Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

Dalinar pulled her close; propriety could seek Damnation. Nearby, the three guards shuffled, looking the other way.

“They’ll take my son too,” Navani whispered. “They’re trying.”

“I will protect him,” Dalinar promised.

“And who will protect you?”

He had no answer to that. Answering that his guards would do it sounded trite. That wasn’t the question she’d asked. Who will protect you when that assassin returns?

“I almost wish that you would fail,” she said. “In holding this kingdom together, you make a target of yourself. If everything just collapsed, and we fractured back to princedoms, perhaps he’d leave us alone.”

“And then the storm would come,” Dalinar replied softly. Twelve days.

Navani eventually pulled back, nodding, composing herself. “You’re right, of course. I just… this is the first time, for me. Dealing with this. How did you manage it, when Shshshsh died? I know you loved her, Dalinar. You don’t have to deny it for my ego.”

He hesitated. The first time; an implication that when Gavilar had died, she had not been broken up about it. She had never stated so outright an implication of the… difficulties the two had been having.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Was that too difficult a question, considering its source?” She tucked away her kerchief, which she’d used to dab her eyes dry. “I apologize; I know that you don’t like to talk about her.”

It wasn’t that it was a difficult question. It was that Dalinar didn’t remember his wife. How odd, that he could go weeks without even noticing this hole in his memories, this change that had ripped out a piece of him and left him patched over. Without even a prick of emotion when her name, which he could not hear, was mentioned.

Best to move to some other topic. “I cannot help but assume that the assassin is involved in all of this, Navani. The storm that comes, the secrets of the Shattered Plains, even Gavilar. My brother knew something, something he never shared with any of us.” You must find the most important words a man can say. “I would give almost anything to know what it was.”

“I suppose,” Navani said. “I will go back to my journals of the time. Perhaps he said something that would give us clues—though I warn you, I’ve pored over those accounts dozens of times.”

Dalinar nodded. “Regardless, that isn’t a worry for today. Today, they are our goal.”

They turned, looking as coaches clattered past, making their way to the nearby feasting basin, where lights glowed a soft violet in the night. He narrowed his eyes and found Ruthar’s coach approaching. The highprince had been stripped of Shards, all but his own Blade. They had cut off Sadeas’s right hand in this mess, but the head remained. And it was venomous.

The other highprinces were almost as big a problem as Sadeas. They resisted him because they wanted things to be easy, as they had been. They glutted themselves on their riches and their games. Feasts manifested that all too much, with their exotic food, their rich costumes.

The world itself seemed close to ending, and the Alethi threw a party.

“You must not despise them,” Navani said.

Dalinar’s frown deepened. She could read him too well.

“Listen to me, Dalinar,” she said, turning him to meet her eyes. “Has any good ever come from a father hating his children?”

“I don’t hate them.”

“You loathe their excess,” she said, “and you are close to applying that emotion to them as well. They live the lives they have known, the lives that society has taught them are proper. You won’t change them with contempt. You aren’t Wit; it isn’t your job to scorn them. Your job is to enfold them, encourage them. Lead them, Dalinar.”

He drew a deep breath, and nodded.

“I will go to the women’s island,” she said, noticing the bridgeman guard returning with news on the plateau assault. “They consider me an eccentric vestige of things better left in the past, but I think they still listen to me. Sometimes. I’ll do what I can.”

They parted, Navani hurrying to the feast, Dalinar idling as the bridgeman passed his news. The plateau run had been successful, a gemheart captured. It had taken quite a long time to reach the target plateau, which was deep into the Plains—almost to the edge of the scouted area. The Parshendi had not appeared to contest the gemheart, though their scouts had watched from a distance.

Again they decide not to fight, Dalinar thought, walking the last distance to the feast. What does the change mean? What are they planning?

The feast basin was made up of a series of Soulcast islands beside the Pinnacle complex. It had been flooded, as it often was, in a way that made the Soulcast mounds rise between small rivers. The water glowed. Spheres, and a lot of them, must have been dumped into the water to give it that ethereal cast. Purple, to match the moon that was just rising, violet and frail on the horizon.

Lanterns were placed intermittently, but with dim spheres, perhaps to not distract from the glowing water. Dalinar crossed the bridges to the farthest island—the king’s island, where the genders mixed and only the most powerful were invited. This was where he knew he’d find the highprinces. Even Bethab, who had just returned from his plateau run, was already in attendance—though, as he preferred to use mercenary companies for the bulk of his army, it wasn’t surprising he had returned so quickly from the run. Once they captured the gemheart, he’d often ride back quickly with the prize, letting them sort out how to return.

Dalinar passed Wit—who had arrived back at the warcamps with characteristic mystery—insulting everyone who passed. He had no wish to fence words with the man today. Instead, he sought out Vamah; the highprince seemed to have actually listened to Dalinar’s pleas during their most recent dinner. Perhaps with more nudging, he would commit to joining Dalinar’s assault on the Parshendi.

Eyes followed Dalinar as he crossed the island, and whispered conversations broke out like rashes as he passed. He expected those looks by now, though they still unnerved him. Were they more plentiful this night? More lingering? He couldn’t move in Alethi society these days without catching a smile on the lips of too many people, as if they were all part of some grand joke that he had not been told.

He found Vamah speaking with a group of three older women. One was Sivi, a highlady from Ruthar’s court who—contrary to custom—had left her husband at home to see to their lands, coming to the Shattered Plains herself. She eyed Dalinar with a smile and eyes like daggers. The plot to undermine Sadeas had to a large extent failed—but that was in part because the damage and shame had been deflected to Ruthar and Aladar, who had suffered the loss of Shardbearers in the men who had dueled Adolin.

Well, those two were never going to have been Dalinar’s—they were Sadeas’s strongest supporters.

The four people grew silent as Dalinar stepped up to them. Highprince Vamah squinted in the dim light, looking Dalinar up and down. The round-faced man had a cupbearer standing behind him with a bottle of some exotic liquor or another. Vamah often brought his own spirits to feasts, regardless of who hosted them; being engaging enough a conversationalist to earn a sip of what he’d managed to import was considered a political triumph by many attendees.