(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Shallan takes in Mraize as he stands beside Ialai Sadeas's throne in Sadeas colors — breastplate, skullcap, halberd, scarred face above the rural-poor slouch he has adopted for the part. A small sleek green chicken with a wicked beak perches on his shoulder. He acts as though he has never seen her before. Ialai, sleeved safehand tucked beneath her freehand, opens by likening a man returning to the scene of a kill to the scavengers a whitespine eats after dispatching its prey. Adolin takes the meeting in earnest and assures her that the Kholin house takes a highprince's murder seriously and is doing everything they can to prevent another. Ialai turns the line back on him — *the other highprinces are now too afraid to stand up to you* — and Shallan silently flinches for him.

Adolin pushes through it. He cuts away the courtly fencing and tells her flatly that his mother used to admire her wit, that he sees no proof of it now, and that no clear-eyed person could really believe his father — who endured years of Sadeas's insults, the betrayal on the Plains, the dueling fiasco — would suddenly murder him *now*, with the Voidbringers proving him right and his own position finally secure. To claim otherwise is idiocy. The plain speech lands. Ialai inspects him, then calls for Mraize to fetch a chair and orders Shallan to fetch tea from the side room.

In the smaller storeroom, lit by candles on the counter and walled in muted orange strata, Shallan corners Mraize and demands to know what he is doing here. He drops the country accent and tells her, calmly, that the Ghostbloods have an interest in Ialai but she is not one of them — she and her husband were too unpredictable a variable to invite; morality is a meaningless axis to his organization, only loyalty and power count. He chides her: for someone so insistent she is not a Ghostblood, she was very free with their symbol last night at All's Alley. He grants her use of their authority on her own hunts, so long as she does not abuse it. He acknowledges the debt of the destroyed Soulcaster but does not insist she Soulcast for them. Instead he names a different task: she must have *sensed the wrongness* in this place; her job is to secure the tower, hunt the source of that darkness, and expunge it, because the Ghostbloods mean to use the advent of the Voidbringers as a power they will eventually control. As payment in advance he leans in close and gives her a single word: *Helaran*. He picks up the chair and lurches out in the borrowed slouch, leaving her stunned and furious behind him.

She pours two cups of tea, takes a chair, and joins Adolin again. Ialai's position has narrowed. She is not, she says, accusing Dalinar himself — he would not knife an old friend in dark quarters — but soldiers have always taken initiative they were not granted. Look inside the Kholin ranks, she tells Adolin: somewhere among them is a man who decided to do his highprince a favor. She does not know who is responsible for the other strangulations; perhaps the killer acquired a taste. The interview is finished. She will share her own findings if he shares his, she says, so her investigator can be better informed. Asked who is investigating for her, she names him: Highmarshal Amaram, arrived with the last caravan through the Oathgate, unannounced to the tower, looked after personally by Ialai after he was caught out in the storm. Shallan gapes; she glances at Mraize, who keeps his face neutral, and the name Helaran burns behind her ribs. She still has no idea how her brother came into a Shardblade or what brought him to clash with Amaram in the first place.

Out in the corridor Adolin hisses about Amaram: Bridgeboy is not going to be happy about this, and *Father* originally meant to refound the Knights Radiant under him — by harboring him now, Ialai is setting up an alternative to Father's rule and quietly calling him a liar. Shallan forces herself back into the moment, agrees with the analysis, and tells Adolin that for once she thinks he is right about something else too: there is probably more than one killer. She heard a few things, she tells him, while she was out last night being a graceful drunk.

The conversation breaks off as two of Ialai's scribes pelt past them down the corridor with guards behind. Adolin catches one of the soldiers by the arm — nearly drawing a blade for it — and asks what is happening. The man, reluctant, finally answers: word has come up from the coast. A stormwall has been sighted at New Natanan. The highstorms have returned.