Nearby, shouts arose. General Khal and a large strike force of soldiers, judging by the banner approaching. There wasn’t time. The assassin stood on the wet plateau between Dalinar’s small troop and Adolin’s, head bowed. Fallen blue lanterns gave light. The sky had gone as black as night, except when broken by that red lightning.

Charge and mob a Shardbearer. Hope for a lucky blow. It was the only way. Adolin nodded to Dalinar. His father nodded back, grim. He knew. He knew there was no beating this thing.

Lead them, Adolin.

Unite them.

Adolin screamed, charging forward, sword out, men running with him. Dalinar advanced too, more slowly, one arm across his chest. Storms, the man could barely walk.

Szeth snapped his head up, face devoid of all emotion. As they arrived, he leaped, shooting into the air.

Adolin’s eyes followed him up. Surely they hadn’t chased him off . . .

The assassin twisted in the air, then crashed back down to the ground, glowing like a comet. Adolin barely parried a blow from the Blade; the force of it was incredible. It tossed him backward. The assassin spun, and a pair of bridgemen fell with burning eyes. Others lost spearheads as they tried to stab at him.

The assassin ripped free from the press of bodies, trailing blood from a couple of wounds. Those wounds closed as Adolin watched, the blood stopping. It was as Kaladin had said. With a horrible sinking feeling, Adolin realized just how little a chance they’d ever had.

The assassin dashed for Dalinar, who brought up the rear of the attack. The aging soldier raised his Blade, as if in respect, then thrust once.

An attack. That was the way to go.

“Father . . .” Adolin whispered.

The assassin parried the thrust, then placed his hand against Dalinar’s chest.

The highprince, suddenly glowing, lurched up into the dark sky. He didn’t scream.

The plateau fell silent. Some bridgemen propped up wounded fellows. Others turned toward the assassin, pulling into a spear formation, looking frantic.

The assassin lowered his Blade, then started to walk away.

“Bastard!” Adolin spat, dashing after him. “Bastard!” He could barely see for the tears.

The assassin stopped, then leveled his weapon toward Adolin.

Adolin stumbled to a halt. Storms, his head hurt.

“It is finished,” the assassin whispered. “I am done.” He turned from Adolin and continued to walk away.

Like Damnation itself, you are! Adolin raised his Shardblade overhead.

The assassin spun and slapped the weapon so hard with his own Blade that Adolin distinctly heard something snap in his wrist. His Blade tumbled from his fingers, vanishing. The assassin’s hand slapped out, knuckles striking Adolin in the chest, and he gasped, his breath suddenly gone from his throat.

Stunned, he sank to his knees.

“I suppose,” the assassin snarled, “I can kill one more, on my own time.” Then he grinned, a terrible smile with teeth clenched, eyes wide. As if he were in enormous pain.

Gasping, Adolin awaited the blow. He looked toward the sky. Father, I’m sorry. I . . .

I . . .

What was that?

He blinked as he made out something glowing in the air, drifting down, like a leaf. A figure. A man.

Dalinar.

The highprince fell slowly, as if he were no more weighty than a cloud. White Light streamed from his body in glowing wisps. Nearby bridgemen murmured, soldiers shouted, pointing.

Adolin blinked, certain he was delusional. But no, that was Dalinar. Like . . . one of the Heralds themselves, coming down from the Tranquiline Halls.

The assassin looked, then stumbled back, mouth open in horror. “No . . . No!”

And then, like a falling star, a blazing fireball of light and motion shot down in front of Dalinar. It crashed into the ground, sending out a ring of Stormlight like white smoke. At the center, a figure in blue crouched with one hand on the stones, the other clutching a glowing Shardblade.

His eyes afire with a light that somehow made the assassin’s seem dull by comparison, he wore the uniform of a bridgeman, and bore the glyphs of slavery on his forehead.

The expanding ring of smoky light faded, save for a large glyph—a swordlike shape—which remained for a brief moment before puffing away.

“You sent him to the sky to die, assassin,” Kaladin said, Stormlight puffing from his lips, “but the sky and the winds are mine. I claim them, as I now claim your life.”

One is almost certainly a traitor to the others.

—From the Diagram, Book of the 2nd Desk Drawer: paragraph 27

Kaladin let the Stormlight evaporate before him. He was running low—his frantic flight across the Plains had drained him. How shocked he had been when the flare of light rising into the darkening sky above a lit plateau had turned out to be Dalinar himself. Lashed to the sky by Szeth.

Kaladin had caught him quickly and sent him back to the ground with a careful Lashing of his own. Ahead, Szeth stumbled away from the princeling, holding out his sword wardingly toward Kaladin, eyes wide and lips trembling. Szeth looked horrified.

Good.

Dalinar finally landed on the plateau with a soft step, and Kaladin’s Lashing ran out.

“Seek shelter,” Kaladin said, the tempest in his veins dampening further. “I flew over a storm on my way here . . . a big one. Coming from the west.”

“We’re in the process of withdrawing.”

“Hurry,” Kaladin said. “I will deal with our friend.”

“Kaladin?”

