Chapter Text
The conversation came in bits and pieces, as if spoken from far away, down a long, echoing corridor. He could hear the bridgeman’s voice, pleading with another. No, two others. He caught perhaps one word in five, but the ones he could hear made him shudder.
They were here to kill him, just as he had always feared. It wasn’t the Assassin in White. His father’s killer had no interest in the son. No, he had wanted Dalinar, the man who should be king instead of the one that was king. Even his death, even his failure was a reminder that he was not meant for this.
A king on the outside, a coward on the inside. Any delusions of his authority were an illusion in truth.
Darkness was coming for him, crawling in at the edges of his vision. Shifting figures crowded forward.
Elhokar Kholin’s hearing faded which, even in the state he was in, he realized was a bad thing.
Truth. The word drifted through his mind. Give us a truth.
“Y-you want to know the truth?” Elhokar mumbled. “You can have it. I’m a b-bad king. I’m n-not my f-father, and I’m n-not Dalinar.”
We accept this truth, Elhokar Kholin.
“W-what does t-that--”
In the hallway, Kaladin was still fighting with the assassins. He said something, and the world exploded into blue and white, mixed with gold and black. The light was blinding, and Elhokar cried out. He felt himself warm. He felt himself change. He felt his world tilt.
When the light cleared, he saw Kaladin Stormblessed, ex-bridgeman, ex-slave, and current leader of his bodyguards standing tall, unharmed and bearing a glowing blue and white Shardblade. Elhokar stared in wonder. Stormlight came off of him in waves, like the way air rippled on a hot day.
They’re always such show-offs, said a voice in his mind. Those Windrunners. Ridiculous.
“Don’t say that, he’s a hero,” Elhokar said, sitting up. “He saved my life.”
He was a delaying tactic and a barrier, the voice said again. We saved your life.
“Is that the royal we? I was told to only use that when I needed to be particularly imposing, or pompous, depending on how you look at it.” Elhokar touched his side slowly, fingers shaking briefly. The illusion could utterly shatter, and then I’ll be dead again.
Not the royal we, though it belongs to you and you should own it, the voice said. We as in ‘you and I’, a collective of two persons, we.
“A... what?” Elhokar’s voice was louder now, and the bridgeman, the hero, turned towards him. He was glowing, and the thing that should have been a shardblade was now a spear, waving with blue and white light. “Captain...”
“Elhokar, try to stay still, you’re hurt,” the bridgeman said, and released his weapon. Instead of vanishing, his spear remained upright, glowing to give illumination to a hallway that was now utterly devoid of stormlight. Captain Kaladin knelt, and started feeling at Elhokar’s side. “What..?”
“You would think that a Windrunner would know a dying person from a healthy one by now, but it would appear not,” said the voice, and from the face the bridgeman made, he heard it too. “I always thought they were a bit overrated, personally.”
Kaladin’s spear dissolved into blue and white light, taking on the form of a young woman, her skirts snapping in an intangible wind. She pointed at the shadows. “Oh, just say that to my face, you eclectic pile of math!”
“I would surely do so, if I weren’t certain you would fall asleep before I got to the good part, Ancient Daughter,” the voice said. The shadows nearest to Elhokar shifted and moved, then floated up to him. For a moment, he simply stared at the shifting form, his sense of wonder fighting with panic.
“You’re one of the things from the mirror,” Elhokar said. “This must be what going mad feels like.”
“No, it’s far worse than that,” Captain Kaladin said, and held out his hand to beckon the glowing woman to his hand. “You have a spren.”
“He has a Cryptic,” the glowing woman complained. “Another one, I can’t believe this.”
The bridgeman turned his head. “What do you mean, Syl?”
“From the duel that wasn’t a duel,” the glowing woman -- Syl -- said impatiently. “I saw one interfering with the bastard that was fighting Renarin.”
“Syl!” Captain Kaladin said, shocked. “Where did you learn language like that?”
“We live with a barracks full of soldiers, did you think I hadn’t learned anything at all?” Syl put her hands on her hips. “Airsick lowlander.”
Does that mean--
“I’m going to have to lecture the men about--” Captain Kaladin shook his head slightly. “No, I can’t get distracted. Your Majesty, the ones trying to assassinate you weren’t Surgebinders, just angry men. The Assassin in White has gone after Dalinar and I need to go to him. Stay here, I can find a place for you to--”
“No,” Elhokar said, and forced himself to stand. The voice -- the shadow -- dispersed and reformed. “I want to go with you. I know that I haven’t been the most useful but I can still fight. I can do that much.”
