The Way of Kings

“I’m sorry, Brightness,” Sadeas repeated, stammering. “The Parshendi overwhelmed your brother’s army. It was folly to work together. Our change in tactics was so threatening to the savages that they brought every soldier they could to this battle, surrounding us.”

“And so you left Dalinar?”

“We fought hard to reach him, but the numbers were simply overpowering. We had to retreat lest we lose ourselves as well! I would have continued fighting, save for the fact that I saw your brother fall with my own eyes, swarmed by Parshendi with hammers.” He grimaced. “They began carrying away chunks of bloodied Shardplate as prizes. Barbaric monsters.”

Navani felt cold. Cold, numb. How could this happen? After finally – finally – making that stone-headed man see her as a woman, rather than as a sister. And now…

And now…

She set her jaw against the tears. “I don’t believe it.”

“I understand that the news is difficult.” Sadeas waved for an attendant to fetch her a chair. “I wish I had not been forced to bring it to you. Dalinar and I… well, I have known him for many years, and while we did not always see the same sunrise, I considered him an ally. And a friend.” He cursed softly, looking eastward. “They will pay for this. I will see that they pay.”

He seemed so earnest that Navani found herself wavering. Poor Renarin, pale-faced and wide-eyed, seemed stunned beyond the means to speak. When the chair arrived, Navani refused it, so Renarin sat, earning a glance of disapproval from Sadeas. Renarin grasped his head in his hands, staring at the ground. He was trembling.

He’s highprince now, Navani realized.

No. No. He was only highprince if she accepted the idea that Dalinar was dead. And he wasn’t. He couldn’t be.

Sadeas had all of the bridges, she thought, looking down at the lumberyard.

Navani stepped out into the late-afternoon sunlight, feeling its heat on her skin. She walked up to her attendants. “Brushpen,” she said to Makal, who carried a satchel with Navani’s possessions. “The thickest one. And my burn ink.”

The short, plump woman opened the satchel, taking out a long brushpen with a knob of hog bristles on the end as wide as a man’s thumb. Navani took it. The ink followed.

Around her, the guards stared as Navani took the pen and dipped it into the blood-colored ink. She knelt, and began to paint on the stone ground.

Art was about creation. That was its soul, its essence. Creation and order. You took something disorganized – a splash of ink, an empty page – and you built something from it. Something from nothing. The soul of creation.

She felt the tears on her cheeks as she painted. Dalinar had no wife and no daughters; he had nobody to pray for him. And so, Navani painted a prayer onto the stones themselves, sending her attendants for more ink. She paced off the size of the glyph as she continued its border, making it enormous, spreading her ink onto the tan rocks.

Soldiers gathered around, Sadeas stepping from his canopy, watching her paint, her back to the sun as she crawled on the ground and furiously dipped her brushpen into the ink jars. What was a prayer, if not creation? Making something where nothing existed. Creating a wish out of despair, a plea out of anguish. Bowing one’s back before the Almighty, and forming humility from the empty pride of a human life.

Something from nothing. True creation.

Her tears mixed with the ink. She went through four jars. She crawled, holding her safehand to the ground, brushing the stones and smearing ink on her cheeks when she wiped the tears. When she finally finished, she knelt back on her knees before a glyph twenty paces long, emblazoned as if in blood. The wet ink reflected sunlight, and she fired it with a candle; the ink was made to burn whether wet or dry. The flames burned across the length of the prayer, killing it and sending its soul to the Almighty.

She bowed her head before the prayer. It was only a single character, but a complex one. Thath. Justice.

Men watched quietly, as if afraid of spoiling her solemn wish. A cold breeze began blowing, whipping at pennants and cloaks. The prayer went out, but that was fine. It wasn’t meant to burn long.

“Brightlord Sadeas!” an anxious voice called.

Navani looked up. Soldiers parted, making way for a runner in green. He hurried up to Sadeas, beginning to speak, but the highprince grabbed the man by the shoulder in a Shardplate grip and pointed, gesturing for his guards to make a perimeter. He pulled the messenger beneath the canopy.

Navani continued to kneel beside her prayer. The flames left a black scar in the shape of the glyph on the ground. Someone stepped up beside her – Renarin. He went to one knee, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Mashala.”