(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

In the Azimir courtyard a surgeon checks Adolin's stump and orders him to rest before the night's certain call-up — to walk with a crutch when he slips on the peg. *I don't fall,* Adolin promises. *I catch myself while slipping.* The grand strategy of the dome's defence has reduced to one line — *hold* — and there is nothing for him to do but wait, so he plays a round of towers with Yanagawn and wins, then wins, then loses to an emperor who learns from every mistake and never has to be taught a principle twice. He finds himself wondering, after his talk with Colot the night before, whether the Azish were simply lucky to have plucked the boy off the street — or whether plenty of gutter children would have grown into great rulers had anyone given them the throne.

He invites May to make it a three-way game. She hesitates — towers is rarely taught to women — but settles in with her mail draped on the next chair. The spanreed by her hand brings the worst news of the morning: the Shattered Plains are officially lost. *Reinforcements?* Yanagawn asks, hopeful. May has already asked the Windrunners: a few worn-out ones can be sent, but his father has not come back from the Spiritual Realm and Navani's Towerlight leaks too fast to infuse spheres at speed. Hours away on a single Lashing.

The board grows complex. Yanagawn takes a dominant position and is then methodically demolished as May and Adolin silently ally against him. *How?* he asks, looking at the wreckage. The lesson is the Sunmaker's Gambit, May explains: two weaker forces always align against the strongest, and presenting power in a three-party fight galvanises the others into a coalition. *Two parties is warfare. Three is negotiation. It transforms into an entirely different game.* The horns sound. The desperate call. Every able body to the wall. Adolin starts strapping the peg back on and tells Yanagawn's guards to take their emperor to the saferoom — if he dies, Azir has nothing left to hope for. He calls out to Maya: *close — hours, some hours,* she answers from Shadesmar. *Maybe, Adolin. Maybe* she can win the war for them with the spren she brings.

Far away in the Spiritual Realm, Shallan Lightweaves herself into a village woman to creep around the carcass-mountain — then realises Tumi-and-Glys visions do not have other people in them, so Mraize is real, and waiting. The fishy stench gets stronger as she climbs. She has the air-bending knife in her sleeve, a clear shot down onto the crab-head, and she hesitates. He turns and looks back to the ocean. *I climbed this corpse as a child,* he says quietly, *and pretended I'd been the hunter that felled it.* She presses for the end. He nods toward the stars and admits to wanting the offworld places of legend more than anything; the Ghostbloods have just sentenced him to ten more Roshar-bound years for failing to recruit her, and he understands the only way to shorten that is to kill her and erase his mistake. *Walk away from Iyatil,* she tells him. He answers that he has made oaths he will be bound by. She realises Iyatil is doing the actual hunt for the prison while he keeps her here. He turns back to the waves. *When next we meet, be ready to fight.* The vision bursts. She decides she has to stop hiding from Odium and let Mishram's piggyback influence steer her, in the hope of finding Iyatil — or the prison itself — first.

In the broken monastery, Kaladin stirs stew over a small fire on the ninth and final night. Nale sits hollow against the wall, eyes red from weeping, wrapped in Kaladin's blue Kholin cloak. *I feel the man I used to be,* Nale whispers. *The one who stood against the law to defend those who deserved mercy. How can I see clearly again?* Szeth is certain Kaladin can help him. Nale summons not his Radiant Blade but his Honorblade — delicate, twin-slitted, large pommel — and presses it on Szeth to hold *until I am sure I can carry it again. I am not a man, or a Herald, of justice right now.* Szeth wraps him in the cloak, brings him water. *So,* Syl says, *now what?* The last monastery, Szeth answers. The Unmade who banished him.

*No,* Nale whispers. *There is no Unmade.* *Ishar,* Syl breathes. *Isn't it?* He nods. The wells of power — Honor's refuses humans and moves; Cultivation's at the Peaks is kept by her spren; but Odium's pool *dislikes him,* thinks him weak. Mishram used it once. Ishar used it later. With a fraction of it, the Herald of Wisdom became the divinity the Shin Honorbearers obeyed — showing visions, naming wars to come. Kaladin whispers his horror. *Voidbringers,* Syl says. *Something worse,* Nale answers. *We did not believe the Return would happen. He wanted to make a real soldier of you. He is what infected me, infected the others. Even when you were wrong, Szeth, you saw more clearly than the rest of us. We are Truthless. Ishar, Herald of Wisdom, is Truthless.* 12124 appears at Szeth's shoulder, his face a void of stars. *Storms,* he whispers. *Storms!*

*Ishar waits at the final monastery?* Kaladin asks. Nale nods. There is Stormlight cached at one of his hidden retreats — they can reach it before dawn and arrive at the monastery in the morning to confront *Ishu-son-God.* Kaladin ladles stew for everyone, and carries a bowl to Nale against the wall. The Wind returns a few skilled flute-notes through the broken halls; Kaladin is certain she has brought them from the Shattered Plains of years ago, from a night he was the broken one. Proof that being reforged is possible.