Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Everyone had gone silent. A sea of eyes stared at him.

“Brother?” Gavilar asked, the only sound in the room. “Is everything … all right?”

“Lost my storming knife,” Dalinar said. “Thought I’d left it in the other bunker.” He raised his mug and took a loud, lazy slurp of rainwater.

“Excuse me, Lord Gavilar,” Toh stammered. “I … I find myself in need of refreshment.” The blond-haired Westerner stood from his place, bowed, and retreated across the room to where a master-servant was administering drinks. His face seemed even paler than those folk normally were.

“What’s wrong with him?” Dalinar asked, scooting his chair closer to his brother.

“I assume,” Gavilar said, sounding amused, “that people he knows don’t casually go for strolls in highstorms.”

“Bah,” Dalinar said. “This is a fortified waystop, with walls and bunkers. We needn’t be scared of a little wind.”

“Toh thinks differently, I assure you.”

“You’re grinning.”

“You may have just proven in one moment, Dalinar, a point I’ve spent a half hour trying to make politically. Toh wonders if we’re strong enough to protect him.”

“Is that what the conversation was about?”

“Obliquely, yes.”

“Huh. Glad I could help.” Dalinar picked at a claw on Gavilar’s plate. “What does it take to get one of these fancy servants to get me a storming knife?”

“They’re master-servants, Dalinar,” his brother said, making a sign by raising his hand in a particular way. “The sign of need, remember?”

“No.”

“You really need to pay better attention,” Gavilar said. “We aren’t living in huts anymore.”

They’d never lived in huts. They were Kholin, heirs to one of the world’s great cities—even if Dalinar had never seen the place before his twelfth year. He didn’t like that Gavilar was buying into the story the rest of the kingdom told, the one that claimed their branch of the house had until recently been ruffians from the backwaters of their own princedom.

A gaggle of servants in black and white flocked to Gavilar, and he requested a new dining knife for Dalinar. As they split to run the errand, the doors to the women’s feast hall opened, and a figure slipped in.

Dalinar’s breath caught. Navani’s hair glowed with the tiny rubies she’d woven into it, a color matched by her pendant and bracelet. Her face a sultry tan, her hair Alethi jet black, her red-lipped smile so knowing and clever. And a figure … a figure to make a man weep for desire.

His brother’s wife.

Dalinar steeled himself and raised his arm in a gesture like the one Gavilar had made. A serving man stepped up with a springy gait. “Brightlord,” he said, “I will see to your desires of course, though you might wish to know that the sign is off. If you’ll allow me to demonstrate—”

Dalinar made a rude gesture. “Is this better?”

“Uh…”

“Wine,” Dalinar said, wagging his mug. “Violet. Enough to fill this three times at least.”

“And what vintage would you like, Brightlord?”

He eyed Navani. “Whichever one is closest.”

Navani slipped between tables, followed by the squatter form of Ialai Sadeas. Neither seemed to care that they were the only lighteyed women in the room.

“What happened to the emissary?” Navani said as she arrived. She slid between Dalinar and Gavilar as a servant brought her a chair.

“Dalinar scared him off,” Gavilar said.

The scent of her perfume was heady. Dalinar scooted his chair to the side and set his face. Be firm, don’t let her know how she warmed him, brought him to life like nothing else but battle.

Ialai pulled a chair over for herself, and a servant brought Dalinar’s wine. He took a long, calming drink straight from the jug.

“We’ve been assessing the sister,” Ialai said, leaning in from Gavilar’s other side. “She’s a touch vapid—”

“A touch?” Navani asked.

“—but I’m reasonably sure she’s being honest.”

“The brother seems the same,” Gavilar said, rubbing his chin and inspecting Toh, who was nursing a drink near the bar. “Innocent, wide-eyed. I think he’s genuine though.”

“He’s a sycophant,” Dalinar said with a grunt.

“He’s a man without a home, Dalinar,” Ialai said. “No loyalty, at the mercy of those who take him in. And he has only one piece he can play to secure his future.”

Shardplate.

Taken from his homeland of Rira and brought east, as far as Toh could get from his kinsmen—who were reportedly outraged to find such a precious heirloom stolen.

“He doesn’t have the armor with him,” Gavilar said. “He’s at least smart enough not to carry it. He’ll want assurances before giving it to us. Powerful assurances.”

“Look how he stares at Dalinar,” Navani said. “You impressed him.” She cocked her head. “Are you wet?”

Dalinar ran his hand through his hair. Storms. He hadn’t been embarrassed to stare down the crowd in the room, but before her he found himself blushing.

Gavilar laughed. “He went for a stroll.”

“You’re kidding,” Ialai said, scooting over as Sadeas joined them at the high table. The bulbous-faced man settled down on her chair with her, the two of them sitting half on, half off. He dropped a plate on the table, piled with claws in a bright red sauce. Ialai attacked them immediately. She was one of the few women Dalinar knew who liked masculine food.

“What are we discussing?” Sadeas asked, waving away a master-servant with a chair, then draping his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“We’re talking about getting Dalinar married,” Ialai said.

“What?” Dalinar demanded, choking on a mouthful of wine.

“That is the point of this, right?” Ialai said. “They want someone who can protect them, someone their family will be too afraid to attack. But Toh and his sister, they’ll want more than just asylum. They’ll want to be part of things. Inject their blood into the royal line, so to speak.”

Dalinar took another long drink.

“You could try water sometime you know, Dalinar,” Sadeas said.

“I had some rainwater earlier. Everyone stared at me funny.”

Navani smiled at him. There wasn’t enough wine in the world to prepare him for the gaze behind the smile, so piercing, so appraising.

“This could be what we need,” Gavilar said. “It gives us not only the Shard, but the appearance of speaking for Alethkar. If people outside the kingdom start coming to me for refuge and treaties, we might be able to sway the remaining highprinces. We might be able to unite this country not through further war, but through sheer weight of legitimacy.”

A servant, at long last, arrived with a knife for Dalinar. He took it eagerly, then frowned as the woman walked away.

“What?” Navani asked.

“This little thing?” Dalinar asked, pinching the dainty knife between two fingers and dangling it. “How am I supposed to eat a pork steak with this?”