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Moash pulls a Voidbringer sledge westward into the orchard country east of Kholinar, the open plains giving way to cultivated hills and to the great frozen-wave crem ridges that Alethi farmers spend generations growing as windbreaks. He notes which ridges have been broken westward by the Everstorm and will need new wooden barricades planted on that side, too. The conscript crew of parshmen he marches with does not trust him; he does not blame them, and likes himself no better than they like him. He has not been beaten or starved — sturdy boots, gloves, three meals a day — and the overseer who tracks him is a quiet replacement for the one he punched.

Watching one of the flying Fused hover above an orchard with her long sleeves rippling, Moash works out something he hadn't seen before. The hovering subspecies does not Lash like a Windrunner; they use the dark light for something else, and they almost never walk. That, he notes, is the kind that captured him — and the kind he killed. He says to Sah beside him that this is no apocalypse; the Voidbringers are sparing the orchards, working the towns, settling Revolar. You don't farm an apocalypse. Then, half by accident, he tells Sah the Fused woman he killed went down easily — she had not expected a slave to fight back. Sah goes slack-jawed. *Probably shouldn't have mentioned killing one of their gods,* Moash thinks, and falls back into line.

The army diverts off the direct road to take a suburb already seized — parshmen patrolling, the only humans already in the fields — that sits at the closest distance an army can camp from Kholinar without being washed away by the next storm. The weakest of the sledge-pullers are cut loose and pointed at the capital on foot, to burden it with refugees ahead of the siege. Moash's own sledge is split off down a side street that passes a tavern he knows from his caravan years — the Fallen Tower, its glyph still cut into the leeward wall — and is finally halted at a lumberyard ringed with warehouses. An overseer barks at him: he will spend the next weeks here building siege equipment, and on the day of the assault he will be at the front, hauling a ladder at Kholinar's walls. Moash starts to laugh. A lumberyard, like the one in Sadeas's warcamp. Full circle. He laughs until he is on his back on the stone, tears running down his face.

In Urithiru, Shallan waits outside Elhokar's audience chamber reading Mraize's latest letter, which appeared in her satchel without her seeing how it got there. The Ghostbloods have investigated Ishnah and pronounce her safe to keep on; they offer, with proprietary politeness, to clean up the body if Shallan would rather eliminate her. The phrasing — they would *allow* Ishnah to stay close — settles uneasily. She puts the letter away and takes out her real experiment instead: a small sphere pouch she has dressed in an illusion to make it look violet, with a white sphere inside it actually powering the illusion. It is the longest she has held a Lightweaving without feeding it herself; almost four hours so far, the Stormlight draining out of the sapphire the way a fabrial would drain. The original idea had been to leave standing illusory maps for Dalinar in meetings she did not need to sit through. She is beginning to see other uses.

Helt the master-servant ushers her in. Elhokar, in Kholin blue, is spreading a map of Kholinar beside the last spanreed reports out of the city — the captain has asked to practice flying others before he carries his king. Shallan asks for the room. Elhokar shoos his attendants and the Bridge Thirteen guards into the corridor, then jumps when she lifts her face into Adolin's as a demonstration. She has been telling people she is an Elsecaller so that her ability to wear other people's faces stays close. She shifts again — a cleaning woman, a soldier, a parshwoman from her older sketches — while she lays out the case: the last letters from Kholinar spoke of riots and of spren taking shape and hurting people, and she has been quietly building a team of spies. If Elhokar reaches the city and the Oathgate is in enemy hands, would he rather let the bridgeman fight his way to it, or have a better option? The king walks a circle around her and signs the request.

She leaves with the formal royal petition tucked into her safepouch beside Mraize's letter. Kaladin had said he could carry six, beyond the bridgemen who fly themselves; Adolin and Elhokar account for two of those seats, which leaves room for her and three others. Part of her knows what she is doing — knows that since she spoke Ideals it has become harder to bury things in the back of her mind — and that what she is calling helping is also fleeing: from her aunt's wedding talk, from Jasnah, from the version of herself that has to sit still and decide which face is hers. But the mission needs her, and she will help Adolin reclaim his home. Pattern hums against her skirts, and she hums back.