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Some hours after the battle, Lopen and Rushu make one last circuit through the broken city. Lopen kneels at a heap of stones on the beach and thanks them, solemnly, for their sacrifice — one of the monsters had tripped on them during the retreat — and Rushu suggests that he might try, for a day, being less weird. They had spent the last of the fight huddled in a roofed ruin under a sky full of grub-monsters, certain they were about to die; the creatures had eventually turned and gone back into the bay. Lopen had not known why at the time — Rysn had been brokering peace under their feet — but the rocks really had bought them ten seconds. Rushu reminds him, dryly, that his cousin literally saved his life. He knows. Thanking Huio is going to be harder than thanking rocks. He had wanted to practise.

At the beach, Kstled waits with two boats and a ridiculous haul: full Shardplate, real gemstones, a stack of Soulcasters. Rushu takes one boat with Kstled; Lopen takes the other alone with Huio (he has arranged it). On the slow row out, he congratulates his older-cousin on the Third Ideal. *Protect even those you hate*: for Kaladin and Teft and Sig that was the shape of the oath; for Huio (as for Teft before him), it had a different inside. Huio looked at Lopen before he said it. Huio tries to wave it off. Lopen, quiet, asks. After a pause Huio tells him plainly: he does not hate Lopen — who could? — but the way Lopen jokes can cut. Punio, Fleeta, Mama Lond, Huio himself. *Could you, sure, tease a little less?* Lopen makes himself smile, says of course, and rows the rest of the way without speaking.

Aboard the Wandersail he laughs with the sailors he meets and slips down into the small cabin he shares with Huio and asks Rua whether others complain about him too — whether his jokes really do hurt. Rua shrugs, then nods. Sometimes. Lopen sits very still, shamespren falling around him like little red petals, and almost lets the curl-up take him. Then he hauls himself up: he has to take it like Bridge Four — an arrow straight to the heart, but you can pull it out and heal. He is going to be a better Lopen. An *extra-incredible* Lopen. Protect people, even from himself.

Rua lifts a fist into the air in approval — and topples sideways and vanishes. A small silvery dagger lies where he was. The voice that joins him is unimpressed and grandfatherly: *These Words are accepted.* A burst of frost and power explodes around him. The Stormfather has finally, after the fact and entirely off-rhythm, taken his Third Ideal — protection from his own self. *Where's the drama?* Lopen complains at the ceiling. *The sense of timing?* He tries the dagger and it lengthens into a beautiful silvery sword, then helpfully shows him a small etching of Rua making a rude gesture the moment he thinks about it. There are, he decides, possibilities here. He swears off pranks — well, fewer pranks — and then immediately yells up the corridor at Huio that he is never going to guess what just happened.

Out at sea, Rysn does not let herself relax until the wind drops and clean sunlight pours through the porthole of her cabin. The ship is out of the storm around Akinah. They were actually allowed to leave. She is not alone: a few hordelings, hidden, ride along to train with her and to watch her, likely for the rest of her life. The arrangement holds; the lie is the best kind, almost all of it true; only she and Cord know the whole. Chiri-Chiri chirps from a nest she has made of towels, bouncing through the cabin and flying near the ceiling with every colour back in her carapace. Rysn wonders, with mild dread, how she will manage when the larkin is the size of a chasmfiend. She decides she will handle that when it comes.

She pours herself tea and notes that it tastes extraordinary, that the sunlight is brighter than it should be, that the room's colours are unaccountably vivid — and answers a knock from Captain Drlwan, who bows in, looks past her at the porthole, and confesses she had not thought any of them would see the sun again. They talk briefly: about Cord holding vigil outside the door in full Shardplate (yes, she keeps the suit — five Soulcasters for Thaylenah more than balances the loss); about the three sailors lost; about what those things are, *truly*. Most people who are different from us, Rysn tells her, are frightening at first. Vstim taught her to see past that. Drlwan then tells her something more delicate: the Sleepless who left the ship had told her, before Rysn returned, that she had been offered the chance to bargain for her own life and had refused unless the deal included the entire crew. *I did what any rebsk would do.* *Pardon — what any* good *rebsk would do. A rebsk worthy of this crew.*

Drlwan proposes that, after they leave port on the Wandersail's third voyage, the crew see Rysn steer the ship for a short time. Rysn's voice catches as she agrees. As the captain leaves, Rysn catches sight of a purple hordeling tucked up under the ceiling beam where the light does not quite reach. Strange, how she sees shadows more starkly now. How Drlwan's voice sounded more musical. She tells the captain she will pick the most boring, most mundane trade expedition she can find for the next one. Settled back, a single gloryspren fading overhead, she suspects that neither *boring* nor *mundane* will ever quite fit her life again.