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Adolin joins Zu atop an obsidian outcropping to check the Tukari caravan that has tailed them since they left the waystop — never more than a few hours behind, never close enough to catch up. The terrain has roughened into crags and outcrops and made the tail easier to lose, but his spyglass picks them out again: about twenty, holding their distance. Zu grins and offers to charge them two-on-twenty — one of those two being a Stoneward who can shape stone with a thought and weaponise her clothes — but they cannot spare the Stormlight. They have been in Shadesmar nearly thirty days; their spheres are all dun and even the larger Thaylen-lent gemstones are starting to dim, which means they will dim quickly. From below, Ua'pam calls up not to encourage her. She leaps off, slides down the obsidian like an Edgedancer, and wanders back to camp with her spren. The Tukari are not trying to overtake; they could double-march if they wanted, since *night* in Shadesmar isn't a real time. Adolin has already asked Notum — whose patrol is a little ahead of them — to keep watch and report any threatening move.

Adolin tucks the spyglass away, breaks camp, sets the guards as a commander best seen doing things, checks on Maya up on Gallant's back — the midnight stallion has taken to her and walks gently because he plainly knows she is hurt — then goes looking for Shallan.

Shallan has been of two minds, technically three, about Beryl. As the caravan starts out she sticks close, *helping* her with Lightweaving. Beryl complains she still cannot find her focus: she can change her own appearance, she has seen the rest of them do more. Shallan points to Vathah over by the Cryptics — he thinks like the thing he wants to be, and is surprised every time it works. Beryl has tried it; thinking like a rock didn't take. She is eager and frustrated; Veil cannot spot a single tell, and her certainty that they have the wrong woman is hardening. Shallan does not want to accept it. Radiant suggests pressing Ornament, Beryl's Cryptic — they have been trying that, with nothing to show. Then Veil floats the other possibility: that Mraize, who is clever, fed them a deliberate misdirection after the real spy reported back. Why bother running the inquiry at all, then? Shallan thinks. Because Veil doubts everything. Radiant agrees they need hard proof before condemning anyone. The three of them squabble inside her head, and Shallan notices how new and uncomfortable that arguing is — they used to slide past each other without overlap. She doesn't know whether the new co-operation is healthier or more dangerous.

Veil takes over and sticks closer to Beryl looking for a slip. Adolin arrives instead, like an axehound looking for something to chase, with a question. He has been worrying that Notum was right about the honorspren — that they will refuse letters and gifts on the spot and turn the delegation away. He floats the alternative he has been working: offer them all the Stormlight Father can pour through the Oathgate, plus a stone palace in Shadesmar built with goods from his side. Veil dislikes it — they will read valuable gifts as bribes, as guilt admitted. Radiant agrees: it is isolation they want, not payoff. He tries the opposite tack — abject begging, the way Windrunners cannot say no to a cry for help. Radiant is willing to consider it; Veil points out that if Adolin looks defeated on arrival, the honorspren will read it as confirmation that the war is unwinnable and stay put. Radiant thinks they should appeal to the honorspren's rational side; Adolin objects that their hostility is emotional, scar tissue from old fraternization with humans; Radiant counters that being scarred by a thing is a perfectly rational reason to refuse it. He flips again — they have had millennia to brace for every argument Father and Jasnah could write, perhaps the only edge is surprise. Radiant is sceptical and circles back to delivering the letters.

He breaks off mid-debate and asks for Shallan. He has noticed. The boat ride was better; the last few weeks she has felt *off*. Radiant tries to fetch her — and fails. Shallan is hiding and will not come out. So Veil, reluctantly, sits him down and tries to explain. Pretend you experienced something so traumatic that you cannot believe it happened to you, she tells him, so you pretend it happened to someone else. *That's you?* he asks. Not exactly. She and Radiant are coping mechanisms that mostly work — but something deeper has started to manifest. Shallan is afraid that the person he loves is a lie. That Pattern, Dalinar, Jasnah, Navani — none of them know the real her. That the Shallan they know is the false identity and the monster inside is the truth, and that the truth will inevitably come out and everyone will leave. Saying it pushes Shallan into a tight knot of fear right next to Formless. Adolin takes it in. *You can say things she can't,* he says — *and that's why we need you, isn't it?* She tells him yes, and admits she was wrong about him; she is glad she was outvoted. He sends back a message for Shallan: he does not care what she did, and she does not have to do this alone any more. Inside, some part of her whispers that she never was alone — they had Pattern, even in the dark of childhood, although she does not remember.

Adolin is wrong, and also right. They do not have to do this alone; if only Shallan could be persuaded.