“I . . .” Vamah sighed, looking to the side. A group of young men nearby was snickering as they looked toward Dalinar. “It is a matter of . . .”
Another sound, louder, came from the opposite side of the island. Vamah started again, but his eyes flicked in that direction, and a round of laughter burst out more loudly. Dalinar forced himself to look, noting women with hands to mouths, men covering their exclamations with coughs. A halfhearted attempt at maintaining Alethi propriety.
Dalinar looked back at Vamah. “What is happening?”
“I’m sorry, Dalinar.”
Beside him, Sivi tucked some sheets of paper under her arm. She met Dalinar’s gaze with a forced nonchalance.
“Excuse me,” Dalinar said. Hands forming fists, he crossed the island toward the source of the disturbance. As he neared, they quieted and people broke up into smaller groups, moving off. It almost seemed planned how quickly they dispersed, leaving him to face Sadeas and Aladar, standing side by side.
“What are you doing?” Dalinar demanded of the two of them.
“Feasting,” Sadeas said, then shoved a piece of fruit into his mouth. “Obviously.”
Dalinar drew in a deep breath. He glanced at Aladar, long-necked and bald, with his mustache and tuft of hair on his bottom lip. “You should be ashamed,” Dalinar growled at him. “My brother once called you a friend.”
“And not me?” Sadeas said.
“What have you done?” Dalinar demanded. “What is everyone talking about, snickering about behind their hands?”
“You always assume it’s me,” Sadeas said.
“That’s because any time I think it isn’t you, I’m wrong.”
Sadeas gave him a thin-lipped smile. He started to reply, but then thought a moment, and finally just stuffed another chunk of fruit in his mouth. He chewed and smiled.
“Tastes good,” was all he said. He turned to walk away.
Aladar hesitated. Then he shook his head and followed.
“I never figured you for a pup to follow at a master’s heels, Aladar,” Dalinar called after him.
No reply.
Dalinar growled, moving back across the island, looking for someone from his own warcamp who might have heard what was happening. Elhokar was late to his own feast, it seemed, though Dalinar did see him approaching outside now. No sign of Teshav or Khal yet—they would undoubtedly make an appearance, now that he was a Shardbearer.
Dalinar might have to move to one of the other islands, where lesser lighteyes would be mingling. He started that way, but stopped as he heard something.
“Why, Brightlord Amaram,” Wit cried. “I was hoping I’d be able to see you tonight. I’ve spent my life learning to make others feel miserable, and so it’s a true joy to meet someone so innately talented in that very skill as you are.”
Dalinar turned, noticing Amaram, who had just arrived. He wore his cape of the Knights Radiant and carried a sheaf of papers stuck under his arm. He stopped beside Wit’s chair, the nearby water casting a lavender tone across their skin.
“Do I know you?” Amaram asked.
“No,” Wit said lightly, “but fortunately, you can add it to the list of many, many things of which you are ignorant.”
“But now I’ve met you,” Amaram said, holding out a hand. “So the list is one smaller.”
“Please,” Wit said, refusing the hand. “I wouldn’t want it to rub off on me.”
“It?”
“Whatever you’ve been using to make your hands look clean, Brightlord Amaram. It must be powerful stuff indeed.”
Dalinar hurried over.
“Dalinar,” Wit said, nodding.
“Wit. Amaram, what are those papers?”
“One of your clerks seized them and brought them to me,” Amaram said. “Copies were being passed around the feast before your arrival. Your clerk thought Brightness Navani might want to see them if she hasn’t already. Where is she?”
“Staying away from you, obviously,” Wit noted. “Lucky woman.”
“Wit,” Dalinar said sternly, “do you mind?”
“Rarely.”
Dalinar sighed, looking back to Amaram and taking the papers. “Brightness Navani is on another island. Do you know what these say?”
Amaram’s expression grew grim. “I wish I didn’t.”
“I could hit you in the head with a hammer,” Wit said happily. “A good bludgeoning would make you forget and do wonders for that face of yours.”
