(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Lopen strikes a heroic pose at the prow of his rowboat — one foot up, spear shouldered, Rua matching him on his shoulder — while a Lashing pulls the boat across the calm bay under its own power and the sailors enjoy the rest. He keeps watch on the shadow he glimpsed before: a flat dark shape moving with the boat in the shallows, refusing to surface even when he tempts it by infusing the hull with Stormlight. He is still convinced this is one of the creatures that drained Leyten and the other Windrunners, related perhaps to Chiri-Chiri but larger and shaped differently. It hangs back, timid, and the watching becomes harder than the steering.

Huio's boat slides up alongside, his cousin in a tense crouch with spear in hand. Lopen tries to sell him on the glory of stepping onto land no person has visited before; Huio, deadpan, points out that Akinah was a capital city of the Epoch Kingdoms and that the crew of the missing ship, and whoever killed them, presumably went ashore before them. The shadow under the water turns and slips back toward deeper waters, unwilling to be looked at. Lopen's Lashing runs out as his boat grinds onto the stones, and he uses the momentum to step elegantly straight onto the shore — wasted, since Cord is still on the Wandersail and there is no one of consequence to notice. The other rowboats arrive the honest way, sailors splashing into the shallows to drag them up the beach, and Rua watches longingly. Lopen tells the spren that *Lopen style* and *sailor style* are both perfectly good styles, and that style is the one resource in the cosmere that never runs out.

Rushu is helped ashore dry — ardent style does not involve getting paperwork wet. She gestures at the diamond gemhearts littering the rocks like rockbuds; Lopen calls it money lying on the storming ground. Rushu guesses Akinah may be a place where greatshells come to die, and makes a note to write Brightness Shallan about it. Kstled walks up parade-straight with his barbed spear and shortsword and asks, very correctly, whether the riches are cursed and he should forbid his men from indulging. Rushu insists not — they were sent to gather artefacts from this place, gemstones absolutely count, and the sailors will get their traditional salvage share. She asks Kstled to assign Lopen a handful of his best for the inward scout.

Lopen has been told to look for the Oathgate without ever quite saying the word out loud — the queen wants it kept quiet, Rysn knows but no one else needs to. He turns over Kaladin's standing instructions in his head: he had suggested sending Teft so the team could actually activate a Blade, and Navani had refused; if the Oathgate was in enemy hands, she would rather not deliver them a key. The team's job is to confirm the Oathgate exists, scout for any enemy presence, and come home; the cosmere can decide later whether holding it is worth the trouble. Lopen has neither a living Blade nor any clean idea what to do with the thing if they find one.

While Rushu sketches the layout of the exoskeletons and gemhearts, something else begins nagging at Lopen. No crem. The carapace, the spheres, the bone-bleached beach — nothing has the melted crust he is used to on old things. He picks up a single dun gemheart and pockets it, and finally figures out what it means: the highstorms must not fall on this island, kept off by the strange winds. Rushu sends the sketches back to Rysn with the all-clear and gets the green-flag permission to push inland. Huio elects to stay with the beach party. He has a spanreed, not for writing — that would be unseemly for a Herdazian man — but for blinking. He has worked out a code: one blink means all is well, two means he is worried, three means come back at once. Numbers are not unseemly, and besides, Dalinar can write books now, which has made the old rules a bit elastic. Lopen asks Rushu whether they might at least claim to be the first Herdazians to walk this ground; she allows that they probably are, since Herdaz did not yet exist when Aimia was a kingdom. With that consolation, he spins his spear, salutes his cousin, and sets off inland with the ardent and the squad to go and make history.