(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Dalinar steps out of the Oathgate into a wooden-walled corridor — the Azish have boxed in the control building inside their Grand Market dome, sphere-lamped along the walls in sapphires (a coincidence, or a Kholin courtesy). At the end of the corridor is a small chamber full of plate-mailed soldiers in colourful caps holding very long axes; the whole group jumps and shies back when he enters. He holds out Fen's packet and the cloth-wrapped lunch and tells them he is unarmed. From among the patterned-robed viziers and scions — the Azish versions of ardents, more deeply involved in government than is proper — one woman in long extravagantly layered robes and matching cap steps forward to interpret.

*Time for my first attack.* He pulls four pieces of paper from the packet and presents them. The shock in her eyes pleases him. The ardents withdraw behind the guards to read. He cannot read the cremling-track script himself, but he closes his eyes and feels meaning *almost* within his reach. *Help me?* he whispers to the Stormfather. *What makes you think I can?* *Don't be coy.* The Stormfather concedes that what spoke for Dalinar in the visions was not the Stormfather; it was Dalinar himself. *Try touching one of them. With Spiritual Adhesion you can make a Connection.* Dalinar mimes drinking; the soldiers reluctantly push the youngest of them forward with a canteen; as Dalinar drinks he holds the young man's wrist and pushes Stormlight into him. The Azish chatter modulates from gibberish to sense in his ear like music changing keys. He lets go. The young guard, terrified — *the warlord speaks Azish?* — backs away among his fellows.

The viziers' lead — *Vizier Noura*, Dalinar guesses — confirms in Azish that Queen Fen really wrote what they have just read: a long, plodding, exactly-the-sort-of-essay-he-has-no-patience-for argument that the Oathgates are economically valuable to the cities that host them, and that even if Azir declines to join the coalition they ought to secure trade through Urithiru now. Noura begins to wave it off — *as impressed as we are* — and Dalinar, who knows never to go into battle without reserves, raises the next sheaf: six pages from Navani. Navani's essay invites Azish scholars to Urithiru to share what is being discovered there, sketches her Weeping tents and floating-tower theories, and ends with a gift: the half-shard schematics Taravangian brought from Jah Keved, offered freely because *the days of hoarding knowledge are gone*. The viziers' attitude shifts visibly. He sees them gasping for breath and rams the sword home: a single sheet on front and back, *Verdict, by Jasnah Kholin*. The scribes whisper marvelling over it — *all seven of Aqqu's Logical Forms; an allusion to the Grand Orientation; quotes Prime Kasimarlix in three successive Superior Understandings; written entirely in a single rhythmic meter* — and logicspren burst around them as little stormclouds. *A work of art,* Noura says. *Is it persuasive?* Dalinar asks. *It provokes further consideration.*

Noura agrees to take the essays before the Prime and his formal council. She walks Dalinar through the maze of the reverse-fortress market — barricades at every cross-street, the only legitimate path out climbing to a circumferential ledge on the dome's inner rim and down again — meant to confuse anyone who comes through the gate. He notes none of it would matter if a Radiant simply transferred the whole dome away with an army inside; he files that for later delicate explanation. On a wooden ramp built on a lattice of stilts he has a moment of surreal recognition — *Rathalas. The Rift. The city that had rebelled* — and feels something hidden trying to push itself up into his mind. Below the dome two divisions of Azish troops are stationed around it, taken off the wall now that the Voidbringers have withdrawn through burning Emul. Tezim is there too, Noura says; Dalinar thinks of him as the mad Herald now, and quietly wonders whether the best they can hope for is a war between Voidbringers and a Herald's army.

A rickshaw — novel and undignified — takes them to the palace. He passes groups of Azish in colourful patterned vests and caps shouting in apparent rage but surrounded by logicspren. *Protestors,* Noura explains. They have filed a formal complaint rejecting an order to leave the city and work the fields — *we don't do things at swordpoint here* — and have a month's window to make their grievance known before being made to comply. Carpenters and cobblers are being pressed to manual labour to head off famine; the fields hadn't been planted when the parshmen left. *They knew the very best moment to cripple us.* He hears about the Azish parshmen doing what Azish parshmen would do — open the gates during the storm, walk onto the plain, and the next morning file a court motion seeking back-wages. They were in negotiation when something pulled their leaders away.

At the palace he is sequestered alone in a small couch-lined room while Noura and the scribes go in to the council. He paces, sends the signal *time* on his spanreed to buy Navani's timer another hour, and finally sits down to eat — only to find his wrapped lunch already opened, the curry box scraped, crumbs on the table. On the back of the other couch perches the small Reshi girl gnawing on his sausage. *Kind of bland.* *Soldier's rations. I prefer them.* *'Cuz you're bland?* She is wearing an oversized Azish robe and cap. She listens to him work out aloud that he is uncomfortable with scribes ruling the fates of nations — *the things women write are stronger than my military* — and tells him cheerfully that lots of boys is afraid of girls. She has decided to stop eating so she will stop growing (any day now), and confides that the geezers in there will deny him — *they gots a finger,* a dried emperor's relic she calls Emperor Snot-a-Lot, and which Dalinar identifies as Sunmaker-era Prime Snoxil; a memory the Azish are leaning on to remember the last time an Alethi was here. He asks her about her order; she answers *Edgedancer — I slip around and stuff*. Then she sniffs at him and says he smells like the crazy spren who lives in the forest. *You've met the Nightwatcher?* he asks. *Yeah. You?* He nods. They eat the rest of her fruit bowl in silence.

The door opens; Noura is in the doorway, the others behind her. She glances at Lift and smiles — she does not, in fact, think as poorly of the girl as the girl thinks she does. *The emperor and his council have decided to accept your invitation to visit Urithiru.* He cuts off the protest he had prepared. She runs through the others coming with: the exiled Prime of Emul and *the Sage*, an ambassador from Tashikk (the prince's brother), the princess of Yezier (mostly because Azimir feels safer), and Liafor (always eager, as long as they cater). *Tukar's priest-king* and overrun Marat are out. He stammers thanks. *Well, your wife writes a good essay,* Noura says. He starts — *Navani? Not Jasnah?* Each of the three was weighed favourably and the Thaylen reports helped, but Jasnah's essay impressed more than it persuaded. *There was something more authentic about Lady Navani's plea.* He grins like a fool.

She walks him back to the Grand Market dome. He raises, gently, that the Oathgate could move the entire dome including its contents (*what would it do, if we built a structure halfway across the plateau perimeter?* she asks, intrigued) and that no, they do not yet know what happens to a person standing half on, half off. As Jasnah flashes into the control building to fetch him, Noura tells him she does not, personally, like the idea of Radiants — *these powers are dangerous, and the ancient Radiants turned traitor.* He promises to convince her. *You are not what I expected, Blackthorn.* *And what did you expect?* *An animal,* she says frankly. *A half-man creature of war and blood.* *I was that man,* Dalinar answers. *I've merely been blessed with enough good examples to make me aspire to something more.*

Then Jasnah takes them home. He steps out into Urithiru's mountain cold and turns toward Navani to tell her what her essay has done. *An animal,* he hears again, in Noura's voice. *An animal reacts when it is prodded. You whip it, and it becomes savage.* The memory Cultivation took from him crashes back with the weight of a thousand boulders: he remembers what happened to Evi. It started in a cold fortress in highlands once claimed by Jah Keved. It ended at the Rift. Navani is calling for a healer, sure he has been poisoned. It is not that.