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The intercut continues. On the beach, Lopen keeps the grub-monster focused on himself and Huio rather than the sailors, mostly with insults aimed at the creature's resemblance to his cousin. The thing's tree-trunk arms alternate between trying to spear Lopen and trying to swat him out of the sky. He gets cocky on one weave and ends up upside-down against a boulder, ribs knitting back on Stormlight while Kstled crouches next to him. His spear cannot get through the carapace. *Can't you summon a Shardblade?* Kstled asks. *Afraid not. It's political.* Lopen tries the Words once more at the sky — *I will protect those I hate, I've got it* — and the Stormfather does not deign to answer.

He sketches a retreat: he and Huio will draw the thing inland while the sailors fall back to the ruins. Flying behind the creature one more time to drop a Lashed spear into an eye, he feels a sudden ice-cold leech open between his shoulder blades. His Stormlight goes out of him. Behind him is a swarm of two dozen fist-sized cremlings — the Stormlight-eaters Huio warned him about — and they have drained the spheres in his pouches too. He drops, hits hard, snaps something in his leg. The monster turns toward him and raises an arm to crush him.

Down in the vault, Rysn keeps the negotiation alive. She reminds Nikli that he already knows Queen Navani — *the Mother of Machines*, he calls her — and ought to know that if the ship she sent vanishes mysteriously a fleet will follow. Nikli sighs and explains the Sleepless' plan. His own plan had been to let the expedition take the fake gemhearts, find a planted cache of old writings that would *prove* the legends of riches on Akinah to be an ancient pirate trap, and go home. Now, after what regrettably has to be done here, some of his kin will imitate the surviving sailors; the ship will limp into port; the story will be a deadly storm, a strange greatshell, a destroyed Oathgate, fake gemhearts. After that, everyone will leave them alone. It might actually work. Vstim's voice is in her head — *what do they want, what do they say they want* — and Rysn presses the seam: each lie the Sleepless spin makes the mystery more entrancing rather than less. She offers herself as a better fabricator. *What if I could help you?* He holds her gaze without answering.

Clanking footsteps at the door: Cord is back, in the breastplate as well as the greaves, holding a spear and a glowing fist of free gemstones. Half a set of Plate on a doll-sized frame — yet Rysn is steadied by her determination. Cord slams the spear butt down and challenges Nikli to a duel to the death, invoking her father Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor's drawing of the Bow of Hours and an ancient pact of the Seven Peaks under which a god who killed her would forfeit the battle. Nikli has no idea what any of that means; the Horneater treaties were with other gods. Cord kneels beside Rysn and whispers that she is no warrior, that in the old songs you must trick these gods rather than duel them — but the Sleepless are guardians of life. *Use that.*

Rysn does. *Are you protectors of life?* Nikli admits his people have watched worlds end and vowed to prevent any more such — but will kill the few to save the many. She pushes: if every fabrication leaks and brings more searchers, are you not bringing about the very wrong you fear? She offers an open hand again, palm up. The hordelings buzz; the buzzing in the chamber gets louder. Then he sits at the table.

On the beach the leg comes down. Lopen rolls barely clear; his foot flops awkwardly and painspren scuttle around him. He whispers to the gods of the ancient Herdazians to please not let him be killed by something this stupid. Rua takes the shape of an axehound and bounces in worry. Then Huio drops out of the sky in front of his cousin, spear in hand, Stormlight guttering. Lopen waves him off; he stays. He steps squarely between Lopen and the monster, looks back at his cousin, then sets himself to the oncoming spear-leg — and explodes with light. A blast of cold washes over Lopen and a great frost glyph appears around them on the stone. Mist forms in Huio's hand: the biggest, most ornate Shardhammer Lopen has ever seen. He slams it against the carapace arm and splits it apart in a spray of violet ichor.

In the chamber, Nikli winces and tells Rysn her friends fight very well — they are still alive, the captain and crew held aboard the Wandersail in captivity until he has spoken to her. He invites her to make her offer. She offers what he wants: a way to avoid killing. He corrects her — the Sleepless do not want to avoid killing, they want to avoid losing control of a force that could end the cosmere, with as little suffering as is reasonable. *Then I can help you* — she is better placed than any swarm to feed both Queen Navani and the Thaylen council a version of events they will accept. That requires him to trust her with a secret too dangerous to let escape, he says; besides, the crew on the ship has *seen* his kind, so the sailors will have to die regardless. Rysn tells him plainly that she will not give up the lives of any of her crew — that is not negotiable.

Nikli lifts his hands as if to say *I told you*, and the seams in his fingers open enough that she can see insectile legs at the joints. She asks what he is. Her body is made of cells, he answers patiently, his of larger pieces. Cremlings, she says. *Hordelings*, he prefers — his people are not native to this planet. Many of the hordelings in him are brains; cognition is shared across the swarm; memory lives in specialised hordelings bred for the purpose. Three hundred years of breeding produced hordelings capable of imitating human fingers, and most of his kin are still poor at pretending to be human. He has come, he says, to enjoy being with her — even so, he is persuaded the secret cannot be released.

She insists. The sailors have already seen the Sleepless; the best lies are mostly true. He shakes his head and finally names the thing on the wall: there are forces in the cosmere the Sleepless can barely identify, let alone track. Evil ones. They are hunting this place. Now that the *Ancient Guardians of Akinah* are all but extinct, his people must hold the line — or billions die. *The Dawnshard is…* — and then he stops. He squints. Winged hordelings crawl out of his skull and fly to the mural, joined by hordelings sent by the other two; they scramble across the gold and red. *What have you done?* he shouts. He reaches across the table and grabs the front of her vest. Cord swings at him; his body splits before the blow; pieces of him crawl up her arms and into her armour, others swarm over Rysn. The man becomes the monster again. The negotiations are over. From somewhere outside, a low rumbling roar shakes the cavern.