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Hoid sits in a Ladrian house waiting room on Scadrial, primly turned out in a coachman's livery and dusted-over beggar's coat, lecturing the other applicants on his pet theory: that all art is, secretly, improvisation. Practice is only an outline; the moment the lights come on, the page is blank again. The brushstrokes one did not plan but the hand needed anyway — that is the art. The woman beside him scoots away. He does not mind. Months in, he is gainfully looking for work he does not need so that he can stay close to people he intends to influence, and so that the steward of a great Elendel house will not look askance at a stranger whose presence quietly improves the topsoil of the garden.

He turns the thought back, again, to Dalinar and what the old Blackthorn has done. It has taken weeks for Hoid to see it. Everyone — himself very much included — had been positioned to walk quietly away from Roshar's mess one more time, satisfied that the problem had been postponed. With a single move, Dalinar had stripped that option from the table. He had let Retribution out of its cage; he had given that new threat enough push to compel the rest of the cosmere to engage; he had refused, at the last possible moment, to allow another peaceful delay. Hoid had briefly feared this would simply destroy Roshar — but no — a Shard does not allow itself to be cornered, and the new god has already gone to ground. Now what looms is a long game on a large board. War in measured movements, a dance, no one's preferred outcome. Better an axe-stroke now that takes a limb than the slow rot of waiting until it takes everything. And in the meantime, perhaps, Retribution would settle into a complacency that gave Roshar some little room to breathe.

The Ladrian house steward calls him at last. Miss Grimes is plump, prim, and serious behind her spectacles, with a small bright square in her breast pocket as the only flourish on an otherwise practical jacket — a woman who knows ledgers seventeen different ways and treats them as a hobby. She studies him over the rim of her glasses, consults the application, and confirms he wants the coachman's post. *I am?* he says, gesturing helpfully at the coachman's hat and the coachman's coat and the coachman's paperwork already in her hand, and she pegs him at once as the funny type. She warns him about the wages — they are not generous — and he agrees they never are. She notes the lack of references. He explains that his most recent employer is sadly indisposed on another world that is in the middle of its own catastrophe, and besides, the two of them parted on bad terms. She takes this calmly, which he counts in her favour. The previous coachman, she allows, drove a carriage off a cliff and the role has been hard to fill since; he cleared the driving examination, the stable hands like how he handles the horses, and the role is his. Report at six the next morning.

He leans across the desk for one more sermon. The point, he tells her, is that when the predetermined answers run out, the answer becomes who you are. That is when the mettle shows. That is art: untested skill meeting unplanned catastrophe. She blinks at him and allows that she follows. He is delighted — really? Of course, she says drily: he is at her desk because no one else would have him, and at any rate he can drive a carriage and find an address. Good enough.

Ma'am, he assures her as he sets the hat on his head, she very much does not.

He steps out into the Elendel afternoon already at work on the next gambit. First, to steer the unfolding crisis on Scadrial into a shape that can be survived. After that, the part he likes less. With Retribution loose, he needs allies who know what it takes to oppose a hostile god — and realistically there is only one such option still open to him, even if the two of them have not been on speaking terms in some while. He will have to go and find Valor. For all the years he spent trying to maneuver Dalinar, in the end it was the old Blackthorn who had quietly maneuvered every Shard in the cosmere, himself very much included. *Brilliantly done,* he tells the sky, walking on down the street. A storming brilliant move. Their world has been handed an opening; now it falls to the rest of them to be worth it.