Justice
POV: dalinar
Summary
Back at the Kholin warcamp the council is loud. Adolin wants Sadeas dead by nightfall and is not the only one. Renarin is quieter than the rest, white-faced at his brother's elbow, watching the room. The officers argue logistics openly. Which divisions could be moved to which staging point by which morning. Where the Sadeas house guard is thinnest at second-watch. What the king would and would not need to be told beforehand. The word *treason* gets used. The word *justice* gets used considerably more.
Dalinar lets them talk. He sits at the council table with the back of his neck still bruised from the inside of his helm and listens. When the room quiets and waits for him he says, simply, that they will do nothing. Sadeas did what Sadeas has always done, only more openly. Striking back would split the camps, fracture the war, hand the Parshendi the win they were denied on the Tower, and prove Sadeas right that the old codes are a luxury no real general can afford. He will not give Sadeas that satisfaction. The Kholins keep the codes. They keep them especially now.
Adolin stares at his father for a long moment as if waiting for the punchline, and then leaves the room without speaking. Renarin stays a beat longer, opens his mouth, closes it, and follows his brother out. The officers file after them one by one with the careful politeness of men who do not agree and will not say so to a highprince's face. Dalinar sits alone at the council table afterwards for a while with his eyes closed. When he opens them again he quietly issues the orders he actually intends. Every Kholin patrol on the outer Plains is to be doubled. Every Kholin scout pulled in to the inner perimeter. Every supply line shortened. Every spanreed correspondence with the lesser highprinces is to go through Navani herself before it goes out. He will not strike back at Sadeas. He will also not be ambushed by him a second time.