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Adolin stands in his underclothes the morning of the envoy departure, agonizing over which jacket to wear. Picking an outfit, he thinks, is exactly like a duel: instincts only work if you have built them, and some days even instincts lock up. He cycles through the traditional Kholin blue with white cuffs (easy to see in battle, boring), a daring Kholinar-fashion yellow piece that does not fully button (you would own a feast), then three more. Shallan leans against the door in Veil's travel clothes — tan and blue, not white, since white will not survive the road — and tells him Pattern has run off to say goodbye to Wit over what is almost certainly a misunderstood joke. She grants him an hour. He finally pulls out a Kholin-blue uniform he designed himself four years ago and has not worn since: relaxed cut, stylized glyphs, the only piece of clothing he has ever designed. Dalinar had chewed him out the day he first wore it. He puts it on anyway.

On the way down, he climbs to the sixth floor instead, where his parents' clinic has somehow drawn a line. Most of the patients are scrapes and coughs; Kaladin's mother takes the intake. Through a cracked door Adolin glimpses Lirin examining a young man while a town girl reads aloud the notes his wife has written. Kaladin himself is in the next exam room in a surgeon's apron and brown trousers — Adolin cannot remember ever seeing him out of uniform — and pretends to be annoyed by the visit. Adolin teases him about being Alethkar's most eligible bachelor, watches the way his hand jumps to the surgery knives at a sudden noise, and pulls out a small enameled metal disc — a coin from Zahel's homeland given to him at the end of his training. Two sides, two halves of a saying: war is the last option of the state that has failed; but it is better than having no options. Zahel told him once that he considered himself a coward for training soldiers — that a man who truly wanted to stop war would put down the sword entirely — then gave him the disc, because in a perfect world none of them would need to train at all. Adolin passes it to Kaladin as permission: it is all right to step away from the sword, even permanently. You can hate killing and still love the contest. Syl forms in the air to confirm that the clinic is helping — he is almost never alone now, his parents are always there, the nightmares are quieter — and warns Adolin that her kind follow morality rather than law, and that what they feel can override what they think. Kaladin tells Adolin he should have been the surgeon; Adolin says he could never dress like that, and leaves with a wink.

Six minutes early, Adolin strides out of the tower onto the plateau, breath steaming. His armorers are crating his Shardplate for the trip with the usual reverence, and warn him that the Plate has never made the transfer to Shadesmar in any of the test runs. If his is the same, he tells them, send it on to his father's expeditionary force, who will lend it to Fisk to pair with his Blade. Beryl hurries past in traveling clothes — Stargyle's wife has fallen ill, she explains, so she is taking his slot. Adolin files the change uneasily; Shallan had been very particular about who was chosen. Gallant balks at the indignity of being loaded as a pack horse until Adolin dangles a palafruit and threatens to saddle a common horse instead; the Ryshadium eats the fruit, spits out the pit, and stands for the straps. Adolin has been riding him for months now — his father is too busy with meetings to ride, and he has his own loss in Sureblood to fill the saddle.

Loading the weapons is its own small joy. Adolin pulls out a longsword, hand-and-a-half, swordstaff that screws longer for horseback, an Emuli curved kusu for ride-by cuts against unarmored opponents, a Veden house sword for mail, a workman-sized warhammer for cracking Plate, and a triangular Thaylen *gtet* he has always wanted to train with — and tries to walk the Edgedancer through all of them until Godeke waves to someone far away and excuses himself. Zu strolls over in her oversized coat, summons her slender curved Shardblade from mist and shows him she can change its shape — slender to short, curved to thrust-straight — which explains, in retrospect, why the dead Blades are stuck in shapes more grandiose than useful. She suggests he just become a Radiant himself. As if it were that easy. The team's third Radiant, the elderly Tashikki Truthwatcher Arshqqam — whom the orphans called the Stump, a name she likes — crosses the plateau in rugged traveling clothes and refuses his help with her pack. With her, the count is complete: Adolin, Shallan, three Radiants, three Lightweavers for Soulcasting, and six soldiers chosen for steady heads — Felt, an old foreign friend of Dalinar's, the steadiest of them. No Dustbringers on the trip; Adolin notes the omission and assumes Taravangian noticed too.

On the platform, Jasnah is testing Vathah and Ishnah one last time, having them Soulcast a brought-through obsidian block into a hardened lump of lavis pulp. Adolin watches and wonders whether the agents understand how much the queen sees them as tools — whether she ever saw Shallan's Lightweavers as illusionists at all, or only as a way to feed armies. She has, after eight months, formally released Shallan from her wardship. Dalinar gives the usual short speech about rekindling ancient alliances; Adolin's soldiers cheer, the Radiants applaud politely. Jasnah and Taravangian each add a few words.

Then everyone but Adolin and Dalinar is in the control building or retreating across the plateau, and the conversation Adolin did not want to have arrives. Dalinar notices the uniform, says it is better than some he has been wearing lately; Adolin reminds him he called it disgraceful the first time. Dalinar insists he is not disappointed; Adolin asks him to say so on oath, and Dalinar cannot. He tries to frame the choice as one between Taravangian's any-cost calculus and his own actions-define-you ethic — *do not let my failings drive you to rebel against what you know is right* — and Adolin feels the seething knot deep in his chest, the one he does not dare touch because he knows it will burn him: the murder of his mother. Dalinar had been a different man then, in thrall to one of the Unmade, not in his right mind. Adolin knows this. He also knows it is not something one forgives. He swallows the answer, sees an angerspren boil up around his feet, and pushes back only that there are more than two choices in life — maybe he is his own brand of wrong. Dalinar lays a hand on his shoulder, says he believes in him, and lets slip the other reason for the trip: that he hopes Adolin will come back a Radiant. Adolin bows his head and nods, because the Blackthorn is unaccustomed to losing an argument and he himself does not know what to think — and that, he realizes, is the real problem. He walks Gallant into the chamber a highprince and the leader of the expedition, and somehow still a little boy.

Inside, Shallan summons her Shardblade and fits it to the keyhole — but instead of rotating the inner wall, she pushes the silvery blade *through* it, letting the hilt run like liquid around her hand, and lifts the entire locking mechanism upward. In a flash, the expedition is thrown into Shadesmar.