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Kaladin wakes the last on the Reacher ship in Shadesmar, beads crashing rhythmically against the hull below. He slept poorly — Elhokar, Moash, Drehy and Skar all wandering in and out of his dreams — and the darkness sits thick on him, making him lethargic. He climbs to the open top deck. The crew, Syl calls them lightspren, but their common name is *Reachers:* human-shaped figures with bronze metallic skin and large childlike metal eyes, wearing real tan jackets and trousers rather than spren-mimicked clothing. Their only weapons are knives, but wicked harpoons are clipped to the railings; he marks where to go.

Syl stands at the bow. She has changed — red dress, black hair, tan-flesh skin — a Lightweaving she had Shallan make for her so the ship's crew would not spread rumour of an honorspren traveling the sea. *We used a mark that was running out,* she protests when he mutters about wasted Stormlight. *So it was worthless to us.*

Captain Ico crooks a finger and Kaladin follows him below. A line of copper plating runs the length of the stairwell wall; the captain touches it with his fingertips as he walks, and a distinct vibration carries. They pass off-duty Reachers reading in hammocks — spren, *reading,* unbothered by gender roles — and reach the hold, where Ico lights an oil lamp without striking a flame and digs out a rope-handled box. On the top deck he unpacks a small steel device shaped like a coatrack with metal prongs and a basin. Drop a bead from the sea in the centre slot, draw Stormlight out of a sphere, and concentrate. *This is a soul,* he tells Kaladin — *soul of water, but very cold. Ice from a high, high place. Ice that has never melted.* Water collects on the prongs over the next half hour and drips into the basin. Cold makes water. Some humans, Ico notes, can do this manifesting too; it is rare on both sides, and best done by the gardener-aspect cultivationspren. He admits he is unpractised.

Why Stormlight and no spheres for light on board? Because on this side the light fades too fast in chips and marks. Then he gives Kaladin something more important: in Celebrant, moneychangers keep *perfect gemstones* that hold Stormlight indefinitely. Travellers transfer fading sphere-light into a perfect stone and get credit to spend. Kaladin turns that over. If such stones exist on his side too, they could be the difference between life and death for Radiants during the Weeping.

Syl sulks over: the crew will not let her ride a mandra. *Why on Roshar would you look at one of those things and think "I need to get on its back"?* — *Because they can fly.* She nudges him with her foot. *Go talk to her. About life. About fun things.* She is his spren, she reminds him; he cannot lie to her about being lonely, and the girl makes him feel better. He fills another cup of water from the device and carries it across the rolling deck to Shallan, who is sketching the flying spren.

She is good at the sketches — and bad, alternately, at others; he flips through the book and finds an attempt at Ico reduced to a stick figure. She snatches it back. They trade banter. She tells him he walks like the sailors do. She gets visibly excited about her mandra theory: the arrowhead spren on their heads have the same shape as the luckspren she has seen accompanying skyeels and chasmfiends on her side. Greatshells, by Bavamar's calculations, should be crushed under their own weight; *they kind of do* fly, mathematically. The mandras *drop* — vanish briefly, she thinks back into the Physical Realm — which is why no ship can ever be pulled by a single one. Spren of this kind cannot be taken too far from human population centres on her side, either, or they waste away. Kaladin asks what they eat; she trails off — Syl and Pattern say *emotions*, but there is something else…

She turns sketchbook to her map of Shadesmar: Alethi rivers as peninsulas, the Sea of Spears as an island with Celebrant on its western coast. Two days, she guesses. Kaladin taps a point further south. Thaylen City — on this side a platform on the edge of a bead-lake, like the Kholinar gate they fled. *I want to try,* he tells her. Dalinar is in danger; they need to reach him. She is still skeptical; the lighthouse keeper's theatrics may have coloured what he saw. *I didn't see the future,* he insists. *It was like soaring with the Stormfather. I just know.*

They settle into chairless small talk. He asks her, finally, how she keeps from fixating on the terrible things — *the darkness inside, the men I lost.* Her answer is blunt. *I cover them up.* She can shove away anything she does not want to think about. *There. Gone.* It is getting harder; for most things it still works. *I know,* she whispers. *I'm crazy.* No, he tells her, more amazed than envious — *I wish I could do the same.* She shakes her head: *Jasnah said that power is an illusion of perception. Act like you have authority, and you often will. But pretending fragments me. I'm too good at pretending.* He says again that he would smother his emotions in a heartbeat if he could. She nods, then falls silent, and resists every attempt to draw her back into conversation.