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Kaladin flares with Stormlight over the hedgerow of refugees outside Hearthstone, pretending not to see his father, and lets Syl form into a spear. Syl reminds him, with insufferable patience, that she had told him they would be spotted. The hulking Fused who has come for him is a variety Kaladin has not seen — the seventh new shape since the Everstorm — and instead of accepting a one-on-one challenge in the way of the Heavenly Ones, he waves his soldiers to swarm. Kaladin Lashes himself up to draw the fight off the field.

The creature catches him in the air. A line of red-violet light shoots out of the body he leaves behind, re-forms around him in a heartbeat, has him by the throat and the uniform, and slams him to the ground. Kaladin sliced free of the fingers, Lashes himself airborne again, and is taken from behind in an arm triangle. A carapace dagger goes into the back of his neck once, twice, again — severing the spine in the moment between each healing. The surgeon's son in Kaladin reads the technique even as he is dying from it: this enemy has fought Surgebinders before. He head-butts free, takes the creature's head off with the Sylblade, and watches a violet ribbon abandon the discarded body. Three teleports in a row before the creature must rest. It cannot carry objects through the jump — only hair, only carapace — so it cannot keep Voidlight on its person; it has to retreat to refill. When the red light returns, Kaladin outpaces it with five Lashings and watches it dive back into the fog. The Fused calls a parting line in stone-grinding Alethi: *Watch for me from the corner of your eye, Windrunner. We'll meet again soon.* Syl coaxes a smile back out of him about the sleep he is not getting. He has not been sleeping. He has been pretending to.

A continent west, Veil is increasingly annoyed that no one has kidnapped her. She has spent a month in the Sadeas warcamp wearing the face of one Chanasha Hasareh — a real lowborn lighteyed merchant they bribed and sequestered — making exactly the wrong comments to exactly the wrong people, and the Sons of Honor still have not bitten. Radiant offers, drily, to punch them in the face if it would help. Shallan surfaces long enough to laugh; the three of them, after a year of practice, share their skin like sisters at a kitchen table. Veil books a hundred boots from a cobbler, drops a careful seditious line about Dalinar not being king, lingers near a known dark alley, finds a corner booth at the Sons of Honor winehouse, and lets Shallan do the day's accounts in character. Pattern is watching from a wall. Adolin's soldiers are out of sight. The wine, when it finally fuzzes her thinking, is drugged. *Finally*, she thinks, and slumps.

Kaladin lands outside Hearthstone with Syl needling him about how easily babies sleep. He keeps the phantom dagger feeling in the back of his neck to himself. At the gate, the singer soldiers have been backed off and are waiting on the outcome of his duel; he tells them they can fight a Radiant alone if they like, or retreat with Abiajan to the stormshelter east of town. Six rush him; thirty seconds later one is dead with her eyes burned out and the others have gone trudging away with their weapons cut in half. His mother Hesina meets him at the checkpoint with Oroden in her arms — *Gagadin!* — and asks after Lyn before he can stop her; Syl gleefully reports the breakup and the two-week sulk. He shoos her off to start gathering the townspeople. *Something big is coming.*

In the shed where Hesina has stashed the Mink's party, daggers come out — then awe, when Kaladin breathes Stormlight and the tall Herdazian whispers *By the Three Gods, it's true.* That awe disturbs Kaladin — a Herdazian freedom fighter should have seen Radiants before now. Only no one had come. After Thaylen Field, Dalinar's coalition had written Herdaz off again and again, and the Herdazians had stayed standing and bled the enemy grievously for it. When Kaladin asks which of them is the Mink, the Herdazians gesture at a hooded figure against the back wall. The cloak falls open on a rolled bundle of tarps. The man has snuck out through a loose plank. Of course he has. *He likes to see if he can do it without us noticing.* They will go find him in town. Kaladin tells them to be quick: more Fused are on the way.

Outside, Syl congratulates him on barely scowling at being called *Brightlord*. He passes his mother again, watches his father organising the line — a shorter, balding man whose lips tighten when their eyes meet — and tries to explain that he tried to come in quietly; the fog cleared at the wrong moment. Lirin does not argue. They both know what he warned Kaladin of: that visiting Hearthstone would bring death here, eventually. Today, on a stretcher under a shroud, it has. *I'm a soldier, Father. I fight for these people.* *Any idiot with hands can hold a spear. I trained your hands for something better.* They will have that argument later. Right now there is a sound in the distance. Kaladin tells his father to pack up the supplies he wants and points up.

An enormous dark shape comes through the fog: a vehicle the size of a small plaza, floating, ringed by two dozen Windrunners glowing bright. Awespren rise around Lirin like rings of blue smoke. *You and Mother won't abandon the people of Hearthstone*, Kaladin tells his father as the shadow falls over them. *So I arranged to bring them with us.*