As Dalinar made his way toward Sebarial’s oncoming procession, Amaram rode up, wearing his Shardplate, his golden cloak trailing behind. He had a fine warhorse, the hulking breed used in Shinovar to pull heavy carts. It still looked like a pony beside Gallant.
“Is that Sebarial?” Amaram asked, pointing at the oncoming force.
“Apparently.”
“Should we send him away?”
“Why would we do that?”
“He’s untrustworthy,” Amaram said.
“He keeps his word, so far as I know,” Dalinar said. “That is more than I can say for most.”
“He keeps his word because he never promises anything.”
Dalinar, Roion, and Amaram trotted up to Sebarial, who stepped out of a carriage at the front of the army. A carriage. For a war procession. Well, it wouldn’t slow Dalinar any more than all of these scribes. In fact, he should probably have a few more carriages made ready. It would be nice for Navani to have a way to ride in comfort once the days wore long.
“Sebarial?” Dalinar asked.
“Dalinar!” the plump man said, shading his eyes. “You look surprised.”
“I am.”
“Ha! That’s reason enough to have come. Wouldn’t you say, Palona?”
Dalinar could barely make out the woman sitting in the carriage, wearing an enormous fashionable hat and a sleek gown.
“You brought your mistress?” Dalinar asked.
“Sure. Why not? If we fail out there, I’ll be dead and she’ll be out on her ear. She insisted, anyway. Storming woman.” Sebarial walked up right beside Gallant. “I’ve got a feeling about you, Dalinar old man. I think it’s wise to stay close to you. Something’s going to happen out there on the Plains, and opportunity rises like the dawn.”
Roion sniffed.
“Roion,” Sebarial said, “shouldn’t you be hiding under a table somewhere?”
“Perhaps I should, if only to get away from you.”
Sebarial laughed. “Well said, you old turtle! Maybe this trip won’t be a complete bore. Onward, then! To glory and some such nonsense. If we find riches, remember that I get my part! I got here before Aladar. That has to count for something.”
“Before…” Dalinar said with a start. He twisted around, looking back toward the warcamp bordering his own to the north.
There, an army wearing Aladar’s colors of white and dark green spilled out onto the Shattered Plains.
“Now that,” Amaram said, “I really didn’t expect.”
* * *
“We could try a coup,” Ialai said.
Sadeas turned in his saddle toward his wife. Their guards scattered the hills around them, distant enough to be out of earshot as the highprince and his wife enjoyed a gentle “ride through the hills.” In reality, the two of them had wanted a closer look at Sebarial’s expansions out here west of the warcamps, where he was setting up full-scale farming operations.
Ialai rode with eyes forward. “Dalinar will be gone from the camp, and with him Roion, his only supporter. We could seize the Pinnacle, execute the king, and take the throne.”
Sadeas turned his horse, looking eastward over the warcamps. He could just barely make out Dalinar’s army gathering distantly on the Shattered Plains.
A coup. One last step, a slap in the face of old Gavilar. He’d do it. Storm it, he would.
Except for the fact that he didn’t need to.
“Dalinar has committed to this foolish expedition,” Sadeas said. “He’ll be dead soon, surrounded and destroyed on those Plains. We don’t need a coup; if I’d known that he would actually do this, we wouldn’t have even needed your assassin.”
Ialai looked away. Her assassin had failed. She considered it a strong fault on her part, though the plan had been executed with exactness. These things were never certain. Unfortunately, now that they’d tried and failed, they’d need to be careful about…
Sadeas turned his horse, frowning as a messenger approached on horseback. The youth was allowed to pass the guards and proffered a letter to Ialai.
She read it, and her disposition darkened.
“You aren’t going to like this,” she said, looking up.
* * *
Dalinar kicked Gallant into motion, tearing across the landscape, startling plants into their dens. He passed his army in a few minutes of hard riding and approached the new force.
Aladar sat on horseback here, surveying his army. He wore a fashionable uniform, black with maroon stripes on the sleeves and a matching stock at the neck. Soldiers swarmed around him. He had one of the largest forces on the Plains—storms, with Dalinar’s numbers reduced, Aladar’s army might be the largest.
He was also one of Sadeas’s greatest supporters.
“How are we going to do this, Dalinar?” Aladar asked as Dalinar trotted up. “Do we all go out on our own, crossing different plateaus but meeting back up, or do we march in an enormous column?”
“Why?” Dalinar asked. “Why have you come?”
“You made such passionate arguments all along, and now you act surprised that someone listened?”
“Not someone. You.”
Aladar pressed his lips to a line, finally turning to meet Dalinar’s eyes. “Roion and Sebarial, the two biggest cowards in our midst, are marching to war. Am I to stay behind and let them seek the fulfillment of the Vengeance Pact without me?”
“The other highprinces seem content to do so.”
“I suspect they are better at lying to themselves than I am.”
Suddenly, all of Aladar’s vehement arguments—at the forefront of the faction against Dalinar—took on a different cast. He was arguing to convince himself, Dalinar thought. He was worried all along that I was right.
“Sadeas will not be pleased,” Dalinar said.
“Sadeas can storm off. He doesn’t own me.” Aladar fiddled with his reins for a moment. “He wants to, though. I can feel it in the deals he forces me to make, the knives he slowly places at everyone’s throats. He’d have us all as his slaves by the end of this.”
“Aladar,” Dalinar said, moving his horse right up alongside the other man’s so the two of them faced each other directly. He held Aladar’s eyes. “Tell me Sadeas didn’t put you up to this. Tell me this isn’t part of another plot to abandon or betray me.”
Aladar smiled. “You think I’d just tell you if it were?”
“I would hear a promise from your own lips.”
“And you’ll trust that promise? How well did that serve you, Dalinar, when Sadeas professed his friendship?”
“A promise, Aladar.”
Aladar met his eyes. “I think the things you say about Alethkar are naive at best, and undoubtedly impossible. Those delusions of yours aren’t a sign of madness, as Sadeas wants us to think—they’re just the dreams of a man who wants desperately to believe in something, something foolish. ‘Honor’ is a word applied to the actions of men from the past who have had their lives scrubbed clean by historians.” He hesitated. “But… storm me for a fool, Dalinar, I wish they could be true. I came for myself, not Sadeas. I won’t betray you. Even if Alethkar can’t ever be what you want, we can at least crush the Parshendi and avenge old Gavilar. It’s just the right thing to do.”