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Kaladin falls with the rain from the cut opening in the palace wall, his one working hand clamped to the assassin's bone-white silks. The assassin's dropped Shardblade dissolves into mist beside them. The tempest inside Kaladin is almost still — too little Stormlight — but partway down Szeth flares brighter, drawing Light from spheres in pouches at his waist. Kaladin breathes in sharply, hauling some of it across, and Szeth kicks him free. He smacks against wet stone at the base of the rise, vision flashing. The Light is already at work on his shredded right side and a broken shoulder, but his severed forearm dangles grey and lifeless. The assassin, by contrast, has landed with control and poise; he speaks softly in a sibilant language Kaladin does not know, then in accented Alethi puzzles aloud at having Lashed Kaladin upward by accident — *but why did you not die falling?* Impossible.

The pause buys Kaladin a heartbeat. He grits his teeth and heaves Light into the dead arm; color and a cold flooding pain return, the hand glows, and he switches a knife to his left fist and charges. The assassin springs ten feet back, lands lithe, and his Blade reforms; he demands to know what Kaladin is. *Same thing you are. Windrunner.* The assassin scrambles backward through a puddle, eyes wide as if confronted with a chasmfiend, and screams that they told him he was a liar, that they named him Truthless — *Szeth-son-son-Vallano*. Are *they* all back? Yes, Kaladin says. The assassin stares one moment longer, turns, and lifts into the sky in a streak of light, fleeing east. Kaladin breathes out his last Light and collapses on the rocks.

He comes to with Syl standing over him, hands on her hips and scolding him for sleeping on guard duty. The arm aches, and it is the most welcome ache he has known. Syl admits she had no idea he could heal a Shardblade wound until he did it — there are dead up above. He climbs the back steps, stopping often, and tears the cut sleeve off his coat so the slice through it will not show. Above, Mart and Moash are holding the king's door with King's Guard men and let out a whoop as they recognize him. Inside, Dalinar and Adolin are alive on the couches under Eth's field-medicine — Kaladin had trained the bridgemen in basic surgery — and Renarin sits slumped in a corner with his Blade discarded at his feet like refuse. Elhokar paces at the back of the room, pouring deep violet wine with a trembling hand and speaking softly with Navani.

Kaladin slumps into a plush chair. He wants to say *I am a Surgebinder* and cannot make the words come out in front of Elhokar and Adolin. He hates himself for the cowardice. He claims he saw a light moving in the air outside and acted on instinct — a half-truth, since Syl's glow is also a light, but a half-truth all the same; she zips in and frowns pointedly at him without contradicting. Adolin, watching, narrows his eyes at the missing sleeve. The king is sure the assassin came for him, refilling his cup as he says so. Kaladin and Dalinar meet eyes — both heard the assassin whisper otherwise, that he had come for the highprince — and neither corrects him. Dalinar admits aloud that he had once dismissed the witness stories from his brother's assassination, men walking on walls and falling upward; what, he asks the room, is this man? *Death,* Kaladin whispers, and Dalinar nods.

Adolin stays behind on the couch as the bridgeboy excuses himself without permission and walks out — *storming man considers himself above the king* — and is then forced to admit that yes, the bridgeboy did stand against a Shardbearer alongside them. He is sure he saw the assassin cut Kaladin's arm through; the arm now looks unhurt, but the sleeve is gone. He warns himself against catching Elhokar's paranoia. Just then Elhokar tries his bedroom door for more wine; Navani gasps; the back of the wood has been scratched with knife glyphs and numerals — a third in the chain of countdowns left near Dalinar's rooms. Renarin reads it aloud: thirty-eight days, the end of all nations.

Kaladin takes a sphere lamp and retraces their route through the silent corridors past the spotted blood, down to the corridor with the hole cut into the cliff face. Beld still lies at the crossing with his eyes burned hollow above the freedom tattoos Kaladin had designed. He kneels and grieves the man who had survived Bridge Four and the rescue of Dalinar's armies only to fall to a sword that should not exist. Syl, gentle, says Beld died protecting. Kaladin wants to banish the men back to safety; Syl reminds him the choice was theirs and he cannot take it from them. He asks why Szeth can do things he cannot — does he have more Words to speak? Syl thinks there are more and he is not ready, and that he could already do what the assassin does with practice. She is troubled by Szeth's Blade — it was different, very different, in the amount of Light it drank. She does not yet know why. No honorspren would give a creature like that the means to slaughter.

Down the side corridor Kaladin finds Hobber, whom he had once saved on a plateau, weeping and apologizing — his legs are grey and dead from midthigh, sliced by the assassin in passing. Hobber tries to release Kaladin of his service: he is useless now, no longer a soldier. *No. You're still Bridge Four. You're always Bridge Four.* He promises to have Rock teach him to cook; Hobber confesses he can burn broth, which fits him for any military kitchen. Kaladin tries to lift him and cannot. He breathes in a sphere from the lamp and carries the man back.