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Adolin walks down to the floor of the forum on the southern plane of Lasting Integrity for the start of his trial by witness. The weather has turned upbeat, the honorspren in the tiers chattier than usual; the inkspren beside him notes it as a drumming at the back of her mind. Blended has warned him that today — three witnesses against him — will be the worst of the three trial days, and that the honorspren crowd will weigh more heavily than Kalak when he finally judges. He spots Shallan and Pattern in the seats and takes his place on the floor as Kalak settles into the High Judge's seat and Sekeir lays out the terms: the trial will judge whether Adolin — as a stand-in for all humanity — can be trusted, given the Recreance. Adolin objects that he agreed to be tried for himself, not his ancestors. Kalak makes him stand on Sekeir's terms but says he will weigh the objection.

The first witness is Amuna, the honorspren who looks after the deadeyes sheltered inside the fortress. She has brought two ragged, scratch-eyed honorspren up onto her bench to bear silent witness. Of some two thousand honorspren alive at the Recreance, she says, only the Ancient Daughter — catatonic at the time, and spared — survived; all the rest were killed in a single day by the people who knew them best. She demands of Adolin whether his Radiants will be any different. He answers that every man fails his ideals — but his father is the man the Stormfather chose, and that should count. Amuna turns that back on him: what *will* happen if the Stormfather is killed? No one knows, and she would have Lasting Integrity pulled stone from stone before she would let another bond fail.

Kalak writes in his notebook, eats a bright green fruit, allows that the point about the Stormfather is good, but is steered by an elderly attendant who reminds him the Stormfather has himself been erratic of late. Sekeir then calls his second witness: Blended herself, inkspren emissary to the fortress. Adolin is rocked — she has been his tutor — but Blended tells him she wanted the trial as fair as possible, and her hatred is real. Inkspren, unlike honorspren, did not give all their kind to Radiant bonds at the Recreance and so watched from outside, losing half their number. Men, she says, break their oaths nearly every day; bonds with them are unnatural; perhaps the highspren have the right idea joining the Fused. The comment makes Adolin shudder, but the watching honorspren shudder with him; he answers that he knows evil when he sees it, and Odium is evil. Blended gives him a private nod for the point, then drives in her real testimony — that an inkspren and an honorspren testifying together should be extraordinary weight, and that the only sure way to prevent more dead spren is to make no more bonds.

Kalak finds the cooperation between inkspren and honorspren damning indeed, and sets down his half-eaten fruit. The third witness is announced: Notum, once captain of the ship *Honor's Path*, in uniform, looking healed but unwilling to meet Adolin's eyes. They have offered to end his exile. Notum unfolds a written statement and begins to read about the erratic behaviour of Adolin's party in Celebrant — and then trails off. *Go ahead*, Adolin tells him; *we got you in trouble. It's only fair*. Notum lowers the paper, draws himself up, and shouts that honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men. The line splits the forum: some honorspren roar with outrage, others stand and take up the cry, and officiators wade in to drag the dissenters out. Kalak curls down in his seat with his hands over his ears, whining piteously while attendants beg the crowd not to wound the Holy One. The forum is cleared — even Shallan and Pattern are ushered out — and Adolin sees for the first time how deep the disagreement among the honorspren runs beneath their stoic surface.

In the emptied amphitheatre, Adolin climbs to Kalak's bench. The Herald — uncurled and writing again as if nothing had happened — calls the outburst an old spren argument that his coming has reopened, and finds it amusing. Adolin tries to claim the day went well: one witness refuted herself on the Stormfather, one made his case for him by leaning toward Odium, one set his honor above his rehabilitation. *Does it matter?* Kalak asks, his eyes briefly turning into the bored-through eternal holes of something not quite human. He has known many great men; all of them broke or died. He cannot order the honorspren back into the war. Worse — the inkspren's suggestion of joining the enemy is on many honorspren minds already, and Adolin may end up tipping the scales the wrong way and triggering a mass defection.

About an hour later, while Adolin is still being consoled, Shallan climbs a real tree on her plane to see if she can feel the invisible barrier where its gravity gives out — and stages a noisy fall onto a hidden stone in her safehand. Lusintia, the honorspren long since assigned to watch her, rushes over, with Pattern in tow. Pattern hams up an alarming diagnosis: rapid eye blinks, a serious head wound, certain death unless they get her Stormlight. The fortress has no hospital. Lusintia panics, and a team of four honorspren hauls Shallan to a guarded building she has not been allowed to see before: the fortress's Stormlight vault, with a tall Eyree vat at its centre and shelves of flawless gemstones glowing along the walls — wealth accumulated over millennia, perfect enough not to leak.

Shallan draws a breath of Stormlight from one of the loose stones and lets herself flush back to alert; then Veil takes the body for the sleight of hand. She makes a show of touching her head and slipping out her notebook, drops it in a flurry, and in the same motion brushes the shelf and swaps a dun emerald onto it for a brightly glowing one, palming the stolen stone into her glove. Lusintia sees only the dun gem, gasps that years of stored Stormlight has been *eaten*, and a furious uniformed honorspren shoves her out before she can do any more damage. Pattern meets her at the door and thanks her for letting him lie. *They're stupid*, he tells her; *no*, Veil answers, *stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing.* They make themselves scarce before someone thinks to search her.