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Jasnah descends into Urithiru's basement carrying an old Veden history in her head. The ancient Siln dynasty of Jah Keved was founded after the death of King NanKhet, who had succeeded his brother NanHar when NanHar took ill on campaign in what would become modern Triax. NanKhet ruled three months and survived six attempts on his life — by his sister, his nephew, his cousin, another brother, an uncle, and finally his own son — before, according to the chronicler Natata Oileyes writing two centuries later, calling his entire household to a great feast under pretense of distant Aimian delicacies, having them executed one by one, and dining alone at a table laid for two hundred. Oileyes' account is theatrical even by her standards, ending with NanKhet choking to death at that same feast with nobody on hand to help. Similar court-murder cycles thread the long history of the Vorin kingdoms, and a particular thought from her reading the night before will not leave Jasnah alone: that the greatest danger to a ruling family has very often been its own members.

She turns the corner into the converted basement library, the two former library rooms now packed with tables and scholars Navani has marshalled there. Dalinar's scouts have followed the tunnel the Unmade used to flee, marched it for days along a stream, and surfaced in the foothills of Tu Fallia — a second way in and out of the tower that does not depend on the Oathgates. Concentrationspren ripple overhead like waves and logicspren dart through them; Jasnah notes with private pleasure that the end of the world was apparently what it took to make people take her seriously about coordinated research. Renarin is in the corner in his Bridge Four uniform, still floating between worlds, and Jasnah makes a mental note to pull him away from the stormwardens before they get him too deep into numerology. She quietly tells Ivory to go listen, and he shrinks to a speck and goes.

Her spanreed lights. A Tashikk information-house has, by her standing arrangement, hooked her up to two old Veristitalian colleagues at once — Jochi in Thaylenah (in life, a potbellied man running a pastry shop, whom the world believes is a celebrated woman scholar) and Ethid, an Azish scion at the royal palace — by a clever three-intermediary loop that lets the whole conversation flow in real time. Jochi greets her cheerfully back from the dead; Ethid dryly reminds him that anyone who thought Jasnah could drown was being optimistic.

The news is grim, then grimmer. Ethid is increasingly sure she has been tracking the Herald Nalan: a man attacked the Azish royal palace trying to kill some thieves, one of whom is the new Prime they are scrambling to dress up as a folk hero. She also had — past tense — an Edgedancer, a young Reshi street girl, who slipped away from her, chased the same Herald to Tashikk, and is now back in Azir avoiding her. Jasnah suspects this is the same girl her uncle met in one of his visions. Jochi caps the round with a recent sighting of Axies the Collector, which feels almost mundane now. Jasnah agrees with Ethid: the Heralds are broken; they will not be a resource. She will share drawings of their true faces (from an unexpected source) and the most recent of Dalinar's visions, which bear on them. The conversation rolls on through Thaylen City reduced to ruins by repeated Everstorms, the Thaylen parshmen who stole the surviving ships and sailed off in their own exodus, and the Dawnchant translations in Jah Keved that are running ahead of the ones in Kharbranth. Jasnah asks after Ethid's drawings of order-spren; Ethid has seen an Edgedancer spren personally and Jochi has dug up a reference to the Truthwatcher spren as light cast through something crystalline.

The thought catches. Jasnah excuses herself from the conversation and crosses the room — pausing where Navani is pressing Shallan on the wedding — to look at Renarin again. Something about how he is standing. Shallan catches her hand on her shoulder, then sees the doorway. Amaram has arrived — Sadeas's regent now, in forest green — and walks straight at Jasnah asking for a private word about her uncle, about how she has been "steering" him toward her religion, about how she could steer him back. Jasnah sends him away. He grips her arm and presses her on why she has always denied him. She returns the most brutally public insult to his mother she can construct in front of an entire roomful of scholars; his face goes deep red; he steps back, hand thrust to one side to summon his Blade; she lifts her freehand and lets Stormlight curl off it and dares him. He hesitates, turns, and walks out under the snickers of the room. Jasnah resolves to speak with Dalinar about keeping him safely occupied, and — quietly, without telling Dalinar — to find an Urithiru-based assassin or two of the discreet sort, in case the first plan fails.

Shallan is bouncing in her seat in delight. Jasnah takes her aside and tries to reopen the question of her studies; Shallan very quickly informs her that King Elhokar now needs her on the Kholinar expedition because her illusions will be priceless if the Oathgate is held by the enemy. Jasnah frowns and resolves to speak with Elhokar herself; in the meantime she sets Shallan to drawing the spren of Renarin and Kaladin. Then she trails off — *what is he doing?* Across the room, Renarin is standing at the wall of palm-sized white tiles and has somehow tapped one out like a drawer. He turns and shows them what was inside: a long ruby, cut in a strange shape and pierced with holes. Navani takes it, declares it imperfectly cut, predicts it cannot hold a charge for a day and will vibrate badly. Jasnah infuses it with Stormlight and it glows dimly and buzzes hard. *Storms*, Shallan whispers — *that's a pattern.* Pattern tells her the buzz is code: letters. Renarin murmurs about the music of language, draws in Stormlight from his pocket, and pushes his palms flat against the wall. A surge ripples out from his hands like twin ripples on a pond, and a hundred — two hundred — drawers spring open behind their tiles, each holding a ruby. The ancient Radiants had known their library would decay. The gemstone archive is the other way they had left their knowledge behind.