Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

It was far from a perfect plan, but it was better than letting the Fused murder the Radiants while they were in comas.

“Even if you only get yourself out,” Kaladin said, “do it, rather than staying and making a hopeless stand. Take your spren and get to Dalinar.”

“And you?” Teft said. “You’ll follow, right?”

Kaladin hesitated.

“If I run, you run,” Teft said. “Look, what happened the last two times a node was discovered?”

“The Pursuer was waiting for me,” Kaladin admitted.

“He will be again,” Teft said. “This is a trap, plain and simple. What the enemy doesn’t know is that we don’t care about the node. We’re trying to free the Radiants. So distract him a little, yes, but then run and let them have their storming fabrial.”

“I could try that.”

“Give me an oath, lad. We can’t do anything more in this tower. We need to reach Dalinar. I’m going to head that way with as many Radiants as I can rescue. You’ve got my back, right?”

“Always,” Kaladin said, nodding. “I swear it. Get as many of the Radiants out as you can, and then run. Once you do, I’ll follow.”

I love their art. The way they depict us is divine, all red shades and black lines. We appear demonic and fearsome; they project all fear and terror upon us.

—Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days

Dalinar stepped into the Prime’s warcamp home, and immediately felt as if he’d entered the wrong building. Surely this was a storage room where they were keeping extra furniture gathered from the surrounding abandoned towns.

But no, Dalinar was merely accustomed to austerity. It was an Alethi wartime virtue for a commander to eschew comfort. Dalinar had perhaps taken this idea too far on occasion—but he’d become comfortable with simple furniture, bare walls. Even his rooms in Urithiru had grown too cluttered for his taste.

Young Yanagawn came from a different tradition. This entry room was so full of rich furniture—painted bronze on every surface that wasn’t of some plush material—that it created a maze Dalinar had to wind through to reach the other side. Adding to the difficulty, the room was also packed with a battalion’s worth of servants. Twice Dalinar encountered someone in bright Azish patterns who had to physically climb onto a couch to let him pass.

Where had they found all of this? And those tapestries draping every visible space on the walls. Had they carried them all this way? He knew the Azish were more accustomed to long supply chains—they didn’t have access to the number of food-making Soulcasters that the Alethi did—but this was excessive, wasn’t it?

Though, he noted, turning back across the room as he reached the other side, this would certainly slow an assassin or a force who tried to break in here and attack the Prime.

In the next room he found an even greater oddity. The Prime—Yanagawn the First, Emperor of Makabak—sat in a throne at the head of a long table. Nobody else ate at the table, but it was stuffed with lit candelabras and plates of food. Yanagawn was finishing his breakfast, mostly pre-cut fruit. He wore a mantle of heavy cloth and an ornate headdress. He ate primly, spearing each bite of fruit with a long skewer, then raising it to his lips. He barely seemed to move, with one hand held crossed before his chest as he manipulated the skewer with the other.

A large rank of people stood to either side of him. They mostly seemed to be camp followers. Washwomen. Wheelwrights. Reshi chull keepers. Seamstresses. Dalinar picked out only a few uniforms.

Jasnah had already arrived for the meeting. She stood among the groups of people, and a servant ushered Dalinar in that direction as well, so he joined the bizarre display. Standing and watching the emperor eat his fruit one delicate bite at a time.

Dalinar liked the Azish—and they’d proven to be good allies with a shockingly effective military. But storms above and Damnation beyond, were they strange. Although curiously, he found their excess to be less nauseating than when an Alethi highprince indulged. In Alethkar this would be an expression of arrogance and a lack of self-restraint.

Here, there was a certain … cohesion to the display. Alethi servants of the highest order wore simple black and white, but the Azish ones were dressed almost as richly as the emperor. The overflowing table didn’t seem to be for Yanagawn. He was merely another ornament. This was about the position of Prime, and the empire itself, more than an elevation of the individual man.

From what Dalinar had heard, they’d had trouble appointing this most recent Prime. The reason for that was, of course, standing directly behind Dalinar: Szeth, the Assassin in White, had killed the last two Primes. At the same time, Dalinar couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be Prime. They had to deal with all this pomp, always on display. Maybe that was why their “scholarly republic” worked in a way Jasnah liked so much. They had accidentally made the position of emperor so awful, no sane person would want it—so they’d needed to find other ways to rule the country.

Dalinar had learned enough social grace to remain quiet until the display was complete. Each of the onlookers was then given a bronze plate full of food, which they accepted after bowing to the emperor. As they left one by one, other servants quickly made space at the table for Jasnah and Dalinar, though the clock he wore in his arm bracer told him he was still a few minutes early for the meeting.

Damnation’s own device, that was. Had him hopping about like the Prime. Though admittedly, Dalinar was realizing how much less of his time was wasted now that everyone knew precisely when to meet together. Without ever saying a word, Navani was bringing order to his life.

Be safe. Please. My life’s light, my gemheart.

He sent Szeth out, as neither of the other two monarchs had guards in the room. As they settled—the last of the observers leaving—Noura bowed to the Prime, then took a seat at the table deliberately positioned to be lower than the three of them. Some in the empire considered it a scandal that Dalinar, Jasnah, and Fen were always seated at the same height as the Prime, but Yanagawn had insisted.

“Dalinar, Jasnah,” the youth said, relaxing as he removed his headdress and set it onto the table. Noura gave him a glance at that, but Dalinar smiled. She obviously thought the Prime should maintain decorum, but Dalinar liked seeing the youth grow more comfortable with his position and his fellow monarchs. “I’m sorry we didn’t have plates of food for you as well,” Yanagawn continued in Azish. “I should have known you’d both arrive early.”

“It would have made a fine memento, Majesty,” Jasnah said, laying out some papers on the table. “But we were not of the chosen today, so it wouldn’t feel right to be so favored.”

The boy looked to Noura. “I told you she understood.”

“Your wisdom grows, Imperial Majesty,” the older woman said. She was an Azish vizier—a high-level civil servant. Her own outfit had less gold on it than the Prime’s, but it was nevertheless fantastically colored, with a cap and contrasting coat of a multitude of patterns and hues. Her long hair was greying and wound into a braid that emerged from her cap on one side.

“All right, Jasnah,” Yanagawn said, leaning forward to inspect Jasnah’s papers—though as far as Dalinar knew, he couldn’t read Alethi. “Tell it to me straight.”