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Szeth is Lashed — well, *landed* — into the town square of a modest settlement on the north border of the Purelake, along with the other Skybreaker hopefuls and squires assembled for today's test. Three masters set down with them; the rest of the order remains on the cliffs above or in the air. The group is a deliberate mix: Makabaki, Reshi, Vorins, Iriali, a single Thaylen, and Szeth the lone Shin. The order, he notes, does not care about eye colour or ethnicity.

A thickset man in a Marabethian wrap and an Azish coat heaves himself off a porch and demands in Azish to know what took them so long. Convicts have escaped his prison; they will kill again if not stopped; the Skybreakers will find them, recognisable by the tattoos on their foreheads. The eager squires sprint for the water or take to the sky at once. Szeth lingers, then steps up to Master Ki, who today wears the shoulder cloak of a high judge of Marabethia — the order, she has explained, dresses as the local law dresses, wherever it is. She tells him the Skybreakers have been openly expanding since the new storm; local monarchs have given them legal authority, and the city's high minister wrote them for help. The convicts are dangerous murderers, all guilty, and writs of execution have already been obtained. Several more squires leave at that. Szeth presses one more question — why were these men not executed before? — and is told the region is dominated by Reshi idealists who hold nonviolent views even toward killers, and that Minister Kwati is paid tribute to hold their prisoners. With the breakout, mercy is withdrawn.

Ki also asks why a Shin walks on stone, when every Shin she has known calls it holy and refuses. Szeth answers that stone cannot be holy; if it truly were, it would have burned him away long ago. He steps into the Purelake.

The water is warmer than he remembers — never higher than a man's thighs even at the centre. The flying squires will easily take anyone in the open, so he hunts for less obvious targets and turns parallel to the shore. The sword complains in his head that he is going the wrong way, that he hasn't killed anyone the whole time he has been carrying it, that he is increasingly *kind of boring.* Szeth notices the leaves of a gnarled tree along the bank pulled in to hide and ambles beneath it as if he had not. A scrawny Reshi convict drops on him with an improvised dagger.

Without Lashings Szeth feels slow and is forced back into the water. He turns the man's own momentum against him, eventually pinning the convict's wrist and pulling a knife to his chest — only to realise, with a flash of horror at himself, that he was about to kill the very man he needed to question. The convict tackles him; they both go under into water warm as blood. The fight reduces to splashing in the shallows; the sword's harness strap catches on the stones and Szeth tears himself free, dropping the weapon. The convict sees the silver scabbard underwater, his eyes glaze, and he drops his own knife to dive for the sword instead. Curious. Szeth punches him — his arm leaving the now-familiar afterimage of his improperly attached spirit — wrenches the sheathed weapon back, and swings it scabbard and all into the man's back. The convict goes down paralysed but alive. Questioning him, Szeth confirms there was no help from outside; only a guard killed in the escape. He drops the man face-down in the lake and walks on.

Up at the prison he finds it confirmed: barely any windows, a single dead guard, a stinking dark hole left to police itself. Down at the corpses laid out in town he sees a prison economy — the convicts who held power were fed; the rest were not. He returns to the porch, where the minister is failing spectacularly to make small talk with Ki, and tells him to his face what he has worked out: one guard for the whole jail, no oversight on weapons, prisoners starved into a hierarchy, and the funds for proper security gone somewhere else. The minister sneers — *a Shin stonewalker, who are you to question me, go back to your stupid grass and dead trees, little man.* Szeth turns to Ki and asks whether she has a writ for *this* man. *It is the first we obtained,* she answers.

Szeth unhooks the clasp on the black sword and draws it.

A rushing of a thousand screams. A wave of force. The colours around him deepen — the minister's cloak resolves into stunning oranges and blood reds — and a single word fills him: *DESTROY!* Liquid darkness flows from the Blade and melts to smoke as it falls. Through searing pain in his arm Szeth rams the weapon through the minister's chest, and the man simply ceases — flesh and blood and apparently soul puff into black smoke, leaving not even a stain on the stones. Black veins crawl up Szeth's hand. He sheathes the sword, falls to his knees, and slowly the dark drains from his arm. The skin of his hand, already pale, has been bleached grey-white. Several of his spheres are completely drained. He bows to Ki: *I have dealt with the worst of the criminals.* Around him, townspeople and Skybreakers alike stare at him in uniform horror. He asks for something to drink.

Hours later, the sword stirs again from its stupor, slurring like a beast that has gorged itself. *Hey! Did you draw me? Did we destroy lots of evil?* Szeth tells it a great and corrupt evil indeed. The sword observes proudly that Vivenna never drew it once in the days she carried it; Szeth has been carrying it *at least an hour. One, or two, or ten thousand.*

Ki returns. She has decided to take him as her squire — there had been an argument among the masters over who would have the privilege. During her prayers the night before, the highspren Winnow told her that the highspren are watching him; she will not be surprised if he reaches the Third Ideal in mere months. He bows his head, but he does not yet swear. First he asks: she knew this breakout would happen, didn't she? She tells him the order had already investigated Kwati and obtained the first writ against him — but the man had not yet broken a law. Only when his prisoners had escaped, only when *he* had failed his own duty, could they mete out justice. That is the point of their place in the world. Szeth nods. *I swear to seek justice, to let it guide me, until I find a more perfect Ideal.* *These Words are accepted,* Ki answers, and offers him a glowing emerald sphere. Trembling, he breathes in the Stormlight. It comes to him in a rush. The skies are his once again.