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Adolin and Colot meet emperor Yanagawn as he steps from his palanquin in the cobbled square outside the Azimir dome — crimson and gold robes ten layers thick, a hat wider than his shoulders — and rings of awespren detonate among the bowing Azish soldiers and attendants as if the spren themselves defer. Adolin cues his men to bow too, and the formality runs its full ten seconds until vizier Noura claps once. Yanagawn takes Adolin's hand in Alethi — a gesture that draws gasps across the field — and asks his opinion of the defences.

Commandant Supreme Kushkam cuts in, addressing Adolin rather than the emperor: the Imperial Guard plans to surround the central control building, pack the inner ring with soldiers, and use an imperial Soulcaster to fill the building with water and then transmute the water to bronze. As last resort, drop oil and cook the singers inside. Adolin picks the plan apart: the bronze can simply be towed into Shadesmar out of the way; singers handle heat better than humans, so burning the dome only buys one wave at the cost of the position. He recommends instead filling the field with debris and forming wider, fortified pike lines with Imperial Guard archers behind them — and at this point realises with a jolt that he has been listening to and answering Kushkam in perfect Azish. Dalinar's Bondsmith touch is more effective than Adolin had imagined. Maya confirms inwardly that the Commandant is no fool; he simply has not lived with a siege mentality for five and a half years.

Adolin also realises, too late, that he has just publicly contradicted Kushkam in front of the man's emperor — a rookie mistake. Kushkam is standing taller, chin up; he reads the disagreement as a threat to his command. Adolin reverses, calls the Commandant *obviously passionate and dedicated*, declares he pushed too far, and asks Yanagawn to proceed as Kushkam suggests. The emperor studies him, accepts, and dismisses the Commandant with trust. *I would have done as you asked, if you'd pushed,* Yanagawn tells him quietly in Alethi. Adolin explains his thinking — leaders need *more* friends, not fewer — and asks Noura to keep the debris ready for when Kushkam comes around.

The emperor asks what *stem* meant; he has never heard of towers. Adolin is horrified — *a leader who doesn't know towers?* — and gets Noura's amused agreement that her education for Yanagawn has been political history, social structures, languages and contracts, nothing useful on a battlefield. Adolin promises that after the war is done he will start the emperor on towers himself. Yanagawn thanks him with quiet feeling for being in Azimir at all when this is not his fight, and Adolin — remembering the *fixed brawl* where someone stood up for him when it was not their fight either — promises he is here for the city.

Colot catches him up grinning about the cape and asks about his Azish, and they cross the cobbled square together — Adolin reminding himself how close Colot came to becoming a Windrunner before Lasting Integrity's honorspren chose Bridge Four over the lighteyed officers, and how he carries that wound. Colot does not begrudge centuries of correction; he just admits the rejection still hits like a punch to the gut. Adolin silently counts him a gift: a second with that training and discipline.

The other hole in Adolin's command structure is at the scribes' pavilion, where a cluster of eight women in vibrant gowns waits. Highprince Aladar has taken Adolin's request to heart and sent his daughter — May Aladar. *This was going to be awkward.* May greets him cool as stone, accurately predicts the Fused will rip through the fortification like last year's cloak left in the sun, and accepts his suggestion that she begin with the city's triage and medical tents. Maya notes *so cold; not a good match for you*; Adolin thinks back that he dated basically every eligible woman on the Shattered Plains, earning the laughing accusation from her that he was *a slut* — *a trollop at worst*, he thinks back. May points a junior scribe to follow him and goes off to inspect.

Adolin finds Aladar himself before the Oathgate closes. The two of them count Alethkar's surviving highprinces — Sebarial, Aladar, the diminished Bethab and Hatham — and the role Aladar now plays as Navani's right-hand administrator at the awakened Urithiru. He briefs Adolin on the force composition Aladar has assembled — three hundred former Cobalt Guardsmen, seventeen hundred volunteers including foreigners, no Shardbearers — and confesses with a wistful tone that three years ago his own innermost ambitions were *seizing land from neighbours* and the seat of the throne via a betrothal of his daughter May to Adolin. Instead the Kholins *built something*, he says, and asks Adolin to save the city. Then quietly: please keep an eye on May. He has been letting her practice with the family Plate and Blade and worries she will do something foolish; she has been getting ideas ever since Jasnah started fighting personally.

Aladar rushes off at the call for the final transfer, saluting Adolin though they are the same rank; Adolin returns the salute. Most Azish civilians do not leave — they will fight for a city whose heart is still in it. Adolin turns and goes to find his armourers and his Plate; the battle will be on them within the hour.