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That night Rysn sits apart from the bonfire in a small cove, shawl pulled close, watching smoke rise toward the Halls. After consulting with the captain she had ordered a beach landing and a proper funeral for the santhid — a few kegs of Thaylen ale, Cord's stew, Lopen's stories — and her measures have mostly settled the crew. The undercurrent is still bafflement. A corpse appeared, then vanished. Had it ever been a corpse? Chiri-Chiri sleeps on the stones beside her chair, getting steadily worse, and Rysn's heart trembles each time she looks at the little larkin.

Her spanreed wakes. Vstim is dictating to his niece. He has answers, and apologies: the Alethi kept something from her, and from him, though Queen Fen had known. Everything Navani told her about the mission is true, but the deeper reason for the voyage is that Akinah once held an Oathgate. Rysn had not been tracking Oathgate sites and feels she should have been. Vstim explains that securing Aimia would take a force the alliance does not have to spare, so for now Navani only wants information — does the gate exist, has the enemy been digging at it, is the island habitable. Nikli's earlier accusation that the Radiants were hiding something turns out to have been true, and harmlessly true.

Rysn pivots and asks what Vstim has learned about the dissolving santhid. Less than she hoped: most of his scholars have no theory. But Jasnah does. Jasnah told him an old story about creatures that grew in attics and consumed the household, things she had once considered no more real than gloomdancers or sea hags from Thaylen myth, things she has recently begun hearing about again from credible sources. She urges caution. Vstim conveys it. Rysn writes back her own theory — an enemy Lightweaver, illusion of a santhid, panic-dissolved into cremlings to cover the trick — and a moment later Jasnah, relayed through her own spanreed, replies that this is astute, that the new powers keep blindsiding her too, and that if there is a Lightweaver aboard then the mission is more important still: someone is trying to keep them from Akinah. Vstim adds, gently, that perhaps sending Rysn at all had been unwise; she should have had a fleet. They both know there is no fleet to spare. Rysn writes back that he trained her for difficult, remote work, that he made a woman of a selfish child, and that she can do this. He answers that he does not doubt her, but does not want anything more to happen to her in his service. He calls her his friend in the saying of it, and the word catches Rysn in the chest harder than she would have predicted. She tells him farewell.

Nikli rises, stretches, and offers to fetch her a bowl of Cord's stew. She holds him for a moment to ask about his village. He says it lies in Alm, close to Aimia, settled in part by ordinary Aimian survivors of the scouring. She asks him for the stories. He resists, then yields. The fall of Aimia, in his telling, came after the fall of the Radiants: the Aimians had been close allies of the Radiants and had kept too many secrets, secrets that became worthless once their allies were gone. Aimia had been beautiful, lush, made habitable by fabrials that did not belong to the cold latitude it sat in. The invaders smashed those devices and the place could not sustain a nation; the survivors fled and have wept for their drowned paradise ever since. Rysn writes it down. Nikli excuses himself.

Cord arrives next, carrying a bowl of stew, and after a stumble in Alethi Rysn switches them into Veden. Cord's relief is enormous — *someone who can speak a proper tongue*. The dead santhid, Cord says, was a god. Not a spren-god, not a person-god, but one of the Gods Who Sleep Not — creatures whose body is a creeping swarm, one mind to a swarm, secretive and not evil but unfathomably powerful. They guard treasure behind trials and tests. The apaliki'tokoa'a — the luckspren Lopen had named — are tied to those gods, and Cord can see fifteen of them in the air above the ship right now, where there had been none at the start of the voyage. They want the ship to keep moving. Rysn understands at last why the Radiants brought Cord along: a sighted Horneater who can see spren that do not wish to be seen. Cord, asked whether she could spot a Lightweaving in disguise, doubts it. Asked whether they should turn back, she will only say *move forward, with caution*. Rysn slips the question of whether her presence on the ship is suspicious, and finds it isn't.

Cord is recalled to the fire, and Lopen arrives with Huio and Rushu in tow. Rushu kneels at Rysn's chair and starts working on it without waiting for permission; corrected, she apologises and asks properly. Huio had left a sliver of aluminum foil inside one of Rushu's spanreeds earlier in the day, which broke the conjoined ruby's lateral coupling while leaving the vertical one intact. Rushu has thought what that would mean for paired-ruby flying platforms generally, and what it would mean for Rysn's chair specifically. She runs the demonstration: a counterweight on a beachside tree, a chair that lifts two feet off the rocks, a gentle push that sends Rysn gliding sideways across the cove. Rysn finds a branch, plants it on the ground, and pushes off; she sails through the air like a gondola, has to stop the chair manually, and breaks down in tears with Chiri-Chiri flapping up to grab her sleeve. Joyspren bloom around her. She has tasted independence for the first time in two years. Lopen tells her she deserves it, and a strange windspren-shaped Radiant spren bows to her — Rysn's first meeting with Rua, who splits into copies and waves.

The night is closing in. Rushu strips the gems back out of the chair to rebuild it properly for the ship's railings, promising a hover-on-command rig. Rysn gives the order to return to the Wandersail and asks Rushu to send word of the discovery onward by spanreed at once, so it cannot be lost if the expedition is. Nikli kneels by her chair as the others pack up. He is sorry, he says, but he overheard Cord saying something suspicious earlier; she is *too eager* for the voyage to continue. The Horneater used spren only she could see as proof Rysn should sail on. The Alethi have already lied to them once. If he could bring her proof of Cord's bad faith, would Rysn listen? Yes, Rysn says, frowning. He asks her to keep the conversation between them. She agrees, while quietly deciding that the next move on this game board is now hers to make.