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Wit walks the hallways of Elhokar's old palace on the Shattered Plains, looking for an audience and rehearsing his patter as he flips and palms a pair of trick coins. Storytelling, he says to the empty hall, is cheating. The challenge is to make a stranger believe you have lived a thousand lives — feel pains you have not felt, see sights you have not seen, know truths you have invented — using the same dirty tricks you would use in a back-alley brawl. Design, pulsing peppily on his coat, points out he has hidden a coin in his belt and that he could just vanish it with Lightweaving. Wit explains why the cheaper illusion is better: the audience knows the lie and gives him their belief, and the lie lingers in their minds afterwards because they can imagine catching him out. Design pronounces this stupid. He sends her off to bother someone else. A small audience of windspren — wrong-coloured, trailing red, Sja-anat's expanding influence — drifts after her.

Down a side hallway Wit feels something tug at his stored Breaths. Ah. He has been expecting this; it is why he left the tower, where Odium could not find him. He hikes to Elhokar's former sitting room, makes himself easy to reach, and bows when the presence enters. *Welcome, Rayse*, he says. *It's been not nearly long enough.* The voice in his head accuses him of touching the contract; Wit, in form, asks whether it was his diction, his bargaining, or the fact that he signed his name in the text. They volley — *a game of sense*, Wit insists, *the only kind I have is nonsense*. *I hate you*, the voice says. Wit warns Rayse that intelligent remarks like that will force him to reconsider; *I know you adjusted the contract, trying for an advantage. How does it feel to know that Dalinar bested you?* *I shall have my vengeance*, Odium answers. *Even if it takes an eternity, Cephandrius, I will destroy you.* Wit strides for the door, telling him to enjoy the brooding.

Then Odium asks, conversationally, whom Wit would pick as champion if he were in Odium's place. Something about the change in tone is wrong — Rayse would not care. Odium drops it. *Whomever I pick, they will destroy Dalinar's champion! Then I will use him, and my minions on this planet, to finally do whatever I wish.* Wit walks out whistling, turning the words over: was Rayse growing more thoughtful? After all this Odium will be safely imprisoned no matter what happens. There is no way out. Unless …

A power slams into him from behind — golden, infinite, deadly, and horribly wrong. A soft, thoughtful voice acknowledges its own slip: it is still learning the role, it should not have pressed for an answer Wit had not offered, the whole art is feeding people what they already expect to see — even an immortal can be misled, as it has learned from its own recent example. *Who are you?* Wit whispers. *Odium*, the power answers. It cannot harm him directly — the predecessor's agreements forbid it — but Wit has stored his excess memories outside himself in Breaths because he has lived longer than a mortal should, and those, Odium can both see and touch.

Wit stops in the hallway, searching around himself. Had he heard something? He shakes his head and starts again — coin in the air, vanish, the patter about storytelling being a kind of cheating. A coin slips out of his belt and pings on the floor; it is one half of his stuck-together fake, which should have been safely in his hidden shirt pocket. He glances around. *Pretend you didn't see that, Design.* But she is not there on his coat. Had he heard her chasing some windspren away earlier? He cannot quite remember. Something feels wrong. The whistled tune sounds off — something is fiddling with his perfect pitch.

Then he feels the tug at his Breaths. Ah. He hikes to Elhokar's former sitting room, makes himself easy to reach, and bows when the presence enters. *Welcome, Rayse!* The conversation runs again: the contract, the diction, the sense and nonsense, *I hate you*, the warning about intelligent remarks, the boast about Dalinar. *I shall have my vengeance, Cephandrius.* This time Wit suggests the Beyond knows nobody else can stand Odium's company, and slams the door. He spins on, trying to find a tune to whistle — each one sounds wrong. Odium's presence has remained behind. Something is wrong. *Don't trouble yourself*, he thinks. *This is working.* After all, his first meeting in over a thousand years with Odium in person had played out precisely the way he had pictured it.