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Torol Sadeas stands at the end of a stolen plateau run with Oathbringer resting on his shoulder, breathing in the sweet moldy scent of Parshendi blood while his soldiers finish slaughtering the trapped survivors who failed to make the retreat. The Thrill surges in him as the killing peaks, fades the moment it ends, and feels thinner now than it once did; this contest no longer stretches him toward the conquest he wants. Amaram crosses the corpses to him with the harvested gemheart in a gauntleted hand and pulls off his helm to point out that the maneuver has just failed — Hatham and Roion, whose plateau run this actually was, have arrived behind their plodding bridges already in sight, and Sadeas has lost every shred of deniability. Sadeas tells him deniability is no longer the point. While they speak, he remembers privately the first year of the war, when a Parshendi line tried to surrender to him: he killed them all with Shardhammer and Plate beneath the eyes of their fellows watching from the next plateau, and no Parshendi has tried it since. He waves his vanguard up and rides out across the bridges while idle bridgemen sleep on the rock and better men die.

Amaram rides at his side and tells him quietly, hand on his arm, that he does not approve — they should be bridging differences with Dalinar and the king, not goading them — but acknowledges that to Sadeas above all others he can speak the truth of what kind of ruthless bastard he really is. Alethkar needs to be strong, Amaram insists, for what is coming. Sadeas tells him Alethkar will be strong by force of fist and rule of blood, and takes the gemheart from him. When Hatham finally reins up across the gap on his Ryshadium demanding to know what has happened, Sadeas hurls the captured gemheart across the rock to clatter at the feet of Hatham's horse — *I was bored, thought I'd save you the trouble* — and rides on, ignoring further questions. He notices Parshendi scouts on a nearby plateau watching the exchange and sends archers after them.

Hours later he settles into his cleared chair in the dueling arena tugging at an insufferable stock collar, watching Adolin take the sand against Eranniv — black-painted breastplate, Gavilar's old Blade in his hand. He admits privately to envying Dalinar's simple uniform, then dismisses the envy: uniforms are the wrong dress for the battle they are actually fighting, and Dalinar's habit of wearing one is proof he no longer understands the game. He turns over how badly his body is aging out from under him and tells himself the only durable answer is an empire too vast to die with him. Ialai slips into the seat beside him and lets him scratch the small of her back while she briefs him: she has pieced together the disturbance at the king's rooms two weeks ago — a sabotaged balcony, an assassination attempt that nearly succeeded — and reckons Thanadal for the most likely commissioner. Sadeas searches himself for feeling about almost having lost Elhokar and finds only a faint pity. Old Gavilar's son will need to die anyway when the time comes, after Dalinar is dealt with; he expects to cut the boy's throat himself, quietly, out of respect for Gavilar.

He turns over whether to invoke his designation as Highprince of Information to take the investigation. Ialai cautions him: Dalinar used that very designation as precedent to make himself Highprince of War, and every exercise of Sadeas's office now cements Dalinar's. Better instead to weaponise Dalinar's weakness — his inability to delegate. They will have her informants seed questions in court: why, if Dalinar is forging a single kingdom, will he not let Sadeas do the job he was given? Why has Sadeas not been called in on the attempt on the king's life? Why are Sadeas's judges shut out of Dalinar's camp? And then, the moment before Dalinar finally yields and asks him to do his job, Sadeas will renounce the appointment in protest and widen the crack.

Down on the sand Adolin looks oddly off — sloppy openings, hits taken on the shoulder, Stormlight leaking from a gauntlet to the booing of the darkeyes. Sadeas watches a few more exchanges and starts grinning: Adolin is faking. He is fighting beneath himself, taking *barely lethal* hits across different sections of Plate so none shatters and exposes him, dragging the bout out so the eventual win looks like luck — bait for the Shardbearers who have been refusing his challenges. The boy is cleverer, and more skilled, than Sadeas had credited; it takes mastery to win while seeming to lose. Adolin brings Eranniv down on a *lucky* final blow and the crowd roars.

Sadeas changes his plan on the spot. *Stop discouraging people from fighting him*, he tells Ialai; not encourage either — just step back and let it develop. Adolin is brash and passionate, his father's son with less of his father's control, and Sadeas thinks he can be walked right up to a cliff and pushed off. *The boy is a weapon, Torol*, Ialai warns. *True*, he answers — *but one is rarely cut by a weapon when one holds the hilt.* He helps her up; he also tells her to invite Ruthar along on the next plateau run he decides to steal. Walking to the exit he glances at Dalinar across the stands and asks himself, briefly, whether things could have been different. He answers himself honestly — no, he would have killed him anyway — and leaves.