A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role.

Rhythm of Resolve thrummed softly in the back of Eshonai’s

“Not easy,” Dalinar said, “but there is no point in demanding answers.” “Particularly if the Almighty is dead. . . .” Perhaps he should not have shared that fact with her. Speaking of just that one idea could brand him a heretic, drive his own ardents from him, give Sadeas a weapon against the Throne. If the Almighty was dead, what

“Natural laws?” Syl said, finding the concept amusing. “Laws are of men, Kaladin. Nature doesn’t have them!” “If I toss something upward, it comes back down.” “Except when it doesn’t.” “It’s a law.” “No,” Syl said, looking upward. “It’s more like . . . more like an agreement among friends.” He looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Ah, don’t say that!” Lopen said, still chuckling. “It’s the best one I know—and trust me, I’m an expert on one-armed Herdazian jokes. ‘Lopen,’ my mother always says, ‘you must learn these to laugh before others do. Then you steal the laughter from them, and have it all for yourself.’ She is a very wise woman. I once brought her the head of a

Renarin dismissed his Blade, and oddly, as he did so, he let out a relieved sigh and relaxed against the outer wall of the building.

“Expectation. That is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.

“I will protect even those I hate,” Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. “So long as it is right.”

There were ten main ones, just as there had been ten orders of knights, ten kingdoms, ten peoples. And then—between the segments representing the first and tenth kingdoms—was a narrower eleventh section. It depicted a tall tower. Urithiru.