(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Part Two opens with Radiant in command of the body, walking the rim of a vast reservoir cistern far below Urithiru as her Lightweavers spar. The waterworks crash from openings high on the far wall, contained and restrained — a sound she has come to find comforting. She wears her vakama, a Veden warrior's outfit cut after the Alethi takama but with a pleated skirt, vibrant blue embroidered over red and gold, and the traditionally male coat-and-vest cut draws double takes in the tower. She wants both halves of her to read clearly: warrior, and Veden.

Internally, the Three are still working out the mission to the honorspren. Veil wants it because it is what Mraize wants — a chance to reach Lasting Integrity and learn who Restares is and what hold he has on the Ghostbloods. Their compact, *the will of two should be respected*, holds: Veil wants to participate in the Ghostbloods in earnest, Shallan wants to know what they know, Radiant will not run to Dalinar or Jasnah alone. But there is a deeper trouble. Shallan is afraid the people she loves will turn on her when they learn the extent of her crimes — a wound the Three have been working around all year, and one Radiant suspects is the last knot.

Radiant interrupts Beryl and Darcira mid-spar. Both women have begun to wear other faces as a fighting distraction, and both attack more recklessly under the new face — many Lightweavers throw themselves wholeheartedly into a part. Off duty, in their own faces, both retreat into quiet rooms and books. Radiant tells Darcira she loses her stance when she wears a man's face, and tells them their job today is the sword. Beryl pushes back: they are spies; surely fighting is failure. Radiant agrees fighting is the last resort — but she wants her people to survive the moment the cover breaks. Pattern, riding under her collar, complains that he cannot tell which Cryptic she means; they each insist their name is *Pattern*. *We can write the numbers,* he offers helpfully. The team has agreed to use the individual names the Cryptics were pressed into picking.

The team has invented its own structure as well. Cryptics are quicker to bond than honorspren, so most of Shallan's twenty agents already have a spren without yet earning a Blade; rather than be called Windrunner-style squires, they are *Agent Lightweavers* and Shallan is *Master Lightweaver*. Together they call themselves the Unseen Court — a name Veil and Shallan both love, and that more than a few Windrunners roll their eyes at.

Radiant turns to the real question: who to bring into Shadesmar. The team is to be small — Shallan, Adolin, three Radiants (Godeke the Edgedancer, Zu the Stoneward, and the Stump the Truthwatcher), and three Lightweaver agents along to Soulcast food and water — plus Adolin's soldiers as grooms and guards, chosen specifically from men who were not on the mission to the warcamps. Then the question that fractures the Three: if there really is a Ghostbloods spy among her Lightweavers, whoever they are must have been on the warcamps mission, because they killed Ialai. Veil wants the suspects close — bring them, watch them. Radiant wants them left behind. The two sides argue.

Shallan walks over to Ishnah. She once tried to join the Ghostbloods herself; she is the obvious first suspect. Radiant asks her opinion of the mission and her instinct for who to bring; Ishnah sees the opportunity and volunteers immediately, which is exactly what a spy would do. Vathah catches Radiant's eye next — naturally talented, large, quietly opaque, hiding his height behind unconscious Lightweaving. By a quick circuit she has her short list of most-eager volunteers: Ishnah, Vathah, Beryl and Stargyle — all four already her most suspicious, all four veterans of the warcamps mission.

Shallan takes the vote, Veil and Radiant supporting her, and decides to leave all four behind. She turns to break the news to Ishnah — then folds, nauseated, and Veil takes the body. *Made my decision,* Veil says brightly: Ishnah is coming, and would she be a dear and fetch Vathah and Stargyle to come along too. The compact has just been broken. Radiant is strangely quiet — *I change my vote, then. I agree to bring them with us.* — and Veil notes the wrongness of it without yet understanding it. She keeps the body for the rest of the day, Shallan pounding at her from inside.

Late, in her own rooms, Veil finds a green feather on the floor and a green cloth peeking from a dresser drawer. Inside is a metal cube the size of a head and a Mraize cipher. Pattern recites the translation from memory: spanreeds do not work between realms, but this cube does; it is worth more than some kingdoms; it cannot be opened without being destroyed; once she is in Shadesmar and alone, she is to hold it and call his name. *Good hunting, little knife.* She glimpses into Shadesmar and finds, on the other side of it, a sphere of mother-of-pearl light — power, but no Stormlight. She cannot fool Pattern into thinking she is Shallan; he saw through her the moment she answered him. She will have to hide the cube from Adolin somehow. This time, she thinks, she will not be the prey running through Shadesmar. She will be the hunter.