“Wit,” Dalinar said flatly.
“I’m only joking.”
“Good.”
“A hammer would hardly dent that thick skull of his.”
Amaram turned to Wit, a look of bafflement on his face.
“You’re very good at that expression,” Wit noted. “A great deal of practice, I assume?”
“This is the new Wit?” Amaram asked.
“I mean,” Wit said, “I wouldn’t want to call Amaram an imbecile . . .”
Dalinar nodded.
“. . . because then I’d have to explain to him what the word means, and I’m not certain any of us have the requisite time.”
Amaram sighed. “Why hasn’t anyone killed him yet?”
“Dumb luck,” Wit said. “In that I’m lucky you’re all so dumb.”
“Thank you, Wit,” Dalinar said, taking Amaram by the arm and towing him to the side.
“One more, Dalinar!” Wit said. “Just one last insult, and I leave him alone.”
They continued walking.
“Lord Amaram,” Wit called, standing to bow, his voice growing solemn. “I salute you. You are what lesser cretins like Sadeas can only aspire to be.”
“The papers?” Dalinar said to Amaram, pointedly ignoring Wit.
“They are accounts of your . . . experiences, Brightlord,” Amaram said softly. “The ones you have during the storms. Written by Brightness Navani herself.”
Dalinar took the papers. His visions. He looked up and saw groups of people collecting on the island, chatting and laughing, shooting glances at him.
“I see,” he said softly. It made sense now, the hidden snickering. “Find Brightness Navani for me, if you would.”
“As you request,” Amaram said, but stopped short, pointing. Navani stalked across the next island over, heading toward them with a tempestuous air about her.
“What do you think, Amaram?” Dalinar said. “Of the things that are being said of me?”
Amaram met his eyes. “They are obviously visions from the Almighty himself, given to us in a time of great need. I wish I had known their contents earlier. They give me great confidence in my position, and in your appointment as prophet of the Almighty.”
“A dead god can have no prophets.”
“Dead . . . No, Dalinar! You obviously misinterpret that comment from your visions. He speaks of being dead in the minds of men, that they no longer listen to his commands. God cannot die.”
Amaram seemed so earnest. Why didn’t he help your sons? Kaladin’s voice rang in Dalinar’s mind. Amaram had come to him that day, of course, professing his apologies and explaining that—with his appointment as a Radiant—he couldn’t possibly have helped one faction against another. He said he needed to be above the squabbles between highprinces, even when it pained him.
“And the supposed Herald?” Dalinar asked. “The thing I asked you about?”
“I am still investigating.”
Dalinar nodded.
“I was surprised,” Amaram noted, “that you left the slave as head of your guard.” He glanced to the side, to where Dalinar’s guards for the night stood, just off the island in their own area, waiting with the other bodyguards and attendants, including many of the wards of the highladies present.
There had been a time not too long ago when few had felt the need to bring their guards with them to a feast. Now, the place was crowded. Captain Kaladin wasn’t there; he was resting, after his imprisonment.
“He’s a good soldier,” Dalinar sa
id softly. “He just carries a few scars that are having trouble healing.” Vedeledev knows, Dalinar thought, I have a few of those myself.
“I merely worry that he is incapable of properly protecting you,” Amaram said. “Your life is important, Dalinar. We need your visions, your leadership. Still, if you trust the slave, then so be it—though I certainly wouldn’t mind hearing an apology from him. Not for my own ego, but to know that he’s put aside this misconception of his.”
Dalinar gave no reply as Navani strode across the short bridge onto their island. Wit started to proclaim an insult, but she swatted him in the face with a stack of papers, giving him barely a glance as she continued on toward Dalinar. Wit watched after, rubbing his cheek, and grinned.
She noted the papers in his hand as she joined the two of them, who seemed to stand among a sea of amused eyes and hushed laughter.
“They added words,” Navani hissed.
“What?” Dalinar demanded.
