Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, walked with bowed back, carrying a sack of grain down off the ship and onto the docks of Kharbranth. The City of Bells smelled of a fresh ocean morning, peaceful yet excited, fishermen calling to friends as they prepared their nets.

Szeth joined the other porters, carrying his sack through the twisting streets. Perhaps another merchant might have used a chull cart, but Kharbranth was infamous for its crowds and its steep walkways. A line of porters was an efficient option.

Szeth kept his eyes down. Partially to imitate the look of a worker. Partially to lower his gaze from the blazing sun above, the god of gods, who watched him and saw his shame. Szeth should not have been out during the day. He should have hidden his terrible face.

He felt his every step should leave a bloody footprint. The massacres he’d committed these months, working for his hidden master… He could hear the dead scream every time he closed his eyes. They grated against his soul, rubbing it to nothing, haunting him, consuming him.

So many dead. So very many dead.

Was he losing his mind? Each time he went on an assassination, he found himself blaming the victims. He cursed them for not being strong enough to fight back and kill him.

During each of his slaughters, he wore white, just as he had been commanded.

One foot in front of the other. Don’t think. Don’t focus on what you’ve done. On what you’re… going to do.

He had reached the last name on the list: Taravangian, the king of Kharbranth. A beloved monarch, known for building and maintaining hospitals in his city. It was known as far away as Azir that if you were sick, Taravangian would take you in. Come to Kharbranth and be healed. The king loved all.

And Szeth was going to kill him.

At the top of the steep city, Szeth lugged his sack with the other porters around to the back of the palace structure, entering a dim stone corridor. Taravangian was a simpleminded man. That should have made Szeth feel more guilty, but he found himself consumed by loathing. Taravangian would not be smart enough to prepare for Szeth. Fool. Idiot. Would Szeth never face a foe strong enough to kill him?

Szeth had come to the city early and taken the job as a porter. He had needed to research and study, for the instructions commanded him—for once—not to kill anyone else in performing this assassination. Taravangian’s murder was to be done quietly.

Why the difference? The instructions stated that he was to deliver a message. “The others are dead. I’ve come to finish the job.” The instructions were explicit: Make certain Taravangian heard and acknowledged the words before harming him.

This was looking like a work of vengeance. Someone had sent Szeth to hunt down and destroy the men who had wronged him. Szeth laid his sack down in the palace larder. He turned automatically, following the shuffling line of porters back down the hallway. He nodded toward the servants’ privy, and the portermaster waved for him to go ahead. Szeth had made this same haul on several occasions, and could be trusted—presumably—to do his business and catch up.

The privy didn’t smell half as foul as he had anticipated. It was a dark room, cut into the underground cavern, but a candle burned beside a man standing at the pissing trough. He nodded to Szeth, tying up the front of his trousers and wiping his fingers on the sides as he walked to the door. He took his candle, but kindly lit a leftover stub before withdrawing.

As soon as he was gone, Szeth infused himself with Stormlight from his pouch and laid his hand on the door, performing a Full Lashing between it and the frame, locking it closed. His Shardblade came out next. In the palace, everything was built downward. Trusting the maps he’d purchased, he knelt and carved a square of rock from the floor, wider at the bottom. As it began to slide down, Szeth infused it with Stormlight, performing half a Basic Lashing upward, making the rock weightless.

Next, he Lashed himself upward with a subtle Lashing that left him weighing only a tenth his normal weight. He leapt onto the rock, and his lessened weight pushed the rock down slowly. He rode it down into the room below. Three couches with plush violet cushions lined the walls, sitting beneath fine silver mirrors. The lighteyes’ privy. A lamp burned with a small flame in the sconce, but Szeth was alone.

The stone thumped softly to the floor, and Szeth leaped off. He shed his clothing, revealing a black and white master-servant’s outfit underneath. He took a matching cap from the pocket and slipped it on, reluctantly dismissed his Blade, then slipped into the hallway and quickly Lashed the door shut.

These days, he rarely gave a thought to the fact that he walked on stone. Once, he would have revered a corridor of rock like this. Had that man once been him? Had he ever revered anything?

Szeth hurried onward. His time was short. Fortunately, King Taravangian kept a strict schedule. Seventh bell: private reflection in his study. Szeth could see the doorway into the study ahead, guarded by two soldiers.

Szeth bowed his head, hiding his Shin eyes and hurrying up to them. One of the men held out his hand wardingly, so Szeth grabbed it, twisting, shattering the wrist. He smashed his elbow into the man’s face, throwing him back against the wall.

The man’s stunned companion opened his mouth to yell, but Szeth kicked him in the stomach. Even without a Shardblade, he was dangerous, infused with Stormlight and trained in kammar. He grabbed the second guard by the hair and slammed his forehead against the rock floor. Then he rose and kicked open the door.

He walked into a room well illuminated by a double row of lamps on the left. Crammed bookcases covered the right wall from floor to ceiling. A man sat cross-legged on a small rug directly ahead of Szeth. The man looked out an enormous window cut through the rock, staring at the ocean beyond.

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 eff orts 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.

The king turned to Szeth. “It is better for one man to sin than for a people to be destroyed, wouldn’t you say, Szeth-son-son-Vallano?”

“I…”

“We do not know why some speak when others do not,” Taravangian said. “But the dying see something. It began seven years ago, about the time when King Gavilar was investigating the Shattered Plains for the first time.” His eyes grew distant. “It is coming, and these people see it. On that bridge between life and the endless ocean of death, they view something. Their words might save us.”

“You are a monster.”

“Yes,” Taravangian said. “But I am the monster who will save this world.” He looked at Szeth. “I have a name to add to your list. I had hoped to avoid doing this, but recent events have made it inevitable. I cannot let him seize control. It will undermine everything.”

“Who?” Szeth asked, wondering if anything at all could horrify him further.

“Dalinar Kholin,” Taravangian said. “I’m afraid it must be done quickly, before he can unite the Alethi highprinces. You will go to the Shattered Plains and end him.” He hesitated. “It must be done brutally, I’m afraid.”

“I have rarely had the luxury of working otherwise,” Szeth said, closing his eyes.

The screams greeted him.