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The Wall Guard barracks smells, to Kaladin, like home — not the antiseptic-and-pressed-flowers smell of his father's house, but the *real* home of leather and weapon oil, boiling stew and bodies. Spheres in white and blue line the walls of a common room that comfortably houses two platoons; armourers stitch jerkins in the corner, others sharpen weapons in that rhythmic way good soldiers do. The stew nowhere matches Rock's — he has been spoiled — but he settles onto a long bench beside a fidgety little ardent inking glyphwards onto squares of cloth and finds himself, against his will, smiling.

Looking again he notices the second layer. Notched weapons being whetted back to edge. Cuts in leather being mended from lance work. Conspicuous empty seats with cups already laid out. These men have been losing brothers. Not many yet — they can still laugh — but the room is tighter than the laughter suggests. Lieutenant Noro names him to the squad as a deserter with Sadeas's shash brand, borne, no less, by a *lighteyes*; the rest of the room takes the news as curious rather than alarming and one or two openly cheer. Kaladin can't imagine any of Dalinar's units being this open with a marked deserter.

A short hairy-handed man called Beard (who has no beard) sets a bowl of thick Soulcast tallew-and-meat stew in front of him. *Best to ignore Beard,* Noro suggests; *it's a habit the squad has acquired.* Beard nudges Kaladin like a confidant: he knew Amaram from his secret-operations days, you see, and he'll tell that story sometime. The squad laughs him off; the flatbread recipe is his too, apparently, learned from a Horneater mystic atop a mountain. *More like where he landed,* the tall one says, *after his last squad kicked him there.* He explains, when pressed on a deserter's sins, that branding a lighteyes shash takes a highprince's leave; there is more to the story. There is, Kaladin agrees, then goes back to his stew.

He fishes for Guard intelligence between bites. Where does the grain come from? Not the market — no Guard in his right mind would Soulcast openly with the screamers in the city — and a stockpile would have been seized by some highprince by now. Noro dodges that smoothly — *a Guard secret* — but there is always a stew on and bread in the oven. *My recipe,* Beard puts in. Eventually Kaladin realises, with a small shock, that everyone in the room is lighteyed — cook, armourers, lieutenants, the dish-washers. He has not noticed, because no one has acted any differently than darkeyed soldiers do. He has been told most of his life that lighteyed footsoldiers are basically just people; sitting here on this bench is the first time he has actually felt it.

Noro makes a soft pass at recruitment — warm beds, light watch duty, cards through highstorms, no questions about a man's past — and asks point-blank what Kaladin thinks. Kaladin deflects: *Aren't you worried I'll just walk away again?* Beard: *Not as afraid as we are of being under-staffed. A man who can put down enemies will suit us fine.* Kaladin then asks the one thing he came here to learn: *Tell me, then, about this commander of yours.* He'll meet Beard tells him, the highmarshal does the rounds at dinner. Noro looks uncomfortable; another squadmate praises Azure at length — they lost their old commander in the riots, Azure held the line when the cultists tried to seize the gates amid the chaos, fought like a Voidbringer with a glittering Shardblade aloft, and rallied men who should by rights have broken. Kaladin narrows his eyes. He stays for a third bowl in part to see whether the highmarshal will actually appear.

The highmarshal does. A disturbance at the door brings the room to salute. The newcomer wears a glittering chain over a bright tabard, with an azure cloak — a lighter shade than traditional Kholin blue — and a mail coif at the neck, helm carried in hand. And Azure is *a she*. Syl gasps from somewhere up above. The highmarshal is of about middle stature among Alethi women, with straight short hair to mid-cheek and orange eyes; a couple of long, serious scars cross her face. She wears gloves on both hands. At her belt is a silver-basket-hilted side sword that does not look Alethi — possibly the much-praised Shardblade, although why she would carry one rather than dismiss it Kaladin cannot guess. Kaladin hisses at Beard: their commander is *a woman.* *That subject — the marshal's secret — we don't discuss,* Beard hushes back. The others nod. It is, Kaladin thinks, a remarkably open secret, given that she is right there.

Azure accepts a bowl of stew, takes a polite bite, compliments the cook, and hands the bowl to an attendant; she moves through the room talking to officers. At Noro's table she fixes Kaladin with a discerning eye. *A shash brand on a lighteyes? Storms — who'd you kill?* *It wasn't the one I killed that earned me the brands, sir. It was the one I didn't.* *That sounds like a practised answer, soldier.* *That's because it is.* She does not press; she grunts, asks if he is joining up, and — when he hedges — calls Noro out for not having *shown him* yet. The two of them march him up an enclosed stairwell to the wall walk.

The Kholinar wall is reportedly over sixty feet at points, ten feet thick on the walk, set onto the outer windblades like an inverted crown. Guard towers stand every three hundred feet, big enough for entire platoons. Night has just fallen; far to the north a glow hangs on the horizon. *They re-form after each storm,* Azure tells him quietly, *and they leave a portion of their forces encamped out there. That's good battle sense — keeps us from being resupplied, hides when they intend to attack.* These are not Alethi coming to be king of Alethkar — they are monsters, and at best the entire population is enslaved. Reading from his shash brand she guesses correctly that he was an old Sadeas northern recruit who had been promised the Plains and instead got used to break neighbouring highprinces — a service she does not blame him for deserting.

The Wall Guard, she tells him, is redemption: do enough up here and no one cares what you were down there, because if the wall falls there is no city and no nation to care. He can go back into the streets and pray they hold without him, but if they don't he is simply another body afterward. Up here, he can do something. *We won't press you. Walk away tonight. Lie down somewhere and picture men dying for you up here in the dark when the assault comes. Come back tomorrow and we'll get you a patch.* Syl lands on his shoulder; he spends a long moment looking out at the distant lights, and thinks of Sah, of Sah's daughter with her pressed flowers and her treasured playing cards, of Khen who had been furious at him but had insisted he keep his freedom. *Winds send they were not dragged here.*

He clatters back down with the others. Noro and the squad bid him a cheerful farewell, certain he'll be back; he probably will return, though his reason will not be the one they assume. At the party he forces himself through small talk with the lighteyed bodyguards, learns nothing, and gets stared at over his brands. Adolin and Elhokar finally come out, illusions still intact — so what had gone wrong with Kaladin's? — and he gathers Skar and Drehy and falls in beside the king and Adolin for the walk home. *Something on your mind, captain?* Elhokar asks. *I think,* Kaladin answers, *I might have just found us another Radiant.*