The Journey
POV: dalinar
Summary
In the family sitting room of the Kholin complex Adolin reclines on the long couch with a hand behind his head and admits — with the wry honesty he saves for arguments his father has already won — that he hates being wrong almost as much as he hates being right about everything. The joint Tower plan with Sadeas may, against every instinct he has ever had about the man, be the correct call. He does not have to like Sadeas to march beside him. The math is what the math is.
The two of them go over the terms one more time. Sadeas's scribes and Dalinar's have finalised the joint plan in three iterations of spanreed correspondence. The two armies will assemble at Sadeas's staging plateau and march together; the smaller, faster Sadeas force, with its full complement of bridges, will go on ahead and engage first; Dalinar's larger and slower force will catch up into position and close the bracket around the Parshendi on the Tower from the other side. Both highprinces will commit reserves. Neither will hold back his elite Shardbearers. The contract specifies the split of any gemheart down to the chip.
As they part on the night of the agreement Sadeas's gold-embroidered scarf flutters in the hall draft, and he asks Dalinar for one extra concession he had not put in writing — a Kholin clerk and a fair copy of Gavilar's personal annotated edition of The Way of Kings. *It may amuse me to hear its other stories*, he says, with the slight half-smile that is his most disarming expression. Dalinar smiles back, faintly, and agrees. He will send the clerk over with the book in the morning. They part friends, as they have not for years, and as in the morning Dalinar will reflect on with a kind of cautious gratitude.