“Wise suggestion, sir,” Lyn said, then bowed and retreated.
Jasnah nodded to him, then returned to her exaggerated discussion of the maps. Yes, she was acting a role here.
Dalinar glanced at Ruthar, whose face was steadily growing redder. Perhaps he’d had a few drinks too many while waiting for the monarchs to finish their planning, but plainly he did not like how Jasnah was blatantly interjecting herself into the war plans. It was a masculine art, and Ruthar had been forbidden from participating in the planning today.
Looking at him, it was hard not to agree with what Jasnah had said about Alethkar. Gavilar’s grand unification of the kingdom hadn’t lasted ten years past his death before essentially breaking into civil war. Alethi squabbling had ended up favoring men like Ruthar. Oily, belligerent, aggressive. The last representation of old Alethkar.
Jasnah was making herself into bait. And Ruthar bit. Hard.
“Am I the only one seeing this?” Ruthar asked a little too loudly to his attendants. “I didn’t say anything when she was made queen. Other nations have queens. But are any of them in this room interrogating a general?”
One of his companions tried to calm him, but he brushed her off, shouting, “It’s a disgrace! Dalinar writing? He might as well put on a havah and start painting. We deserve the judgments of the Almighty, after giving the throne to a godless wh—” He stopped himself just in time, perhaps realizing how still the tent had grown.
Dalinar stepped forward to berate the man. There was nothing for it now but to—
“Wit,” Jasnah said, her voice cold.
Wit strode forward, his hands spread to the sides, as if stepping out from behind curtains to face an adoring crowd. “I see you’re envious of those more skilled in the masculine arts than you, Ruthar,” Wit said. “I agree, you could use lessons on how to be a man—but those in this room would teach lessons far too advanced. Let me call in a eunuch to instruct you, and once you’ve reached his level, we’ll talk further.”
“Harsher,” Jasnah said.
“You speak of honor, Ruthar, though you’ve never known it,” Wit said, his voice rising. “You’ll never find it though. You see, I hid your honor in a place you could never find it: in the arms of someone who truly loves you.”
“Wit,” Jasnah said. “Harsher.”
“I’ve been speaking to your children, Ruthar,” Wit said. “No, this part isn’t a joke. Relis, Ivanar. Yes, I know them. I know a lot of things. Would you like to explain to the queen where Ivanar’s broken arm last month truly came from? Tell me, do you beat your children because you’re a sadist, or because you’re a coward and they are the only ones who won’t dare fight back? Or … oh, silly Wit. It’s both, isn’t it?”
“How dare you!” Ruthar roared, shoving away the attendant who tried to control him. Angerspren rose around his feet, like pools of bubbling blood. “I demand trial by swords! Me versus you, stupid fool. Or me against your champion, if you’re too much of a coward to face me!”
“Trial by combat accepted,” Wit said lightly, undoing his belt and sliding free his sheathed sword. “Shall we?”
“Fine!” Ruthar said, drawing his sword, causing many of the women and attendants to scatter to the sides of the large tent.
“This is idiocy,” Dalinar said, stepping between them. “Ruthar, you’ve been baited. Killing a Queen’s Wit is punishable by exile and forfeit of title. You know this.”
Ruthar grunted, the words sinking in.
“Besides,” Dalinar said, glancing over his shoulder, “that man is no simple Wit. I’m not sure if you can kill him.”
“You tell me I’d forfeit my title,” Ruthar growled. “What title? What lands do I hold? And exile? We are in exile, Blackthorn. Maybe I should challenge you. You’ve lost our kingdom, and now you expect me to waste my time in foreign lands? Protecting those we should have conquered? We would have, if your nephew had been half the man his father was.”
“Ruthar,” Wit said, “you don’t need to fight him. Or me. I accept your challenge, but I exercise my right to choose a champion. You won’t risk losing your lands by killing a Wit.”
“Excellent,” Ruthar said. “I accept. Stop trying to interfere, Blackthorn.”
Dalinar reluctantly stepped to the side. He felt a mounting dread, but there was nothing illegal here. And he doubted any action he could take would prevent this trap from springing.
