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Eleven years before the present, Dalinar marches on Rathalas a second time. There are not enough boats for a true amphibious assault, so he comes overland from the west, sends Adolin back to Kholinar, and orders Sadeas to converge on the Rift from the east. Evi travels with him in a covered carriage scented with the incense of glyphward prayers; she weeps when she thinks he cannot hear and composes herself the moment she steps outside. The road runs through rockbud plains so well-watered that the stems are waist-high and the vines as thick as a man's wrist. Her quiet petitions to the Heralds for his marriage gnaw at him in a way that the constant arguments with Gavilar never have.

He stops the carriage on impulse and climbs in beside her. He has come, he says, because he cannot ride into battle while she thinks him a monster. She tells him gently that she has not been praying for herself; she has been praying for the countrymen he is about to kill — men no different from him save for which city they were born in. The boy Tanalan, she reminds him, lives because he once chose to spare him. *A sign of humanity, Dalinar.* She does not want to see him kill today. *Don't feed it.* The line lands harder than he expects. The hunger he has always considered a familiar companion — the Thrill he and his fellow officers count as a reward of war — has, in her mouth, become a thing she can see in his eyes.

At the vanguard's muster ground he finds Teleb wearing the Plate that had once belonged to Adolin — which had once belonged to Evi. Teleb reports that a large guarded caravan slipped out of the Rift earlier; his scouts trailed it but did not engage. Dalinar orders the vanguard into formation behind him, climbs into his armour, and rides alone out onto the killing field with Oathbringer resting on his shoulder. He waits, deliberately within bowshot, until the city gates finally creak open.

A delegation rides out: a bald man with a purple birthmark covering half his face, and a younger horseman with violet eyes whom Dalinar recognises as the boy he had spared in the garden retreat above the chasm — Tanalan grown to manhood, riding his father's seat. Dalinar dismounts, dismisses his Blade, and asks him to walk. Their parley is candid almost to the point of theatre. *You have nothing I want to hear, Blackthorn,* Tanalan says. Dalinar tells him that if the city forces him to fight, he will leave widows and corpses where Rathalas now stands. Then, because of the tears of a good woman, he offers an alternative: a duel, Tanalan in borrowed Plate and Blade, surrender of the city if Dalinar wins, his father's Shards returned if he loses.

Tanalan refuses outright — he knows he cannot beat the Blackthorn in single combat — but salutes him for the offer. Then, almost in afterthought, he says one of the loyal Alethi highprinces is arming the Rift from the shadows. The envoy who brought the latest shipment was at the city not an hour ago. With his advisor's silent nod, Tanalan sketches the larger move out loud: pretend the rebellion was a Kholin ruse all along, a false flag staged to flush traitors out. Rathalas surrenders without fighting, Tanalan is confirmed as a highlord — possibly given the traitor's seat — and a witness will testify before the king. Dalinar, feeling the excitement of an unforeseen accord, agrees. *Who?* he demands. *Brightlord Torol Sadeas.*

Then Teleb's scouts return from trailing the caravan. They had not been able to identify its colours, but they had seen a man in Shardplate among the escort. Plate makes no sense for a discreet supply train; it does make sense for a flanking force in disguise. Dalinar does not entirely believe Tanalan, but Sadeas secretly seeding a Shardbearer at his back is the sort of betrayal he cannot leave to a junior officer. He hands command to Teleb, orders the vanguard onto the walls without displacing Tanalan's men, has the rest of the army camp back in the field, and pulls a hundred of his fastest elites to ride east with him at once. To Evi, waiting hopefully in the press of activity, he says only that she may have brought the Rift over without bloodshed — and that she should write to his brother and warn him that one of their closest allies may have betrayed them. Then he rides south to find out for himself.