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Shallan sits with Notum after the rescue, Radiant in the foreground shooing away clusters of shockspren that have to be physically prodded back. The honorspren is in a daze: humans, he says, have never attacked spren — there is no honour in this. His three Reacher attendants, still silent in their plain uniforms, give no answer. Stripped of Stormlight in this realm, his fine blue-white glow has dulled brown; Adolin's gut wound will need careful watching. Adolin tells Notum he is coming to Lasting Integrity whether he wishes to or not — they cannot leave him here for the Tukari to come back to. Notum warns that arriving with them will be read as conspiracy; Adolin answers with a tired joke about being turned away regardless.

On the field, Godeke moves among the Tukari corpses, inspecting each face — these men will be left to rot, and no one else will remember them, so he will. Shallan shakes her head at Edgedancers and goes to chide Adolin for ruining yet another uniform. He half-jokes about being good at *something*, again, for once — the tone is more honest than he meant. Meanwhile Vathah and Ishnah pilfer the dead for spheres and clues — a few cloth bracelets with Tukari clan writing — and Beryl, who has thrown up twice now, picks through with shaking hands. Shallan admits to Veil that if this is acting, Beryl is wasted in the Ghostbloods. They need to rethink.

Loaded onto the horses, the party meets the Stump and the rest of the Cryptics coming up the trail. Notum rides beside Adolin and asks how he trained his deadeye to fight; Adolin tells him he didn't — Maya chose. *Deadeyes can't choose,* Notum says. *My own father is one.* He cannot reconcile it.

At the camp, Shallan checks on the cube out of habit and freezes. The faint powder Veil had dusted across it has been disturbed — brushed by fingertips, then set back the right way up. The only one left to guard the camp was Pattern, standing now at her shoulder, cheerful about her exciting human day. The thought is unbearable. Shallan shrinks deep inside herself; Veil and Radiant take turns walking the column forward, working through what they know: Pattern has been near every leaked conversation; Pattern has been in her life since before any of this began; Pattern killed her mother in her hands; the holes in her childhood touch him. Could a bond go back that far?

Veil needs proof, so as they hike she chooses her words and feeds Pattern a fabricated childhood memory of Shallan watching her brother Balat meet a masked figure in the garden. Pattern is enthusiastically certain — *yes, I remember now, ha ha,* he says, agreeing it was Mraize, naming her brother a spy. It is a lie. He was not there. Veil does not blink. *Pattern is lying to me,* she tells Shallan from outside. *I'll keep you safe.* The fortress of Lasting Integrity rises on its obsidian shelf — high blue walls, a defensive bridge across a bay of bead ocean — and Shallan retreats deeper still.

The patrol that rides out to meet them does not bow. Three honorspren in long sweeping coats and crowns made of their own substance — fashion Adolin does not recognise — pull up five paces away on their not-horses. Adolin introduces himself as the son of the Bondsmith and offers letters from his father. The leader takes them, then tears them up before they can be read. *We will not accept a contract from you.* The fortress is closed; the new Radiants are not wanted; Notum is told that his complicities run deeper than they had thought and that his exile is now complete.

Adolin's arguments die on his tongue. He reaches for the only lever he has left. He has not, he tells them, come to offer Radiant bonds — he has come to face their judgment. Let them stand him in the place of the human Radiants who broke their oaths at the Recreance; let them prove, by trial, that he is not worthy of the bridge they have built across these waters. *Where is your honour?* The three honorspren confer in plain shock, and finally the leader says they cannot refuse the demand. *Know that if you enter, there is little chance of ever leaving.* He may bring two others, and the deadeye — they will see to her care themselves. Shallan argues against it on his arm; he only asks if there is a choice that does not mean facing his father having failed him again.

A short while later Adolin walks toward the bridge leading Gallant, Maya on the saddle, Veil and Pattern beside him, the rest of the column camped outside to wait for word. The gates open. Inside, a knot of glowing blue-white figures takes him in hand and slaps chains on his wrists. The gates boom shut behind. He grits past the pain in his side. He will not return to his father empty-handed. No matter the cost.