Everyone is standing around arguing, and Rain's slave friends are offering to commit seppuku if it'll get him away from the front lines, and Rain's just like "all of you guys are fucking idiots" and then starts dressing down Dastan and pointing out every logical follow-through for why people shouldn't be arguing about his enemies sending him to the most dangerous place on the continent for him right now, because even his Imperial Patron wants him to go there, or why give him a bodyguard who has to fight to the death for him who could straight up beat Gerel like a red-headed stepchild?
And then he starts taking charge and telling an entire courtyard full of Experts and Peak Experts and Generals what they should all be doing and they just let him, and Nian Zu's like "what the fuck" and "this is awesome" at the same time because he's a little mouthy shit who's also a cripple in a society where being a cripple is actually worse than being dead. Giving absolutely zero fucks.
In internal monologue the story's mostly "god you're so dumb but I can't stop reading" but then chapters like this happens and someone else is narrating and you realize: Rain's an outside context problem and a political operator who doesn't care about saving or giving face, so no one knows how to fucking handle him. His entire act is "refuge in audacity" without actually realizing he's hiding beneath it, and people think he's a Five Dimensional Chessmaster because they can't predict what moronic thing he's going to do next.