Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

Veil hesitated.

You found her! Pattern said in her mind. Do you have evidence, like Dalinar wanted?

“They’ll send you after Restares next,” Ialai said. “But they’ll watch you. In case you rise high enough, learn enough to threaten them. Have you asked yourself what they want? What they expect to get out of the end of the world?”

“Power,” Veil said.

“Ah, nebulous ‘power.’ No, it is more specific than that. Most of the Sons of Honor simply wanted their gods back, but Gavilar saw more. He saw entire worlds.…”

“Tell me more,” Veil said.

Shouts sounded outside the room. Veil glanced at the door in time to see a brilliant Shardblade slice through the lock. Adolin, wearing the false face she’d given him, kicked open the door a moment later.

People flooded in around him—soldiers and five of Shallan’s Lightweaver agents.

“Once I’m dead,” Ialai hissed, “don’t let them search my rooms before you do. Look for the rarest vintage. It is … exotic.”

“Don’t give me riddles,” the Three said. “Give me answers. What are the Ghostbloods trying to do?”

Ialai closed her eyes. “Do it.”

Instead, the Three dismissed her Blade. I vote against killing her, Veil thought. Killing her would mean she had been manipulated by Mraize. She hated that idea.

“You’re not dying today,” the Three said. “I have more questions for you.”

Ialai kept her eyes closed. “I won’t get to answer. They won’t let me.”

Shallan emerged, calming her nerves as several soldiers rushed up to surround Ialai. Veil and Radiant settled back, both pleased at this outcome. They were their own person. They did not belong to Mraize.

She shook her head and trotted over to Adolin, then dismissed his illusory face with a touch. She needed to see him as himself.

“Which one are you?” he asked quietly, giving her a pouch of infused spheres.

“Shallan,” she said, putting the pouch into her satchel, which a soldier had fetched for her from beside the wall. She glanced over her shoulder as the soldiers bound Ialai, and again Shallan was struck by how deflated the woman looked.

Adolin pulled Shallan close. “Did she confess to you?”

“She danced around it,” Shallan said, “but I think I can make a case to Dalinar that what she said constitutes treason. She wants to depose Jasnah and put Elhokar’s son on the throne.”

“Gavinor is way too young.”

“And she’d be guiding him,” Shallan said. “Which is why she’s a traitor—she wants the power.”

But … Ialai had spoken like that plan was in the past, as if she were now fighting only for survival. Had the Ghostbloods truly killed Highprinces Thanadal and Vamah?

“Well,” Adolin said, “with her in custody, perhaps we can get her armies to stand down. We can’t afford a war with our own right now.”

“Ishnah,” Shallan called, drawing the attention of one of her agents. The short Alethi woman hastened over. She’d been with Shallan for over a year now, and—along with Vathah, leader of the deserters that Shallan had recruited—was one of those she trusted most.

“Yeah, Brightness?” Ishnah asked.

“Take Vathah and Beryl. Go with those soldiers and make certain they don’t let Ialai speak to anyone. Gag her if you have to. She has a way of getting inside people’s heads.”

“Consider it done,” Ishnah said. “You want to put the illusion on her first?”

The contingency plan for extraction was simple: They’d use Lightweaving to make themselves into House Sadeas guards, and Ialai into someone lowborn. They’d march her out the gates with ease, capturing the highprincess right out from underneath the watchful eyes of her guards.

“Yes,” Shallan said, waving the soldiers to bring the woman over. Ialai walked with her eyes closed, still maintaining her fatalistic air. Shallan took Ialai by the arm, then breathed out and let the Lightweaving surround her, changing the woman to look like one of the sketches Shallan had done recently—a kitchen woman with rosy cheeks and a wide smile.

Ialai didn’t deserve such a kindly face, nor did she deserve such a light treatment. Shallan felt an unexpected spike of disgust at touching Ialai; this creature and her husband had plotted and executed a terrible plan to betray Dalinar. Even after the move to Urithiru, Ialai had worked to undermine him at every opportunity. If this woman had gotten her way, Adolin would have died before Shallan met him. And now they were just going to take her in to play more games?

Shallan let go, hand going to her satchel. Radiant was the one who emerged, however. She grabbed Ialai by her arm and towed her over to Adolin’s soldiers, handing her off.

“Take her out with the others,” Adolin said.

“You got the rest of the conspirators?” Shallan asked, walking back to him.

“They tried to escape out the side door as we burst in, but I think we managed to round them all up.”

Ishnah and the soldiers—Adolin’s men, hand-picked from among his finest—led the disguised and bound Ialai out the door. The highprincess sagged in their grip.

Adolin watched her go, a frown on his lips.

“You’re thinking,” Shallan said, “that we shouldn’t have ever let her leave Urithiru. That it’d be easier if we’d ended her, and the threat she represented, before it went this far.”

“I’m thinking,” Adolin said, “that maybe we don’t want to travel that road.”

“Maybe we started already. Back when you…”

Adolin drew his lips to a line. “I don’t have any answers right now,” he eventually said. “I don’t know if I ever did. But we should ransack this place quickly. Father might want more proof than your word, and it would be awfully helpful if we could present him with incriminating journals or letters.”

Shallan nodded, waving over Gaz and Red. She would have them search the place.

And what of what Ialai had said? Look for the rarest vintage.… Shallan eyed the wines set out on the counter of the hutch. Why speak in riddles? Adolin and the others were coming in, Shallan thought. She didn’t want them to understand. Storms, the woman had grown paranoid. But why trust Shallan?

I won’t get to answer. They won’t let me.…

“Adolin,” she said. “Something is wrong with this. With Ialai, with me being here, with—”

She cut herself off as shouts sounded in the antechamber. Shallan scrambled out, feeling a sense of dread. She found Ialai Sadeas lying on the floor, foam coming from the mouth of her fake face. The soldiers watched with horror.

The highprincess stared up with lifeless eyes. Dead.

* * *

Kaladin flew through the smoke billowing up over the manor. He soared down toward where the townspeople were being threatened by the strange Fused and his soldiers. That was Waber, the manor’s gardener, being held against the ground with a boot to his face.

This is obviously a trap, Syl said in Kaladin’s mind. That Fused knows exactly what to do in order to draw the attention of a Windrunner: attack innocents.

She was right. Kaladin forced himself to drop carefully a short distance away. The Fused had torn a hole in the wall around a side entrance of the manor. Though flames licked the upper floors of the structure, the room beyond the hole was dark, not yet afire. At least not completely.