The aging but powerfully built man kept waving away those who tried to encourage him to bed. As he walked, Szeth was forced to step around Dalinar Kholin-the king’s own brother-who slumped drunken at a small table. The revelry had lasted long even the king had retired hours ago. Szeth stood and began to pick his way through the room. But wine was the great assassin of both tradition and propriety, and now the Alethi elite danced with abandon. To them, drums were base instruments of the common, darkeyed people. At first, the Alethi lighteyes had been hesitant. It meant, roughly, “parshmen who can think.” Neither side seemed to see that as an insult. They did not call themselves Parshendi this was the Alethi name for them. Parshendi, they were named-cousins to the more docile servant peoples known as parshmen in most of the world. They were men with skin of black marbled with red. Szeth’s masters-who were dismissed as savages by those in more civilized kingdoms-sat at their own tables. The beats shook Szeth like a quartet of thumping hearts, pumping waves of invisible blood through the room. Most out here in the East thought Szeth’s kind were docile and harmless. He was just a servant, and Shin were easy to ignore. Few at the treaty-signing celebration noticed him. He sat on a bench at the back, a still servant in white robes. Szeth did not sway to the drums, drink the sapphire wine, or stand to dance. They looked as if they were dead, at least until their friends carried them out of the feast hall to waiting beds. Some fell to the ground red-faced, the revelry too much for them, their stomachs proving to be inferior wineskins. He sat in a large stone room, baked by enormous firepits that cast a garish light upon the revelers, causing beads of sweat to form on their skin as they danced, and drank, and yelled, and sang, and clapped. But he did as his masters required and did not ask for an explanation. The white clothing was a Parshendi tradition, foreign to him. Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king. Subject was a darkeyed pregnant woman of middle years. Collected on the first day of the week Palah of the month Shash of the year 1171, thirty-one seconds before death. It is but a thousand days, and the Everstorm comes.” “The love of men is a frigid thing, a mountain stream only three steps from the ice.

The way of kings