POV: dalinar
Summary
Dalinar stands at the great window of one of Urithiru's upper amphitheaters, hands behind his back, while a clean white sun burns above the cloudline. The half-moon room descends in seats to a speaking floor below, every chair paired with a small pedestal beside it — for the Radiants' spren, the Stormfather tells him. Dalinar asks why the old Radiants betrayed humanity; the Stormfather answers only that they were no better and no worse than men, and that some things are better left forgotten — a barb at Dalinar's own missing wife that lands hard.
Below him sits the team Navani has assembled to write to the kings of Roshar: Aladar and his daughter May, Kalami at the spanreeds, Teshav with two senior wards to translate, and Navani in the front row in green, shoes off, ankles crossed. Dalinar opens with Azir, the most important capital in the west and home to the Oathgate he most needs. Yanagawn the First — the fifteen-year-old Prime Aqasix — answers through a wall of ministers, careful and ornamental: thanks Dalinar for the storm warning, enters his name into the imperial annals, and dodges every invitation to come visit the tower.
Dalinar tries again on the Voidbringers and gets a real answer at last: the empire's transformed parshmen are not assaulting Azir — they are negotiating, exchanging written contracts with detailed demands and outrageous stipulations. The average parshman cannot write, the reply admits, but some among them are stronger, speak differently, and seem to lead. Dalinar pushes for a face-to-face meeting through the Oathgate. The Azish reply with an affidavit, stamped and signed by stormwardens, certifying that the device — when not being operated — does not operate as a portal. Navani reads it half delighted, half exasperated; the Azish are simply not going to be pushed. The conversation closes with an explicit walk-back of the word *negotiating*. A mistake of translation, they write. Farewell, highprince.
Queen Fen of Thaylenah comes through next on her own spanreed, and announces herself by calling Dalinar an old brute and telling him to stop spreading chull scat. Navani notes this as a good sign — formal courtesy from Fen means she is hiding something. Thaylen City is in pieces: the storm broke their aqueducts, their sewers, their docks, and flattened their outer market, all in the middle of the Weeping and without a single parshman left to help rebuild. Her transformed parshmen stole every seaworthy hull in the harbor — naval ships, traders, sloops — and simply sailed away in a fleet. Dalinar has to ask her twice to confirm she means *sailed*. Fen is no more interested in a grand conference of kings than the Azish were; she has a city to rebuild.
Dalinar offers her troops to help with the reconstruction, knowing it sounds like an invasion. Aladar warns him not to give away the entire keys to the Radiants — leverage matters — but Dalinar also tells Fen to begin looking for budding Knights Radiant in her own city, since the Oathgate there needs a Radiant on her end too. The Oathgate mechanism, Navani explains for the room's benefit, is locked at both ends: a Radiant has to undo their side here, and another has to reach the destination city and undo its side there, before either end can throw the portal open. Fen's reply slides back into queenspeak and they have lost her for the day. The princess of Yezier and the prince of Tashikk are no warmer.
When Dalinar climbs out of the amphitheater, Elhokar is waiting in the doorway. Without preamble the king asks why no one will listen. Does Dalinar's nephew think he is going to take their thrones? Elhokar does not wait to be reassured: he walks down to the speaking floor, calls his mother and Teshav as witnesses, kneels, and swears that as Alethkar is his, he is Dalinar's. Dalinar hauls him to his feet, refuses to let him abdicate with a flourish, and asks what he actually means by the oath. After a moment Elhokar works it out: he stays king of Alethkar; Dalinar becomes highking of Urithiru and the Shattered Plains; the Alethi highprinces in those lands answer to Dalinar directly, but at home in Alethkar they go through their king. Navani silently warns the guards never to repeat a word of it.
Then Elhokar surprises him again. He wants to lead the team that goes to Kholinar to reopen the palace Oathgate — and he wants to take the bridgeman with him. Not because he expects to succeed, but because if he fails, he wants the hero on hand to save the city anyway; and while he tries, he wants to watch the man and figure out what makes someone follow him. Dalinar is bemused into agreement. Elhokar leaves with a spring in his step, asking for every Kholinar report they have and for a Radiant to fly him there as soon as one comes back.
Dalinar is settling into a Radiant's chair, exhausted, when Kalami's spanreed starts again. The note is from Taravangian of Jah Keved and Kharbranth — the slow, kindly old king widely thought a little simple. He calls Dalinar's offer generous and his advice wise. One of his own people has come forward as a Radiant under instruction from her spren; they will test the Oathgate in his city with her Shardblade tonight. If it works, he will come to Urithiru in all haste and add his forces to Dalinar's in a joint defense of Roshar. The words warm Dalinar through. Someone has listened. Someone is coming. If he has Taravangian beside him, at least he will not be alone.