“Shardbearers can’t fight the Assassin well,” the bridgeman pointed out. “...and you aren’t going to want to summon your Shardblade, anyway. Holding one of the dead blades is unpleasant for Surgebinders. You’ll need to make at least one other Oath beforehand.”
“Our Truths are different from your Oaths... but the Windrunner is correct,” the voice said. “You must break your bond with the poor Deadeye that is chained to that abomination so that you may progress.”
“...but it’s my only defense,” Elhokar said, and even to his own ears, he was whining. “How am I supposed to do anything if no one lets me?” Captain Kaladin stared down his nose at Elhokar, and there was a crawling sensation for a moment, as though being judged and found wanting. Not so different from any other time, then. Nothing has changed.
“I’ll speak to some of the people here, they should be able to hide you,” the bridgeman said, and held his hand out. The blue woman, Syl, immediately dispersed, and wind encircled the stern Surgebinder. Elhokar wondered briefly if he would simply take to the skies from here. “Keep quiet and don’t cause trouble for them. We’ll discuss this when I return.”
“No,” Elhokar said, forcing strength into his voice. “Break my bond with my Shardblade? Fine.” He held his hand out at his side, and counted out heartbeats, each one painful, as though shot through by lightning from the storm outside. “Let me--”
The blade screamed in his mind, wordless in its pain, demanding answers to a question he didn't understand.
“Break it, hurry,” the voice said. “If you drop it, you’ll have to start over.”
Elhokar hastily renounced his claim on the Shardblade, and it went dull. He dropped it from his hand, the blade stabbing downwards into the floor. Immediately, the pain ceased, and the pressure on his mind eased. The bridgeman stared at him. He had the sense that the spren, for all she was invisible, was staring too.
“Well?” Elhokar asked, chest heaving. “Are we leaving or what?”
~ * ~
Urithiru... the legendary city spoken of by scholars. It seemed quiet, almost dead, though anything was better than being outside in the terrible storm that shook the tower.
The Everstorm... I don’t know if I would have believed it to be told about it, Elhokar thought to himself. Dalinar had called the meeting of those who were identified as Surgebinders, though his uncle was insistent that they were the Knights Radiant now.
He had insisted to Captain Kaladin that he didn’t wish for Dalinar to know about the Cryptic, and the bridgeman had agreed. When he’d arrived, the bridgeman had pulled Adolin aside and spoken to him in soft, urgent tones, along with some pointing and not-quite shouting.
That’s probably because Adolin nearly got himself killed, Elhokar thought to himself, and smiled thinly. The two of them are about as subtle as my uncle’s tactics.
Absently, Elhokar rubbed at his chest, and remembered his uncle’s harsh, pointed lesson about trust. He was lucky to be alive. One of his father’s own tactics had involved provoking his enemies into duels or short, brutal wars conducted by the Blackthorn.
His uncle had changed since his father’s death, and it was still hard to understand why that, in the face of such a terrible enemy, Dalinar Kholin sought peace.
We’ll need to table the philosophical discussion for now, the voice said. But we will need to address this soon.
“I don’t see why,” Elhokar breathed out as he watched the bridgeman stalk away from his cousin to join Dalinar, while Adolin left the room. “My father was a great king, and he used war as a weapon like any other. That’s surely the right way to lead.”
Do you really want to be like your father? the voice asked. Do you want to leave your son’s education to others, ignoring him unless you want to parade him around as your heir? Force him into a loveless marriage simply to prove that you must be obeyed at all times?
Elhokar shivered. “Jasnah was always his favourite, that’s why he wanted her to marry well.”
Would she have married well to Meridas Amaram? the voice asked, impatient. To a man who speaks out of both sides of his mouth? Or is that just the lie you believed?
“I...”
“I am grateful that you’re all here,” Dalinar began, and looked to the bridgeman, as well as Adolin’s betrothed, Shallan Davar. The young woman who had arrived out of nowhere with news of Jasnah’s death, and Elhokar still had no idea what to make of her. “I was badly mistaken when I chose Amaram to lead the Knights Radiant, and for that, I do again apologize, Captain.”
