The Way of Kings sa-1

by Brandon Sanderson

  “True, but I fear he carries it to extremes. He mistrusts even his allies.”

  Navani folded her hands in her lap, freehand lying atop safehand. “He’s not very good at this, is he?”

  Dalinar blinked in shock. “What? Elhokar is a good man! He has more integrity than any other lighteyes in this army.”

  “But his rule is weak,” Navani said. “You must admit that.”

  “He is king,” Dalinar said firmly, “and my nephew. He has both my sword and my heart, Navani, and I will not hear ill spoken of him, even by his own mother.”

  She eyed him. Was she testing his loyalty? Much like her daughter, Navani was a political creature. Intrigue made her blossom like a rockbud in calm wet air. However, unlike Jasnah, Navani was hard to trust. At least with Jasnah one knew where one stood-once again, Dalinar found himself wishing she’d put aside her projects and return to the Shattered Plains.

  “I’m not speaking ill of my son, Dalinar,” Navani said. “We both know I am as loyal to him as you are. But I like to know what I’m working with, and that requires a definition. He is seen as weak, and I intend to see him protected. Despite himself, if necessary.”

  “Then we work for the same goals. But if protecting him was the second reason you returned, what was the third?”

  She smiled a violet-eyed, red-lipped smile at him. A meaningful smile.

  Blood of my ancestors… Dalinar thought. Stormwinds, but she’s beautiful. Beautiful and deadly. It seemed a particular irony to him that his wife’s face had been erased from his mind, and yet he could remember in complete and intricate detail the months this woman had spent toying with him and Gavilar. She’d played them off one another, fanning their desire before finally choosing the elder son.

  They’d all known the entire time that she would choose Gavilar. It had hurt anyway.

  “We need to talk sometime in private,” Navani said. “I want to hear your opinion on some of the things being said in camp.”

  That probably meant the rumors about him. “I–I’m very busy.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you are. We’re meeting anyway, once I’ve had time to settle here and put out feelers. How about one week from today? I’ll come read to you from that book of my husband’s, and afterward we can chat. We’ll do it in a public place. All right?”

  He sighed. “Very well. But-”

  “Highprinces and lighteyes,” Elhokar’s suddenly proclaimed. Dalinar and Navani turned toward the end of the table, where the king stood wearing his uniform complete with royal cape and crown. He raised a hand toward the island. The people hushed, and soon the only sound was that of the water burbling through the streams.

  “I’m sure many of you have heard the rumors regarding the attempt on my life during the hunt three days ago,” Elhokar announced. “When my saddle girth was cut.”

  Dalinar glanced at Navani. She raised her freehand toward him and rocked it back and forth, indicating that she didn’t find the rumors to be persuasive. She knew about the rumors, of course. Give Navani five minutes in a city and she’d know anything and everything of significance being gossiped about.

  “I assure you, I was never in real danger,” Elhokar said. “Thanks, in part, to the protection of the King’s Guard and the vigilance of my uncle. However, I believe it wise to treat all threats with due prudence and seriousness. Therefore, I am appointing Brightlord Torol Sadeas to be Highprince of Information, charging him to unearth the truth regarding this attempt on my life.”

  Dalinar blinked in shock. Then he closed his eyes and let out a soft groan.

  “Unearth the truth,” Navani said skeptically. “Sadeas?”

  “Blood of my…He thinks I’m ignoring the threats to him, so he’s looking to Sadeas instead.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s all right,” she said. “I kind of trust Sadeas.”

  “Navani,” Dalinar said, opening his eyes. “The incident happened on a hunt I planned, under the protection of my guard and my soldiers. The king’s horse was prepared by my grooms. He publicly asked me to look into this strap business, and now he’s just taken the investigation away from me.”

  “Oh dear.” She understood. This was nearly the same thing as Elhokar proclaiming that he suspected Dalinar. Any information Sadeas unearthed regarding this “assassination attempt” could only reflect unfavorably on Dalinar.

  When Sadeas’s hatred of Dalinar and his love of Gavilar conflicted, which would win? But the vision. It said to trust him.