Kaladin turned, glancing at the highprince, who stood tall, despite cradling one arm against his chest. Dalinar met his eyes. “You are what I’ve been looking for.”

“Yes. Finally.”

Kaladin turned and strode toward the assassin. He passed Bridge Four in a tight formation, and the men—at a barked command from Teft—threw something down before Kaladin. Blue lanterns, lit by oversized gems that had lasted the Weeping.

Bless them. Stormlight streamed up as he passed, filling him. With a sinking feeling, however, he noticed two corpses with burned-out eyes at their feet. Pedin and Mart. Eth clutched his brother’s body, weeping. Other bridgemen had lost limbs.

Kaladin snarled. No more. He would lose no further men to this monster.

“You ready?” he whispered.

Of course, Syl said in his head. I’m not the one we’ve been waiting on.

Burning with Stormlight, enraged and alight, Kaladin launched himself at the assassin and met him Blade against Blade.

* * *

“We’re dead . . .” Renarin muttered.

“Someone shut him up,” Shallan snapped. “Gag him if you have to.” She pointedly turned around, ignoring the raving prince. She still stood in the center of the muraled chamber. The pattern. What was the pattern?

A circular room. A thing on one side that adapted to fit different Shardblades. Depictions of Knights on the floor, glowing with Stormlight, pointing at a tower city, just as the myths described. Ten lamps on the walls. The lock hung over what she thought was a depiction of Natanatan, the kingdom of the Shattered Plains. It—

Ten lamps. With gems in them. Latticework of metal enclosing each one.

Shallan blinked, a shock running through her.

“It’s a fabrial.”

* * *

The assassin hurtled into the air. Captain Kaladin flew upward, chasing him, trailing Light.

“Status of the retreat!” Dalinar bellowed, crossing the plateau, his ribs smarting like nothing else, his wound from before little better. Storms. That one had faded as he fought, but now it ached something fierce. “Someone get me information!”

Scribes and ardents appeared from the nearby wreckage of tents. Shouts rose from around the plateau. The wind started to pick up—their period of reprieve, the short calm, was over. They needed to escape these plateaus. Now.

Dalinar reached Adolin and helped the young man to his feet. He looked quite a bit worse for wear, bruised, battered, dizzy. He flexed his right hand and winced in pain, then gingerly let it relax.

“Damnation,” Adolin said. “That bridgeboy is really one of them? The Knights Radiant?”

“Yes.”

Oddly, Adolin smiled, seeming satisfied. “Ha! I knew there was something wrong with that man.”

“Go,” Dalinar said, pushing Adolin along. “We need to get the army to move two plateaus over, that direction, where Shallan waits. Get over there and organize what you can.” He looked westward as the wind whipped up further, with bursts of rain. “Time is short.”

Adolin shouted for the bridgemen to join him, which they did, helping their wounded—though they were unfortunately forced to leave their dead. Several of them carried Adolin’s Shardplate as well, which was apparently spent.

Dalinar limped eastward across the plateau as fast as he could manage in his condition, searching for . . .

Yes. The place where he’d left Gallant. The horse snorted, shaking a wet mane. “Bless you, old friend,” Dalinar said, reaching the Ryshadium. Through the thunder and the chaos, the horse had not fled.

Dalinar moved much more easily once in the saddle, and eventually found Roion’s army pouring southward toward Shallan’s plateau, in organized ranks. He allowed himself a sigh of relief at their orderly march; the majority of the army had already crossed to the southern plateau, only one away from Shallan’s round one. That was wonderful. He couldn’t remember where Captain Khal had been sent, but with Roion himself fallen, Dalinar had assumed he’d left this army in chaos.

“Dalinar!” a voice called.

He turned to find the utterly incongruous sight of Sebarial and his mistress sitting beneath a canopy, eating dried sellafruit off a plate held by an awkward-looking soldier.

Sebarial raised a cup of wine toward Dalinar. “Hope you don’t mind,” Sebarial said. “We liberated your stores. They were blowing past at the time, headed for certain doom.”

Dalinar stared at them. Palona even had a novel out and was reading.

“You did this?” Dalinar asked, nodding toward Roion’s army.

“They were making a racket,” Sebarial said. “Wandering around, shouting at one another, weeping and wailing. Very poetic. Figured someone should get them moving. My army is already off on that other plateau. It’s getting rather cramped there, you realize.”

Palona flipped the page in her novel, barely paying attention.

“Have you seen Aladar?” Dalinar asked.

Sebarial gestured with his wine. “He should be about finished crossing as well. You’ll find him that direction. Downwind, happily.”

“Don’t dally,” Dalinar said. “You remain here, and you’re a dead man.”

“Like Roion?” Sebarial asked.

“Unfortunately.”

“So it is true,” Sebarial said, standing up, brushing off his trousers—which were somehow still dry. “Who am I going to make fun of now?” He shook his head sadly.

Dalinar rode off in the direction indicated. He noticed that, incredibly, a pair of bridgemen were still tailing him, only now catching up to where he’d found Sebarial. They saluted as Dalinar noticed them.