15: THE DECOY

After a chasmfiend attack kills nearly fifty soldiers and wounds twice as many, the chapter alternates between the aftermath cleanup and reveals a web of political machinations among the highprinces. The king asks for an investigation into his saddle girth, suspecting assassination, while tensions simmer between the highprinces over wealth and influence.

Four hours after a chasmfiend attack destroys a bridge, the warcamps await a replacement bridge crew while surgeons tend the wounded. The creature killed approximately fifty of the king's men. The king's girth—a saddle component—broke during the fight, throwing him from his horse; he suspects it was cut as an assassination attempt and asks his uncle to investigate. After examining it, both believe it may have been deliberately weakened, though the method would be crude for such an attack. Meanwhile, the highprinces compete fiercely for gemhearts from slain chasmfiends, which provide months of funding and valuable large gemstones for use in soulcasting. The king questions why neither his uncle nor cousin have won gemhearts recently, instead spending their time on royal duties. When the renowned storyteller and jester called simply "the King's "... calls out the crude bridgeman tactic of using lightly-armored men as expendable targets to draw enemy fire, tensions escalate. Throughout the evening, it becomes clear that the king is increasingly paranoid, fearing assassination. The chapter reveals that both the uncle (former soldier) and the man known as "the king's friend" (called "the decoy") had made a vow after the king's father died: to protect his heir at all costs. This vow binds them together even as personal hatred simmers between them. The uncle secretly reads an ancient text called "The Way of Kings," which his deceased brother cited just before his own death. The uncle's private quest to understand those final cryptic words "find the most important words a man can say"—written in blood by the dying king—troubles him deeply. At the chapter's end, the uncle departs to ride back to camp alongside the king's procession, contemplating a passage from the book about kings bearing invisible burdens.