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Szeth crashes into the little waystop off the road in an expanding burst of Stormlight, frost crystallising on his clothes. Sloppy. He has been warned about that. He cannot remember most of the flight — only the running, only the fleeing, both from the Unmade in the cavern and from the past she has just rearranged. Neturo's cookfire is where he said he would wait. Szeth scrambles to him and grabs him by the shoulders, Stormlight streaming from his arms, too much of it, burning to be used.

*It's all a lie.* *Son? What's wrong?* He cannot tell his father. Not yet. *Stay here,* he insists. *Hide.* He leans in over him until Neturo cringes.

Then Neturo reaches up and lays a hand on his son's cheek. *Deep breaths,* he says, *like when you were a child.* And Szeth obeys. Each in, each out, peels off a year of the man he has become. He remembers those days of childhood that he had always told himself were untroubled — and remembers, fairly, that they were not: problems had festered then, too. Sivi had been right. He had only been too small to see them.

He tries to put words to it. *This is big, Father. Bigger than a stone in the soil, or a conflict among family members. Big as the world …* Neturo cannot help if he is not told. Szeth cannot tell him — not when he doesn't yet know what he is going to do. *What if I'm wrong?* *I trust you,* Neturo says, and means it. Szeth collapses to his knees and asks how. *I'm so wrong so very often, Father. Then when I choose, I hate my choices.* *I've never met anyone who wants to do the right thing more than you, Szeth.* *Wanting has never been enough, Father.* Neturo pulls him in and holds him against his chest. *I know. But sometimes it's all we have.*

And here, half-knee in the dirt with his face in his father's tunic, Szeth hears Neturo admit the thing he has never said out loud. He stayed all these years — through the killings, through the exile — hoping he might find for Szeth the answers no one else could. He never has. *They might not exist.* *Maybe not.* And then Neturo tells him about his own father.

Vallano, Neturo's father, had broken down weeping the day he understood he was going to die — the Honorbearers could not come for him; there were too many petitioners needing Regrowth and they could only treat those who could come to them. Until that moment, young Neturo had assumed his father would live, on force of will if nothing else; perhaps the father had assumed it too. *Six days later, he was gone.* So no one has the answers. The Heralds and spren left clues, Neturo says. The rest is for the living.

*There should be more than that,* Szeth says. *More than me.* But it is him, or no one, and he knows it. He stands. *Stay here. Stay hidden. Please.* He launches himself back into the air, leaving his father at the fire.