“So,” Ruthar said, brandishing his sword. “Wit. You call me coward, then wiggle out of a challenge? So be it! Who do you want me to kill, then?”
“Your Majesty?” Wit said. “If you don’t mind?” He cocked his sheathed sword to the side, hilt out, as Jasnah brushed past and drew the weapon—a thin, silvery blade that Dalinar didn’t think he’d ever seen unsheathed.
Dalinar’s dread deepened as Jasnah stepped into striking range, batting aside Ruthar’s sword. He recovered from his shock and blocked her next strike. She was better than Dalinar might have expected, but her stance was uncertain, and she overreached. At best, she was equal to a promising student.
She had two distinct advantages though. She was Radiant. And Ruthar was an idiot.
“I refuse this,” he said, tossing his sword aside. “I will not face a woman in combat. It is demeaning.”
And so, Jasnah stabbed him straight through the throat.
This lunge was better than the previous one, but it was not her skill that won the fight—it was the fact that Ruthar underestimated how far she would go. Indeed, Ruthar’s eyes bulged as shockspren shattered around him as yellow glass. He stumbled back, gushing lifeblood across his beautiful doublet.
“Renarin!” Jasnah called.
Dalinar’s younger son scrambled into the tent from outside, and the full level of her preparation became manifest. The twisting feeling in Dalinar’s stomach began to release. He’d been preparing to lock down the tent, send guards for Ruthar’s next of kin, and institute martial law.
Renarin scurried forward and used his powers as a Truthwatcher to heal Ruthar, sealing up the wound in the man’s neck before he bled out. Still, Dalinar caught the eye of Fisk, the current captain of the Cobalt Guard. He was a solid fellow, bearer of the Blade Loremaker. Fisk nodded in understanding, and covertly signaled his soldiers to create a perimeter around the tent—nobody in or out—until Dalinar was ready to let news of this incident spread.
Jasnah held Wit’s sword out to her side, and he took it, clicking his tongue. “Not willing to wipe the blood off first, Brightness? I suppose this is the sword’s first kill. Adonalsium knows, I could never give her that myself. Still.” He wiped the weapon clean with a white handkerchief, glancing at Ruthar. “I’ll be billing you for a new handkerchief.”
Both Wit and Jasnah pointedly ignored the horrified expressions of the room’s attendants. The standout exception was the Mink, who was grinning at the show. Dalinar almost expected him to begin applauding.
Dalinar felt no such mirth. Although she hadn’t gone all the way, he didn’t like Jasnah’s statement. Duels of passion were—if not common—an accepted part of Alethi culture. He himself had killed more than one man at a feast or other gathering. It was reminiscent, however, of their barbaric days as broken princedoms. Times that the Alethi tried to pretend had never happened. These days, this sort of thing was supposed to be handled in a more civilized way, with formal challenges and duels in arenas days later.
“Ruthar,” Jasnah said, standing above him. “You have insulted me thrice tonight. First, by implying a queen should not take concern for the welfare of her own armies. Second, by threatening to assault my Wit, a man who is an extension of the royal will. Third and worst of all, by judging me unfit to defend myself, despite my calling as a Knight Radiant.
“As you have died tonight, and I have bested you legally in combat, I name you forfeit of your title. It will pass to your eldest son, who has been speaking quite frankly with Wit recently. It seems he will make a far more fitting highprince.”
“That bastard!” R
uthar croaked. “That traitorous bastard!”
“Not yours then, is he?” Wit said. “That explains why I like him.”
“What you do from here is your choice,” Jasnah said. “Unfortunately, by the time you leave this tent, you will find that your princedom has quite thoroughly moved on. You’ll be barred entrance to your own camp, should you try to return. I suggest you join the military as a new recruit. Alternatively, you may take up the queen’s charity at the Beggars’ Feasts and poorhouses.”
She left him gaping on the floor and touching his healed neck—still wet with blood. Renarin awkwardly hurried after Jasnah as she moved over to the map table.
Wit dropped his bloody handkerchief before Ruthar. “How remarkable,” he said. “If you spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won’t stand up for you. There’s poetry in that, don’t you think, you storming personification of a cancerous anal discharge?”
