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The Windrunners hang in the air around Kaladin in a defensive spread, motionless and equidistant in a way no skyeel ever managed; below, the refugees boarding the Fourth Bridge stop to gape up through the awespren. Out of the burning fog come three flights of Heavenly Ones in muted battle robes, lances proffered. From the Herald Ash the coalition now knows what these creatures are: each Fused is an ancient soul sustained in a singer body that was sacrificed to host it. Kaladin sends the lowest-rank squires down to guard the civilians and tells the rest to engage as duels — primary engagement protocol. He has three hundred Windrunners now, fifty of them full knights; the queue of would-be Radiants has stalled because there are barely any willing honorspren left to find.

He waits for the figure he wants. She finds him. Leshwi — a leader among the Heavenly Ones who reigns at roughly his rank, marbled in red, black and white with the same upturn in the way she holds herself even in a new singer body — meets his eye, smiles, and offers her spear. He answers. They peel up and away as Dalinar opens the perpendicularity below; for an instant the sky becomes the black starlit highway of Shadesmar, then a wave of light rises through the battlefield and the Windrunners burst alight with renewed Stormlight. Leshwi's spear is reinforced with a silvery metal that resists Shardblade cuts and tipped with a gemstone that would suck out his Light if it struck him; she is also immortal — every Fused returns with the next Everstorm — and so she fights with a recklessness he cannot. She dives, weaves through the crowd, brushes past Godeke and his civilians (the Edgedancer's Blade only clips her trailing robes), then arrows along the Fourth Bridge's flank, plainly more interested in studying the airship than in killing him. He breaks away long enough for Rock to throw him up a spare spear from the deck; on the next pass Kaladin hurls it at her at full Lash and misses by a hand. She loops away in a sky-flourish, exulting, and disappears into the larger fight.

In the chasms a continent away, the Sons of Honor are halfway through resealing Veil's sack when she insists she is not who they think she is. The chasm goes quiet. *Now think of something.* Shallan picks her line: she is a hidden second business, copying Kholin artifabrian schematics through her own informants at Urithiru and selling them on. She has the plans for the great floating platform that flew out of Narak two weeks ago — she just needs a buyer of the right scale. The male cultist sputters *treason*; Radiant fixes the woman (Ulina) with the level stare Shallan has spent months sketching off Dalinar — *you will not take this from me; you can earn favour by helping me deliver it.* The woman bites: show me. Shallan pulls out a notebook, breathes in a sip of Light under cover, and snaps a Lightweaving into place such that a charcoal rubbing on a blank page reveals an *indentation* of the Fourth Bridge's schematic. The man cannot parse it; the woman, leaning close, decides it is interesting enough to take to the queen. They re-bag her for transport — and the tall man with the sack, Red, whispers to her under it. *What now? This feels like trouble.* Veil tells him to hold character; she needs to get to Ialai now and find out if there really is a spy near Dalinar. Shouts rise in the chasm before the conversation can finish. *Kholin troops.* Adolin, seeing the sack go back over her head, has read it as distress and committed to the ambush.

In the sky again, Kaladin takes another Heavenly One in a long methodical duel — wear the Voidlight down with hits the enemy cannot heal away, then break the spear with a Sylhammer — and lets him go. Killing him would only feed him back to the next storm; better to take him out of the fight for a few days. The defeated Fused hums a different tone, lifts what is left of his spear in Kaladin's direction, drops it, bows, and drifts away. Almost immediately, a ribbon of red-violet light streaks in from the side and Kaladin is already Lashed backward before he has consciously seen it — the new Fused from earlier in the morning, looking for him. It dodges away.

Lyn arrives, asking — the wrong way — if he is all right. He snaps at her; she answers, plainly, that not wanting them to be more together had not stopped her caring. He looks away. He sends her with the warning about the red light to the other Windrunners and drops down to the ship deck. Syl rides his shoulder home and, when he accuses her of having told the squad about his sleep, denies it cleanly. Nightmares. Lopen and Teft have been hovering at him because they care, not because she gave them a script. *Stop being a stumer,* she says — a word she once heard Lift use whose meaning she does not actually know. He admits, grudgingly, that Roshone has improved a little; that does not mean he gets to be forgiven for Tien. Meanwhile Roshone has stepped up to Dalinar to mention prisoners in the manor stormcellar — only two — and asks to accompany Godeke to free them. Rock and Dabbid are helping refugees aboard; Cord is standing nearby in the full set of Shardplate she came home from Aimia in, Amaram's old Shardbow on her back. Kaladin tells them to keep an eye out for red lines of light, gives the team a watch on Dalinar, spots Leshwi streaking past again — and launches.