The bridgeman, his expression still stormy, nodded once. “I couldn’t be sure that it was safe to tell anyone of my gifts. Syl -- my spren -- urged me to, but I had had too many things taken away from me. Many people believed Amaram to be a good man, including myself. The very scars I bear are because I trusted that so-called good man. It’s difficult to rely on your instincts when you’ve been so wrong in the past.”
“Understandable,” Dalinar said. He reached out and put a hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. It was an easy, reassuring gesture, and Elhokar fought back a wave of jealousy and nausea. Dalinar looked to Shallan. “I will say that your own gifts were a great surprise to me. Did Adolin..?”
“No, but Jasnah did,” Shallan said. “I was very surprised by my powers, by Pattern, and to a point, so was she. She had similar gifts to mine -- Elsecaller to my Lightweaver -- so she could teach me some things, but our approaches were different. I wish she had survived to see this day.”
“I do too,” Dalinar said, and let Kaladin go, then put a hand on Shallan’s shoulder. “I have... we have so much to do. I am sworn to the Stormfather as a Bondsmith. I will unite the Knights Radiant and we will reform the Knightly Orders. So much has been lost to us, but we will find it again, or so I believe.”
“So, that’s three then,” Kaladin said, and gave Elhokar a look. He looked away, into the shadows where the voice was hiding. “Bondsmith, Lightweaver, and Windrunner.”
“Four, actually,” said a quiet voice, startling Elhokar from thoughts that twisted like the shadows he watched. He turned to see his cousin, Renarin, approach. He wore the blue of the Kholin family, but decorated with Bridge Four’s designation. A long, thin rapier of a sword appeared in his hand. “Glys says I’m a Truthwatcher.”
“Four...” Dalinar said, and Elhokar fought back another stab of jealousy, this time at seeing the way his uncle’s face lit up with simple joy at the news. “The first of a proud order, of that I have no doubt.”
“With four, we will do everything we can to evacuate people from the war camps,” Kaladin said, bringing them back to the moment. “The damage done by the collision between the Highstorm and the Everstorm will kill far more than any war. After that... we need to contact others. My parents... I have to warn them. No one is prepared for a storm that travels the other way.”
“I don’t like it, but with two other people to use the Oathgates, we should be able to manage until you return,” Dalinar said. “Go, but return swiftly. If you find others...”
“I will send them your way,” Kaladin said. “Thank you, sir.”
What about me? Elhokar thought, swallowing hard. How am I supposed to learn anything without you here?
Dalinar nodded to Kaladin, who saluted, nodded to Shallan, and then turned to go. Renarin excused himself with some haste to follow after.
No one asked Elhokar what he thought of any of it, and it hurt more than it had when he’d been stabbed.
You could tell them now, the voice said. Explain what happened to you and why you insisted on going out to the Shattered Plains during a storm instead of staying safe.
“I’m enough of a disappointment as it is,” Elhokar muttered to himself. “Why should I make things worse?”
You would have your uncle’s respect, his reverence, if you told him that you were a Surgebinder, the voice said. You saw how he treated Renarin.
“My uncle has always loved his sons,” Elhokar breathed out as he watched Dalinar and Shallan discuss logistics. Renarin returned a few minutes later. “Besides, I don’t even know your name.”
My name would be difficult for you to comprehend, the voice said. I am a number that increases exponentially but never reaches an end. Hard for mortal minds to understand, and worse for their pronunciation. I have, however, decided on a nickname, like Shallan’s Pattern.
“Very well, what is it?”
The only appropriate thing for the advisor to a king, the voice said, smug. I am Vizir.
~ * ~
When the scattered forces of the Shattered Plains had arrived at Urithiru, one of Dalinar’s first orders was to find secured quarters for Elhokar’s person. Servants had fetched the essentials from the war camps, and now he was ensconced in one of the biggest rooms Dalinar’s scouts could find and make secure.
Unfortunately, this meant bodyguards. Fortunately, given everything that was happening, said bodyguards were few, as scouting forces were needed to find more living quarters for those flooding in from the camps.
There was a time when I’d have been offended by the lack of protection, Elhokar mused. Now, I want nothing more than to be alone... and besides, it’s not as if a normal assassin could kill me now.
“Just because you’re a Surgebinder, that doesn’t make you invincible,” Vizir said, and Elhokar looked at her floating, spinning form. “No, I can’t read your mind. I’ve been with you since childhood, so I’m familiar with your foibles.”
Elhokar glanced worriedly towards the door, and kept his voice low. “Since childhood? How?”
