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Sigzil wakes in the Bridge Four barracks at Urithiru from a dream in Azish — he had been back home studying for the Azish governmental service tests and panicked to realize he had forgotten how to read. Years away have made his mother tongue strange to him. He inspects himself in a polished length of steel, sets out a sphere for shaving light, and nicks his chin. His skin starts glowing and the sphere goes dun in his pocket. Kaladin is back, and that, Sigzil thinks, is going to solve so many problems. He dresses in sharp Kholin blue, picks up his hogshide notebook, and steps out into the common room.

Lopen is stuck by the soles of his feet to the ceiling, eating breakfast upside-down — practicing — and dangles his face right in front of Sigzil to taunt him into asking the right way to be let past. Down the hall Rock's breakfast bell rings and the men crowd the table in their usual ramble-scramble, which Sigzil observes would not last a day in Azir, where orderly queues are practically a national pride. He notices Teft is missing — the men actually listen when Teft gives orders — and heads to Kaladin's small suite at the end of the corridor.

Kaladin is doing morning push-ups; Sigzil settles in a chair with his notebook and begins working through the captain's list of looming domestic problems. Peet is now formally betrothed to Ka; Bisig is close to the same; Punio is already married, and the woman dropping off his food is not his sister; Drehy has been courting a man named Dru from the district quartermaster's offices, but the Azish paperwork Sigzil half-expects does not exist in Alethkar. Four religions are now represented in Bridge Four (five if you count Teft, whom Sigzil cannot place). Sigzil tries a moon-tale to gracefully sidle into his real point — his master could always change a conversation that way — and it lands flat. Kaladin gently tells him a story he doesn't understand is not a substitute for the point. The point is that the bridgemen have no moral center now that they are not slaves and not quite soldiers, and Sigzil feels he should be that center. Kaladin gives him license to act as something like the unit's ardent — make his arguments, respect what the men actually want.

Sigzil keeps running through his list as they head off down the corridor. Bridge Four is down to twenty-eight after the first Everstorm; if Kaladin does not want to keep shrinking, he should consider recruiting — and there is the deeper question of what to do if other men in the army start swearing oaths and bonding their own spren. Would they dissolve Bridge Four and let each Windrunner be his own? The thought pains Kaladin almost as much as losing a man in battle. He agrees they will at least put out a call for recruits, although he cannot picture how to cull the hopefuls down to a manageable number. They turn off the path to the bridgemen's barracks; Kaladin is going somewhere else.

Lyn of the Kholin scouts catches up to them in the corridor with the news that Quartermaster Vevidar's unusual request has been filled. Kaladin eyes her — she has been making excuses to run messages to Bridge Four — and asks, casually, whether she would like to join the Windrunners. Lyn's jaw drops; she salutes; she would love it. Kaladin turns to Sigzil and asks him to get her their ledgers, accounts, and letters to family members — and her face falls when she realizes he is offering scribe work, not a place in the order. She did not join the scouts to sit over a ledger. Sigzil silently wants to punch his captain in the wake-up sense. Kaladin catches the mood, recovers, and amends the offer: he is holding tryouts for the order proper, and she is welcome to attempt them once she has a battalion transfer. She bounds off. Sigzil, not quite under his breath, suggests his captain try to understand what people want out of life rather than projecting onto them what he thinks they ought to want. *Shut it, Sig.* *Yes, sir.*

At the quartermaster's office Vevidar sweats behind his counter — the room is crowded with guards there to protect what he is about to hand over — and produces two heavy black sacks under his wife's countersigned forms. Sigzil opens his and gets a flood of green light to the face: large emeralds cut from chasmfiend gemhearts, the royal emergency-grain reserve, just renewed in the morning storm. Vevidar grumbles about princedoms' worth of wealth walking out his door; Kaladin assures him the gems will be back by evening, though some will be dun. Sigzil has already guessed what they are for, and grins like a fool: today Bridge Four is going out to practice being Radiant.