh, Dalinar.” She pulled him close.

He felt a swelling of pride. Ridiculous, of course. He had endangered the kingdom—how would people react if they knew the Blackthorn himself had broken before a crisis of conscience? They’d laugh.

In that moment, he didn’t care. So long as he could be a hero to this woman.

“Well, I suppose rebellion was to be expected,” Gavilar said as he stared out the window. “It’s been years since the formal unification; people are going to start asserting their independence.” He raised his hand toward Dalinar, turning. “I know what you want, Brother, but you’ll have to forbear. I’m not sending an army.”

“But—”

“I can nip this thing with politics. We can’t have a show of force be our only method of maintaining unity, or Elhokar will spend his entire life putting out fires after I’m gone. We need people to start thinking of Alethkar as a unified kingdom, not separate regions always looking for an advantage against one another.”

“Sounds good,” Dalinar said.

It wasn’t going to happen, not without the sword to remind them. For once, however, he was fine not being the one to point that out.