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Kaladin watches the besieged city from inside one of Shallan's illusions — a knob of stone ground that looks, from outside, like nothing worth a second glance. The party landed in the night and hiked back to a point about a mile from the wall to sleep under cover; impressively, the illusion held the whole night on very little Stormlight. The cave-roof feels like a cave but does nothing about the rain blowing straight through it; the king and Shallan grumble about the damp, and Kaladin's bridgemen slept like stones because they have lived through worse. Through a slit Shallan has left in the side, Adolin surveys Kholinar with a spyglass and notes that the enemy is letting refugees in through the side gates — a classic siege technique, draining the city's stores from within. Above the palace, even on a cloudless morning, a shadow still hangs. Shallan whispers what they have all suspected: *One of them. The Unmade.*

She has been sketching, and tells the team she needs reference for complex illusions. Most of the party will not need disguising — nobody here knows Skar or Drehy from the Plains — but Kaladin and Adolin get faces; Kaladin because he spent time with the freed parshmen and might be recognised. She drapes Adolin in Stormlight and resolves him into a handsome old rogue, white-haired, the sort of man women decide they prefer older men because of. Kaladin gets something Shallan refuses to describe, but Drehy winces at it. The king is told he is going to be a woman, and to everyone's surprise accepts without complaint; Shallan explains that Elhokar cannot stop carrying himself like a king, so the safest disguise is a high lighteyed lady. She Lightweaves him into a tall stately Alethi woman with features that recall Jasnah. The Stormlight wrapping Kaladin feels strange to him — present, but inert, like a glowing coal that gives no heat. He cannot pull it into himself.

Syl zips into the enclosure as a ribbon of light, takes the shape of a young woman, sees Kaladin's new face and recoils in delight; he glares and threatens to summon her as a flat shiny piece of metal so he can see, which she refuses on the ground that she is a *majestic weapon to be used only in majestic ways*. The party files out in line as the rock illusion melts behind them — Kaladin's bridgemen in unmarked blue, Shallan's deserters in unmarked brown — and they fall into the role of a small refugee household: a lighteyed bright-lady fled with a few guards, a young ward, and (as Kaladin realises with chagrin) himself as her wizened houseman. Crossing the Windrunner bridge into the killing field, the king drops back beside him and quietly observes that the Windrunner order was prominent in what was once Alethela, and that this is the city in which his wife and child still live. *I wasn't speaking of you, Captain,* Elhokar tells him when he flinches. *I was referring to my own limitations. When I fail this city, I want to make sure you are there to protect it.* It is a compliment in the form of an insult — or the other way around — and it reminds Kaladin of the rumour-built reputation he had once relied on in Amaram's army.

The side gates are jammed with a crowd of refugees who are no longer being let in. Elhokar imperiously pushes to the front and demands entry; the guard captain answers that the city is at quota, that the stormshelters are overflowing, and that the Wall Guard's Highmarshal Azure — a name Adolin has never heard, with no superior above him — has set the limit. The captain offers to admit them at once if the king will assign Skar and Drehy to the Wall Guard (and dismisses the disguised Kaladin as too sick to keep). Elhokar refuses. Before the argument can end, Syl zips skyward. A V of roughly two dozen Fused sweeps over the wall trailing dark plumes, throws a few defenders off, and is gone again. The Wall Guard captain bolts inside; the crowd surges through the open door behind him.

Adolin tows the king through. Kaladin fights the press the other way, watching falling men hit the stone below, almost drawing in Stormlight to fly to them and barely holding himself back — *the point is to get in without being seen.* Adolin comes back for him and explains: this is only a probe; a few flying Voidbringers can no more hold a city than a Shardbearer can, and they will need an entire army to take Kholinar properly. They go inside.

The city is half-starved but not yet starving — clogged streets, locked stormdoors, refugees in the gutters, the wealthy quarters fenced in behind hired guards. Where, Kaladin wonders, are the patrols? They pass a small market and finally see one, in unfamiliar colours. Shallan points out cult performers on a corner — a man in white with fluttering strips of cloth, leaping from pose to pose like a windspren. He meets Kaladin's eyes and does not look away. A procession follows of more such people, robed as red and green and blue spren, calling nonsense, while spectators bow and pray. Shallan identifies them: they are imitating spren — flame, wind, fear, anticipation. Nearby a refugee woman gives off exhaustionspren of a sickly red instead of brown, distorted; Syl whispers from Kaladin's shoulder that those spren are from *him*. Shallan grips Adolin's arm: *keep us moving.* Elhokar is fishing in his pocket for a sphere to give the woman, in the middle of the crowd; Kaladin hauls him sideways.

Adolin leads them off the procession route, through an arched gate into a shared courtyard garden behind a row of buildings, and knocks at a back door. On the metal numberplate Kaladin finally sees his own reflection — patchy hair, mismatched eyes, fake teeth, open sores, a nose the wrong size. *I look like some kind of hideous spren,* he complains. *Hey!* says Syl. The door opens on a small Thaylen woman in an apron with twin-curled eyebrows and a white-bearded Horneater-styled husband behind her. Shallan wipes Adolin's illusion off like makeup; the tailor's jaw drops — *Prince Adolin?* — and pulls them inside. The chamber is hung with bolts of cloth and dummies wearing bright half-finished coats. Adolin explains: he wanted somewhere safe, somewhere with someone he would trust with his life, so he has brought them to his tailor.