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Kaladin stands at the edge of an Oathgate platform looking out over a snowfield, wondering if Rock is looking at the same kind of country today. Rock's party — his family, Skar, Drehy — left four weeks ago and only sent word once. He worries; he always will. The Oathgate scribe confirms his transfer, he uses the Sylblade in the wall lock, and seconds later he is over the Shattered Plains, Lashing into the sky with Syl dancing alongside windspren. *I'll miss this,* he thinks — and immediately scolds himself; he is not dying, he is retiring, and he can fly without commanding men. He spots Navani's flying ship at last reaching the Plains, the upper deck packed with gawkers, and alights on the deck to welcome the refugees.

An hour later he is leading his parents through Urithiru by sapphire light. He explains the Navani-led reorganization away from princedom-by-princedom housing and toward neighborhoods clustered on the natural-light rim of the tower. He explains the tower's accidental rooms, dead-ends, stone tubes crossing hallways for no apparent reason, the long crystal veins running the corners of rooms. Under Jasnah's new inheritance laws Laral will be made citylady; he has taken her children and his little brother off her hands for the orientation, and is showing his parents where Hearthstone's people will live. Syl rides on Hesina's shoulder, scandalizes them by gossiping that Kaladin talked to King Elhokar by his name for years, and confesses she once spent an afternoon leading a rat with food into one of Kaladin's boots because it *fit so well*. Hesina coaches her: Lirin surgically removed his sense of humor and got good money for it on the open market. Syl takes a beat, then laughs. Kaladin leans on the wall, listening, and lets himself feel the old peace of their voices.

He shows them the run of balcony rooms reserved for Hearthstone on the sixth floor of the rim — corner suite for Laral, a central stretch of ten rooms ready to be a common kitchen and meeting hall, the smaller interior rooms behind for families. He apologizes for the stairs and lifts. Hesina says it is wonderful. Lirin says nothing and walks out onto the balcony, looking up the side of the tower. Kaladin reads the silence as disapproval and is surprised by how much it stings.

Syl herds the family on to the mirror suite at the far end of the balcony stretch, which Kaladin has reserved for his parents. A sitting room with a wall of book-laden stone shelves bought out of his stipend; a nursery room with toys Syl picked because she did not trust him not to give the baby a spear. Down the hall, Syl makes Lirin open one of the doors. It is a fully outfitted surgery: exam table, the finest instruments, a heartbeat-listener, a fabrial clock, a heating plate for boiling cloth and tools. Kaladin tells him he ordered in the best from Taravangian's physicians and mentions the Kharbranth hospitals' work on infecting a patient with a weakened disease to confer lifelong immunity to a worse one.

Lirin sits down on a stool, quietly, and says it is very nice — but he can no longer see the use of it. He saw the Radiants healing with a touch on the flight in; a single Edgedancer's gesture can seal a cut, regrow a limb. Hesina mutters into Kaladin's ear that he has been moping about this the whole journey. *I'm not moping,* Lirin says. *It would be selfish to begrudge a revolution in healing. I just need to find something else to do.* Kaladin knows that voice exactly — the feeling of becoming a burden. He counters: there are fewer than fifty Edgedancers and three Truthwatchers in the coalition able to heal at all, most are deployed at the front, the few in the tower are spent on the gravest wounds, and their power refuses to touch old injuries. The market clinic is staffed by ordinary surgeons and busy at every hour. Lirin looks at the room with new eyes, almost catches himself smiling, and decides he needs to learn this new equipment. Hesina hugs Kaladin and disappears into the sitting room to look over the books.

Kaladin sits down at last in the surgery. Syl lands on his shoulder in an Alethi havah with her hair pinned up and glares the kind of unblinking glare only a spren can. *Tell them.* He tries to put it off. He cannot find a good reason. He stands and tells his father and mother that he is leaving the military — Dalinar commanded it, he needs a break from the fighting, he intends to take the room next to Oroden's, he might need to find a different life. Lirin's face goes through every shade and then bursts into the widest grin Kaladin has ever seen on him. *The surgery room. The supplies. You finally see I was right. You're going to become a surgeon.* It is the answer Kaladin has been avoiding all along; it is the one place he can go once the spear is taken from him. *Yes,* he tells his father. *You've always been right. I guess … it's time to continue my training.*