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Shallan rides at the head of her own little square of the convoy — Vathah and her soldiers, her maid Marri, no sign of Gaz — as the four armies pour out onto the plateaus and the Plains open up ahead. She is excited and uneasy in equal measure; this is the story she has stepped into the middle of, the one Gavilar and Dalinar began in the Unclaimed Hills years ago. She kicks her placid gelding into something that does not really qualify as a kick, and Adolin trots up on Sureblood to gloat about deliberately picking her the slowest horse in his stable. They bicker about the necessity of a majestic charge. He warns her about the saddle-soreness she will feel later. She protests that she has ridden ponies in circles on her father's estate. He looks at her until she folds and promises to take Sebarial's coach when it comes. A short, eye-patched figure jogs up behind: Gaz, breathless and proud, with a wrapped book under his arm. He has run her errand — an old copy of Words of Radiance, pages stained, spine worn. She is delighted with him.

Days pass, the army moving at the pace of a sleepy chull. On the second day Shallan gives in and takes Adolin's coach alone — declining a maid because she will not explain Pattern to her — and reads. The book is at once wonderful and infuriating: a chapter for each order of Radiants in old proto-script Alethi, written two centuries after the Recreance, facts and superstition tangled by then. Each order had its own Ideals, its own organisation; the Windrunners worked in teams with hierarchies, others were lone wolves. Pattern buzzes contentedly on the seat beside her, more himself now, helping her sort which lines are likely true. She drags out the rough map of the Plains she made in the chasms and the old maps of Stormseat Jasnah left her, looking for two points she can match between them — enough to scale Stormseat over the Plains and locate the Oathgate. The rain comes down soft and gentle, the Weeping is the friendliest weather she has met in the stormlands. She notices, idly, that the Stormlight healed away her saddle-soreness without her having to think about it.

The coach slows. Dalinar is at the door with an umbrella over Navani, who asks to come in. She climbs in, dries her feet, sits across from Shallan. The two of them have circled each other for weeks. Navani confesses she has been ignoring Shallan's Jasnah work because it hurt, and asks to read her notes. Shallan, reluctant but unable to think why she should refuse, hands them over. Navani reads her into the bones of the work: it is obvious Shallan thinks like an artist, not a scribe, and the organisation is interesting in ways Navani cannot help correcting; that aside, she will not steal the project — only help. Shallan hands her a string of orders: copies of everything before the rain wrecks the originals; a surveyor to measure each new plateau; permission to ride out ahead of the army to draw parallel plateaus; a team set on the quotes about how a Knight worked the Oathgate; word to Dalinar that if they find the portal she means to try it. Navani raises an eyebrow at the breadth of her thinking and agrees. She asks why Jasnah thought Urithiru mattered enough to die over. Because it was the seat of the Radiants, Shallan says, and the place where what was known about the Voidbringers still lived. Navani frowns. *So she was like Dalinar — bringing back powers we may be better off without.* And Shallan, for the first time, says it out loud: *Jasnah wasn't trying. She succeeded.* No Soulcaster — she *was* one. She knew secrets nobody else knew. Jasnah was a Knight Radiant. Navani takes the claim with an arched eyebrow and says she will go and work, and raps for the carriage to stop.

The Weeping begins. Inside his dark room in the empty warcamp Kaladin lies under extra blankets listening to the rain and the throb of his leg, awake. After three quiet knocks, Moash comes in in Plate and lays out spheres to see by. The five king's-guard are quartered up in the palace itself, he tells Kaladin — *perfect*. The plan: wait until Dalinar is committed against the Parshendi, raise an alarm that the Assassin in White has been spotted, send the servants into hiding, then fell the king with an arrow from Graves and let everyone believe the Shin did it. Kaladin will not be needed in the act. Moash also brings a message from the king, who has asked to see him; Moash will report him too wounded to come. Kaladin says, quietly, that he thinks Syl left him because of what they are planning. Moash tells him a Radiant should care about doing what is right even when the choice is hard. *Sometimes lives must be spent for the greater good*, Kaladin echoes — *that is what Amaram said about my friends*. Moash says it is different — Amaram is a lighteyes — and does not catch the way his own light-tan eyes have caught up to Amaram's exactly. Asked again if they can trust him, Kaladin says all he has to do is stay away from the palace, and Moash leaves him in the dark again.