“No,” Kaladin whispered. “This proclamation sounds like a real tempest. I just expected the king to be less… well, whiny.”
“We need to secure allies,” Adolin said. “Form a coalition. Sadeas will gather one, and so we counter him with our own.”
“Dividing the kingdom into two?” Teshav said, shaking her head. “I don’t see how a civil war would serve the Throne. Particularly one we’re unlikely to win.”
“This could be the end of Alethkar as a kingdom,” the general agreed.
“Alethkar ended as a kingdom centuries ago,” Dalinar said softly, staring out that window. “This thing we have created is not Alethkar. Alethkar was justice. We are children wearing our father’s cloak.”
“But Uncle,” the king said, “at least the kingdom is something. More than it has been in centuries! If we fail here, and fracture to ten warring princedoms, it will negate everything my father worked for!”
“This isn’t what your father worked for, son,” Dalinar said. “This game on the Shattered Plains, this nauseating political farce. This isn’t what Gavilar envisioned. The Everstorm comes…”
“What?” the king asked.
Dalinar turned from the window finally, walking to the others, and rested his hand on Navani’s shoulder. “We’re going to find a way to do this, or we’re going to destroy the kingdom in the process. I won’t suffer this charade any longer.”
Kaladin, arms folded, tapped one finger against his elbow. “Dalinar acts like he’s the king,” he mouthed, whispering so softly only Syl could hear. “And everyone else does as well.” Troubling. It was like what Amaram had done. Seizing the power he saw before him, even if it wasn’t his.
Navani looked up at Dalinar, raising her hand to rest on his. She was in on whatever he was planning, judging by that expression.
The king wasn’t. He sighed lightly. “You’ve obviously got a plan, Uncle. Well? Out with it. This drama is tiring.”
“What I really want to do,” Dalinar said frankly, “is beat the lot of them senseless. That’s what I’d do to new recruits who weren’t willing to obey orders.”
“I think you’ll have a hard time spanking obedience into the highprinces, Uncle,” the king said dryly. For some reason, he absently rubbed at his chest.
“You need to disarm them,” Kaladin found himself saying.
All eyes in the room turned toward him. Brightness Teshav gave him a frown, as if speaking were not Kaladin’s right. It probably wasn’t.
Dalinar, however, nodded toward him. “Soldier? You have a suggestion?”
“Your pardon, sir,” Kaladin said. “And your pardon, Your Majesty. But if a squad is giving you trouble, the first thing you do is separate its members. Split them up, stick them in better squads. I don’t think you can do that here.”
“I don’t know how we’d break apart the highprinces,” Dalinar said. “I doubt I could stop them from associating with one another. Perhaps if this war were won, I could assign different highprinces different duties, send them off, then work on them individually. But for the time being, we are trapped here.”
“Well, the second thing you do to troublemakers,” Kaladin said, “is you disarm them. They’re easier to control if you make them turn in their spears. It’s embarrassing, makes them feel like recruits again. So… can you take their troops away from them, maybe?”
“We can’t, I’m afraid,” Dalinar said. “The soldiers swore allegiance to their lighteyes, not to the Crown specifically—it’s only the highprinces who have sworn to the Crown. However, you are thinking along the right lines.”
He squeezed Navani’s shoulder. “For the last two weeks,” he said, “I’ve been trying to decide how to approach this problem. My gut tells me that I need to treat the highprinces—the entire lighteyed population of Alethkar—like new recruits, in need of discipline.”
“He came to me, and we talked,” Navani said. “We can’t actually bust the highprinces down to a manageable rank, as much as Dalinar would like to do just that. Instead, we need to lead them to believe that we’re going to take it all from them, if they don’t shape up.”
“This proclamation will make them mad,” Dalinar said. “I want them mad. I want them to think about the war, their place here, and I want to remind them of Gavilar’s assassination. If I can push them to act more like soldiers, even if it starts with them taking up arms against me, then I might be able to persuade them. I can reason with soldiers. Regardless, a big part of this will involve the threat that I’m going to take away their authority and power if they don’t use it correctly. And that begins, as Captain Kaladin suggested, with disarming them.”
“Disarm the highprinces?” the king asked. “What foolishness is this?”
“It’s not foolishness,” Dalinar said, smiling. “We can’t take their armies from them, but we can do something else. Adolin, I intend to take the lock off your scabbard.”
Adolin frowned, considering that for a moment. Then a wide grin split his face. “You mean, letting me duel again? For real?”
“Yes,” Dalinar said. He turned to the king. “For the longest time, I’ve forbidden him from important bouts, as the Codes prohibit duels of honor between officers at war. More and more, however, I’ve come to realize that the others don’t see themselves as being at war. They’re playing a game. It’s time to allow Adolin to duel the camp’s other Shardbearers in official bouts.”
“So he can humiliate them?” the king asked.
“It wouldn’t be about humiliation; it would be about depriving them of their Shards.” Dalinar stepped into the middle of the group of chairs. “The highprinces would have a hard time fighting against us if we controlled all of the Shardblades and Shardplate in the army. Adolin, I want you to challenge the Shardbearers of other highprinces in duels of honor, the prizes being the Shards themselves.”
“They won’t agree to it,” General Khal said. “They’ll refuse the bouts.”
“We’ll have to make sure they agree,” Dalinar said. “Find a way to force them, or shame them, into the fights. I’ve considered that this would probably be easier if we could ever track down where Wit ran off to.”
“What happens if the lad loses?” General Khal asked. “This plan seems too unpredictable.”
“We’ll see,” Dalinar said. “This is only one part of what we will do, the smaller part—but also the most visible part. Adolin, everyone tells me how good you are at dueling, and you have pestered me incessantly to relax my prohibition. There are thirty Shardbearers in the army, not counting our own. Can you defeat that many men?”
“Can I?” Adolin said, grinning. “I’ll do it without breaking a sweat, so long as I can start with Sadeas himself.”
So he’s spoiled and cocky, Kaladin thought.
“No,” Dalinar said. “Sadeas won’t accept a personal challenge, though eventually bringing him down is our goal. We start with some of the lesser Shardbearers and work up.”