  Elhokar sat back down, and the buzz of conversation resumed across the island at a higher pitch. The king seemed oblivious of what he had just done. Sadeas was smiling broadly. He rose from his place, bidding farewell to the king, then began mingling.

  “You still argue he isn’t a bad king?” Navani whispered. “My poor, distracted, oblivious boy.”

  Dalinar stood up, then walked down the table to where the king continued to eat.

  Elhokar looked up. “Ah, Dalinar. I suspect you’ll want to give Sadeas your aid.”

  Dalinar sat down. Sadeas’s half-eaten meal still sat on the table, brass plate scattered with chunks of meat and torn flatbread. “Elhokar,” Dalinar forced out, “I just spoke to you a few days ago. I asked to be Highprince of War, and you said it was too dangerous!”

  “It is,” Elhokar said. “I spoke to Sadeas about it, and he agreed. The highprinces will never stand for someone being put over them in war. Sadeas mentioned that if I started with something less threatening, like appointing someone to Highprince of Information, it might prepare the others for what you want to do.”

  “Sadeas suggested this,” Dalinar said flatly.

  “Of course,” Elhokar said. “It is time we had a Highprince of Information, and he specifically noted the cut girth as something he wanted to look into. He knows you’ve always said you aren’t suited to these sorts of things.”

  Blood of my fathers, Dalinar thought, looking out at the center of the island, where a group of lighteyes gathered around Sadeas. I’ve just been outmaneuvered. Brilliantly.

  The Highprince of Information had authority over criminal investigations, particularly those of interest to the Crown. In a way, it was nearly as threatening as a Highprince of War, but it wouldn’t seem so to Elhokar. All he saw was that he would finally have someone willing to listen to his paranoid fears.

  Sadeas was a clever, clever man.

  “Don’t look so morose, Uncle,” Elhokar said. “I had no idea you’d want the position, and Sadeas just seemed so excited at the idea. Perhaps he’ll find nothing at all, and the leather was simply worn out. You’ll be vindicated in always telling me that I’m not in as much danger as I think I am.”

  “Vindicated?” Dalinar asked softly, still watching Sadeas. Somehow, I doubt that is likely.

  23

  Many Uses

  You have accused me of arrogance in my quest. You have accused me of perpetuating my grudge against Rayse and Bavadin. Both accusations are true.

  Kaladin stood up in the wagon bed, scanning the landscape outside the camp as Rock and Teft put his plan-such as it was-into action.

  Back home, the air had been drier. If you went about on the day before a highstorm, everything seemed desolate. After storms, plants soon pulled back into their shells, trunks, and hiding places to conserve water. But here in the moister climate, they lingered. Many rockbuds never quite pulled into their shells completely. Patches of grass were common. The trees Sadeas harvested were concentrated in a forest to the north of the warcamps, but a few strays grew on this plain. They were enormous, broad-trunked things that grew with a westward slant, their thick, finger like roots clawing into the stone and-over the years-cracking and breaking the ground around them.

  Kaladin hopped down from the cart. His job was to hoist up stones and place them on the bed of the vehicle. The other bridgemen brought them to him, laying them in heaps nearby.

  Bridgemen worked across the broad plain, moving among rockbuds, patches of
grass, and bunches of weeds that poked out from beneath boulders. Those grew most heavily on the west side, ready to pull back into their boulder’s shadow if a highstorm approached. It was a curious effect, as if each boulder were the head of an aged man with tufts of green and brown hair growing out from behind his ears.

  Those tufts were extremely important, for hidden among them were thin reeds known as knobweed. Their rigid stalks were topped with delicate fronds that could retract into the stem. The stems themselves were immobile, but they were fairly safe growing behind boulders. Some would be pulled free in each storm-perhaps to attach themselves in a new location once the winds abated.

  Kaladin hoisted a rock, setting it on the bed of the wagon and rolling it beside some others. The rock’s bottom was wet with lichen and crem.

  Knobweed wasn’t rare, but neither was it as common as other weeds. A quick description had been enough to send Rock and Teft searching with some success. The breakthrough, however, had happened when Syl had joined the hunt. Kaladin glanced to the side as he stepped down for another stone. She zipped around, a faint, nearly invisible form leading Rock from one stand of reeds to another. Teft didn’t understand how the large Horn eater could consistently find so many more than he did, but Kaladin didn’t feel inclined to explain. He still didn’t understand why Rock could see Syl in the first place. The Horneater said it was something he’d been born with.

