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Kaladin kneels in a pillared plaza square several blocks from Yokska's shop, draws in a careful sip of Stormlight, and Lashes a small stone with barely enough light to shiver it in place. He exhales the storm at once, ducks behind a planter with Shallan and Adolin (today disguised as Captainlord Meleran Khal, Teshav's balding youngest son), and waits. People scatter for cover. Two screamers arrive seconds later — yellow-white twists of light hanging above the square, their shrieks like a wounded animal alone in the wilderness, casting around but never quite locking on the stone, whose charge has bled out almost instantly. They are unlike the windspren-like screamer he had seen with Sah's parshmen on the road; these look more like bright spheres crackling with energy. Then a Voidbringer descends on the air in red-and-black, carrying a long lance-like spear with a thin armour-piercing point — *that,* Kaladin thinks, *would be perfect for fighting in flight* — and a tall triangular shield. The spren go silent. The flying enemy hovers, snaps something at them, then shoots away as Wall Guard horns sound nearby.

The lesson is what they'd suspected. He can hold Stormlight indefinitely without notice, but the moment he Lashes anything the screamers come. Shallan's Lightweavings, by contrast, draw nothing — Pattern tells her they are quieter than Kaladin is.

Back at Yokska's shop Kaladin paces. Skar and Drehy lean by the doorway with spears. The plan for tonight is a party — Elhokar has suggested using lighteyed soirees to feel out Kholinar's noble houses for allies, and Adolin has, on minimal effort, scrounged half a dozen invitations. *The city is practically burning,* Kaladin grumbles, *and the lighteyes are throwing parties.* Drehy cheerfully asks Skar whether he ever drinks during a war and gets *every chance I can.* Adolin tromps down in a powder-blue suit with golden embroidery and a tailed jacket that won't close all the way; Yokska follows him around dusting and adjusting, the way a surgeon palpates a patient. She corrects his folio out of Liafor — those uniform plates were old, military cuts are out — and Adolin discovers, to his horror, that he has been embarrassingly out of fashion. He trades barbs with Kaladin about clothes that look like the leavings of a storm, then clasps hands with Skar and Drehy as equals — promising pastries from the inner party, taverns to visit tomorrow. Kaladin is surprised; Adolin explains he has been drinking with these two for years, going back to the Plains. It is a small thing that quietly impresses Kaladin — generals are not supposed to socialise with their rank and file, and Adolin does it anyway.

Elhokar comes down in a more restrained cut of the same outfit. They stop by Shallan's room — she is sketching with creationspren turning around her — and she gives Adolin a kiss that startles Kaladin with how unguarded it is, then layers the illusions: Adolin back to Meleran Khal, Elhokar aged into a bald yellow-eyed General Khal (another of Dalinar's senior Khal officers). She offers to mask Kaladin's scars. He resists — wearing another face still feels like lying — and finally relents only to a small Lightweaving over his slave brands. She hands each man a sphere; the illusions ride on the Stormlight inside, and will drop if the sphere runs dry. The whole group sets out, Skar and Drehy flanking with spears, Syl zipping ahead along the street. Kaladin has confirmed earlier that calling her into Blade form draws no screamers, so he counts himself armed.

Adolin immediately strikes up easy banter with Skar and Drehy. Kaladin hangs back and finds himself, oddly, ashamed of his earlier sourness. The truth is he has felt good for days, ever since he learned his parents survived. He has these days more often than he used to admit; the trouble is that on the bad ones, the good ones are impossible to remember. He passes plazas crammed with refugees just waiting for the next thing to happen. Adolin drops back to check on him, and they chase a joke through several stupid permutations — Kaladin proposing that *punchy guys* is the correct term for ardents trained to fight unarmed; Adolin gravely confirming that no, this is in fact the established academic usage, alongside *swordy fellows* and *spearish chaps.* Their laughter falls back into shop-talk: Adolin presses Kaladin to actually learn the side sword. He is not a spearman in a shield-line any more; he is an irregular, and the surest way to beat a swordsman is to spend hours drilling with the sword yourself. Even Kaladin has to admit, in the powder-blue ridiculousness of his outfit, Adolin is talking honest soldiering. The man stood up for him alone among the lighteyes when Amaram had him imprisoned; you cannot quite manage to hate Adolin Kholin.

The party house is modest by lighteyed standards — tall and narrow, four stories. Elhokar gives final assignments at the door: he and Adolin will work the actual lighteyes inside for allies; the bridgemen will mingle in the darkeyed guards' tent for whatever they know of the Cult of Moments or other strangeness in the city; Kaladin will join the lighteyed bodyguards' tent and dig for what the Guard's rank and file actually know about their highmarshal. Off they go. There is a separate tent for the lighteyed but not-quite-landowner attendants, and as Kaladin's assigned cover, it is where he is supposed to be. He cannot make himself go in. Instead he tells Skar and Drehy he will be back, borrows Skar's spear, and walks the block.

He drifts up to the base of the city wall — a smooth strata-lined formation of natural rock under the cut stonework — counts guard posts along the top, and tells himself he is doing a survey, which he half is. A Wall Guard patrol spots him. He drops the spear, raises empty hands. Their lieutenant — a wispy-bearded, blue-eyed Alethi called Noromin, whom his squad calls Noro — looks him over. *Deserter, I assume?* Kaladin braces for trouble. What he gets instead is a question: would he like a meal? The Wall Guard feeds deserters, no charge. He lifts the hair to confirm his brands are still visible — Shallan's illusion is gone over them somehow, even though the disguise sphere is still infused — and the squad reacts visibly. *A lighteyes branded shash?* the lieutenant breathes. *Storms, friend — that has to come with a story.* Noro swears on his name that the offer is exactly what he says it is — a hot meal, no enlistment. He had come out tonight to learn about the Guard's commander, and these are the men to ask, and these are the men to ask. He picks his spear back up and lets them lead him away.