“They can’t hear me,” Vizir added. “Not unless I want them to, like I did with the Windrunner.”
“His name is Kaladin,” Elhokar said, and relaxed back. “Captain Kaladin Stormblessed. You should use his name.”
“Why, you don’t,” Vizir observed. Elhokar felt a chill move down his back. “He’s ‘the bridgeman’ and ‘the darkeyes’ and ‘the lowborn’. Why would I use his name when you don’t?”
“I...” Elhokar began, and stopped. Is that true? Do I treat him so poorly? He’s a hero--
Elhokar had also called for him to be thrown in jail, and only narrowly avoided executing him for his presumption about Amaram. A presumption that turned out to be entirely right. Not to mention the assassination attempt that Kaladin had stopped, nearly at the cost of his own life, by one of Kaladin’s own men. Moash hadn’t been a highprince or a brightlord, just a very angry, common man.
Any amount of confidence Elhokar had been feeling was replaced by both unease and guilt.
“In any case,” Vizir said, cutting through his thoughts. “What do you recall about your childhood?”
“Bits and pieces,” Elhokar admitted. “My mother’s voice, my father teaching me how to use a sword and how to ride a horse. Little things, here and there. Jasnah was so much older than I was, so we didn’t spend that much time with each other, especially after...”
“After..?” Vizir prompted. “Try to remember.”
“She wasn’t well, when we were young,” Elhokar said. “I overheard my father telling the ardents that she was mad before he sent her to them for treatment. She came back, but she was different. Colder, I think.”
“You thought you were mad because of what you were seeing too, didn’t you?” Vizir said, and Elhokar flinched. “Neither of you are mad, and madness does not make you more likely to see one of us. It’s misunderstood, and represents as many different problems as there are facets in cut glass. It is amusing that your father was so poor at recognizing the thing he wanted most.”
“What does that mean?” Elhokar demanded, shifting forward. “You’re speaking in circles while claiming to know so much, just like any human advisor. What are you talking about?”
“Is there something wrong, Your Majesty?” called a guard, and Elhokar froze. “The scouts have news, we’ll try to bring it to you.”
“Thank you,” Elhokar said, and turned to his spren. “Well?”
“Try to remember,” Vizir insisted. “You have heard the conversations, though you pushed them aside at the time. The words didn’t make sense to you at the time so you dismissed them but now there are many, many things that you must hear and find value in.”
Elhokar made a frustrated noise at the back of his throat and tried to think. “I don’t know about when I was a child but I do know that before my father’s death, he met with many different advisors, and he was close with Amaram. That’s why I thought he was above reproach. My father trusted him, so too could I.”
“Your father trusted your uncle, too,” Vizir pointed out dryly. “But you didn’t.”
“My uncle changed,” Elhokar spat. “The Blackthorn went soft. He was stubborn and toothless. He...”
“He beat the shit out of you because you faked an assassination attempt and it completely obscured attempts to find the culprit of the real assassination attempts until it was almost too late,” Vizir said, brutally. “He is taking the hardest, most dangerous route for a man like him to walk because he was influenced by the same writings your father was before his death. Honour is speaking to him and it’s never an easy thing to deal with. Not for your father, and not for your uncle.”
“You know about the visions?!” Elhokar exclaimed. “They’re real? What do you mean, my father has never--”
“Your Majesty!” A guard burst into Elhokar’s room, and the king spun. Anger -- to conceal the fear of being discovered -- died on his lips at the look on the guard’s face. He gestured once for the guard to continue. “Brightlord Sadeas has been murdered!”
~ * ~
When his uncle had been young, Elhokar recalled that he’d paced like a caged whitespine. Dalinar had always been moving, prowling like a predator... dangerous. It had given Elhokar a little thrill to know that the most dangerous man on Roshar was kept tame by his father’s hand.
His aunt, Evi, had told both her sons that Dalinar was a hero and an honourable man. Elhokar had wondered if the woman, a foreigner that had come with a brother, a suit of Shardplate, and nothing else, had been naive. His mother had certainly worried about that often enough.
The man once called Blackthorn stood stock-still, rigid, as though he had to visibly contain himself from throwing an absolutely cataclysmic row as he reported the details of the incident to Elhokar. The scout that had found the body was with him, along with Adolin, Elhokar’s younger cousin, and Shallan Davar.