Dalinar marched up beside Jasnah at the table. Szeth stayed close behind him, carefully watching Ruthar, silent but making certain Dalinar’s back was guarded. Renarin stood with his hands in his pockets and refused to meet Dalinar’s gaze. The boy likely felt guilty for keeping this little plan quiet, though Dalinar wasn’t angry at him. Denying Jasnah was next to impossible in situations like this.
“Don’t glare at me, Uncle,” Jasnah said softly. “It was a lesson I had to give. Ruthar was a mouthpiece for many other discontented grumblings.”
“I had assumed,” he said, “that you of all people would wish to teach your lessons without a sword.”
“I would much prefer it,” she said. “But you cannot tame a feral axehound with kind words. You use raw meat.”
She eyed the still-stunned people in the tent. They were all quite deliberately staying away from Ruthar. Dalinar met Fisk’s eyes, then nodded again. The lockdown could be eased. Ruthar’s closest allies were fickle, and would see his fallen state as a disease to be avoided. Jasnah had already secured the loyalty of those who could have been dangerous—his family and military advisors.
“You should know,” Dalinar said, “that I found this entire experience distasteful. And not only because you didn’t warn me it was going to happen.”
“That is why I didn’t warn you,” Jasnah said. “Here. This may calm you.” She tapped a paper she’d set onto the map table, which the Mink picked up and began reading with great interest. He looked like he hadn’t been so entertained in years.
“A draft of a new law,” the short man said. “Forbidding trial by sword. How unexciting.”
Jasnah plucked the paper from his fingers. “I will use my own unfortunate experience today as an example of why this is a terrible tradition. Ruthar’s blood will be the last such spilled. And as we leave this era of barbarism, each and every attendant at court will know that Alethkar’s first queen is a woman unafraid of doing what needs to be done. Herself.”
She was firm, so Dalinar tucked away his anger, then turned to leave. A part of him understood her move, and it was likely to be effective. Yet at the same time, it displayed that Jasnah Kholin—brilliant, determined—was not perfect. There were things about her that unnerved even the callous soldier that lived deep inside him.
As he walked away, Renarin hurried over. “Sorry,” the boy whispered. “I didn’t know she hadn’t told you.”
“It’s all right, son,” Dalinar said. “I suspect that without you, she’d have gone through with the plan anyway—then left him to bleed out on the floor.”
Renarin ducked his head. “Father. I’ve … had an episode.”
Dalinar stopped. “Anything urgent?”
“No.”
“Can I find you later today, maybe tomorrow?” Dalinar asked. “I want to help contain the fallout from this stunt.”
Renarin nodded quickly, then slipped out of the tent. Ruthar had stumbled to his feet, holding his neck, his gaudy yellow outfit now ruined. He searched around the room as if for succor, but his former friends and attendants were quietly slipping away—leaving only soldiers and the queen, who stood with her back to him. As if Ruthar were no longer worth attention.
Wit stood in his jet-black suit, one hand on the map table, leaning at a nearly impossible angle. Dalinar often found Wit with a grin on his face, but not today. Today the man looked cold, emotionless. His eyes were deep voids, their color invisible in the dim light.
They maneuvered Ruthar expertly, Dalinar thought. Forced him to make all the wrong moves. Could … I do something similar in facing Odium? Anger the god somehow, forcing him to accept a reckless agreement?
How did one intimidate a creature as powerful as Odium? What, on all of Roshar, could a god possibly fear or hate so much? He’d have to bring up the matter with Jasnah and Wit. Though … not today.
Today he’d had enough of their machinations.
This song—this tone, this rhythm—sounds so familiar, in ways I cannot explain or express.
—From Rhythm of War, page 5
“Only the femalens among your staff read?” Raboniel asked to Craving as they stood in the hallway outside the room with the crystal pillar. “I would have thought better of your instruction, Venli, considering how capable you are in other areas. Your staff shouldn’t follow foolish human customs.”
