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Vasher reflects, as the cell door slams behind him, that a remarkable number of his projects begin with getting himself locked up. He has just been carted to the God King's dungeon under T'Telir by three guards in the gaudy blue and yellow of Hallandren's city watch — colours that would look ridiculous on soldiers anywhere else, but pass without comment in a city where vivid dye is the state's biggest industry. The arrest is the part of his plan that has gone as designed. He found a tavern frequented by priests of the Iridescent Tones, started a brawl, and when the moment came he made sure to strike one of the priests. The Hallandren courts treat that as a hanging offence, which is precisely why he is in the right dungeon and not a local jail.

A tan-skinned lead guard saunters up to taunt him through the bars while the other two ransack his duffel. Vasher pays the man no mind; he is watching the duffel. When a guard pulls free a long object wrapped in white linen and unwraps it, a thin, silver-sheathed sword with a pure black hilt is revealed. The lead guard takes the weapon and is surprised by its weight. He notices the clasp tying sheath to hilt, and undoes it. The colours of the room shift — not brighter, but deeper, reds going maroon and yellows hardening to gold. Vasher tells the man softly that the sword can be dangerous; the guard snorts and carries it off to the guard room with his friends. Vasher counts on what comes next. He twists a sturdy handful of straw into a three-inch figure, threads pulled from his fraying cloak, plucks a hair from one eyebrow as a focus, and Breathes. About half of his fifty Breaths go into the little man, draining most of the red from a scarf he carries, and he Commands it to fetch keys. The figure raises its single eyebrow at him, vaults the bars, and runs off down the hall while screams begin in the guard room.

Vasher does not have much time. He pulls off his cloak and lays it flat — its rips already match the scars on his own body, and the hood has been cut so the eye-holes align with his own — and Breathes the rest of his Breath into it with a hair from his head as focus, draining the scarf the rest of the way grey. Being empty leaves the world dim and the silent, half-felt sense of other people in the city above him gone. He Commands the cloak to protect him and throws it back on. The straw figure returns through the bars with a ring of keys, its straw feet stained red. Vasher thanks it, then Commands the Breath back out of it and the figure collapses; the alertness of fifty Breaths rushes back into him, leaving twenty-five at his disposal.

He unlocks his own cell and walks deeper into the dungeon rather than out. The cell he wants is easy to find: a square of stone walls drained dull grey by long isolation, a place built to hold an Awakener where there is no colour to draw. Inside hangs Vahr, naked and chained, gagged and starved and burned by two weeks of the God King's torturers trying to break loose the hundreds of Breaths he is hoarding. Vasher pulls the gag free. Vahr asks if he has come to free him. Vasher tells him no — he has come to kill him, and the failed rebellion is not his concern; he wants the Breath. Either way the rebel loses it; the question is whether it goes to one of the Returned or to Vasher. Vahr asks where the thing in Vasher's bag is, and how long he intends to stay in T'Telir, and whether he means to use it against them. He gets evasions back, and a promise that the Breath will not reach his enemies. He surrenders. The Breath pours from his mouth in a shimmering haze; Vasher drinks it in and is staggered by colour and sound and the texture of the stone underfoot. Then he tosses the colourless scarf over the rebel's shoulder, Commands it to strangle, and waits while Vahr dies hating him.

He walks back out past the cells, marvelling at the wood and the stones, until he steps around a pool of fresh blood seeping down the dungeon floor. In the guard room the three watchmen are dead; Nightblood, still mostly sheathed, has been rammed through one of them in his chair, an inch of dark blade showing under the silver. Vasher slides the sword the rest of the way home and clasps it. *I did very well today*, the sword tells him in his mind. *I killed them all. Aren't you proud of me?* He doesn't answer. He slings the duffel over his shoulder, picks up the weapon, and leaves the dungeon for the city above. The sword sounds satisfied as they go.