POV: kaladin
Summary
Kaladin hikes through Celebrant with Adolin and Syl after a quick stop at the moneychanger. He is unsettled: a brand-new city full of unknown threats is no place to relax, and the deeper into the streets they go, the stranger the spren grow. Reachers like Ico's crew are common, but he also sees vine-bodied spren with crystal hands, inky-skinned spren that flash colour in the light, Cryptics huddling together, stone-cracked spren with molten light inside, and white-ashen spren whose skin disintegrates at a gesture to reveal bone, then regrows. He sees no honorspren at all, and the various types do not seem to mix.
Syl explains, when Kaladin notices the lack of children, that spren reproduce rarely: power coalesces somewhere, awakens, and a parent returns with a child. Most spren live hundreds of years without it. They do not age the way humans do; they do not learn or change much unless they are bonded. Adolin stops at a clothing stall and haggles for an extra set for everyone — and a skirt for Shallan — while Syl insists on a baggy poncho and floppy hat of her own, partly because she likes them and partly because she does not trust Shallan's illusion to keep her from being recognised. They pick up two harpoons; Kaladin feels better with one in his hand. While Adolin haggles at a food stall, Kaladin finds himself drawn across the path to a small oil painting — sloppy strokes of red and white and black, a kneeling figure throwing nine shadows. The Reacher proprietor calls it the work of Nenefra, from the Court of Gods, and asks three hundred broams of Stormlight for it. *Nine shadows. The Unmade?* In the painting Kaladin sees the images from Riino's storm-orb vision and feels again that he must reach Thaylen City on time.
At the docks, Shallan, Azure, and Pattern are working down the registrar's list. The white-ashen captain in front of them will not sail toward Cultivation's Perpendicularity; Pattern translates her warning that Voidspren now sail warships there and demand tribute, with Fused men of shells that can fly among them. Shadesmar has been changing for months — Voidspren appeared mysteriously near the Nexus of Imagination, opposite Marat and Tukar, and have seized the perpendicularity. No ship will go west toward Thaylen City either. A grand white-and-gold vessel bound for Lasting Integrity dismisses them with a laugh; a sleek molten-stone captain bound for Freelight is happy to negotiate, but waves them off until after his dock inspection.
Shallan turns back toward the rendezvous in time for Azure to catch a parshman-marbled figure standing on Ico's poop deck — a Fused inspector floating a foot above the boards. They duck into the registrar's office. The cringing vine-spren clerk confirms it has been months since Celebrant was free; a handful of officials answer to two Fused, including one named Kyril who runs the inspections and *might be mad too.* As they argue, Azure looks out the window: Kyril has just set Ico's ship on fire.
Across the city, Kaladin is jolted out of the painting by a disturbance behind him — Adolin jogging up to report trouble. Back at the food stall a knot of spren is pointing at Syl: even under the illusion, they have recognised her. Kaladin hauls her away, and she finally admits the rest of it — she ran away from the other honorspren, there is an enormous reward in Stormlight posted in every port for her return to Lasting Integrity, and she did not want him to know because she feared he would hate her for being, in effect, a spren lighteyes.
Meanwhile in the registrar's office, Shallan sucks in Stormlight and overlays the cringing party with the faces of sailors she had sketched. Kyril storms in, glides past them to the desk, and accuses the registrar of hiding human criminals — two or three of them, plus an honorspren and an inkspren — based on what was found aboard Ico's ship. The vine spren stalls. Kyril orders the fire put out with the city's sand stores and the registrar replaced, then sweeps out. Once he is gone, the clerk realises he is speaking to a Radiant — *the old oaths are spoken again* — and urges them to flee, promising to stall.
Back on the dock, Kaladin feels something wrong on the air — flapping cloth, postures further down the street — and pulls Adolin and Syl into a stall just as a Fused soars overhead, its shadow trailing the wrong direction. They scatter into the alleys, find the others, and take stock: Ico's ship is burning unstoppably, all the other ships are sailing east or refusing humans, and the one captain who might have taken them — the Lasting Integrity honorspren ship — is already being pulled out of the harbour. Kaladin floats fighting his way onto a vessel or duelling the Fused alone; Shallan kills both ideas. Syl has a great bad idea instead.
She runs out along the pier beside the honorspren ship, throws off her poncho and hat, and screams her name up at the deck — *Sylphrena, the Ancient Daughter* — taunting the honorspren that she will scamper off if they do not catch her now. The vessel halts; a gangway drops; the rest of the party scrambles up after her. The honorspren tie Syl's arms, confiscate their harpoons and infused gemstones, and pay them little further mind. From the receding deck, Kaladin watches the Fused hover over Ico's smoke before streaking off in another direction. The bounty has worked: honorspren give him pause.