POV: kaladin
Summary
Days run together in Kaladin's cell. He finds himself, sourly, missing Tvlakv's slave wagon — the wagon at least had wind and weather and the rain at the back end of a highstorm. At night the lamp spheres are taken out and the dark closes in; he imagines himself buried under miles of stone with no way up, and concludes there is no worse way for a soldier to die. Better the open sky. Each morning starts the same: pale sphere-light, a frightened serving girl scraping the chamber pot out and in, a flatbread and bean-paste breakfast, a wave at the strange tight-wire spren that have begun to cross the air in front of him, then push-ups. He hears Syl humming somewhere but cannot find her; she has been hiding.
She finally tells him there was a Cryptic at the duel — a kind of spren she calls revolting but not, she thinks, evil. They are watchers, planners; they very rarely act. And they are out looking for someone. He may not be alone for much longer. Kaladin sits down with that, half wondering whether he wants the company of whatever Cryptics would bond, half comforted at the thought that — even if the bonded turns out to be Adolin — he would not be the only one.
Footsteps in the hall. The cell door opens. Dalinar walks in, hands clasped behind his back, the kind of solid that a brick is solid. Kaladin salutes before he can stop himself. Dalinar tells him Elhokar is cooling off, that only the appearance of weakness keeps the king from signing his pardon, that a few more days here is to be treated as guard duty. Kaladin cracks. He says it before he has decided to — he is not sure the king will ever let him out, given the king's record of leaving inconvenient people to die in his dungeons. Dalinar knows what he means immediately: the silversmiths in Kholinar.
Dalinar explains. The affair was real. Roshone was a petty lighteyes who got at young Elhokar when Elhokar was minding the kingdom from Kholinar and the king's father was campaigning here on the Plains. Dalinar himself was away; on his return he untangled the worst of it. He had argued, then, that Roshone should be reduced to a tenner and forced to live his life in squalor; Elhokar argued for mercy; Gavilar agreed; Dalinar relented because he did not want to discourage mercy in his nephew. Roshone was exiled to a place where, Dalinar says, he could not do any more harm.
Kaladin hears the name and stops. He sees blood on his father's surgery floor. He sees Tien. He sees Roshone arriving in Hearthstone carrying his grudge into the town — the man whose grievance against Lirin sent Tien to the war and Kaladin after him. The exile, Roshone's punishment, was Hearthstone. He says, quietly, that he finds it strange a man so dangerous escaped prison while the law lands so heavily on people without cousins. Dalinar answers sharply that Kaladin is a bodyguard, that bodyguards see the man and not the throne, and that bodyguards owe an even firmer loyalty in compensation. He tells Kaladin he gave him the post not because it suited the politics but because his gut said this was a man who could change a kingdom — and that change does not come from screaming and challenging highlords in dueling arenas. It comes from distinguishing oneself in the post one has been given, from making a king believe a darkeyes can lead. He turns and walks out, his shoulders bent a little lower than when he came in.
Alone again, Kaladin sits on the bench and tells himself to stay calm. Stay in the cage. Syl's small voice says Dalinar is trying to help. She admits, when asked, that yes — she had heard about Roshone. Kaladin turns over what Dalinar cannot turn over himself: the man tries his best, but Elhokar is his blind spot. Moash is right. Some injuries cannot be healed, only cut away. For the good of the kingdom, and for Dalinar's own good, the king has to die.