Venli’s staff of singers—the ones carefully recruited in Kholinar over the last year—had arrived in Urithiru via the Oathgate transfers early this morning. Raboniel had immediately put them to work. Nearby, the femalens were sorting through the boxes of notes and equipment the human queen had moved out into the hallway. Young human scribes were adding to that, repositioning boxes, making a general scene of chaos.
Venli’s staff, at Raboniel’s order, were doing their best to make sense of it—and to read through the pages and pages of notes to try to find important points to bring to Raboniel’s attention. They would soon take scholarform to help, but the task was still difficult. Venli had instructed them to do their best.
Today, Raboniel stood with her back to the blue shield, watching the confusion in the hallway and humming to herself.
Venli hummed to Indifference. “Ancient One,” she said, “my staff are good—but they are culturally Alethi. My own people, the listeners, would have happily taught them a better way—but the listeners were taken by Odium, in his wisdom.”
“Do you question Odium, Venli?” Raboniel said to Craving.
“I have been taught that Passion does a person credit, Ancient One,” Venli said. “And to wonder, to question, is a Passion.”
“Indeed. Yet there are many among the Fused who think such Passions should be denied to everyone but themselves. You might find Odium shockingly like one of us in this regard. Or perhaps instead we are like him.” She nodded toward the mess of human scribes and Venli’s staff, working in near-perpetual motion like a pile of cremlings feasting after the rain. “What do you think of this?”
“If I had to guess, the human queen seems to be trying to make a mess.”
“She’s creating ways to stall that won’t appear like purposeful interference,” Raboniel said to Ridicule, though she seemed more amused than angry. “She complains that she doesn’t have enough space, and constantly reshuffles these boxes to buy time. Also, I suspect she’s trying to establish a presence outside the room—even if just in this hallway—so that she has a better chance of putting her people where they can overhear what we’re saying. She seems to be getting more information than I expected; some of her people might be able to speak my language.”
“I find that difficult to believe, Lady of Wishes. From what I’ve been led to understand, it wasn’t but a year ago that they finally figured out how to read the Dawnchant.”
“Yes, curious,” Raboniel said, smiling and speaking to Craving. “Tell me, Venli. Why is it you serve so eagerly after knowing what Odium did to your people?”
Timbre pulsed in worry, but Venli had already prepared an answer. “I knew that only the very best among us would earn his favor a
nd reward. Most were simply not worthy.”
Raboniel hummed softly, then nodded. She returned to her own work, studying the shield around the pillar. “I’m waiting on reports of the Pursuer’s sweep of the upper floors of the first tier. As well as news of his search for Radiants.”
“I will go immediately and ask, Ancient One,” Venli said, stepping away.
“Venli,” Raboniel said. “Many mortals in the past sought elevation to stand among the Fused. You should know that, after our initial elevation, he never again granted such a lofty gift to a mortal.”
“I … Thank you, Ancient One.” She hummed to Tribute and withdrew, picking her way through the increasingly cluttered hallway. Within her, Timbre pulsed to Amusement. She knew that Venli had no aspirations of becoming a Fused.
“Do not be so quick to laud me,” Venli whispered to the spren. “The person I was not so long ago would have been thrilled by the possibility of becoming immortal.”
Timbre’s pulses seemed skeptical. But she hadn’t known Venli during that time—and as well she hadn’t.
As Venli reached the end of the hallway, she was joined by Dul, the tall stormsetter who was in Venli’s inner group of singers. The ones she’d been promising, over the last year, that she would help escape the Fused.
Today Dul wore mediationform, with an open face and smooth, beautiful carapace. He had a mostly red skin pattern with tiny hints of black, like submerged rocks in a deep red sea. He fell into stride with Venli as they walked out into the chamber with the stairs. As far as she knew, this large open room—in the shape of a cylinder—was the sole way up from the basement. They marched up the stairs that wound around the outside, passing over a section of hastily rebuilt steps, until they were far enough from others that no one would be able to overhear them.
She quickly checked Shadesmar. That place was strange, with glowing light suffusing everything, but best she could tell, no Voidspren were watching them. Here, isolated on the steps, she felt reasonably safe chatting.
“Report,” she whispered.
Rhythm of War (9781429952040) Page 79