Words of Radiance

“Sadeas,” Adolin said, turning back. “I wasn’t aware that you had arrived.” Storming man. He’d ignored Father all those months, and now he decided to obey?

The highprince strolled up the hallway, passing Adolin. “This place is remarkable. Remarkable indeed.”

“So you acknowledge that my father was right,” Adolin said. “That his visions are true. The Voidbringers have returned, and you are made a fool.”

“I will admit,” Sadeas said, “there is more fight left to your father than I’d once feared. A remarkable plan. Contacting the Parshendi, working out this deal with them. They put on quite a show, I hear. It certainly convinced Aladar.”

“You can’t possibly believe it was all a show.”

“Oh please. You deny that he had a Parshendi among his own guard? Isn’t it convenient that these new ‘Radiants’ include the head of Dalinar’s guard and your own betrothed?”

Sadeas smiled, and Adolin saw the truth. No, he didn’t believe this, but it was the lie he would tell. He would start the whisperings again, trying to undermine Dalinar.

“Why?” Adolin asked, stepping up to him. “Why are you like this, Sadeas?”

“Because,” Sadeas said with a sigh, “it has to happen. You can’t have an army with two generals, son. Your father and I, we’re two old whitespines who both want a kingdom. It’s him or me. We’ve been pointed that way since Gavilar died.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“It does. Your father will never trust me again, Adolin, and you know it.” Sadeas’s face darkened. “I will take this from him. This city, these discoveries. It’s just a setback.”

Adolin stood for a moment, staring Sadeas in the eyes, and then something finally snapped.

That’s it.

Adolin grabbed Sadeas by the throat with his unwounded hand, slamming the highprince back against the wall. The look of utter shock on Sadeas’s face amused a part of Adolin, the very small part that wasn’t completely, totally, and irrevocably enraged.

He squeezed, choking off a cry for help as he moved to pin Sadeas back against the wall, grabbing the man’s arm with his own. But Sadeas was a trained soldier. He tried to break the hold, taking Adolin by the arm and twisting.

Adolin kept hold, but lost his balance. The two of them fell in a jumble, twisting, rolling. This wasn’t the calculated intensity of the dueling grounds, or even the methodical butchery of the battlefield.

This was two sweating, straining men, both on the edge of panic. Adolin was younger, but he was still bruised from the fight with the Assassin in White.

He managed to come up on top, and as Sadeas struggled to yell, Adolin slammed the man’s head down against the stone floor to daze him. Breathing in gasps, Adolin grabbed his side knife. He plunged the knife toward Sadeas’s face, though the man managed to get his hands up to grab Adolin by the wrist.

Adolin grunted, forcing the knife closer, clutched in his off hand. He brought the right in anyway, the wrist flaring with pain, as he leaned it against the crossguard. Sweat prickled on Sadeas’s brow, the knife’s tip touching the end of his left nostril.

“My father,” Adolin said with a grunt, sweat from his nose dripping down onto the blade of the knife, “thinks I’m a better man than he is.” He strained, and felt Sadeas’s grip weaken. “Unfortunately for you, he’s wrong.”

Sadeas whimpered.

With a surge, Adolin forced the blade up past Sadeas’s nose and into the eye socket—piercing the eye like a ripe berry—then rammed it home into the brain.

Sadeas shook for a moment, blood pooling around the blade as Adolin worked it to be certain.

A second later, a Shardblade appeared beside Sadeas—his father’s Shardblade. Sadeas was dead.

Adolin stumbled back to not get blood on his clothing, though his cuffs were already stained. Storms. Had he just done that? Had he just murdered a highprince?

Dazed, he stared at that weapon. Neither man had summoned his Blade for the fight. The weapons might be worth a fortune, but they’d do less good than a rock in such a close-quarters fight.

Thoughts coming more clearly, Adolin picked up the weapon and stumbled away. He ditched the Blade out a window, dropping it down into one of the planterlike outcroppings of the terrace below. It might be safe there.

After that, he had the presence of mind to cut off his cuffs, remove his chalk mark on the wall by scraping it free with his own Blade, and walk as far away as he could before finding one of his scouting parties and pretending he’d been in that area all along.

* * *

Dalinar finally figured out the locking mechanism, then pushed on the metal door at the end of the stairwell. The door was set into the ceiling here, the steps running straight up to it.

The trapdoor refused to open, despite being unlocked. He’d oiled the parts. Why wasn’t it moving?