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The highprinces' meeting on what to do about the Assassin in White hits a recess after two hours of arguing in circles — by Navani's wall fabrial-clock, Adolin has stood through all of it — and he gets up, wounds along his leg and side protesting, while his father and aunt talk in low voices. The truth no one will name is that nothing useful has been suggested at all; the assassin can walk on walls and command the spren of nature, and the only answer Adolin sees is to keep practicing for the day he comes back. Dalinar had insisted he change out of Plate into a uniform for the meeting (*we project confidence, not fear*); General Khal wears the family Plate hidden in a side room with a strike force, in case. The assassin would not be foolish enough to come for them all together — three highprinces wear their own Plate, others bring Shardbearers, and Adolin has rarely seen so many Shards in one room: Abrobadar, Jakamav, Resi, Relis. Reports from across Roshar keep arriving; in Jah Keved the assassin reportedly killed dozens of soldiers bearing half-shard shields, three Shardbearers, and the king.

Adolin downs a cup of cloyingly orange wine from a servant in blue and gold and goes hunting Relis Ruthar — Ruthar's son, the current dueling champion, frill-coated in green and yellow, with a face flat enough to suggest he was dropped as a child. Relis is talking with his cousin Elit and three of Sadeas's women, one of them Melali — Adolin remembers belatedly that he had courted her sister, which is what he had done to annoy her. He congratulates Relis sarcastically on offering earlier to fight the assassin himself, gibes him for sitting on his title for half a year, and lays out an absurd wager: all five Kholin Shards (his own Blade and Plate, Renarin's Blade and Plate, and the spare Blade he won from Eranniv) against Relis's two. Relis hesitates only long enough for Elit to look hungry, then refuses with pride. Adolin reissues the same wager to Elit — five against one, a terrible deal — and Elit accepts. Adolin haggles the duel date down from seven days (Elit clearly wants training time) to one. Relis, snarling and un-Alethi, drags his cousin away and tries to provoke Adolin into a hasty swing by mocking his father's wits and asking whether the old man has started wetting himself in public yet. Adolin steadies himself. He has what he wanted. Elit serves Ruthar, who is more and more Sadeas's right-hand man; grinding up the brackets from here leads, eventually, to a duel with Sadeas himself.

He turns and finds Sadeas at his shoulder — bulbous, red-veined, dressed in the latest fashion with a forest-green silk scarf at the neck. Sadeas drawls about Adolin's habit of embarrassing himself in the ring, expresses surprise that Dalinar dropped the old prohibition on dueling, and seizes Adolin's shoulder to deliver the line he carries everywhere: that the abandonment at the Tower was a kindness to an old ally, a tip of the sword from one swordsman to another. *I'll have your throat in my hands, Sadeas. I'll squeeze and squeeze, then sink my dagger in your gut and twist.* Sadeas only smiles — *careful, it's a full room* — and the Alethi rule holds: abandoning a man on the battlefield is fine, but speaking the truth in person, well, society would frown. Adolin spins out of the grip, fist already balling, and is stopped short by a hand on his other shoulder.

Brightlord Meridas Amaram — tall, chip-faced, the only senior lighteyes in the room in a proper uniform — turns him by the shoulder and walks him calmly off into the chatter. The recess has turned into a party; the room is full of attendants picking at finger food, mingling and conniving. Amaram tells him in his quiet, deferential way not to let Sadeas use him to embarrass his father. Adolin presses him on why he stays in Sadeas's service when he is a Shardbearer in his own right and no one would object to him changing liege: Amaram answers that staying is the only way to keep the kingdom whole; Sadeas trusts him, Dalinar trusts him, and the friendship of both bridges gaps. *Sadeas will betray you.* *No. Highprince Sadeas and I have an understanding.* He says that Dalinar cannot bend and would not be wanted otherwise, but that Dalinar's temperament makes him unable to work with Sadeas. He and Sadeas agree the means may be distasteful; he and Dalinar agree on what the ends are; it is a matter of perspective. He sounds, Adolin thinks, increasingly like Adolin's own father.

Then Adolin's eye snags on a red-haired girl gliding through the room — deep red without a thread of black, slender against the curvaceous Alethi standard, freckled under the eyes, pale enough to look almost Shin, in a simple blue silk dress. Amaram catches him at it, teases him for chasing every flitting thing that swishes past, and tells him his mother would be mortified to find him still unwed. Adolin counters that Jasnah is unwed and a decade older; Amaram dryly grants that his cousin is hardly a role model in that regard. The hair, Adolin says — have you ever seen anything so red? Veden, Amaram guesses; old families that pride their Horneater blood. *Veden.* Adolin breaks off mid-conversation, shoves politely through the crowd, and reaches his father and aunt just as Shallan is telling them that yes, Brightness Jasnah did go down with the ship, and that she is sorry for their loss.