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Kaladin brings Moash, Teft and Yake to Dalinar's lighteyed dueling grounds to take Zahel up on his offer of training. He has never felt more conspicuous than here, where every other soldier is highborn and wears uniforms ornamented with embroidery and gemstone buttons; the stares say *you are out of yours, like a chull in a dining hall.* Renarin, in a Bridge Four uniform, asks to be released so the ardents can fit him into his Plate. Kaladin posts three of his men on watch positions. Zahel — squatting in the sand throwing colored pebbles into a drawn circle — first sends Kaladin's four on forty laps around the building only to call them back as a test of obedience, then ignores them while he sets Renarin his lesson for the day: eating a full meal at a Shardbearer-weight table with cutlery, without breaking anything. Shardplate, Zahel says, is about more than punching through walls. Kaladin and his men have *red on their ears,* spoiling for a fight; if they want training, they will listen first.

Eventually Zahel jogs back carrying a Shardblade — one of the king's, taken to the meeting with Dalinar and Elhokar that morning, who agreed. He sticks it into the sand and tells the bridgemen to handle it. Moash yanks it free first too eagerly, surprised at the weight (Teft expecting it to be light; Zahel explains that men who train all their lives with a longsword expect a Blade with two or three times the steel to be heavier, not lighter); Yake takes a turn calling it *art*. Zahel, an admittedly poor ardent but an excellent swordsman, grumbles about men prohibited from the weapon for being lowborn — *there is nothing holy about swords.* Kaladin refuses to hold it (those things have killed too many of his friends) but asks Zahel to swing it at him with the guard off; he needs to be afraid. Zahel swings; Kaladin sees Dallet die again on the Blade's mirrored surface and faces with burned-out eyes reflected back, but he does not freeze. Adolin, passing in his own Plate, looks at the Blade and at Kaladin's eyes and gives a single shallow nod — the assassin had bested them both, and there is nothing to mock in preparing — before walking on toward Renarin. Syl, settling onto Kaladin's shoulder, says *thank you* for his refusal. Zahel hands the rest of the lesson to Ivis, a swordsmith-skilled ardent woman (gloved safehand under the loose robes) who runs the bridgemen through the ten Shardblade stances with weighted wooden practice swords.

Shallan arrives at the grounds in a vibrant green gown with her own red hair, carrying a leather portfolio. Adolin assumes she has come to watch him spar (he usually has to throw the gawkers out, a fact he tries on Kaladin to needling effect about his own following of toothless darkeyed admirers — *next time I let the assassin have this one,* Kaladin thinks). Shallan walks past Adolin without a glance and goes straight to head ardent Sister Nall, asking permission to update the royal record of the king's Plate and Blades with new sketches. Nall grants it. Adolin chases her, sputtering and entirely charmed. Shallan flicks his attention onto Kaladin and announces, helpfully, that the captain's boots are on the way to his barrack via courier, the soles replaced because they were terribly uncomfortable (Kaladin liked the fit; *then you must have stones for feet*). Adolin's first registration of how Shallan came by Kaladin's boots in the first place is one more thing to splutter about. Shallan pats Adolin's armoured arm, agrees that he can sit for a sketch if he insists, holds him to the walk he had promised her, and excuses herself to go draw Renarin's Plate while Zahel beats on it. Adolin, completely smitten by the dismissal, calls her insufferable as a love letter. Teft, watching at the water barrel through the eyes of a soldier, points out gently to Kaladin that a foreign woman who appeared out of nowhere to be Adolin's betrothed could make a very good assassin; Kaladin curses himself for not seeing it.

At the barrel, between drills, Moash tells Kaladin what he has been holding back. His grandparents Ana and Da — second-nahn silversmiths in Kholinar — were arrested by Elhokar on confected charges as a favor to a lighteyed competitor across the street, held in the palace dungeons pending an inquest the king never quite found time to approve, and died there of old age. Moash had been away with a caravan and came home to a house his neighbours had been keeping for him for two months. The king Kaladin guards is the man Moash means to kill; Moash himself was the rope-and-rail accomplice on the night of the king's balcony — the cut on the railing meant to look like the work of a Shardblade. Kaladin, after a long silence, agrees not to inform on a member of Bridge Four — on the condition that Moash stand the plan down for now and bring him to hear out the others who are involved. *On my grandparents' honour,* Moash says, and goes back to drilling. Syl, who caught only the last of it, is alarmed; Kaladin tells her if someone is trying to kill the king it is his job to investigate, and he cannot go to Dalinar until he knows more.

Kaladin pulls off boots and socks, steps onto the cold sand and drills Windstance alone with a wooden practice sword. Lighteyed men nearby nudge each other and laugh; he ignores them. *This is my right; I defeated a Shardbearer; I belong here.* He pulls at the contradictions of Vorinism in his head — better yourself with a Calling but never beyond your station; do not get revenge on the king for killing your family, but do get revenge on the Parshendi for killing someone you never met. He asks Syl whether it is wrong for Moash to try to kill Elhokar; she says yes, because killing is wrong. Then what of the Parshendi he himself has killed (and what if one of them had been a Surgebinder with an honorspren of his own, defending his people, would his honorspren say he was right too)? She hates the question and hunches into it. *And Amaram?* *There's a difference.* *Why?* *Because of what it does to you. You're supposed to protect, Kaladin. Not kill.* *You have to kill to protect. You're starting to sound as bad as my father.*

Ivis eventually comes to correct his grip, laughing at his frustration at being unable to pick the weapon up in one day. Zahel, walking past, refuses to teach him what Dalinar had pulled off bare-handed against the assassin — *old Dalinar pulled off a lastclap, eh? Good for him* — calling it a stupid maneuver that usually gets a man killed and works only because most Shardbearers swing with less force than a regular sword. Kaladin, instead of arguing, agrees; *solid soldier's logic.* Zahel grants there may be hope for him yet and sends him back to practising the things that will actually save his life.