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Dalinar emerges from the building at the head of the Thaylen City Oathgate and is met by the one man in Roshar he most wants to hit — Meridas Amaram, clean-shaven and uniform-perfect in House Sadeas colours. They walk the rim of the platform while Amaram reports on his crews: the killing field cleared outside the wall, weak sections of fortification shored up, the army camped in cleared inner blocks, general reconstruction across the city. Then, angerspren boiling beneath his right boot, he asks whether the penance is over. Dalinar tells him to follow his orders; that, he says, is how he can prove himself. Amaram salutes after a deliberate pause and marches down into the city.

Bridge Four arrives at the rim and offers, in turn, to handle the new highprince — Teft, Lyn (with her one session of spear training), Lopen (volunteering Huio as the small-jobs expert). Dalinar calls them to attention through a smile. The next planning meeting is in thirty-seven minutes. Navani, Jasnah and Renarin join him. Fen's son Kdralk offers him a villa on the Royal Ward — above Talenelat's temple, where the meeting will be — to rest in. Beside them another Oathgate flash arrives — Malata running it again, as is becoming her duty — bringing in not soldiers but a knot of overdressed Thaylen merchants with armed escorts and heavy chests. Kdralk explains: bankers across the continent are pulling their gemstone holdings out of vulnerable cities and consolidating them in the fortress-like Gemstone Reserve downhill, leaving local governments without the funds to pay troops. Renarin lingers at the rail, asks how big the city's largest gemstones are, and refuses to explain why when pressed.

Upstairs in the villa, Dalinar washes his face and asks the Stormfather how he is doing. The Stormfather tells him he could have been splintered when the enemy noticed the Venli vision; he survives only because the enemy is afraid of a counterstrike from her. She is alive. Dalinar has even met her, though he does not remember. Normally she stays hidden — call it cowardice, the Stormfather says; call it wisdom, Dalinar answers. Pressed further, the Stormfather reveals more than before: there is another being alongside himself and the Nightwatcher, a third sibling who is not in hiding but slumbering, and he refuses to say anything else. He accuses Dalinar of having hurt them enough already. On the dresser sits a gift from Fen — a Thaylen copy of *The Way of Kings* with a glyph-note reading *Pathway. King.* Dalinar tells the Stormfather he has kept his oath: he has united them. He asks whether Honor ever cared about the pain men felt; the Stormfather says he did. By the end, Honor cared more about the oath than its meaning, but he was no cold-hearted thing, and he died defending humankind.

Down in the common room, Taravangian paces, asks to be called Vargo, and confesses he is fretful. He is, he says, well today — and a day on which he cannot be heartless is a day to fret over. He insists on attending the meeting.

Inside the temple beneath murals of Talenelat's many last stands, Dalinar catches himself looking forward to the politics. The Azish viziers swap a thank-you poem with Fen; Kdralk sits next to Renarin and tries to chat. Bridge Four jokes with Aladar's guards and now includes — for the first time — two women in havahs wearing the bridge-patch on their sleeves where scribes wear platoon insignia. Lift perches on a windowsill. Looking out at Alethi highprinces, Azish viziers, Radiants and Thaylen admirals together — and at the talk of a political marriage between General Khal's eldest, standing tall in his father's Plate by the door, and a princess of Yezier — Dalinar hears once again the familiar resonant whisper that has dogged him for months: *unite them*. The Stormfather denies saying anything.

The naval discussion goes well: the Azish outriders see no sign of enemy ships, the main fleet is less than a day out, and the storm window holds. A Veden scout has counted over a hundred enemy hulls waiting in coves along Marat's coastline, but they have not launched. The admirals work out patrol patterns. Fen belatedly welcomes everyone — a part Dalinar realises he should have left her from the start. Renarin excuses himself, hoarse, and leaves; Jasnah starts after him and is intercepted by a scribe with a sheaf of documents she takes instead to Navani.

Spanreeds across the room then bloom red at once. The Everstorm has struck Shinovar — five days after the last, not nine. Teshav's report says this storm is faster and more violent. Fen reassures the room: the sheltered new docks down the coast can hold the fleet if they redirect it there at once. The Stormfather tells Dalinar under his breath that the storm is not the worst of it. Dalinar is on his feet, Bridge Four grabbing spears, before he knows what he is reacting to.

Jasnah and Navani look up from their pages, Navani's safehand at her mouth. Teams in Kharbranth and in Veden monasteries have separately cracked the Dawnchant using the seed the visions provided. The Eila Stele — the oldest carved record, said to predate the first Desolation — has come in today, and what it actually says, Navani reads softly, is a warning written by a Dawnsinger to her own people about refugees who arrived from another world with stolen Surges and brought betrayal even to the things native to Roshar. The otherworlders, the carver writes, are named Voidbringers. They were the ancestors of every human in the room. The original Desolation was, by this account, the human invasion. That, Jasnah says, is what broke the ancient Radiants. Dalinar feels cold. They are not the defenders of this homeland. They are its invaders.

Then Taravangian stands beside his scribes and apologetically raises a second matter. Fen raises a third — an essay from one Zetah the Voiced claiming King Elhokar swore himself as vassal to Dalinar before leaving for Alethkar. Noura raises a fourth — the accounts of two of Dalinar's private visions in which he met and bargained with a being called Odium. She asks whether it is true, and Jasnah minutely shakes her head; Dalinar says yes anyway. She asks whether the enemy told him he would destroy Roshar. Taravangian presses on: did the ancient Radiants not disband, in fact, because they understood that their own powers could not be safely contained? Everyone is talking at once. Dalinar sinks back into his chair. A single sword has been thrust into his coalition's heart — three blows on the same day, each tuned to a different monarch's deepest fear — and he has been deftly, completely outflanked.