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Adolin comes back from the starspren morning lighter on his feet — Shallan is reachable again, the spy problem is hers, the politics his. He gives Ua'pam a thumbs-up for the recommendation and goes to load Gallant himself: the swords in their sheaths, the box of weapons, the trunk of clothes balanced against them. He stares into the Ryshadium's blue eyes and tells him it must be nice not to worry about politics. Gallant snorts in a way Adolin reads as dismissive. Malli — Felt's wife — leads Maya over from where she has been minded during the walk, and Adolin helps her up into the saddle: she now knows the routine and needs only a hand. He sets out leading the column, Godeke scouting ahead, and chews over Arshqqam's suggestion: appeal to their honor.

Nothing comes to him. By midday his morning's calm has burned off and he is nearly snapping at people when Felt comes up from the rear — floppy old hat that had once been Bashin's, worn now as a memento. The Tukari have broken off the chase and turned south. Adolin calls a break and a snack, climbs an outcropping of obsidian with him — fragile glass plants crackling underfoot, lifespren scattering — and watches through the spyglass. They are far enough that he can barely pick out torch-shadows. Felt suggests the obvious: maybe they were never tailing them at all and were going this way anyway. Adolin would have assumed exactly that on first sight if they hadn't seemed so wrong. *Keep watch while we eat,* he says — and is halfway back to the column when the truth lands.

In camp, Veil has just re-locked the trunk over the cube. She has started dusting it with a faint powder — a trick from Tyn — so even a careful spy will leave a mark; nothing has been disturbed all trip so far. The plan is to leave it temptingly alone out here in the caravan rather than cooped up on the barge. Ishnah hands her a bowl of mush from the Soulcast stores; she is bracing herself to eat the awful stuff — *let Radiant do this, soldiers like rations* — when Adolin dashes past with the posture of a man going to a fight. Radiant drops the bowl, reflexively reaches for a Shardblade she cannot summon in Shadesmar, and scrambles up the outcropping after him. He is already running for the distant Tukari caravan with his hand pinning the sheath. From behind, cracking stone — Gallant thunders past at a gallop, Maya clinging two-fisted to his mane, his supplies stripped. Without breaking stride Adolin catches the dangling reins, hops, and swings up behind her in a manoeuvre part of Radiant's mind refuses to believe is possible. Felt wonders aloud how the horse knew; no one heard a whistle. Radiant gets the column moving in short order — outriders ahead, Pattern to watch the gear, the rest at forced march. She has trained the last twelve months under Adolin but has never done a forced march without Stormlight; she, Godeke, and Zu outpace the Stump and the slower spren. It clicks for her almost at once: the Tukari had never been following them. They had been following the same direction. The direction Notum had gone.

Out at the Tukari camp, the mob has split — supplies left with a small guard, the rest pressing south with torches. Adolin rides past the guards without engaging, draws close, and sees the worst: a circle of more than a dozen Tukari stabbing repeatedly at a bound, white-and-blue glowing figure in the centre. Notum — wrapped in rope and bleeding fine white-blue mist from a dozen wounds. Three Reacher attendants are bound and lined up beside him, likely next. Spren can be cut in Shadesmar; *killing* them means hurting them so badly their minds break, and they become something close to deadeyes. The Tukari have no bows; he passes safely.

He pulls up out of range. His Radiants and soldiers are minutes away. Jeopardise the mission or save Notum alone? The mission is a letter-delivery the others can finish; he is nothing here but a uniform and sword, so he uses them. He swings off Gallant, tells the horse to stay back, tries to leave Maya with him — *if I draw them off, can you cut him free?* — and gets in answer a tight grip on his shoulder and a low whine. He pries her fingers loose and hefts his greatsword from the saddle sheath. Stall for time. He doesn't have to beat twenty; he has to last until Felt arrives.

He breaks them into Flamestance first, fast and brutal — takes a head with a wide swing, guts a spearman with a lunge, scatters them with a full-bodied spin. They are untrained but numerous; they will not all rush at once, and they keep circling him. He shifts to Stonestance to conserve and works in close to Notum. The leader, a man in a blue-on-yellow coat, sends them in by pairs; he takes a spear in the right side, near the stomach. The end has begun. He keeps swinging, hacks the fingers from a man whose handguard had come off — a swordmaster's lesson — runs another through with a body-length lunge, beheads the third — but the rear catches him out and his back lands against someone he had not heard coming.

It is Maya. She has his shortsword out of its sheath and is holding it like a baton, arm out, blade up — useless stance, growling instead of swinging. The Tukari hesitate. *Maya!* he says, resets his arms overhead in the distinct opening of the morning kata Zahel taught him — the one she has done with him every day out here, and which he had done with her as his Blade for years before that. Something shifts in her ruined eyes. She moves into the same form, proper grip, stance powerful, and they begin the kata together in tandem with glistening blades. He has a back. The Tukari leader sends three more, and Adolin holds his ground — speared in the stomach of one from a body-length away, beheading the second on the reset, breaking the charge of the third with a roar that has the rest scrambling. Gallant disobeys orders, comes in stomping and screaming. The leader, gashed in the shoulder by Adolin's next sweep, joins his men in flight back to the supply dump.

Felt and the others arrive a few minutes later to find a bloodied Adolin propping up a dazed but alive Notum, surrounded by the corpses of what had been overwhelming odds.