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Elhokar began shouting in panic. “Guards! To me! Guards!”
Nobody came. Dalinar kicked again, and Elhokar cursed, catching his boot. Dalinar grunted, but bent down and grabbed Elhokar by the arm, then yanked him to his feet, tossing him toward the side of the room. The king stumbled on the rug, crashing through a chair. Round lengths of wood scattered, splinters spraying out.
Wide-eyed, Elhokar scrambled to his feet. Dalinar advanced on him.
“What has gone wrong with you, Uncle?” Elhokar yelled. “You’re mad! Guards! Assassin in the king’s chamber! Guards!” Elhokar tried to run for the door, but Dalinar threw his shoulder against the king, tossing the younger man to the ground again.
Elhokar rolled, but got a hand under himself and climbed to his knees, the other hand to the side. A puff of mist appeared in it as he summoned his Blade.
Dalinar kicked the king’s hand just as the Shardblade dropped into it. The blow knocked the Blade free, and it dissolved back to mist immediately.
Elhokar frantically swung a fist at Dalinar, but Dalinar caught it, then reached down and hauled the king to his feet. He pulled Elhokar forward and slammed his fist into the king’s breastplate. Elhokar struggled, but Dalinar repeated the move, smashing his gauntlet against the Plate, cracking the steel casings around his fingers, making the king grunt.
The next blow shattered Elhokar’s breastplate in an explosion of molten shards.
Dalinar dropped the king to the floor. Elhokar struggled to rise again, but the breastplate was a focus for the Shardplate’s power. Missing it left arms and legs heavy. He went to one knee beside the squirming king. Elhokar’s Shardblade formed again, but Dalinar grabbed the king’s wrist and smashed it against the stone floor, knocking the Blade free yet again. It vanished into mist.
“Guards!” Elhokar squealed. “Guards, guards, guards!”
“They won’t come, Elhokar,” Dalinar said softly. “They’re my men, and I left them with orders not to enter—or let anyone else enter—no matter what they heard. Even if that included pleas for help from you.”
Elhokar fell silent.
“They are my men, Elhokar,” Dalinar repeated. “I trained them. I placed them there. They’ve always been loyal to me.”
“Why, Uncle? What are you doing? Please, tell me.” He was nearly weeping.
Dalinar leaned down, getting close enough to smell the king’s breath. “The girth on your horse during the hunt,” Dalinar said quietly. “You cut it yourself, didn’t you?”
Elhokar’s eyes grew wider.
“The saddles were switched before you came to my camp,” Dalinar said. “You did that because you didn’t want to ruin your favorite saddle when it flew free of the horse. You were planning for it to happen, you made it happen. That’s why you’ve been so certain that the girth was cut.”
Cringing, Elhokar nodded. “Someone was trying to kill me, but you wouldn’t believe! I… I worried it might be you! So I decided… I…”
“You cut your own strap,” Dalinar said, “to create a visible, obvious-seeming attempt on your life. Something that would get me or Sadeas to investigate.”
Elhokar hesitated, then nodded again.
Dalinar closed his eyes, breathing out slowly. “Don’t you realize what you did, Elhokar? You brought suspicion on me from across the camps! You gave Sadeas an opportunity to destroy me.” He opened his eyes, looking down at the king.
“I had to know,” Elhokar whispered. “I couldn’t trust anyone.” He groaned beneath Dalinar’s weight.
“What of the cracked gemstones in your Shardplate? Did you place those too?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you did uncover something,” Dalinar said with a grunt. “I guess you can’t be completely blamed.”
“Then you’ll let me up?”
“No.” Dalinar leaned down farther. He laid a hand against the king’s chest. Elhokar stopped struggling, looking up in terror. “If I push,” Dalinar said, “you die. Your ribs crack like twigs, your heart is smashed like a grape. Nobody would blame me. They all whisper that the Blackthorn should have taken the throne for himself years ago. Your guard is loyal to me. There would be nobody to avenge you. Nobody would care.”
Elhokar breathed out as Dalinar pressed his hand down just slightly.
“Do you understand?” Dalinar asked quietly.
“No!”
Dalinar sighed, then released the younger man and stood up. Elhokar inhaled with a gasp.
“Your paranoia may be unfounded,” Dalinar said, “or it may be well founded. Either way, you need to understand something. I am not your enemy.”
Elhokar frowned. “So you’re not going to kill me?”
“Storms, no! I love you like a son, boy.”
Elhokar rubbed his chest. “You… have very odd paternal instincts.”
“I spent years following you,” Dalinar said. “I gave you my loyalty, my devotion, and my counsel. I swore myself to you—promising myself, vowing to myself, that I would never covet Gavilar’s throne. All to keep my heart loyal. Despite this, you don’t trust me. You pull a stunt like that one with the girth, implicating me, giving your own enemies position against you without knowing it.”
Dalinar stepped toward the king. Elhokar cringed.
“Well, now you know,” Dalinar said, voice hard. “If I’d wanted to kill you, Elhokar, I could have done it a dozen times over. A hundred times over. It appears you won’t accept loyalty and devotion as proof of my honesty. Well, if you act like a child, you get treated like one. You know now, for a fact, that I don’t want you dead. For if I did, I would have crushed your chest and been done with it!”
He locked eyes with the king. “Now,” Dalinar said, “do you understand?”
Slowly, Elhokar nodded.
“Good,” Dalinar said. “Tomorrow, you’re going to name me Highprince of War.”
“What?”
“Sadeas betrayed me today,” Dalinar said. He walked over to the broken desk, kicking at the pieces. The king’s seal rolled out of its customary drawer. He picked it up. “Nearly six thousand of my men were slaughtered. Adolin and I barely survived.”
“What?” Elhokar said, forcing himself up to a sitting position. “That’s impossible!”
“Far from it,” Dalinar said, looking at his nephew. “He saw a chance to pull out, letting the Parshendi destroy us. So he did it. A very Alethi thing to do. Ruthless, yet still allowing him to feign a sense of honor or morality.”
“So… you expect me to bring him to trial?”
“No. Sadeas is no worse, and no better, than the others. Any of the highprinces would betray their fellows, if they saw a chance to do it without risking themselves. I intend to find a way to unite them in more than just name. Somehow. Tomorrow, once you name me Highprince of War, I will give my Plate to Renarin to fulfill a promise. I’ve already given away my Blade to fulfill a different one.”
He walked closer, meeting Elhokar’s eyes again, then gripped the king’s seal in his hand. “As Highprince of War, I will enforce the Codes in all ten camps. Then I’ll coordinate the war eff ort directly, determining which armies get to go on which plateau assaults. All gemhearts will be won by the Throne, then distributed as spoils by you. We’ll change this from a competition to a real war, and I’ll use it to turn these ten armies of ours— and their leaders—into real soldiers.”
