POV: dalinar
Summary
Dalinar stands at attention on his Urithiru balcony, hands locked behind his back, refusing to bow even an inch under the weight of what he has remembered. Surgeons and family have decided his collapse on the Oathgate platform was heart trouble or fatigue; he knows better. The memories of the Rift — the burning city, the children pleading for mercy, Evi — sit so close to the surface that any softening of his posture, he is convinced, will let them crush him. Navani tries to coax him inside, then sighs and returns to the common room.
Word from Kholinar came hours ago through a spanreed that somehow still worked: an assault on the palace, a push for the Oathgate. Outside on one of Urithiru's Oathgate platforms, the gathered Kholin, Aladar, and Roion armies wait to be transferred to the capital. Four hours have passed with no further news. Dalinar stares at the empty sky-shelf of clouds and rock outside the tower and tries to make himself into a soldier — even as he admits, privately, that he never really was one. The Blackthorn never fought in clean ranks; he waged war as a riot.
He thinks of the legend around him — the Blackthorn who would fight you fair, brutal but honest — and of how much of it now reads as fraud. He had condemned Amaram for killing a squad of men to take a Shardblade; he himself burned a city for less. He asks the Stormfather why he was bonded at all instead of a just man, and the Stormfather rumbles back that he has burned cities himself — that only since the bond has he begun to see pain in such acts. Dalinar suspects the cursed return of his memories may yet cost him the bond, and is honest enough to recognise the cowardice in wishing the forgetting back. He cannot yet remember his visit to the Nightwatcher, but he knows what he asked of her: relief, a clean conscience, a license to pretend.
He retreats inside to the common room. Navani, Teshav, May Aladar, Aladar, and General Khal sit around the silent spanreed with battle maps of Kholinar spread between them — strategy without information. Taravangian keeps to his usual seat by the heating fabrial, a red ruby glowing instead of a fire. Dalinar lowers himself stiffly beside him. He thanks the old king for taking yesterday's tour of the tower in his place when the Azish delegation arrived; Navani reports they left charmed by Taravangian and planning a return visit on the matter of a coalition.
The two men talk quietly across the fabrial. Dalinar asks whether Taravangian has ever come to the sudden realisation that he is not the man others believe him to be; the king answers that the harder version of the question is realising you are not the man you believe yourself to be. Dalinar returns to a thought experiment they once traded — the leader forced to hang one innocent or free three murderers — and asks how a man lives after discovering he chose wrong. Taravangian answers with the chapter's title: *someone has to fall, that others may stand.* Someone must bear the blood of the wronged, must trudge through dirty water so the rest may stay clean. The phrasing is close to things Dalinar has said and believed for years, but stripped of any hope.
Across the room the spanreed suddenly begins to write. Navani gasps and covers her mouth; Teshav goes pale; May Aladar sits back as if struck. The pen cuts off mid-sentence and tumbles to the page. Dalinar demands to know what it says, and has to demand again before Navani can answer: the capital has fallen. The ardent reports Voidbringer forces in possession of the palace; the message broke off as they reached him. Teshav adds the rest: the team Dalinar sent has apparently failed, the remnants of the Wall Guard are captured, the city is lost, and there is no word on the king, on Adolin, or on the Radiants. Dalinar sinks back into his chair. *Almighty above,* Taravangian whispers beside him, grey eyes lit by the fabrial. *I am so, so sorry, Dalinar.*