  A pair of bridgemen approached, youthful Dunny and Earless Jaks towing a wooden sled bearing a large stone. Sweat trickled down the sides of their faces. As they reached the wagon, Kaladin dusted off his hands and helped them lift the boulder. Earless Jaks scowled at him, muttering under his breath.

  “That’s a nice one,” Kaladin said, nodding to the stone. “Good work.”

  Jaks glared at him and stalked off. Dunny gave Kaladin a shrug, then hurried after the older man. As Rock had guessed, getting the crew assigned to stone-gathering duty had not helped Kaladin’s popularity. But it had to be done. It was the only way to help Leyten and the other wounded.

  Once Jaks and Dunny left, Kaladin nonchalantly climbed into the wagon bed and knelt down, pushing aside a tarp and uncovering a large pile of knobweed stems. They were about as long as a man’s forearm. He made as if he were moving stones around in the bed, but instead tied a large double handful of the reeds into a bundle using thin rockbud vines.

  He dropped the bundle over the side of the wagon. The wagon driver had gone to chat with his counterpart on the other wagon. That left Kaladin alone, save for the chull that sat hunkered down in its rock shell, watching the sun with beady crustacean eyes.

  Kaladin hopped down from the wagon and placed another rock in the bed. Then, he knelt as if to pull a large stone out from under the wagon. With deft hands, however, he tied the reeds into place underneath the bed right beside two other bundles. The wagon had a large open space to the side of the axle, and a wood dowel there provided an excellent place for mounting the bundles.

  Jezerezeh send that nobody thinks to check the bottom as we roll back into camp.

  The apothecary said one drop came per stem. How many reeds would Kaladin need? He felt he knew the answer to that question without even giving it much thought.

  He’d need every drop he could get.

  He climbed out and lifted another stone into the wagon. Rock was approaching; the large, tan-skinned Horneater carried an oblong stone that would have been too large for most of the bridgemen to handle alone. Rock shuffled forward slowly, Syl zipping around his head and occasionally landing on the rock to watch him.

  Kaladin climbed down and trotted across the uneven ground to help. Rock nodded in thanks. Together they hauled the stone to the wagon and set it down on the bed. Rock wiped his brow, turning his back to Kaladin. Sprouting from his pocket was a handful of reeds. Kaladin swiped them and tucked them beneath the tarp.

  “What do we do if someone notices this thing we are doing?” Rock asked casually.

  “Explain that I’m a weaver,” Kaladin said, “and that I thought I’d weave myself a hat to keep off the sun.”

  Rock snorted.

  “I might do just that,” Kaladin said. He wiped his brow. “It would be nice in this heat. But best nobody sees. The mere fact that we want the reeds would probably be enough to make them deny them to us.”

  “This thing is true,” Rock said, stretching and glancing upward as Syl zipped over in front of him. “I miss the Peaks.”

  Syl pointed, and Rock bowed his head in reverence before following after her. Once she had him going in the right direction, however, she flitted back to Kaladin, bobbing up into the air as a ribbon, then falling down to the side of the wagon and reforming her womanly shape, her dress fluttering around her.

  “I,” she declared, raising a finger, “like him very much.”

  “Who? Rock?”

  “Yes,” she said, folding her arms. “He is respectful. Unlike others.”

  “Fine,” Kaladin said, lifting another stone into the wagon. “You can follow him around instead of bothering me.” He tried not to show worry as he said it. He had grown accustomed to her company.

  She sniffed. “I can’t follow him. He’s too respectful.”

  “You just said you liked that.”

  “I do. Also, I detest it.” She said that with unaffected frankness, as if oblivious of the contradiction. She sighed, sitting down on the side of the wagon. “I led him to a patch of chull dung as a prank. He didn’t even yell at me! He just looked at it, as if trying to figure out some hidden meaning.” She grimaced. “That’s not normal.”

  “I think the Horneaters must worship spren or something,” Kaladin said, wiping his brow.

  “That’s silly.”

