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Kaladin sits chained to a chair in Dalinar's rooms back at the warcamp — not the palace; he does not know why — while Dalinar and Elhokar argue across him about what to do with the bridgeman who just challenged Amaram in front of the whole court. He listens dully, the iron cold around his ankles, remembering chains like these.

Elhokar is furious. Kaladin insulted a highlord and torched the move against Sadeas: by the time Adolin was free of the arena, Sadeas had already sent word agreeing to duel him — in one year's time. He has wriggled out of the noose Adolin was about to pull tight. The king blames the slave Dalinar put in charge of his guard; Dalinar reminds him that Kaladin was the only man in the stands who went to help his sons. They settle on prison rather than execution, with Dalinar making clear he would not let an execution happen — a hard line that finally gives Elhokar the opening to demand whether Dalinar still considers him king at all.

Alone with Kaladin afterwards, Dalinar kneels at the chair. He acknowledges what Kaladin did on the sand was a wonder — proof of his faith in him in front of the whole court — and then says it was thrown away in the same breath. He insists Kaladin is wrong about Amaram: seventeen men, lighteyed and dark, said Amaram won his Shardblade only four months ago, long after the ledger says Kaladin was made a slave. Kaladin asks why an honourable man then refused to step down and fight beside the Kholin princes. Dalinar hesitates and answers with an order: be a soldier; go to prison; go happily. He thanks Kaladin for saving his sons and walks out.

Across the camps, Sadeas slams the door of his own quarters and leans on the table he split with Oathbringer long ago. A drop of sweat hits the wood. He has held his face all the way back across the Plains — dictated a polite response to Adolin's challenge, smiled at the right people — but here, alone, he admits how near it was. Dalinar had almost cornered him into the arena against a man who had just beaten four Shardbearers. He will not call it skill. He calls it luck. But the man he had wanted to wake — the Blackthorn — is beginning to stand back up inside his old friend, and that terrifies him.

Ialai slips in and waits. Sadeas tells her to mobilise every informant and every source she has and find him something — anything — that will hurt Dalinar. Then, after that, it will be time to use the assassins she has been planting. He has to make Dalinar look desperate, ruined, broken to the other highprinces before he finishes him.

Soldiers Kaladin does not know come for him later. They are respectful as they unchain him from the chair and leave the manacles on his wrists and ankles; one gives him a quietly raised fist in passing. They walk him through the camp under the watching eyes of soldiers and scribes alike, and he catches a glimpse of Bridge Four uniforms in the crowd. They reach Dalinar's camp prison — a small, nearly windowless building of thick stone, where the highprince's soldiers do time for fighting — and lock Kaladin, chains and all, into an interior cell with stone walls and a door of steel bars.

He sits down on the stone bench. After a long moment Syl drifts into the room. He tells her this is the price of trusting lighteyes, and lies down on the bench. She tries to speak and he turns his face away. He is in a cage once again.