Szeth strode forward. “I have been instructed to tell you that the others are dead. I’ve come to finish the job.” He raised his hands, Shardblade forming.
The king did not turn.
Szeth hesitated. He had to make certain the man acknowledged what had been said. “Did you hear me?” Szeth demanded, striding forward.
“Did you kill my guards, Szeth-son-son-Vallano?” the king asked quietly.
Szeth froze. He cursed and stepped backward, raising his Blade in a defensive stance. Another trap?
“You have done your work well,” the king said, still not facing him. “Leaders dead, lives lost. Panic and chaos. Was this your destiny? Do you wonder? Given that monstrosity of a Shardblade by your people, cast out and absolved of any sin your masters might require of you?”
“I am not absolved,” Szeth said, still wary. “It is a common mistake stone-walkers make. Each life I take weighs me down, eating away at my soul.”
The voices… the screams… spirits below, I can hear them howling…
“Yet you kill.”
“It is my punishment,” Szeth said. “To kill, to have no choice, but to bear the sins nonetheless. I am Truthless.”
“Truthless,” the king mused. “I would say that you know much truth. More than your countrymen, now.” He finally turned to face Szeth, and Szeth saw that he had been wrong about this man. King Taravangian was no simpleton. He had keen eyes and a wise, knowing face, rimmed with a full white beard, the mustaches drooping like arrow points. “You have seen what death and murder do to a man. You could say, Szeth-son-son-Vallano, that you bear great sins for your people. You understand what they cannot. And so you have truth.”
Szeth frowned. And then it began to make sense. He knew what would happen next, even as the king reached into his voluminous sleeve and withdrew a small rock that glittered in the light of two dozen lamps. “You were always him,” Szeth said. “My unseen master.”
The king set the rock on the ground between them. Szeth’s Oathstone.
“You put your own name on the list,” Szeth said.
“In case you were captured,” Taravangian said. “The best defense against suspicion is to be grouped with the victims.”
“And if I’d killed you?”
“The instructions were explicit,” Taravangian said. “And, as we have determined, you are quite good at following them. I probably needn’t say it, but I order you not to harm me. Now, did you kill my guards?”
“I do not know,” Szeth said, forcing himself to drop to one knee and dismissing his Blade. He spoke loudly, trying to drown out the screams that he thought – for certain – must be coming from the upper eaves of the room. “I knocked them both unconscious. I believe I cracked one man’s skull.”
Taravangian breathed out, sighing. He rose, stepping to the doorway. Szeth glanced over his shoulder to note the aged king inspecting the guards and seeing to their wounds. Taravangian called for help, and other guards arrived to see to the men.
Szeth was left with a terrible storm of emotions. This kindly, contemplative man had sent him to kill and murder? He had caused the screams?
Taravangian returned.
“Why?” Szeth asked, voice hoarse. “Vengeance?”
“No.” Taravangian sounded very tired. “Some of those men you killed were my dear friends, Szeth-son-son-Vallano.”
“More insurance?” Szeth spat. “To keep yourself from suspicion?”
“In part. And in part because their deaths were necessary.”
“Why?” Szeth asked. “What could it possibly have served?”
“Stability. Those you killed were among the most powerful and influential men in Roshar.”
“How does that help stability?”
“Sometimes,” Taravangian said, “you must tear down a structure to build a new one with stronger walls.” He turned around, looking out over the ocean. “And we are going to need strong walls in the coming years. Very, very strong walls.”
“Your words are like the hundred doves.”
“Easy to release, difficult to keep,” Taravangian said, speaking the words in Shin.
Szeth looked up sharply. This man spoke the Shin language and knew his people’s proverbs? Odd to find in a stonewalker. Odder to find in a murderer.
“Yes, I speak your language. Sometimes I wonder if the Lifebrother himself sent you to me.”
“To bloody myself so that you wouldn’t have to,” Szeth said. “Yes, that sounds like something one of your Vorin gods would do.”
Taravangian fell quiet. “Get up,” he finally said.
Szeth obeyed. He would always obey his master. Taravangian led him to a door set into the side of the study. The aged man pulled a sphere lamp off the wall, lighting a winding stairwell of deep, narrow steps. They followed it and eventually came to a landing. Taravangian pushed open another door and entered a large room that wasn’t on any of the palace maps that Szeth had purchased or bribed a look at. It was long, with wide railings on the sides, giving it a terraced look. Everything was painted white.
It was filled with beds. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Many were occupied.
Szeth followed the king, frowning. An enormous hidden room, cut into the stone of the Conclave? People bustled about wearing coats of white. “A hospital?” Szeth said. “You expect me to find your humanitarian efforts a redemption for what you have commanded of me?”
“This is not humanitarian work,” Taravangian said, walking forward slowly, white-and-orange robes rustling. Those they passed bowed to him with reverence. Taravangian led Szeth to an alcove of beds, each with a sickly person in it. There were healers working on them. Doing something to their arms.
Draining their blood.
A woman with a writing clipboard stood near the beds, pen held, waiting for something. What?
“I don’t understand,” Szeth said, watching in horror as the four patients grew pale. “You’re killing them, aren’t you?”
“Yes. We don’t need the blood; it is merely a way to kill slowly and easily.”
“Every one of them? The people in this room?”
“We try to select only the worst cases to move here, for once they are brought to this place, we cannot let them leave if they begin to recover.” He turned to Szeth, eyes sorrowful. “Sometimes we need more bodies than the terminally sick can provide. And so we must bring the forgotten and the lowly. Those who will not be missed.”
Szeth couldn’t speak. He couldn’t voice his horror and revulsion. In front of him, one of the victims – a man in his younger years – expired. Two of those remaining were children. Szeth stepped forward. He had to stop this. He had to–
“You will still yourself,” Taravangian said. “And you will return to my side.”
Szeth did as his master commanded. What were a few more deaths? Just another set of screams to haunt him. He could hear them now, coming from beneath beds, behind furniture.
Or I could kill him, Szeth thought. I could stop this.
He nearly did it. But honor prevailed, for the moment.
“You see, Szeth-son-son-Vallano,” Taravangian said. “I did not send you to do my bloody work for me. I do it here, myself. I have personally held the knife and released the blood from the veins of many. Much like you, I know I cannot escape my sins. We are two men of one heart. This is one reason why I sought you out.”
“But why?” Szeth said.
On the beds, a dying youth started speaking. One of the women with the clipboards stepped forward quickly, recording the words.
“The day was ours, but they took it,” the boy cried. “Stormfather! You cannot have it. The day is ours. They come, rasping, and the lights fail. Oh, Stormfather!” The boy arched his back, then fell still suddenly, eyes dead.