POV: mraize
Summary
Betd — who has called himself Mraize for as long as anyone in this story has known him — has always allowed himself many emotions. He grieves Iyatil and glories in the freedom of having survived her in the same breath, and that paradox does not feel like weakness to him. It feels like being alive. He had hoped to claim Shallan as his own acolyte, controlled through information rather than punishment. She has refused. The beast he cannot control he must put down. He prowls toward her, ignoring her Lightweaving of him as a Radiant in Shin traveller's gear; she steps foot to foot, oddly anxious. Her spren lurches at him from the side — a sudden rush — and he sets his stance and deflects it, irritated. *You send your spren hoping I'll wound it and leave myself unarmed,* he taunts. *Ruthless, little knife. I didn't know you had it in you.* Then Pattern stands up *behind* him. Too fast. Too smooth. He realises he has just been worked by Iyatil's own swap-and-divert. He turns and catches Shallan's strike one-handed; the Lightweaving falls; *I'm sorry,* he tells her, drawing the second anti-Stormlight knife from his pocket. *Almost, you made me wish I could be the man you imagine. How do you do that?* *By caring,* she answers. *And by lying.* Her eyes flick to his blade — which is dull, the air not warping above it — while hers, the live one, hums in her hand.
*When she tried to tackle me,* he understands. The tackle was the cover. Great Gods of Fallen Worlds. For the first time in this fight he is worried. *You have a choice, Mraize,* she says. *You always have a choice. Don't force this.* If you don't kill her, he thinks, she will kill you. He drops the useless knife, twists her wrist with both hands until she screams and lets her dagger go, and snatches it from the air as she scrambles for the one he dropped. They meet in a single moment: his blade through her chest, hers through his stomach. Anti-Stormlight tears through him from the wound out. *H… how?* *I'm not good enough to slip a knife out of your pocket and replace it,* she tells him close to his face. *But I've always been great with a calculated lie. You always held the knife that could have killed me, but you dropped it. I have a choice too. I make it now. The choice to no longer let myself be abused.* She drives the dagger deeper, seeking the heart. Too new to his Investiture to keep from reflex, Mraize breathes in Stormlight to heal. Fire consumes everything like a sunrise burning night.
On the wet plateaus of Narak Venli knows the deadline has come when El finally calls his guards off the Oathgate. She had emerged from a fitful sleep in a collapsed human dwelling anxious that she had ruined everything again — Timbre's confidence notwithstanding. Sun breaks across the broken plateau. The Rhythm of Joy beats in her head unbidden. *Not yet,* she tells herself. *We need to be certain.* She joins the Five as El and several high-ranking Fused cross the debris-strewn city past sleeping chasmfiends. Leshwi floats over humming to Joy. *An odd rhythm, Leshwi,* El notes. *I wasn't aware you were capable of hearing the old ones.* *Has the contest begun?* she asks. *Yes,* he says. *As per the agreement, the boundaries of nations are now set and immutable. We have won the Shattered Plains, as I was asked to do.* To Determination, Thude asks him to withdraw his forces. Every rhythm stills. El turns to regard the gathered listeners as if for the first time. *Excuse me?* From an oiled pouch Venli produces a treaty signed by Jasnah Kholin — daughter of the man the listeners killed the night of the last treaty signing — that cedes the plains to them. Seven years of war. Peace at last. El reads it quietly. *You arranged this how?* *With great care.* A Magnified One in his retinue shouts to Fury that they will simply take it — and El, without looking up, forms a long thin sword from air and runs it through the side of the Fused's head. A Shardblade. The eyes burn. *We will hold to the terms our god has made.* He reads on, absent, dismisses the Blade. The terms are not unacceptable. *I should have liked to own this land, but this offers different opportunities. I'm impressed. We'll send ambassadors.* He hands the treaty back and walks away calling his forces to retreat.
On the roof of Urithiru a second storm — the highstorm — begins to build atop the tower, like the first rays of a dawn. A herald of things to come; a glimmer of hope. Dalinar looks again at Gav frozen with arms raised, sword scoring the stone at his feet. The trick is cheap, but it is also the larger message: Taravangian could have used any unnamed innocent. Kill Gav and his philosophy is proved correct. Walk away and become his Fused general anyway. He could go and try to ignore the orders to fight — except the Stormfather tells him, quietly, that the contract would let Odium remake him as the Unmade were made. *It is hard,* Taravangian calls back, *to have one's morals legitimately tested. Trust me, I know. And I am sorry.* He sounds, Dalinar realises, not reasonable but *relatable.* As Dalinar had feared, all his work was for nothing — until he thinks back across his road. The Spiritual Realm. Singer, Herald, human, god. He raises his hands to the sides in the cold wind and feels them: the people of the tower, the surrounding nations, Alethkar, the world. Their fear. Their love. Their dreams. Some of them hurting, as Taravangian said. That is life. He hears the deepest lie Taravangian tells: that only great men have difficult choices, that only kings carry burdens of guilt. His power is vast and his choices influential, but they are not unique. *Yes,* something familiar says. *See.* He has been. He has walked time itself. He has been every party to it. He has not, until now, looked through the eyes of the power itself. He does so. Person after person has failed it, making it tremble. *It hurts,* the power of Honor says. *Why must it hurt? Can humans not simply do as they say that they will?* Awareness blossoms. *Stormfather,* Dalinar says at the crux of two storms, *I know the Words.*