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Adolin, up after a few hours of sleep and planning to arrive early at Dalinar's war council, gets sidetracked by a small room beside his bedroom that Hakindar the room steward calls a *shower* — water raining through stone, a dial for temperature, a dial for pressure. The reawakened tower has opened conveniences nobody knew it had, and a highprince and Shardbearer is reduced to standing under hot water like a man who has never owned a luxury in his life. Shallan finds him there, freshly back from her Lightweaver gathering, and crowds in beside him: the contraption fascinates her, the heat draws joyspren and then passionspren, and the moment turns to the kind of quiet they have not had a real chance for since they married in the middle of a war.

Between kisses she breaks the news. She has to skip Dalinar's meeting. Mraize is somewhere in the tower and will move on her before long, so she has to move on him first — and she needs Adolin to do something hard for her: brief Dalinar and Navani about Mraize, the Ghostbloods, and everything she has done with them. She wants authorization for Radiant troops to back a preemptive strike if her people can find the current Ghostblood base. Adolin agrees without protest — relieved, even, that she trusts him enough to ask. The old wound under all of this — Dalinar killed his mother in Rathalas a lifetime ago, and a year of knowing has not made it ache less, only deeper — surfaces briefly when joyspren wink out around him, but he puts it away again. *Another time.* He promises Shallan he will deal with his father eventually, and means it less every time he says it.

She tells him not all of it is bad now. They have it all on the table; he knows about Mraize, about Formless, about Veil; he does not hate her. It can maybe, possibly work out, if she stops Mraize before he reaches the prison of the most powerful Unmade. They linger a few more minutes than they should, the highstorm-strength water turning to applause, then she dries off and goes.

Elsewhere in the tower, Dalinar is already stomping toward the atrium with Colot of the Cobalt Guard trailing him out of habit — Dalinar does not need bodyguards anymore, but the man has bounced between postings for years and does not need to feel useless again. Kelen, the Windrunner squire who came to fetch him, hovers along at the Bondsmith's elbow; three days after Navani rekindled the Sibling's bond, the Windrunners are already flying everywhere they used to walk. The main thoroughfare is thinner than usual — people still hiding from the invasion's after-shake, traumatized, recovering — and Dalinar keeps the pace he has always kept, leaving the yelps and bows to splash around him like wake.

Near the atrium, Sigzil streaks in with the first scout reports and turns the morning bad. Not just Azimir and Thaylen City: a third army is marching on the Shattered Plains. The southern force is what shakes him — almost a thousand Fused and at least one thunderclast, maybe both, more enemy power in one place than Dalinar has ever faced. Three strikes at his three strongest coalition cities, eight days before the deadline freezes the borders. It is not really about capturing land; it is a message. *I can cut your hearts out if I choose.*

Dalinar gives the orders — wake every soldier, patrols in the mountains and into Shadesmar, quadruple guard at every entry to Urithiru — and asks after the other monarchs. They are on their way up to the meeting; so is Wit. He moves to take a Lashing from Sigzil and beat them all to the top, and that is when he sees Gavinor in the corridor, in a schoolchild's tunic, eyes red with crying. Nightmares again. Mararin the nursemaid is taking him up to the garden room that comforts him. Gav remembers a promise to play swords with *Grampa* — Dalinar folds himself down small, defers it, asks Mararin to feed the boy and bring him to the tower top so he can be there after the meeting.

He is straightening up when a voice asks his name. Colot is already between Dalinar and the speaker — a short Makabaki woman in earth-brown clothes, hair in tight curls, eyes that shimmer with something he cannot quite name. *Do I know you?* *We've met,* she says, and walks off along the balcony railing, beckoning him after her. He waves the others back and follows. Her bearing, her face, her dress — woven, in places, as if grown from fine webs back into her skin — pull memories up out of a place that had been smoothed flat by her own hand long ago. Not a Fused trick; Fused powers do not work in this tower now.

Cultivation herself. The third god, walking his balcony past oblivious passersby, and Dalinar grips the metal railing for support as he goes to meet her.