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Dalinar stands alone in a small windowless chamber deep in an unused quarter of the tower, four broams lit on a slab of stone and the Honorblade Kaladin surrendered to him laid out at their center. The weapon is alien and silent — no screaming, no gemstone anywhere on it. The Stormfather explains: a Shardblade's blade is the corpse of a Radiant's broken-oath spren and screams at a stranger's touch, but this weapon was made directly from Honor's own soul and handed to the Heralds — it has no mind to scream. Whoever holds it is something like an unoathed Windrunner, or nearly a Herald.

Dalinar presses on. Can Odium break oaths? No, says the Stormfather — even Odium is bound. He is a force on the order of pressure or gravity, permeated by the ancient power of Adonalsium, and cannot break his own rules. To fight him directly would risk pulling out the old scarred wounds; a champion contest would only cost him time, of which he has plenty. Persuadable, in the right moment, in the right way. And the death of Honor — for a Blade like this to exist, Honor himself must have fallen — is, in its way, a hope: a god has been killed before.

Dalinar kneels by the side of the chamber, where a rusted, footwide shaft drops through the floor — part of some abandoned tower piping that Navani is fascinated by, currently dry — and slips the Honorblade into a stone sheath he has cut into the wall of it, hilt out of sight beneath the lip. He hates leaving it there, but a vault would draw guards and guards would draw notice. Only Kaladin, Navani, and the Stormfather know it exists. *Can you watch it for me?* he asks. The Stormfather actually laughs. *I am no god, Dalinar Kholin. No more than your shadow on the wall is you. I see what is left out in the storms, and that darkly.*

He climbs back into the inhabited halls of the tower — chefs hauling supplies, soldiers' families crowded along a wide hallway watching children roll wooden spheres into an old bath — and is met outside his rooms by his day's guards from Bridge Thirteen. One of them, Sergeant Rial, drawls a mock interrogation about the highprince walking the corridors alone after the highprince himself ordered nobody go anywhere alone; reminds him he could just consult the time-and-stormclock painrial bracer Navani sent over, *which is what they're for, sir*. Dalinar glares, retreats for the bracer, straps it on outside his uniform sleeve, and decides to burn off restless energy in the training hall.

The chamber is a sea of Kholin blue — lighteyes and darkeyes in the same rings, the smells of oiled leather and sweat that always feel to him like home. He greets the ardent swordmasters lined up against the back wall and asks for a spar. The head swordmaster Kelerand stiffly excuses himself; one by one the others trail off after him to *find someone suitable*, leaving Dalinar with Zahel, who allows that Dalinar is no more revolting than anyone else, then notes drily that asking ardents to choose between God and their highprince doesn't get easier when they like the highprince. *Most moments in our lives seem trivial,* he says. *Like white on black.* The figure of speech goes past Dalinar.

Dalinar stops waiting for a partner and picks one himself — General Khal's younger son Aratin, a stocky wrestler who hasn't lost a match in months. They go to the ring in sparring leggings. Dalinar charges, twists, and is tripped down to the mat, on his face, breath crushed out of him. By old reflex he reaches for the Thrill — and stops himself, because he hasn't felt it in months and has come to recognize that there has always been something profoundly wrong about it. He fights cleanly, and Aratin pins him. He almost reaches instead for the Stormlight in his discarded trousers; his sense of fairness stops him too. Navani arrives in a yellow gown to break it up. He bows the win to Aratin and concedes that *almost* is doing a lot of work.

Navani has come to tell him the Iriali queen's tidereader has decided the meeting should be moved up to *now*. Dalinar stubbornly refuses to retreat to a writing chamber and orders her to set scribes up at the edge of the training floor. While they unfold a writing bench he hands Kadash — his old comrade-in-arms, now an ardent come to *check up on him* — a longsword and pulls him into the ring.

The two conversations weave together. The Iriali queen opens in pious mysticism — *all experience is welcome, we are the One experiencing itself, even this storm is glorious* — and Kadash scoffs that this is pagan superstition no better than Shin shamanism. Dalinar asks him how he knows Vorin doctrine is right and Iriali doctrine is wrong, *because it should be asked*; Kadash answers *because it simply is* and is told *that isn't good enough for me anymore*. The queen drops the piety: the Iriali Triumvirate has decided Alethkar has not been relevant in the world since the Sunmaker's fall, the new storm's masters offer gracious terms, and Adolin's Plate is stolen Iriali property held by a thief.

Kadash pulls in close with their swords locked. *The Almighty is not dead*, he hisses. He has been sent, frightened, by curates who think he has failed in his duty to a man he admires; if Dalinar will just recant the claim, he can make them accept the marriage. Kings have done worse and kept the Vorin church. Dalinar tells him a story instead — his first sword-tutor Harth, who taught him to wrap a takama belt three times around his waist because it was the *true way*; the man who taught Harth, in turn, taught it the same way; the wizened ardent in Kholinar who had taught all of them turned out to be terribly short and said *if I only tie it twice the ends drag and I trip*. He loves tradition, Dalinar says. He fights for it. But age alone does not make a thing worthy.

To prove the point he takes Stormlight, pins Kadash to the stone in a glowing pool of Radiance that holds him fast, and tells the room — soldiers, swordmasters, every man who has stopped to listen — that the Knights Radiant have returned, that he accepts the Heralds and even that there was once a being named Honor; if Kadash can prove that Vorinism as it now stands is what the Heralds taught, they will speak again. He tosses the practice sword aside.

Navani is unsurprised that the show was for the whole room. The queen's final word: contact her with arrangements for the return of the *stolen goods*, and she'll consider. Navani tells him the Iriali claim is weak — the Plate came east through marriage, and to a lighteyes from Rira, not Iri proper, and the present queen has no relation to the woman or her brother. Dalinar grunts that he might give it back anyway if it brings Iri to their side; he could agree to —

He stops. *What did you say?*

Navani is puzzled. About what?

He whispers it. *Say it again.*

*Evi?*

The name lands. He staggers against the writing table, Navani calling for physicians, but it isn't his lungs and it isn't the wrestling. After all these years he can suddenly hear his first wife's name. And, behind the name, her face.