Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,527

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