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The morning after Kaladin survives the highstorm against the barrack wall is humid and gentle, full of the new spring that follows a Weeping. He limps out into the lumberyard, every bruise an argument against standing, and sits by a low cookfire among Bridge Four. The crew has done something they have plainly been saving up for. They have surprised Rock with a razor. The big Horneater vanishes into the barrack at the sight of it and emerges a quarter-hour later in the long red-blond sideburns-and-shaven-cheek of a true peak-dweller of his people. He bellows that he feels at last like a real *alil'tiki'i*, sweeps Bisig up in a family-hug strong enough to crack ribs, and promises every man around the fire that someday he will take them all up to the Peaks for the hospitality of kings. The razor, he says, is theirs together — kept in his cot, used by anyone who needs it, never taken away from the crew.

Kaladin tries to share the firelight and cannot. *Eyes of red and blue*, the epigraph in his head goes, and for him to wear those eyes tonight he would have to believe that Bridge Four could be saved — that the new tradition Rock has just started for them will not end on a chasm rim in two weeks. He cannot believe it. Sigzil, the Azish who has chosen the firelight tonight, sits on the far side of the fire from him and does not meet his eyes. Dunny brings him a bowl of stew. He thanks the boy and does not eat it.

Inside his own head he says what he has not yet said to any of them. He is sliding back toward the wretch he was on the slave wagons. He has carried Tien and his old squad and Dallet and now Bridge Four's hopes, and the weight is more than he can hold without breaking. He is not strong enough. He sits by the fire that the others are laughing around and watches Syl dance in the smoke and waits to feel anything, and cannot.