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Spear in hand, Kaladin backs from Nale and reads the broken floor of the Skybreaker monastery — fallen chimney to his left, stone blocks tumbled toward the centre. The Wind whispers in his ear: *the day I warned you about is nearly here. The storm. Tomorrow. I need you tomorrow.* *Then I'll have to survive,* he says. *Any chance I could get your help?* *I am weak. I have nothing but my voice, Kaladin.* No magic, then. Nale, without his powers, is only a man.

Nale strolls deliberately around the perimeter, then lunges from the wall's shadow into the sun. Kaladin's spear knocks the Blade aside; he refuses the counter, knowing the lunge was a test, knowing the reach is his to keep. They circle. A testing strike. Then the real one, where Nale shoves in close to flick the spear away. Kaladin withdraws hard, the spear-point trained, almost skewering the Herald when he tries to close. *Good,* Nale says, in a voice with nothing in it. *Good.* Wit's old line returns to him: *the fight ahead of you is going to be legendary. You can't fight this one with strength of muscle …*

He uses the Plate he hasn't trained enough with. Nale swings; he takes the hit on his head while stabbing in close with Syl formed into a long knife. Cracks bloom blue in the air beside him; the armour wakes and forms — starting a hair out from his skin, pulling in, locking with him, perfectly fitted around even his coat. His Plate is not castoff; the windspren who shape it are his, come to his call at the Fourth Ideal. He cuts Nale's uniform; a slit, no more. Nale strolls on, swings a *Radiant* Blade rather than his Honorblade; his own Plate doesn't form. He waves Kaladin forward and takes the helmet-strikes one, two, three, armour leaking light. *You did better without the Plate, Stormblessed. How long have you had it?* And in a blink Nale's own Plate forms and an armoured fist drops Kaladin to the floor. *Do better. I would not have you die in such a pitiful way.* Kaladin dismisses most of his own Plate — the windspren of it stay as honour guard — and gets back to the spear. Nale gives ground, then returns in a stance like Windstance but more frantic; the reach advantage evaporates; one sweep closes, and in a blink Nale's Blade is a spear, rammed at his face — caught by the invisible helm only barely, tip stopped a finger from his skin.

*You are good. I have looked into your past, Stormblessed. You — the one who slipped past me, the one I should have found and killed. I know you have had a difficult life. It would have been better if you'd died by young Helaran's Blade.* The name lands. *It was you,* Kaladin says. *You sent him.* Nale confirms it cheerfully and adds the regret: *I wish I'd known the key target was not Amaram but one of his squadleaders. I would have gone myself and made sure you didn't leave that battlefield alive.* Syl picks at it from inside his head: Nale's old belief that killing the would-be Radiants would prevent a Desolation is broken — the spren came because they felt the storm coming in Shadesmar; Taln Returned anyway.

*Why?* Kaladin presses. *The Desolation would still have come.* Nale freezes a heartbeat, hand to his chest at some old memory. *Do you know a young Radiant named Lift?* *I do. Why?* *She is the only one to have ever defeated me in single combat.* *Please tell me she didn't use the fork.* *No. A different weapon entirely.* He shakes himself. *You might be right. The Desolation may still have arrived. However, I'd have killed you, and been correct to do so — for I believed it was the best course and was following what I'd been told.* *By whom?* *Ishar, naturally.* He shakes the doubt off. *Regardless: my choices were correct.* The Everstorm, he says, is *meaningless.* *He's working through his rationalisations,* Syl says inside his head. *Logic will never work. Emotion. Memory.*

Kaladin tries. *That day — Helaran came in like a storm. He killed my friends. He murdered a youth. A wounded child who was no threat. Cenn was his name. Didn't you care? About the innocents?* The briefest concern crosses Nale's face. *I am here,* he says softly, *because of the innocents.* *Yet you kill them!* *I follow the law. Helaran joined the army your lord was fighting against, which gave him legal justification to kill as he needed.* He levels his sword at Kaladin. *I would kill a thousand youthful soldiers if my cause were just and the law on my side.*

Cold, then warm. And Kaladin is back there, in Amaram's army, the smell of blood on the field, Dallet's spear ringing on a shield, his squad forming up at his orders. Szeth is the boy who needs him now. He is in this fight not because he was compelled but because he decided. Wit had told him he needed to discover who he was when he didn't need to fight; he had begun to. *New Kaladin* still protects, but accepts he might fail. He controls his sense of loss — not through callousness, as his father had once tried to teach him, but through love. Memory and present mesh, and he lunges. The thrust changes mid-flight in the way only he can change a spear-thrust. He should have had Nale.

Then Nale blurs and shifts, faster than a person should be able to move. The spear passes by his ear and finds empty air. Kaladin strikes again, then a third time, three precise attacks — and each time Nale is somewhere else, casual, Blade not even raised. *Such an interesting aspect of Windrunners,* he says. *Put you in a position to protect, and we find you at your best.* He pivots into Kaladin's next leap, sidesteps around it impossibly, sets a hand on his chest, throws him sprawling. Fear that Kaladin has felt many times before — never with a spear in his hand.

*If I am asked, I will be honest. You fought well. It is rare that I must use the true skills of a Herald against a mortal. We do not deploy them frivolously.* Szeth stumbles between them, swearing he will do as told, that it is over. Nale pushes him aside without breaking stride. *I must execute him, Szeth, now that I have legal authority to do so. His corrupting influence on you must end.* He takes Kaladin by the arm and smashes him into the stone wall once, twice, three times. The Plate explodes. He tosses Kaladin across the room into the pack. Syl forms in front of him — *this is not fair.* *It is just.* Nale steps through her. Szeth's spren forms after, *please, stop;* Nale tells her she is a disgrace, and continues forward, ignoring Szeth's cries. Kaladin presses his palms to the chipped floor and prepares to stand. He hears something, faint, distant. The sound of a flute.