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Shallan sits alone in her rooms with Pattern and a single dim sphere, reading the second half of Mraize's letter. Two institutions other than the Ghostbloods foresaw the return of the Voidbringers. The Sons of Honor — Gavilar Kholin their driving force, Amaram their convert — were not just zealots: they actively worked to provoke a Desolation so that the Heralds would have to show themselves and the Vorin church regain its old power. The Skybreakers are the only order of Knights Radiant that did not break at the Recreance; led from antiquity by the Herald Nalan'Elin, they have spent decades hunting potential Surgebinders — recruiting some, eliminating the rest. Her brother Nan Helaran was one of Nale's recruits, sent against Amaram as a proving test or simply as a strike at the Sons of Honor. The letter ends with a calculated reassurance — the bridgeman who killed Helaran was never on the Skybreakers' list, or he would have died in his months as a slave.

Pattern climbs onto the page to read it with her and announces that it contains lies. Shallan knows: Mraize is feeding her one scrap at a time, the way a quayside showman trains a kurl to dance for its supper, and the trick works on her because she wants the scraps. She takes a Memory of the page, washes the ink off in a basin, shreds the letter into a wad, then changes into the coat and hat and goes looking, as Veil, for what to do with all of it.

Veil finds Vathah and his squad of pardoned deserters playing pieces in Sebarial's barracks common room. The game is one of the few the Vorin church will tolerate — no shuffling, no dice, only ten facedown stone tiles arranged by a *mink* and a face-up *seed* to guess from — and Vathah's table has Gaz, Red, and Shob bickering through the rounds while Glurv at the next table sits with Dalinar's medal pinned to his collar for his part in chasing the Unmade out of the basement. Veil borrows a beer chit from Red, settles in with a mug of lavis beer, and complains about Shallan as if she were someone else — the woman cannot decide who she is, one minute joking with old aunties, the next hollow-eyed. The men grunt their agreement and admit that they liked feeling useful for once; Gaz tells her, plainly, that none of them are *good men* and that without something to do they will go back to being trouble.

A few rounds in Shallan absently names every one of Vathah's nine hidden princedom tiles correctly without a single peek; he stares at her, flips them, and complains that her brothers must have warned every gambler in the family the same way. The squad's bowls run empty and they fall back to playing for *ends* — fake glass spheres without gemstones — while Zendid cheerfully chimes in from the next table that uselessness is precisely the shape their unit has always taken.

Veil is enjoying the beer more than expected, only half-tracking the question of how to handle Mraize — he obviously wants a mole inside the Knights Radiant, and she half-suspects she does not have the training to dare a double-cross — when a washwoman idles by with a sack of laundry. Something about the fingers is wrong. Veil crosses the room, grabs the woman by the dress, hauls her back, and pulls off the mottled wig: Ishnah, the spy from All's Alley, hair pure Alethi black under it and ash smudged onto her cheeks. Veil sits her down at the table. Ishnah admits she has been listening in for some time — *you talked about Horneater lager; Red said it was nasty, Gaz loves it* — and asks again, more directly, to be let in.

Veil takes her to the doorway out of earshot. Ishnah was trained as a spy in Vamah's court, in the service of House Hamaradin — information gathering, message coding, observation, room searches — until her brightlady crossed the Ghostbloods and ended up dead, and Ishnah went underground to keep her own head. Veil turns the offer sideways: yes, she has infiltrations planned; what she really needs is a loyal support team, not strangers. She points at Vathah's table. Ishnah is doubtful — *that's a bit like saying you want me to teach hogs to talk, with the comfort that they only need to speak Alethi* — but agrees to try, and Veil silently notes that the arrangement will get her something else, too: a way to be trained in the things she does not even know she does not know yet, without ever admitting that Veil is anything other than what she pretends to be.