The Way of Kings: Chapter 69

Navani barges through Sadeas’s warcamp, struggling to maintain her composure in the wake of the news from the plateau assault. The guards at the camp are unable to keep her out because they are forbidden from touching the King's mother. She sees Sadeas in his untouched Shardplate consulting with officers and approaches his canopy, where guards at last manage to halt her progress. Navani hasn’t bothered to announce herself, and now Sadeas is stalling her to collect himself.
As she waits, Navani reflects on a time when she would have played this game of propriety perfectly. She was a natural at court, but all it got her was "a dead husband whom she’d never loved and a 'privileged' position in court that amounted to being put out to pasture." She’s considering a screaming fit when she spots Renarin approaching.
The young man asks her if she’s heard anything, and she fills him in on the rumors of a rout. Sadeas allows them to approach at last, and tells Navani that Dalinar has died. Navani and Renarin reel, but Navani collects herself and orders him to explain. Sadeas delivers a number of lies, that the Persendi overwhelmed Dalinar's army and he personally witnessed him fall. He swears vengeance for Dalinar with such earnestness that Navani almost believes him. She looks at Renarin and thinks that he is now a Highprince, but shakes that off.
Navani calls for a brush pen and her "burn ink," and begins painting. Dalinar has no daughters and no wife, no one to burn a prayer for him, so she makes one, losing herself in the act of creation. When she finishes, Sadeas’s warcamp has been adorned with a twenty-pace thath glyph: Justice. She burns it, sending the soul of the prayer to the Almighty.
The quiet of the watching crowd is broken when a messenger appears for Sadeas. The Highprince takes him aside, and Renarin joins Navani. When Sadeas returns, furious, they follow the line of his vision and see "a creeping line of men limping back toward the warcamps, led by a mounted man in slate-grey armor."
Dalinar approaches Sadeas’s warcamp riding Gallant and clad in his Shardplate, hastily patched with the remaining Stormlight from the army and augmented with Adolin’s gauntlet. Dalinar wants nothing more than to take up his Blade and kill Sadeas, but knows he won’t. Alethkar takes precedence over revenge. He orders his wounded to be taken back to the Kholin warcamp, then to mobilize the remaining companies, prepare them for anything.
Dalinar turns and approaches the bridgemen, led by Kaladin. He suggests they accompany the wounded back to his camp. When Kaladin verifies that Dalinar plans to confront Sadeas, he says he’s coming too. Kaladin is no more successful in sending his own men away, and Dalinar is struck again by their discipline.
As they ride into the warcamp, he sees the crowd gathered around the glyph, and picks out Navani and Renarin among them. Both Renarin and Navani are overjoyed to see them, although Navani plays it cool at first. When he realizes how terrified Navani was, Dalinar grabs her in a hug, and tells her of his revelations on the battlefield, and tells her he’s realized something important. He says he realized that he spent too much of his life worrying about what others thought, that was worry wasted and that he was pleased how he spent his life. He also says that he faced eternity and saw peace there which would change how he lived--"The end was peace, but living that is still a tempest". He needs to learn why in his verison Nohadon rejected his suggestion to write down his wisdom. He says there's something there that he needs to learn, he doesn't know exactly what but he's close to figuring it out. 
Dalinar tells Adolin to keep his Blade as mist and the men calm, and approaches Sadeas. He demands to know why Sadeas betrayed him, and receives an evil villain speech in return. Apparently Sadeas thought that this betrayal was necessary to fulfill his oath to defend Elhokar and Alethkar, but he’s also in it for the power. Typical. He also reveals that he never tried to frame Dalinar for the saddle girth incident because it wouldn’t work. No one would believe he’d try to kill Elhokar, especially not Elhokar. The King apparently knew Dalinar didn’t do it. Dalinar ends their conversation by thanking Sadeas for showing him that he’s still a threat worth trying to remove. 
Kaladin watches this conversation from the sidelines. Matal, in turn, watches him. Kaladin draws grim satisfaction from the fact that Matal didn’t kill him in time, but is mostly concerned that he doesn’t know what’s happening to him, and exhausted by the Stormlight drain. He’s intent on seeing things through.
The quiet conference between Sadeas and Dalinar breaks up, and Sadeas tells Dalinar to take his men back to camp, since their alliance has proved unfeasible. Dalinar says he’s taking the bridgemen with him, but Sadeas refuses to let them go. Kaladin watches with a sinking sensation, knowing that another promise is about to be broken. Dalinar bargains, offering to pay whatever price Sadeas named, but Sadeas insists that nothing will satisfy him. Dalinar tells Sadeas not to press him on this point, and the tension that had been easing between the armies resurges. Sadeas demands that Dalinar leave, and Kaladin turns away, hope dying. As he does, he hears gasps of surprise, and he whips back to see Dalinar standing with Shardblade in hand. The soldiers begin drawing weapons, but Dalinar takes a single step forward and plunges the Blade into the ground between him and Sadeas. He offers it in trade for all the bridgemen.
Sadeas is dumbstruck, but contemptuously takes the deal. Kaladin is stunned, and hurries after Dalinar, begging to know what happened.
Dalinar then proceeds to take care of his other business.
Dalinar approaches Elhokar in his palace, clad in Shardplate. He interrupts the King's pleasantries by viciously assaulting him, kicking and punching his breastplate apart, leaving his helpless nephew on the ground. Elhokar calls for his guards, but Dalinar tells him that those guards are his, men, trained by and loyal to him. No one is coming to save him.
Dalinar accuses Elhokar of cutting his own girth, and forces the confession. Dalinar goes on to say that, in his attention-seeking attempt to manufacture an investigation, Elhokar gave Sadeas the opportunity to destroy him. He determines, however, that since Elhokar didn’t put the cracked gemstones in his Plate, there may be an actual assassin out there. That doesn’t, however, mean he’ll let Elhokar up now.
Dalinar makes it clear how easily he could kill Elhokar. He’s strong enough and skilled enough that he could have killed him at any time, and no one would have stopped him. Most of the Alethi would even have praised the choice, been satisfied that the Blackthorn was finally taking over. "Your paranoia may be unfounded," Dalinar says, "or it may be well founded. Either way, you need to understand something. I am not your enemy."
Elhokar asks if this means Dalinar isn’t going to kill him, and Dalinar replies that he loves Elhokar like a son. Elhokar points out legitimate grievances with Dalinar’s parenting instincts, but Dalinar says he was doing this to demonstrate that he doesn’t want Elhokar dead.
Dalinar tells him how things are going to go now. Elhokar is going to name him Highprince of War, they’re going to corral the Highprinces, treat them like children until they can become adults. They’ll enforce the Codes, determine which armies go on which plateau assaults, take all gemhearts as spoil, and distribute them personally. Elhokar is worried they’ll kill them for this, but Dalinar has ideas about his guard detail.
Elhokar points out that Dalinar used to think it was wrong to force the Codes on people, but Dalinar says that was before the Almighty lied to him. He was treating the Highprinces like reasonable adults, rather than bickering children, but now that he sees them as they truly are, different tactics are called for. They’re going to turn Alethkar into a place of unity and honor, or die trying.
- by Carl Engle-Laird
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