“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.
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.