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Up on the second floor of the larger house she has taken in the coalition's command camp, Jasnah reads the spanreed report: today's engagement in Emul has gone the coalition's way, and the kingdom is essentially theirs. She did not fight this one — neither she nor Dalinar is fielded at the same battle anymore — but the body still aches from the last few. She has chosen this room precisely because it shares no wall with the outside: any Shardbearer coming in through a window will trip her fabrials, sound an alarm, and give her time to either fight or flee into Shadesmar from a position she has scouted. A boat is moored on the other side, as close to analogous to this house as that realm allows. Her dressing-gown pockets are weighted with Stormlight. She will not be caught unprepared again. Only with all of that in place can she allow herself to be frustrated.

Her career has been built on two principles: cut through the historian's bias to recover the past, and treat the past as the only honest guide to the future. The trouble is that history has started talking back. She leafs through her interviews with the Heralds Ash and Taln — papers more valuable than emeralds. The Challenge of Stormhold? Ash was there. King Iyalid was drunk. On a question she had long fought Jochi about, Jochi was right and she was wrong. There are still things the Heralds do not know or will not say — Taln *cannot* say much — and the tower spren in particular none of them really understand. But the second principle she lives by is more damaging. The enemy can read what *will* happen; Jasnah is staring at the future through occluded glass from the bottom of a chasm while Odium sits on the watchtower.

Wit unfolds himself from the corner chair, kneels at her side, and kisses the tip of her unclothed index finger. She has come to realise, after a long youth of being called too cold by her partners, that this is simply how she relates — through curiosity, through scheme, through the mind. With Wit her usual problems do not appear. He never minds her questions, even when he dodges them; he is older than the Alethi he has shaped himself to look like. She does not trust him. That is partly the point.

She asks how to beat Odium if he can truly read the future. Wit tells her a parable about a card game in a far country where Awakened cards walk themselves around the table. The finest gambler in the realm used the Breath of life on his cards and the patience of an old man. Everyone waited for him to lose. He did — because the games were rigged, and the rigger was Wit, who had rigged them so completely he could not *lose*; a second player rigged a *tie*, which Wit had bet against. Lesson: do not let yourself lose, but do not bet on winning. He smooths a paper out on her desk. A contract, scribed in his hand, for Dalinar's contest with Odium. If Dalinar wins, Odium retreats to Damnation for a thousand years. If Odium wins, he must remain in the Rosharan system but is granted the planet to rule, with the monarchs and Dalinar's Radiants submitting. Perfect, Wit says. Jasnah sees it: perfect for *him*. Either way, Odium is confined to this star system. The cosmere outside is protected; only Roshar is on the table.

She does not like that it puts everything on a single duel — even when she herself used Wit in a ploy turning on that tradition two weeks ago. He answers that those stakes involved nothing worse than his death. She turns it around: he is immortal, he told her so. He acts aghast; he told her he has not died *yet* when killed, not the same thing, and even for him being killed *can confound*. Then he gets serious. The contest is not really a duel. It is about what leads up to one. He knows Rayse — arrogant, performative, careful enough to never enter a fight unless he is certain he cannot utterly lose. A thousand years of waiting is nothing to him; to budding Radiants it is everything. Frame the loss state so it does not scare him, and he will sign. After that, the contest is about hearts. Does she trust the hearts of those who fight on her side?

She pauses too long. "A wise answer," he whispers, although she has not given one. If she can get this signed — with the assurance that Odium cannot escape the system whatever the outcome — she will not have to rely on mortal hearts. She will have Wit, openly. He shows her how: insert a clause naming him as a contractual liaison for Honor, whom Dalinar represents. That binds Rayse to leave him alone for the life of the contract — part of the promise Rayse made when he took up Odium, one he cannot break without giving rival gods an opening, the kind of opening that has killed Vessels before. *Who are you really?* she asks. *Someone who wisely turned down the power the others all took,* he tells her, *and in so doing gained freedoms they will never again have. I am someone who is not bound.* She meets the eyes of a thing that is not a man — eternal as a spren or older — and says she feels she should be terrified. *That,* he tells her fondly, *is why I am so fond of you. You are poised, you are smart, you are always ready with a ploy; and when each of those fails you, you are, above all else, paranoid.*