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Queen Fen leads Dalinar's party through the temple of Shalash, the first stop on the traditional Thaylen progression up and down the Royal Ward — ardents burning thousands of glyphwards for the people, smoke pooling under the dome of a god who isn't there. Dalinar catches himself wondering uncomfortably who might be receiving prayers in the Almighty's place these days. Navani nudges him to stop scowling; he insists, scowling, that the city is half-rubble and they are looking at temples. *Six temples,* he mutters. Navani explains the political point of the tour — a reinforcement of the throne's Vorin piety, useful for a queen who has had trouble with her church. He grudgingly settles in for the act.

The next stop is the temple of Battah beside the stone feet of the once-grand Simulacrum of Paralet; Fen trails off when she realises the rest of the statue is no longer there. Dalinar presses on, asks why the next temple — of Ishi, the oldest in the city — is one they will not linger at. The lack of prayer smoke from its roof and the ardents emerging with robes flecked red gives him his answer. Inside, the marble floor is a sea of pallets and painspren: hundreds of wounded too injured to be sent home, families huddled around bleeding mothers and fathers, others marked with rotspren and waiting to die. Taravangian is in the doorway behind him, weeping, and pleads with Fen for permission to send his Vedenar surgeons through the Oathgate. She concedes — the first real concession of the day — and he stays behind on the steps to await them, looking, Dalinar thinks, like one kneeling before a burning prayer.

The tour reboards palanquins to the courtyard of Talenelat — Stonesinew, Herald of Soldiers — where Fen has set out a meagre repast of nuts, fruit, and salted fish. The temple here has fared worst of any: the entry lintel block has dropped down into the doorway and the carved reliefs of Talenelat standing alone against the Voidbringers are cracked in hundreds of places, with a long black scorch across the wall where Everstorm lightning struck. *As if Odium had a grudge against this one in particular,* Dalinar notes — and remembers that Talenelat was the one they abandoned. Fen withdraws to conduct business and leaves Dalinar half an hour to wait — calibrated as a reminder that she is still the authority here, no matter how powerful he has become. He decides instead to pick a fight.

The target is the captainlord who has been muttering at him all morning — Fen's son Kdralk, who Dalinar pretends not to recognise. Navani sets him up the opening he needs and he challenges the young man to a sparring bout, longswords, three-minute alternating advantage. Kdralk agrees, jeering, on condition that Rial and the others swear that if he lands a fatal blow it is not to be called assassination. The countdown begins. Dalinar dodges around the ring's edge holding Stormlight, lets Kdralk grow desperate, then steps deliberately into the final thrust and takes the longsword through his chest just left of the heart. Stormlight rushes to heal the wound. Dalinar coughs blood, calmly takes Kdralk by the wrist, slides the sword the rest of the way through, then draws it out and stands glowing in the daylight. The courtyard is silent. *I don't want your life, son,* he tells the boy, and tosses him his shirt to wear in place of his own. *If I'd wanted to conquer Thaylenah, I wouldn't be smiling about peace.*

The trick works on the watching officers — they are afraid of him; he has them — and that, to his own surprise, sickens him. He turns and climbs the temple steps and sits down against the lintel block, ashamed. The Stormfather rumbles. Beneath the rumble he hears that other voice, the one that has murmured at him through every vision: *Unite them.* *I'm trying,* he whispers. And then, very quiet, beneath that: *Unite us. Please.* — a hundred voices overlapping. He follows the sound and realises he is hearing the *spren of the broken temple*: chunks of stone that have stood as one for centuries, that still see themselves as a single carving and now hurt the way men weep over their own bodies on a battlefield.

Full of Stormlight he turns and seizes the fallen block. He shoulders it up under the doorway, joints popping and healing, and shoves with legs and back and arms together until it slides home; power floods through his hands into the stone, and the cracks in the carved reliefs knit themselves shut. A gloryspren bursts around his head. The temple is whole. Navani climbs up behind him, asks softly what he just did. *I listened.* The power, he tells her, is good for far, far more than breaking, and they have been ignoring that. *Bondsmith.* He turns to the watching crowd and sends for the scribe who wired Taravangian's surgeons in: *Write again. Send for my son Renarin.*

The chapter closes in the courtyard of the Battah temple. Kdralk — now leading a crew of ten ropework men with Dalinar's bloodied shirt knotted at his waist as a girdle — has just heaved the hips of the Simulacrum back into place, and a shout from below announces the recovery of the statue's left arm from a mansion roof. Dalinar is wiping his hands, exhausted from sealing the stone. Renarin is working the Royal Ward healing the wounded, deflecting every grateful word back onto his father; a Thaylen father comes down the temple steps and breaks into a small skip on legs that had been broken in the most recent storm. *I need your help, Fen,* Dalinar tells the queen quietly. He thinks like an Alethi; he needs people who see what he cannot. Bowed-headed, he asks her to *join* him — the distinction, he explains, between *your* war and *our* war. She tries to demur and then gives in. Three Vorin thrones, Dalinar, Fen, Taravangian — the first real united coalition since the Hierocracy, and two of the three kingdoms in ruins; three, Dalinar corrects, because Alethkar is occupied. With Thaylenah seated, the next target is Azir, and Fen warns him that what worked here will not work there. The Azish, she says, are not Vorin; strength and passion will only make them dig in. *Do you have suggestions?* he asks. *I don't think you'll find them very appealing.* *Try me. I'm starting to appreciate that the way I usually do things has severe limitations.*