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While the population is being divided among the chosen ships and the surplus hulks are being stripped, Nomad heads back to his quarters with Rebeke close at his heels. He stops at her hovercycle on the way and asks permission to take its sunheart out. Aux estimates the stone at around two hundred BEUs of Investiture — far less than the tens of thousands of BEUs that must be needed to keep a city the size of Union flying, far more than the no-more-than-three BEUs that a single human soul ever carries on any planet. So most of a sunheart's energy must come from somewhere other than the seed soul that forms it. He files the thought and walks on with the glowing stone in his hand.

Elegy is still chained to the workshop wall, which is — he reminds himself with a wince — still bizarre. He spares half a thought for what Wit would do with this if he ever heard about it. Then he settles down to work. With the dead sunheart he had been using earlier, he had effectively been trying to command a dead hound to do tricks; this time the stone glows with its own deep-red life. He says the dying-heat prayer Rebeke taught him with it pressed to Elegy's arm. The cinderheart in her chest responds. A trail of luminous red smoke — some of her warmth, drawn out at the prayer's bidding — comes with it. He grins and pulls a new notebook from the desk.

He still has not explained the point of any of this to Rebeke, so he asks her instead what she knows. There are sunhearts and there are the other ones, the ones that make Charred. Why? She admits the city does not know. The Cinder King has access to a darker kind — they call them cinderhearts — which glow with a harsher light and burn away anyone who touches them. He carries one in his own chest, which lets him feed on thousands of souls; he uses others, jammed deep into the chests of his servants, to make his Charred. Aux observes that there must be Connection in play: the Cinder King's own cinderheart glows more brightly than the rest, and the Charred ones twitch in response to his mental commands.

Nomad does not have enough yet. Bracers and skin-touch transfers between the locals are too gentle a process — they would have cured Elegy already if they were sufficient. He needs to get at the core. He examines the cinderheart at her chest beside the bright living sunheart in his hand and sees that hers is darker, as if a membrane or fruit-skin had been pulled over it. Auxiliary cannot rule it out as anti-Investiture but does not think that is what it is; Nomad calls it corruption. He warns Rebeke — for his own benefit as much as hers — that what he is about to do is not intended to harm her sister. He presses the living sunheart to Elegy's cinderheart and speaks the dying-heat prayer in full.

Elegy starts to scream. Rebeke throws herself bodily on Nomad to drag him back, slight as she is. He stays braced, watching the dark crust on Elegy's ember peel away into the prayer; it is working. Eventually Rebeke hangs from his arm hard enough that even he has to give ground, and he pulls back and pushes her off. He snaps at her — he told her he was not trying to hurt her sister — and she snaps back: intent or not, that is what he did, she will not have Elegy used as his pawn, hand the chained woman over to the city's authorities. He moves toward Elegy again and Rebeke flings herself between them.

Then, behind Rebeke, Elegy speaks. Hoarse, raw, halting — like an engine too long without oil. Who are you. Let me go. Rebeke spins, gasping. The chained woman sneers at them, but the wild ferocity is gone; her cinderheart still glows but in a purer, vibrant red, like magma at the heart of a crater. Let me go, she says again. Rebeke reaches out a gloved hand toward her, calling her name. Let. Me. Go. Nomad tosses the spent sunheart onto the table — well, he says, that worked — and begins to take notes. Why didn't you tell me you were trying to cure her, Rebeke sobs, and he allows that the cure was something of a side effect; he had not wanted to raise her hopes. She struggles a glove off and presses her bare skin to his arm, weeping, telling him she has misjudged him; he is a wonderful man; he has earned heat today. Aux remarks dryly on how long it has been since anyone looked at Nomad with that kind of admiration. He pushes Rebeke firmly away.

Elegy, frowning, demands to know who the other one is, why she is in chains, and what happened to the voice in her head. Nomad confirms it: the Cinder King had her on a direct Connection, which he has now broken. Rebeke begs him to do whatever he did, only more, but he tells her flatly it will not help — any more would kill her, and what is in front of them now is everything that is left of Elegy. Her memories were burned away long ago by the same process that infected her soul. The cinderheart's own Investiture is still in her chest and still drives her, in the same way the surplus power in his own body drives him constantly to motion; in her case it is plainly more aggressive.

He decides to try the same trick on himself, with caution. He shaves a small fragment off the living sunheart with a borrowed knife — the stone cuts more like resin than glass — and watches the chip continue to glow on its own. Aux objects that this seems kind of stupid. Choose something not stupid, Aux suggests. Nomad asks Aux what about him suggests he would do anything else. Aux concedes — Nomad is at the very least consistent in his stupidity. Nomad makes a small incision on his own left forearm, pushes the sliver of sunheart into the wound, presses a cloth against it to stanch the blood, and speaks the dying-heat prayer with the proper Intent. Nothing happens. He tries variants — other oaths, other transfer-incantations from across the cosmere — and gets nothing back. Sharing Investiture across worlds is hard work without a Connection to the power or its creators. Or maybe it is working, and he cannot feel —

Click. He looks up sharply. Rebeke is undoing the manacles on her sister's feet; the arm-cuffs already dangle free. Elegy meets his eyes and lunges at him with a howl.