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Dalinar holds a railing as the flying archery platform lurches three hundred yards above Emul: Skybreakers are attacking the fabrial housings from below. He shouts the alarm; two Windrunners drop off the deck in Stormlight, and Sigzil's ten-man flight comes swooping in to scour the underside clean. The Mink — Dieno — clings to the rail beside him, *grinning wildly*, roped to Dalinar so that if the platform falls a Windrunner can pull them both off. He doesn't like the arrangement, but Dalinar tells him plainly: *my job in this battle isn't to command if you are killed; it's to get you out before you are killed.* A Jasnah-arranged escape boat waits across the perpendicularity in Shadesmar for emergencies.

Below them, Dalinar's Alethi augmented with Azish pikes hold a fighting line against Taravangian's treasonous Vedens, who tried to drive inward to rescue their king. The Azish block infantry is impeccably coordinated, the Alethi specialist troops more mobile, and the combination is stiff enough to hold against carapace and stronger builds. The Mink reads the bowing of the enemy line by eye and quietly orders a horse strike along the left flank; the Vedens have no cavalry, and the strike fills their back rows with arrows. They begin to crack.

Dalinar notes that only four Heavenly Ones watch from above and never engage — too few; the bulk must be elsewhere with the main enemy force. A scribe steps up with a spanreed message at last: Navani reports that the tower has come under a strange defensive aura suppressing Radiants and breaking fabrials; the Oathgates are dead; she is *working on the problem*. Everyone is safe. Dalinar returns word about Taravangian's treachery. The Mink joins him; both come to the same reading at the same time — the attacks are deliberately heaped to confuse, and the Veden effort here is too costly for a mere distraction. *Something about this smells wrong, Blackthorn.* They agree the real concern is reinforcements moving secretly to Emul while Urithiru is sealed off.

Down on the field, the line buckles further; the Mink hates fighting men with no escape, but Dalinar orders the Vedens pinned and crushed rather than allowed to reinforce the enemy to the south. Drums roll across the field as enemy commanders fail to hold discipline. *We're missing a piece of the enemy's plan,* Dalinar thinks.

A figure rises beside the platform: a glowing Herald with a silvery Blade in hand, dark brown skin, birthmark on his cheek, head freshly shaved. Szeth — standing beside Dalinar in a Lightwoven disguise as an ordinary Alethi guardsman — moves first, but Dalinar catches his arm before he can draw the sheathed sword at his side; that weapon does dangerous things and they want to be sure. Nale begins to deliver his usual verdict — *your war is unjust* — and Cord's Shardbow arrow takes him through the face. He pulls the arrow free, lets Stormlight knit the wound, drops his Blade to mist, and steps onto the deck.

*How are you a Bondsmith?* Nale demands. *You should not exist, Blackthorn. Honor should not allow this bonding.* Dalinar tells him Honor is dead; Nale answers that Honor should still prevent him, and launches forward. Szeth is in the way but hesitates to draw his sword; Nale twists him to the deck, slaps the sheathed sword from his hand with a strike to the elbow, and casually catches Cord's second Shardbow arrow out of the air.

Dalinar is already pressing his palms together, reaching for the perpendicularity, when the Stormfather speaks in his mind: *No. Touch him.* He hesitates, then presses his hand to Nale's chest as the Herald reaches for him.

Vision after vision flashes through him. Nale stepping away from a Blade rammed into stone. Nale cradling a child as dark forces crawl on a ridge. Nale with a circle of scholars unrolling a writ and dictating that *the law cannot be moral, but you can be moral as you create laws*, instituting a right of movement and binding a lord's authority to those willing to stay under him. Nale kneeling before a highspren. Battle, battle, battle. And then, at the end: Nale clasping hands with a bearded Alethi man Dalinar somehow knows is Jezerezeh, who tells him he is *the single most honorable man I have ever had the privilege of opposing* and offers him the Oathpact. Nale accepts as duty, not honor.

Nale lurches away gasping; a line of light hangs between them. *His past, I think,* Dalinar whispers. And superimposed on the Herald he sees a skeletal echo and eight lines of light extending into the distance — *the Oathpact, I think. The thing that bound them together.* *A cage, forged of their spirits,* the Stormfather says: long shattered by what the Heralds themselves did, even before Jezrien's death. One line is entirely broken; the rest are present but weak; one is still vibrant. Nale tears free of the Connecting strand and throws himself off the platform, blazing away on his own Stormlight as Windrunners belatedly close in.

*You wield the power of gods, Dalinar*, the Stormfather says — and admits he has *abandoned the ignorant supposition* that he knows the limits of a Bondsmith. Dalinar asks whether he could reforge the Oathpact and bind the Fused away again. The Stormfather does not know — and is not sure it would be wise; the Heralds suffer for what they did. Dalinar saw the suffering in Nale — a worn-soul insanity, separate from ordinary madness.

Szeth recovers his sword, ashamed at how easily he was bested. Dalinar does not fault him, allows himself to be flown clear of the field with the Mink now that the rout is in progress, and rides the wind lost in thought. His duty is no longer to stand with a sword held high. He must learn to use these powers — *reforge the Oathpact, or barring that, find another solution that includes binding Odium once and for all.*