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Dalinar rides out on the first plateau run after the proclamation under a sun he names molten steel, with the familiar scrape of bridge wood, the ringing of boots crossing it, and the calls of scouts shouting all-clear — sounds he once craved when he was running from the shame of having lain drunk while his brother fought an assassin, and which he has come quietly to detest. The terrain is the usual sameness: bare jagged stone, scattered rockbuds you could mistake for more stone, the vastness of the Plains dwarfing anything human. For the first time in years he goes out without his Plate; Adolin takes battlefield command of the Kholin army with General Khal beside him for advice. From now on the battles are Adolin's; Dalinar will change the world instead.

He rides Gallant across one of his slow Kholin mechanical bridges — chull-pulled, geared, lever-and-cam, vastly slower than Sadeas's bridge crews but built to keep the crew alive — escorted by a squad of Kaladin's bridgemen under one of the new darkeyed officers, with Dalinar's promise that they will not fight unless to defend him. Bodies of Aladar's bridgemen already litter the launch plateau; Sadeas's bridge-as-disposable philosophy has spread to every other camp. His guards' expressions darken at the sight, and Dalinar privately adds the slaver trade in the Unclaimed Hills — the constant cheap supply that feeds that monster — to the list of things he must change.

The plateau itself is a small victory. Highprince Aladar is the only highprince to have honored the new pairing; Roion, assigned the same target despite the plateau being closest to his own camp, has not come. Aladar watches from a raised command pavilion, bald and slender, in a takama-and-jacket of his own invention, with a thin mustache and chin-tuft. He has lent his Plate and Blade to one of his officers in the line — a thing requiring real trust on both sides, since he can summon the Blade back to himself in ten heartbeats. He is not pleased to see Dalinar. The proclamation, he says, favors the weak and undercuts the successful: he used to take one assault in three on his own, and even if pairing wins him a few more it will halve his earnings, gemhearts being how he actually pays his soldiers. When Dalinar reaches for honor, Aladar refuses the coin. When Dalinar threatens by invoking Yenev — the highprince Sadeas dueled to death at Gavilar's order ten years before — Aladar returns that Gavilar forged the kingdom with knives in the back and soldiers on the field, not the fine words of Dalinar's precious book. Dalinar grinds his teeth, restrains himself from treating the man like a recruit needing correction, and admits inwardly that Navani was right. He has no business trying to be a politician — and no luxury to be bad at it.

Below, Aladar's officers prepare to give the Parshendi ground to lose their footing advantage. Dalinar reads the field differently — the Parshendi are about to push hard, then break in a feigned retreat around the chrysalis so the last harvesting can be finished — and says so under the rule that command remains with Aladar. Aladar curses, trusts him, and assembles a strike team. The Parshendi surge, then pull back stepping respectfully over their dead, and Adolin in his gleaming Plate punches through the line, takes the chrysalis, and turns the Parshendi withdrawal into a rout. The plateau is theirs in minutes.

Through the spyglass on a distant plateau Dalinar picks out a knot of Parshendi who have stopped to watch — and among them a figure in glistening armor he recognises from the Tower: the Parshendi Shardbearer who nearly killed him. The Parshendi held back their only Shardbearer from an otherwise even fight, something he has never seen them do, and the watching itself is new. For the first time the pit opens beneath him that he has been reading the enemy wrong, that their reasoning on the field is more opaque to him than he had assumed. Aladar notes the watchers without comment, posts scouts, and orders the gemheart cracked open. He grudgingly thanks Dalinar for the call. Dalinar turns the thanks back on him — "trust me on tactics; trust me on this kingdom" — and Aladar tells him no. It is not Dalinar he does not trust. It is every other highprince, who would do to him what Sadeas did to Dalinar at the Tower. Even if Dalinar could change them, he will not follow.

The ride back is miserable; Aladar keeps his distance. In his bunker at the warcamp that evening, after seeing to the men and reporting to the king, Dalinar stares at the pale patch where the countdown glyphs were sanded off the wall. Sixty days, not sixty-two. He believes the deadline anyway, because he suspects his own hand wrote it. A letter is waiting for him; he sends for Navani to read it. It is from an old friend who will soon arrive on the Plains — and who may be the answer to his problem.