“Palona may have been inappropriate when she said it, but she wasn’t wrong,” Shallan said, fingers moving as she sketched lightly in her notebook. “No one will miss Torol Sadeas.”
“His wife will,” Dalinar said grimly. “And his soldiers. Sadeas’ behaviour and manners spilled down from his very officers to the most basic of his soldiers. We see that in how the bridgemen Kaladin was training were treated by men one step away from joining them. He was cunning, brutal, conniving, and now he’s dead. We need to find out who did this, very quickly.”
“Did you?” Elhokar asked, and Dalinar turned to the king, expression so rigidly controlled Elhokar feared his face might freeze that way. He’d never laugh again, and he doesn’t do that much to begin with. “Well, did you?”
“No,” Dalinar said tightly. “Our plan was to pin him down into a duel, which I suppose will no longer be necessary. If the plan had been to kill him like a common assassin, we wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to make sure all was following the laws, if not the Codes.”
Elhokar watched the words spill from Dalinar’s mouth in a literal way: sounds, inferences, and meanings tumbled from his lips in glyphs and symbols that immediately made sense to him. They hovered in the air for a moment, then dissipated into motes of light.
What’s doing that? Elhokar wondered. Vizir hovered nearby, invisible, staying out of view of Shallan’s own Cryptic who was resting on her skirt and humming to itself. “I... are you sure?”
“Father wouldn’t do something like that,” Adolin said, glaring at Elhokar. “None of us would dirty our blades with Sadeas’ blood.”
This time, the words were different. Each meaning was coloured different shades of red, until the final words were the hue of spilled blood, closer to brown than bright crimson. There was something to that, something heavy to be weighed and measured.
Is he... lying? Is that what that means? Elhokar wondered. Could I tell that people were lying before? Surely not, otherwise I would have noticed before.
“If you’re done questioning my son, the next stage is to find out who did kill him,” Dalinar said. “We must find out who had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill him.”
“Almost everyone, many people, and a lot of people,” Shallan said, and frowned at her drawing for a moment. She held it up, and Elhokar saw that it was Torol Sadeas himself, dead with a knife through his eye. For some reason, for all he’d been on the battlefield plenty of times, the image made him queasy. “Sadeas was a bastard, and no one liked him but his wife and his lackeys.”
Dalinar raised an eyebrow at her choice of words, but nodded once, rigid, immovable in the face of such bluntly-spoken facts.
“I don’t suppose we can blame that on you spending time with Bridge Four too, can we?” Elhokar muttered, and all three stared at him. “Never mind. So, what you’re saying is that it will be nearly impossible to narrow down one, specific person who could have killed him.”
“Essentially, yes,” Shallan said. “Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look into it further. If it was a serial killer and not someone with a personal grudge against him, they could strike again. We don’t want that to happen.”
“Look into it,” Dalinar commanded, and Shallan nodded to him. “Be careful, we don’t know anything about the person who did this.”
“We do, actually,” Elhokar said. He gestured to Shallan’s drawing. “I assume that you recreated this from memory?”
“I did, yes,” Shallan said, and some of her words were pure, clear, while others were shaded. “I’m an artist, I have an eye for these kinds of things. Anyone could have done the same.”
“Then you have conveyed accurately that his eyes weren’t burnt out when he died?” Elhokar took a step closer, and glanced down at Pattern briefly before focusing on the drawing. “That means that this knife wound was what killed him. He wasn’t killed by a Shardblade. If he had been, his eyes would have been gone.”
“Dead and inorganic matter still cuts under a Shardblade,” Adolin said. “What does it matter what order it happened in?”
“It means that whoever killed him was close enough to him to kill him with a normal knife. A Shardbearer. A Shard plate bearer.” Elhokar tapped the paper lightly. Tiny motes of Creation floated off of it and dispersed. Curious. “How many can boast that they know exactly how to kill a Shardplate bearer without any kind of serious injury themselves.”
“...another Shardplate bearer would know its weaknesses,” Adolin said slowly, and these words were clear, though tinged with something else. “And there are those who have killed Shardblade and plate wearers before. One of them is even here, usually.”
“What?” Elhokar said. “Who?”
“The one who bears the scars for it, though they didn’t come from any blade,” Adolin admitted grimly. “Kaladin.”
~ * ~
“I think you’re all overlooking something very important,” Sigzil said, once the bridgemen had calmed. “Something not considered by those who came up with it when this line of inquiry had started.”
