The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,468

every eff ort. I won’t pretend this was only about honor, though there was an element of that to it. In the end, I just wanted you gone.”

Sadeas’s voice grew cold. “But you are going insane, old friend. You may name me a liar, but I did what I did today as a mercy. A way of letting you die in glory, rather than watching you descend further and further. By letting the Parshendi kill you, I could protect Elhokar from you and turn you into a symbol to remind the others what we’re really doing here. Your death might have become what finally united us. Ironic, if you consider it.”

Dalinar breathed in and out. It was hard not to let his anger, his indignation, consume him. “Then tell me one thing. Why not pin the assassination attempt on me? Why clear me, if you were only looking to betray me later on?”

Sadeas snorted softly. “Bah. Nobody would really believe that you tried to kill the king. They’d gossip, but they wouldn’t believe it. Blaming you too quickly would have risked implicating myself.” He shook his head. “I think Elhokar knows who tried to kill him. He’s admitted as much to me, though he won’t give me the name.”

What? Dalinar thought. He knows? But… how? Why not tell us who? Dalinar adjusted his plans. He wasn’t certain if Sadeas was telling the truth, but if he was, he could use this.

“He knows it wasn’t you,” Sadeas continued. “I can read that much in him, though he doesn’t realize how transparent he is. Blaming you would have been pointless. Elhokar would have defended you, and I might very well have lost the position of Highprince of Information. But it did give me a wonderful opportunity to make you trust me again.”

Unite them…. The visions. But the man who spoke to Dalinar in them had been dead wrong. Acting with honor hadn’t won Sadeas’s loyalty. It had just opened Dalinar up to betrayal.

“If it means anything,” Sadeas said idly, “I’m fond of you. I really am. But you are a boulder in my path, and a force working—against its own knowledge— to destroy Gavilar’s kingdom. When the chance came along, I took it.”

“It wasn’t simply a convenient opportunity,” Dalinar said. “You set this up, Sadeas.”

“I planned, but I’m often planning. I don’t always act on my options. Today I did.”

Dalinar snorted. “Well, you’ve shown me something today, Sadeas— shown it to me by the very act of trying to remove me.”

“And what was that?” Sadeas asked, amused.

“You’ve shown me that I’m still a threat.”

The highprinces continued their low-pitched conversation. Kaladin stood to the side of Dalinar’s soldiers, exhausted, with the members of Bridge Four.

Sadeas spared a glance for them. Matal stood in the crowd, and had been watching Kaladin’s team the entire time, red-faced. Matal probably knew that he would be punished as Lamaril had been. They should have learned. They should have killed Kaladin at the start.

They tried, he thought. They failed.

He didn’t know what had happened to him, what had gone on with Syl and the words in his head. It seemed that Stormlight worked better for him now. It had been more potent, more powerful. But now it was gone, and he was so tired. Drained. He’d pushed himself, and Bridge Four, too far. Too hard.

Perhaps he and the others should have gone to Kholin’s camp. But Teft was right; they needed to see this through.

He promised, Kaladin thought. He promised he would free us from Sadeas.

And yet, where had the promises of lighteyes gotten him in the past?

The highprinces broke off their conference, separating, stepping back from one another.

“Well,” Sadeas said loudly, “your men are obviously tired, Dalinar. We can speak later about what went wrong, though I think it is safe to assume that our alliance has proven unfeasible.”

“Unfeasible,” Dalinar said. “A kind way of putting it.” He nodded toward the bridgemen. “I will take these bridgemen with me to my camp.”

“I’m afraid I cannot part with them.”

Kaladin’s heart sank.

“Surely they aren’t worth much to you,” Dalinar said. “Name your price.”

“I’m not looking to sell.”

“I will pay sixty emerald broams per man,” Dalinar said. That drew gasps from the watching soldiers on both sides. It was easily twenty times the price of a good slave.

“Not for a thousand each, Dalinar,” Sadeas said. Kaladin could see the deaths of his bridgemen in those eyes. “Take your soldiers and go. Leave my property here.”

“Do not press me on this,