(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Five years after Gavilar's murder, Szeth-son-son-Vallano sits on a tavern floor in remote Bavland with Took's lavis beer soaking through his trousers. His brown rags are nothing like the elegant whites he wore that night in Kholinar; he has not summoned his Blade or taken a bath in nearly as long.

Took — his current Oathstone-keeper, a transient mineworker — shows off his obedient Shin to four other miners. Stand up. Jump. Pour another man's beer on your head. Cut your own arm. Szeth complies in silence with each order. When Took demands he cut his own throat, only the Truthless-vow against death by his own hand forces a refusal, spoken in soft, smooth, lighteyes-clean Bav. Took spins a fabricated story of capturing him in southern mountains; Szeth, ordered earlier, confirms every word.

Inwardly Szeth is reckoning. Since the Parshendi tossed his Oathstone aside in their flight from Kholinar he has been recovered, traded, sold, and won away dozens of times — by cobblers, merchants, farmers, finally by Took. He glories in the waste: each day spent mucking a privy or carrying buckets is a day no one has ordered him to kill. None of these men know what they have. A Windrunner, a Surgebinder of the old Radiants, whose dark green eyes would burn to glowing sapphire the moment he summoned his Blade. Best they never learn.

Took eventually rises to bid the miners goodnight — more places to see, more roads to dare — though as far as Szeth can tell he merely circles the same handful of Bavland villages forever. They do not reach the next village. On the dark road outside the tavern two footpads cut Took's throat and rifle his pockets. They take his coins, his boots, and the small smooth Oathstone that has hung around his neck for the past few weeks. Szeth watches them in silence, blood drying down one arm, and follows them home — his new masters, until the stone changes hands again.