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Noura sweeps out of the imperial pavilion the moment Adolin arrives with his armorers; she has plainly already tried to talk Yanagawn out of this. The boy emperor stands grinning over a borrowed set of Adolin's Plate, hat with its long sweeping sides waggling. Adolin makes the servants clear the cluttered pavilion of glass and gold and aluminium; Geb hands the emperor a gambeson and padded hose. Yanagawn dispenses the *blessing of viewership* on Adolin and the armorers — a rare and oddly intimate Azish courtesy, one of the friendly guards explains, normally rationed to commoners by the day so that they may see their Prime live, sleep, eat, bathe. The emperor is the symbol of the nation; the nation watches.

Plate locks on with the awespren ring. The emperor lurches into a training dummy, oversteps with the suit's strength, and falls on his face. *Stop!* Adolin snaps at the guards rushing to help — *you want to get yourselves killed?* — and the boy laughs his way to his feet. Within minutes he is sending splinters into the canvas and crushing wooden eggs as he tries to catch them. Adolin explains the real lesson: in Plate, hitting hard is easy. Learning *not* to break everything is the part that takes practice. While the lesson runs, the guard with the bristly mustache holds his parade pose and quizzes Adolin on which variants of towers he plays — Flat Face, naturally; deliciously straight-faced about *Crosswise Chull* and *Bubbly Belch*. Donalar of the Cobalt Guard looks in to report the enemy still has not moved.

Far to the west, by a gurgling river on the edge of Shinovar, Kaladin finishes a stew while Szeth watches the next town from a hilltop. He tries Wit's flute again — *poorly*, Syl cheerfully reports — and lets his mind go to the friends he has lost. He talks with Syl about Wit's old story of the Wandersail and her own quietly-kept private journal. Szeth returns with stew and the report that the next settlement is corrupted, then wanders away with his bowl. Syl tells Kaladin the old spren — Night, Stone, Wind — predate humans and the orders alike, *like whispers in a room full of shouting people.* Wit's nightly spanreed arrives, claims he has the Bondsmith cover totally handled (worryingly), reports fighting at the Shattered Plains with no Bridge Four casualties, and signs off *write your story; listen to the Wind.*

Kaladin sets aside the flute and the spanreed and asks himself, honestly, what he would do if he could do anything for himself right now. He wants to *dance* with Syl. They drop into the Chasm Kata together — Syl flickering between woman and silver spear in his hands as the figure turns. The Wind arrives and joins them, pushing him this way and that until the three of them are riding a circling gust together. He remembers being a child in Hearthstone, moving in the Wind like this. He lets himself be happy for what feels like the first time since Tien's death. At the end of the dance the Wind blows across the flute, producing fitful half-notes; Kaladin draws that Wind in like Stormlight into his lungs and blows out his first clean note. He plays imperfectly but freely, the Wandersail song as backbone, and discovers a piece of himself he had no words for. The Wind rushes off carrying the last notes. He turns to share the moment with Szeth — and finds the stump empty, the pack with both Honorblades and Nightblood left behind.

Back in Azimir, Adolin and Yanagawn settle to a Flat Face towers match while the emperor is still in Plate. Gezamal lends a deck from the pouch at his belt, all the while standing alert; he is, Yanagawn later murmurs, the commandant's son. Yanagawn proves quick — he intuits the value of reserves, the cost of over-commitment, the reason to retreat. Across the small table he reaches for Adolin's hand, scandalising the servants, and asks to be called by his name. *That wasn't a joke.* *Storming right it wasn't a joke; it was a promise.* He hesitantly asks the question he keeps hearing — *why are you not Radiant?* Adolin gives, for the first time aloud, the real reason: he does not like the oaths. His father and the Alethi highprinces hid atrocities behind kept oaths for years; *the oath, not what it means*, is what too many people care about. He would admire a man who broke a stupid oath, apologised, and moved on — *some might call that hypocrisy*, Yanagawn notes. *No, it would just be —* and he cuts off, because Dalinar has already written exactly that sentence in his book. *Dalinar was always there, everywhere Adolin looked.* Hmask is announced at the tent with a scribe's letter; Adolin does not need it. The shouts are already in the air. *No oaths between us*, Yanagawn says. *Merely two men doing their best.* The armorers finish suiting Adolin back up, exactly as he had predicted, as the next assault begins.