“Who…” Leyten frowned. “Oh! It’s not that, sir. It’s something else. This way.”
Leyten led him down some steps onto the wide field outside the first level of the tower, where three more bridgemen waited near some rows of stone planters, probably for growing tubers.
“We noticed this by accident,” Leyten said as they walked among the planters. The hefty bridgeman had a jovial way about him, and talked to Dalinar—a highprince—as easily as he’d talk to friends at a tavern. “We’ve been running patrols on your orders, watching for anything strange. And … well, Peet noticed something strange.” He pointed up at the wall. “See that line?”
Dalinar squinted, picking out a gouge cut into the rock wall. What could score stone like that? It almost looked like …
He looked down at the planter boxes nearest them. And there, hidden between two of them, was a hilt protruding from the stone floor.
A Shardblade.
It was easy to miss, as the blade had sunk all the way down into the rock. Dalinar knelt beside it, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to grab the hilt.
Even though he didn’t touch the Blade directly, he heard a very distant whine, like a scream in the back of someone’s throat. He steeled himself, then yanked the Blade out and set it across the empty planter.
The silvery Blade curved at the end almost like a fishhook. The weapon was even wider than most Shardblades, and near the hilt it rippled in wavelike patterns. He knew this sword, knew it intimately. He’d carried it for decades, since winning it at the Rift all those years ago.
Oathbringer.
He glanced upward. “The killer must have dropped it out that window. It clipped the stone on its way down, then landed here.”
“That’s what we figured, Brightlord,” Peet said.
Dalinar looked down at the sword. His sword.
No. Not mine at all.
He seized the sword, bracing himself for the screams. The cries of a dead spren. They weren’t the shrill, painful shrieks he’d heard when touching other Blades, but more of a whimper. The sound of a man backed into a corner, thoroughly beaten and facing something terrible, but too tired to keep screaming.
Dalinar steeled himself and carried the Blade—a familiar weight—with the flat side against his shoulder. He walked toward a different entrance back into the tower city, followed by his guards, the scout, and the five bridgemen.
You promised to carry no dead Blade, the Stormfather thundered in his head.
“Calm yourself,” Dalinar whispered. “I’m not going to bond it.”
The Stormfather rumbled, low and dangerous.
“This one doesn’t scream as loudly as others. Why?”
It remembers your oath, the Stormfather sent. It remembers the day you won it, and better the day you gave it up. It hates you—but less than it hates others.
Dalinar passed a group of Hatham’s farmers who had been trying, without success, to get some lavis polyps started. He drew more than a few looks; even at a tower populated by soldiers, highprinces, and Radiants, someone carrying a Shardblade in the open was an unusual sight.
“Could it be rescued?” Dalinar whispered as they entered the tower and climbed a stairway. “Could we save the spren who made this Blade?”
I know of no way, the Stormfather said. It is dead, as is the man who broke his oath to kill it.
Back to the Lost Radiants and the Recreance—that fateful day when the knights had broken their oaths, abandoned their Shards, and walked away. Dalinar had witnessed that in a vision, though he still had no idea what had caused it.
Why? What had made them do something so drastic?
He eventually arrived at the Sadeas section of the tower, and though guards in forest green and white controlled access, they couldn’t deny a highprince—particularly not Dalinar. Runners dashed before him to carry word. Dalinar followed them, using their path to judge if he was going in the right direction. He was; she was apparently in her rooms. He stopped at the nice wooden door, and gave Ialai the courtesy of knocking.
One of the runners he had chased here opened the door, still panting. Brightness Sadeas sat in a throne set in the center of the room. Amaram stood at her shoulder.
“Dalinar,” Ialai said, nodding her head to him like a queen greeting a subject.
Dalinar heaved the Shardblade off his shoulder and set it carefully on the floor. Not as dramatic as spearing it through the stones, but now that he could hear the weapon’s screams, he felt like treating it with reverence.
He turned to go.
“Brightlord?” Ialai said, standing up. “What is this in exchange for?”
“No exchange,” Dalinar said, turning back. “That is rightfully yours. My guards found it today; the killer threw it out a window.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“I didn’t kill him, Ialai,” Dalinar said wearily.
“I realize that. You don’t have the bite left in you to do something like that.”
He ignored the gibe, looking to Amaram. The tall, distinguished man met his gaze.
“I will see you in judgment someday, Amaram,” Dalinar said. “Once this is done.”
“As I said you could.”
“I wish that I could trust your word.”
“I stand by what I was forced to do, Brightlord,” Amaram said, stepping forward. “The arrival of the Voidbringers only proves I was in the right. We need practiced Shardbearers. The stories of darkeyes gaining Blades are charming, but do you really think we have time for nursery tales now, instead of practical reality?”
“You murdered defenseless men,” Dalinar said through gritted teeth. “Men who had saved your life.”
Amaram stooped, lifting Oathbringer. “And what of the hundreds, even thousands, your wars killed?”
They locked gazes.
“I respect you greatly, Brightlord,” Amaram said. “Your life has been one of grand accomplishment, and you have spent it seeking the good of Alethkar. But you—and take this with the respect I intend—are a hypocrite.
“You stand where you do because of a brutal determination to do what had to be done. It is because of that trail of corpses that you have the luxury to uphold some lofty, nebulous code. Well, it might make you feel better about your past, but morality is not a thing you can simply doff to put on the helm of battle, then put back on when you’re done with the slaughter.”
He nodded his head in esteem, as if he hadn’t just rammed a sword through Dalinar’s gut.
Dalinar spun and left Amaram holding Oathbringer. Dalinar’s stride down the corridors was so quick that his entourage had to scramble to keep up.
He finally found his rooms. “Leave me,” he said to his guards and the bridgemen.
They hesitated, storm them. He turned, ready to lash out, but calmed himself. “I don’t intend to stray in the tower alone. I will obey my own laws. Go.”
They reluctantly retreated, leaving his door unguarded. He passed into his outer common room, where he’d ordered most of the furniture to be placed. Navani’s heating fabrial glowed in a corner, near a small rug and several chairs. They finally had enough Stormlight to power it.
Drawn by the warmth, Dalinar walked up to the fabrial. He was surprised to find Taravangian sitting in one of the chairs, staring into the depths of the shining ruby that radiated heat into the room. Well, Dalinar had invited the king to use this common room when he wished.