She shook the papers. “These! You’ve heard what they contain?”
He nodded.
“They aren’t as I wrote them,” Navani said. “They’ve changed the tone, some of my words, to imply a ridiculousness to the entire experience—and to make it sound as if I am merely indulging you. What’s worse, they added a commentary in another handwriting that pokes fun at what you say and do.” She took a deep breath, as if to calm herself. “Dalinar, they’re trying to destroy any shred of credibility left to your name.”
“I see.”
“How did they get these?” Amaram asked.
“Through theft, I do not doubt,” Dalinar said, realizing something. “Navani and my sons always have guards—but when they leave their rooms, those are relatively unprotected. We may have been too lax in that regard. I misunderstood. I thought his attacks would be physical.”
Navani looked out at the sea of lighteyes, many congregating in groups around the various highprinces in the soft, violet light. She stepped closer to Dalinar, and though her eyes were fierce, he knew her well enough to guess what she was feeling. Betrayal. Invasion. That which was private to them, opened up, mocked and then displayed for the world.
“Dalinar, I’m sorry,” Amaram said.
“They did not change the visions themselves?” Dalinar asked. “They copied them accurately.”
“So far as I can tell, yes,” Navani said. “But the tone is different, and that mockery. Storms. It’s nauseating. When I find the woman who did this . . .”
“Peace, Navani,” Dalinar said, resting his hand on her shoulder.
“How can you say that?”
“Because this is the act of childish men who assume that I can be embarrassed by the truth.”
“But the commentary! The changes. They’ve done everything they can to discredit you. They even managed to undermine the part where you offer a translation of the Dawnchant. It—”
“‘As I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.’”
Navani frowned at him.
“It’s from The Way of Kings,” Dalinar said. “I am not a youth, nervous at his first feast. Sadeas makes a mistake in believing I will respond to this as he would. Unlike a sword, scorn has only the bite you give it.”
“This does hurt you,” Navani said, meeting his eyes. “I can see it, Dalinar.”
Hopefully, the others would not know him well enough to see what she did. Yes, it did hurt. It hurt because these visions were his, entrusted to him—to be shared for the good of men, not to be held up for mockery. It was not the laughter itself that pained him, but the loss of what could have been.
He stepped away from her, passing through the crowd. Some of those eyes he now interpreted as being sorrowful, not just amused. Perhaps he was imagining it, but he thought some pitied him more than scorned him.
He wasn’t certain which emotion was more damaging.
Dalinar reached the food table at the back of the island. There, he picked up a large pan and handed it to a bewildered serving woman, then hauled himself up onto the table. He set one hand on the lantern pole beside the table and looked out over the small crowd. They were the most important people in Alethkar.
Those who hadn’t already been watching him turned with shock to see him up there. In the distance, he noticed Adolin and Brightness Shallan rushing onto the island. They’d likely only just arrived, and heard the talk.
Dalinar looked to the crowd. “What you have read,” he bellowed, “is true.”
Stunned silence. Making a spectacle of oneself in this way was not done in Alethkar. He, however, had already been this evening’s spectacle.
“Commentary has been added to discredit me,” Dalinar said, “and the tone of Navani’s writing has been changed. But I will not hide what has been happening to me. I see visions from the Almighty. They come with almost every storm. This should not surprise you. There have been rumors circulating about my experiences for weeks now. Perhaps I should have released these visions already. In the future, each one I receive will be published, so that scholars around the world can investigate what I have seen.”
He sought out Sadeas, who stood with Aladar and Ruthar. Dalinar gripped the lantern pole, looking back at the Alethi crowd. “I do not blame you for thinking I am mad. It is natural. But in the coming nights, when rain washes your walls and the wind howls, you will wonder. You will question. And soon, when I offer you proof, you will know. This attempt to destroy me will then vindicate me instead.”
He looked over their faces, some aghast, some sympathetic, others amused.
