Death Wears White
POV: szeth
Summary
The first name on the Masked Master's list is the Iri king. Szeth-son-son-Vallano spins between the two corridor guards outside the great doors of the feast hall in the Iri palace — their eyes burning out in the same heartbeat — and slashes the hinges and latch of the doors with his Blade in two clean strokes. He breathes in Stormlight from a pouch at his belt until the air around him goes faintly luminous, and kicks the freed doors across the hall.
Inside, the room of chandeliers and clattering plates, Szeth begins the slaughter. He leaps from feast-table to feast-table with the Blade in one hand, listening to each scream and hating himself for each one of them with the precision of an accountant. Lashings carry him over the household guards as if he were running down a steep slope rather than running across a floor; men's legs die out from under them where his Blade passes. The hall empties around the king in a widening ring of flame and falling bodies. The king flees outside into the courtyard.
In the courtyard he raises a half-shard shield — the Iri's national pride, a fabrial-reinforced piece of metalwork that is supposed to be proof against any weapon. Szeth shatters it in two strikes. A double Basic Lashing carries him down out of the air with the weight of three men onto the king, breaking the king's sword-arm beneath him and pinning him face-up against the cobbles. The king whispers up at the faceless mask above him — *What are you?* — and Szeth answers, quietly, *Death.* He drives the Blade point-first through the king's face into the rock below.