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Adolin crashes into the Parshendi line at the head of a small strike force on a plateau run that is not his army's turn — part of his father's policy of sending Shardbearers in to help allied highprinces — and joins a beleaguered Jakamav, a green-and-gold Shardbearer under Highprince Roion who has lost his Blade and now fights with a Shardbearer's hammer. The battle plateau is a strange three-tiered hill, a wide flat pyramid with a hundred-foot middle step and a smaller crown above, and the whole formation has been cleaved straight down the centre — so half rises here and half rises on the next plateau across the chasm. Jakamav is grinning under his helm; the Thrill is singing in Adolin as he carves through enemies who have stopped singing as they die. They have left Renarin on the staging plateau with a heavy escort of bridgemen under careful orders not to let him near the fighting.

The two Shardbearers fight their way to the cliff and start climbing it in Plate to reach the top tier, soldiers cheering them on from below. Halfway up, Adolin summons his Blade, rams it flat-side-up into the rock as a foothold, crouches on it, and uses Plate-amplified leverage to vault himself over the lip into the Parshendi above. He punches and shoulder-checks a hole through their formation, knocking several over the edge, then sends his Blade back and re-summons it as Jakamav clears the rim and falls in beside him with his hammer. They press through to the chrysalis in the centre of the summit — and find it already open, the gemheart cut from the slushy violet interior and gone.

Across the summit, the silvery-armored Parshendi Shardbearer Dalinar fought at the Tower — peaked carapace-ridged Plate, red cloak, seven feet tall — stands holding the dripping gemheart in one fist. Adolin charges, calling for the fight. The Shardbearer passes the gemheart to one of a stream of runners who hurl themselves across the split-hill chasm to the half of the plateau across the gap — one stumbles short and falls screaming into the depths — then turns and parries Adolin's full swing. *You are the son, Adolin Kholin,* the Parshendi says in heavily accented Alethi, *where is your father?* The faceplate snaps up: the face beneath has no beard — a woman, Adolin realises, though Parshendi sex is hard to read. She met Dalinar once a long time ago, she tells him, and now needs to speak to him; time has changed. She has refused every Alethi messenger before this, Adolin protests; she answers only that things change. The Thrill urges him to swing for her Shards. He pushes it down — this could be worth the entire war — and asks how the contact will come. *Will send messenger,* she says. *Do not kill one who comes.* She salutes with her Blade, dismisses it, and leaps the chasm after her people.

Back on the staging plateau the mood among Roion's and Ruthar's armies is unusual — they hold the field but no gemheart to show for it. Adolin finds Renarin sitting on a boulder with his helm off, staring at the ground. A silver-haired bridgeman reports that Renarin insisted on going to defend a contested bridge, summoned his Blade as the Parshendi closed, and then simply stood there until the guards pulled him out. Neither Roion nor Ruthar thanks Adolin for the assist; Ruthar in fact insists Adolin and Jakamav's cliff stunt is what drove the Parshendi off with the prize. Adolin smiles affably and walks back through the trudging columns.

Under his own pavilion afterward, Jakamav pours Adolin a cup of sparkling yellow wine and tells him friendly and direct: certain *inducements* have been going around to discourage Shardbearers from accepting Adolin's challenges, and he should try Eranniv, a duellist with a high opinion of himself who might see the refusals of others as his opportunity. Then Jakamav hears about the betrothal and tells Adolin, when Adolin suggests an evening at the winehouse with Jakamav and Inkima, that being seen with him is no longer good for one's reputation; perhaps they should wait until the king's situation blows over. Adolin sets his cup down untouched and walks out.

His Ryshadium Sureblood is waiting and nudges him with the head for not having scratched his ears in some time. Adolin scratches him, climbs into the saddle, and rides back across the plateaus with Renarin beside him on a smaller mount, his four bridgemen guards hauling their old Sadeas-camp bridge along behind them in shifts that they still find very amusing. Adolin broods on whether he has any true friends, anyone who would stand by him when things are hard; the more he defends his father, the more he suspects the answer. Renarin tells him quietly that he was not frozen this time by his usual ailment — he is just a coward. He needs to be ready, he says, for the storm that is coming. Another countdown glyph has been scratched on the stone outside their father's door after the last highstorm — forty-nine days, with the warning *a new storm comes* — scratched there, somehow, while Adolin slept one room away.