“There are those among you who assume I will flee, or be broken, because of this attack,” he said. “They do not know me as well as they presume. Let the feast continue, for I wish to speak with each and every one of you. The words you hold may mock, but if you must laugh, do it while looking me in the eyes.”
He stepped down from the table.
Then he went to work.
* * *
Hours later, Dalinar eventually let himself sit down in a seat beside a table at the feast, exhaustionspren swirling around him. He’d spent the rest of the evening moving through the crowd, forcing his way into conversations, drumming up support for his excursion onto the Plains.
He had pointedly ignored the pages with his visions on them, except when asked direct questions about what he’d seen. Instead, he had presented them with a forceful, confident man—the Blackthorn turned politician. Let them chew on that and compare him to the frail madman the falsified transcripts would make him out to be.
Outside, past the small rivers—they now glowed blue, the spheres having been changed to match the second moon—the king’s carriage rolled away, bearing Elhokar and Navani the short distance to the Pinnacle, where porters would carry them in a palanquin up to the top. Adolin had already retired, escorting Shallan back to Sebarial’s warcamp, which was a fair ride away.
Adolin seemed to be fonder of the young Veden woman than of any woman in the recent past. For that reason alone, Dalinar was increasingly inclined to encourage the relationship, assuming he could ever get some straight answers out of Jah Keved about her family. That kingdom was a mess.
Most of the other lighteyes had retired, leaving him on an island populated by servants and parshmen who cleared away food. A few master-servants, trusted for such duties, began to scoop the spheres out of the river with nets on long poles. Dalinar’s bridgemen, at his suggestion, were attacking the feast’s leftovers with the voracious appetite exclusive to soldiers who had been offered an unexpected meal.
A servant strolled by, then stopped, resting his hand on his side sword. Dalinar started, realizing he’d mistaken Wit’s black military uniform for that of a master-servant in training.
Dalinar put on a firm face, though inwardly he groaned. Wit? Now? Dalinar felt as if he’d been fighting on the battlefield for ten hours straight. Odd, how a few hours of delicate conversation could feel so similar to that.
; “What you did tonight was clever,” Wit said. “You turned an attack into a promise. The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it.”
“Thank you,” Dalinar said.
Wit nodded curtly, following the king’s coach with his eyes as it vanished. “I found myself without much to do tonight. Elhokar was not in need of Wit, as few sought to speak to him. All came to you instead.”
Dalinar sighed, his strength seeming to drain away. Wit hadn’t said it, but he hadn’t needed to. Dalinar read the implication.
They came to you, instead of the king. Because essentially, you are king.
“Wit,” Dalinar found himself asking, “am I a tyrant?”
Wit cocked an eyebrow, and seemed to be looking for a clever quip. A moment later, he discarded the thought. “Yes, Dalinar Kholin,” he said softly, consolingly, as one might speak to a tearful child. “You are.”
“I do not wish to be.”
“With all due respect, Brightlord, that is not quite the truth. You seek for power. You take hold, and let go only with great difficulty.”
Dalinar bowed his head.
“Do not sorrow,” Wit said. “It is an era for tyrants. I doubt this place is ready for anything more, and a benevolent tyrant is preferable to the disaster of weak rule. Perhaps in another place and time, I’d have denounced you with spit and bile. Here, today, I praise you as what this world needs.”
Dalinar shook his head. “I should have allowed Elhokar his right of rule, and not interfered as I did.”
“Why?”
“Because he is king.”
“And that position is something sacrosanct? Divine?”
“No,” Dalinar admitted. “The Almighty, or the one claiming to be him, is dead. Even if he hadn’t been, the kingship didn’t come to our family naturally. We claimed it, and forced it upon the other highprinces.”
“So then why?”
“Because we were wrong,” Dalinar said, narrowing his eyes. “Gavilar, Sadeas, and I were wrong to do as we did all those years ago.”
Wit seemed genuinely surprised. “You unified the kingdom, Dalinar. You did a good work, something that was sorely needed.”
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