Elhokar squirmed as he watched Adolin nod in understanding. Adolin may have made the suggestion, but I was the one who brought up the idea and called a hero into question. Another mistake for me.
“No feeling sorry for yourself,” Vizir said. “I want to see what the Squire has to say.”
“Captain Kaladin was not in Urithiru when the murder took place,” Sigzil said. “Based on Brightness Davar’s sketch, the report from our scouts, and the state of the corpse, Kaladin was already gone when Brightlord Sadeas died. There were witnesses to it, though not yourself, Brightlord.”
There was something like reprimand in the bridgeman’s voice, and Elhokar had to assume it was something to do with the argument he’d witnessed between Adolin and Kaladin not long after they’d come to Urithiru.
“He saves my life one--”
“Three, perhaps even four.”
“--time and he thinks he can give me orders,” Adolin growled. “Fine, Kaladin wasn’t here. He clearly told you about his powers, and he taught you all in secret to use spears and to coordinate your bridge runs. What else did he teach you about?”
Sigzil stiffened. “Brightlord, this goes far beyond--”
“You wanna know about the Captain, gancho?” asked a voice, and Elhokar took in the sight of a Herdazian in a Bridge Four uniform, and thought he looked familiar. Two arms filled out the sleeves of the uniform well, though his coat was fastened a little haphazardly for Kholin tastes. “I can tell you all about him.”
“Lopen, that’s the king,” Sigzil hissed. “At least try to be respectful.”
“Do you want me to tell the story or not?” Lopen demanded. He turned to Elhokar. “Kaladin, sure, he stabbed that guy. He never wanted to talk about it. Me? I win a fight against a Shardbearer after my whole squad got cut up, I keep those Shards. I tell the whole world that darkeyes can do anything. Him? Nah. He turned ‘em down. He hates killing. Fighting? Yeah, he loves it. Killing people? No way.”
“What kind of a soldier hates killing?” Elhokar asked. “What kind of a bodyguard won’t kill?”
“Didn’t say he wouldn’t, said he hates it.” Lopen shrugs. “When your brother -- and you don’t have a lot of those, not like cousins -- dies and your friends die and other slaves die because of war, you probably wouldn’t like killing much either.”
“It was to avenge my father,” Elhokar snapped, and the words felt like shards of glass in his mouth as he spoke them. “It was necessary!”
Lopen gestured to the sky, and out towards the Shattered Plains which had been destroyed in places where the Everstorm and the Highstorm had met. “You feel avenged, gancho?”
Elhokar opened his mouth and closed it. Nothing that had come from the ex-slave’s mouth had been anything other than pure truth, shining like diamonds fully charged with Stormlight. “Fine. So, it wasn’t Kaladin. It wasn’t one of the bridgemen. Who could it have been?”
“A man missing a medal,” Sigzil muttered, and made shooing motions. “Come on. We can’t practice without Kaladin here, but we can at least get some things settled. You’re supposed to be a member of the command staff, Lopen. You can’t just laze about, sticking people to walls.”
“Yeah yeah, gancho,” Lopen said, and waved lazily before walking off.
“These men are my bodyguards,” Elhokar muttered, shaking his head. “I can hardly believe it.”
“They’re going to be, to a man, Windrunners,” Adolin pointed out. “From what Shallan was telling me, some of the Orders had Squires -- people who can use some of the Surges without actually being chosen by spren -- and Bridge Four are Kaladin’s. They’re worthy, but not yet ready to speak their second Oath. They also only have those powers near a true Knight, which of course, would be Kaladin.”
Does he..? No, Kaladin promised, Elhokar mused. But maybe... “So, what else do you know about the Orders?”
“I did my best to pay attention to what Shallan was telling me,” Adolin said. “There are ten Orders, one for each of the Heralds. Each Order has two Surges and they make five Oaths total. The first is the same, while the others vary a great deal. I don’t know much more than that, a lot was lost.”
“Has she said much about how her Order functions? Lightweaver, I believe it was,” Elhokar said, trying to sound casual. “It might be valuable to know for the future.”
“No, she hasn’t,” Adolin said, giving him a curious look. “...but I can suggest to her that you want to hear more. Unfortunately, I have a lot to do with this investigation, but she should be free.”
If I don’t have witnesses, I can ask her a little more openly about our shared Surges, Elhokar thought, and nodded once. “If you could, just. Though, will she not need a chaperone?”
Adolin, to his surprise, rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, I know the perfect one.”