  “People believe much sillier things. In some ways, I guess it makes sense to revere the spren. You are kind of odd and magical.”

  “I’m not odd!” she said, standing up. “I’m beautiful and articulate.” She planted her hands on her hips, but he could see in her expression that she wasn’t really mad. She seemed to be changing by the hour, growing more and more…

  More and more what? Not exactly humanlike. More individual. Smarter.

  Syl fell silent as another bridgeman-Natam-approached. The long-faced man was carrying a smaller stone, obviously trying not to strain himself.

  “Ho, Natam,” Kaladin said, reaching down to take the stone. “How goes the work?”

  Natam shrugged.

  “Didn’t you say you were once a farmer?”

  Natam rested beside the wagon, ignoring Kaladin.

  Kaladin set down the rock, moving it into place. “I’m sorry to make us work like this, but we need the good will of Gaz and the other bridge crews.”

  Natam didn’t respond.

  “It will help keep us alive,” Kaladin said. “Trust me.”

  Natam just shrugged yet again, then wandered away.

  Kaladin sighed. “This would be a lot easier if I could pin the duty change on Gaz.”

  “That wouldn’t be very honest,” Syl said, affronted.

  “Why do you care so much about honesty?”

  “I just do.”

  “Oh?” Kaladin said, grunting as he moved back to his work. “And leading men to piles of dung? How honest is that?”

  “That’s different. It was a joke.”

  “I fail to see how…”

  He trailed off as another bridgeman approached. Kaladin doubted anyone else had Rock’s strange ability to see Syl, and didn’t want to be seen talking to himself.

  The short, wiry bridgeman had said his name was Skar, though Kaladin couldn’t see any obvious scars on his face. He had short dark hair and angular features. Kaladin tried to engage him in conversation too, but got no response. The man even went so far as to give Kaladin a rude gesture before tromping back out.

  “I’m doing something wrong,” Kaladin said, shaking his head and hopping down from the sturdy wagon.

  “Wrong?” Syl stepped up to the lip of the w
agon, watching him.

  “I thought that seeing me rescue those three might give them hope. But they’re still indifferent.”

  “Some watched you run earlier,” Syl said, “when you were practicing with the plank.”

  “They watched,” Kaladin said. “But they don’t care about helping the wounded. Nobody besides Rock, that is-and he’s only doing it because he has a debt to me. Even Teft wasn’t willing to share his food.”

  “They’re selfish.”

  “No. I don’t think that word can apply to them.” He lifted a stone, struggling to explain how he felt. “When I was a slave…well, I’m still a slave. But during the worst parts, when my masters were trying to beat out of me the ability to resist, I was like these men. I didn’t care enough to be selfish. I was like an animal. I just did what I did without thinking.”

  Syl frowned. Little wonder-Kaladin himself didn’t understand what he was saying. Yet, as he spoke, he began to work out what he meant. “I’ve shown them that we can survive, but that doesn’t mean anything. If those lives aren’t worth living, then they aren’t ever going to care. It’s like I’m offering them piles of spheres, but not giving them anything to spend their wealth on.”

  “I guess,” Syl said. “But what can you do?”

  He looked back across the plain of rock, toward the warcamp. The smoke of the army’s many cookfires rose from the craters. “I don’t know. But I think we’re going to need a lot more reeds.”

  That night, Kaladin, Teft, and Rock walked the makeshift streets of Sadeas’s warcamp. Nomon-the middle moon-shone with his pale, blue-white light. Oil lanterns hung in front of buildings, indicating taverns or brothels. Spheres could provide more consistent, renewable light, but you could buy a bundle of candles or a pouch of oil for a single sphere. In the short run, it was often cheaper to do that, particularly if you were hanging your lights in a place they could be stolen.

  Sadeas didn’t enforce a curfew, but Kaladin had learned that a lone bridgeman had best remain in the lumberyard at night. Half-drunken soldiers in stained uniforms sauntered past, whispering in the ears of whores or boasting to their friends. They called insults at the bridgemen, laughing riotously. The streets felt dark, even with the lanterns and the moonlight, and the haphazard nature of the camp-some stone structures, some wooden shanties, some tents-made it feel disorganized and dangerous.