POV: kaladin
Summary
Kaladin brings the forty exhausted patrol bridgemen home to the Bridge Four barrack in the bruised light just before sunset, and — as he had secretly arranged — the cooks and lounging members of the home crew break into a chorus of cheers and welcoming calls as the visitors file past the stew cauldron. The change in the patrol men is visible from the door: shoulders squared, smiles breaking, heads no longer carried like men used to being kicked. Someone, without being asked, has hung two of Leyten's old carapace breastplates on the barrack wall as trophies, replaced now by proper steel; Rock bellows laughter at a joke from one of the patrol; the smell of the stew is, Kaladin thinks, one of the best smells he can remember.
Pitt of Bridge Seventeen hangs back from the cauldron, awkward, and asks to apologize. He confesses that in the slave days he used to be glad when Bridge Four was sent out instead of his own crew — glad, and angry that Kaladin still walked with his chin up. Kaladin tells him the fault belongs to Sadeas; Pitt allows that men can be reforged after all, and accepts that the work Teft has done on him he will now be expected to do for the rest of Seventeen. He promises with a wry smile to pretend to be Kaladin while he does it. Watching him take his bowl and join the others, Kaladin silently thanks Teft — wherever the man has wandered off to — for proving the method works.
He steps out into the cooling air, looking for Teft and finding only stillness. Rock catches him to grumble about a lanky ardent who keeps loitering at the edge of the firelight with a sketchbook, hoping to draw the famous Bridge Four; Kaladin lets it pass. Above the camp the sky is darkening around Taln's Scar, and the Tear hangs low and bright over the horizon. Starspren drift across the dome. Something feels wrong — the air stale, the night holding its breath — and when Sigzil strolls up to remark how changed the patrol men look and warns there will not be much time for chatting, Kaladin realizes a highstorm is due. He resolves to bolt his stew and join the guard watching over Dalinar and the king through the storm. The patrol men cheer him again as he ladles his bowl.
A few hours short of the Shattered Plains, Shallan sits beside Tyn on a rattling wagon, palming spheres on the seat between them under instruction. Tyn keeps hearing the replacement clink down; Shallan curses *Drynets!* and is teased into admitting she has no idea what the sailor oath means. Tyn rolls a pinch of firemoss between her fingers, eyes glazing, and runs Shallan through her accents — Shallan offers a passable Thaylen — then warns that costume work will come once they have resources, and that she is looking forward to watching Shallan's face the first time she has to walk in public with her safehand bare. West of Marat women go out with both hands uncovered; in the Reshi Isles and parts of Iri, she adds wickedly, they go out topless. Shallan blushes furiously into both hands, one sleeved and one not, and accuses her teacher of needling her for sport. Tyn cheerfully admits it: the girl who scammed an entire deserter troop still flinches at the mention of an uncovered hand, which will make any real con difficult to run.
Shallan stands on the seat and shades her eyes; northward, a brown haze of thousands of cookfires stains the sky. The warcamps. Tyn says to call camp for the night — better to arrive fresh in the morning than after dark with the gates closed — and Shallan, instead of relaying the order, sends a barefoot caravan boy up the line to ask Trademaster Macob what *he* thinks. If the stop is a good move, she reasons, better for Macob to suggest it himself; it is a better way to lead. Tyn grins approval without opening her eyes.
Eyes still closed, Tyn finally drops the news she has been holding. The Veden king is dead. So is his son and heir, along with at least six of Jah Keved's ten highprinces — Jal Mala and Evinor for certain, probably Abrial. Reports name the Shin assassin in white who killed the Alethi king six years ago. Shallan's thoughts go straight to her brothers and the family estate. She asks after her own highprince; Tyn says Valam still lives, fighting in the succession war now consuming the kingdom. Tyn's informants are due to report by spanreed tonight from Tashikk, and Shallan is invited to come by for the dispatch. Shallan's own spanreed lies at the bottom of the sea with the Wind's Pleasure; there is no easy way to reach Balat or any of the others. She sits with the dread, and with the suspicion that her teacher held the news back precisely to watch how she took the surprise. The caravan boy returns: Macob agrees they should camp here, and praises Shallan for asking. Tyn, eyes still shut, smiles.