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Teft drops limp at the booth, his head thumping on the table, his arm flopping his cup off the edge. Kaladin is on him in a second — pulse strong, breath good, eyes dilated and shivering — half a thought stabbing through his own oppressive new fog of mind. *Not now,* he tells himself. He talks calm because his father taught him to talk calm, and rolls Teft across his shoulders. The Edgedancer clinic in the market is closer; Rlain suggests it. Kaladin reaches for Stormlight to make Teft light enough to carry; his sphere pouch resists for a beat, then the Light pours in and burns to use. He commands it into Teft for an upward Lashing. Nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing.

Across the city, on the fifth floor, Navani is interrogating the mute Bridge Four man caught planting the spanreed. Red — first of the Radiants she had sent for, lean in Thaylen suspenders — peeks into the room and names him: Dabbid, an old Bridge Four hanger-on who *isn't right in the head*. He doesn't see a spren on him; the tower glows so brightly in Shadesmar that it interferes with looking, but he is sure he would see an honorspren. Inside the cell Dabbid makes the Bridge Four wrist-tap salute at her, again and again, then points at the lantern's sphere. He wants her to talk to the spanreed. Navani hands Kalami the new ruby and follows. The pen starts scrawling on its own: *Fool human. We are under attack. The enemy is already inside the tower. Quickly! You must do exactly as I say, or we are all doomed.* Navani writes back. *I am the Sibling. I am the spren of this tower. The enemy. They are. They are doing something to me. This is bad. You need to infuse —* The pen goes dead as Red crumples to the floor.

In the corridor, Kaladin cannot work Gravitation no matter what he tries. He can still move quickly enough on his own with Light in him, so he and Rlain carry Teft between them. At the Edgedancer clinic in the market they find two more Radiants on the ground; a non-Radiant nurse — having had the sense to clear the room in case of leaking dazewater — gives him what she can. Kaladin leaves Teft with Rlain and tries one more thing: an Adhesion Full Lashing of his boot to the stone. It holds. He pulls it back without trouble. Some Surges are gone; others still work. They head for his father and the family clinic by the grand staircase. Rlain catches up at the sixth floor having heard from a runner — Radiants are dropping all through the tower; a downed Stoneward in a different corridor, the rhythms in his hearing going to nightmare lines that sound like an Everstorm he cannot hear with his ears.

Back at the audience chamber, the spanreeds in Navani's satchel have all stopped blinking. None of them respond when she twists the rubies. She steadies into command. With every fabrial in the tower dead, she writes orders by hand: every garrison in the tower deploys to the predefined plan, every runner in the scouting office reports to the map room on the second floor, every Windrunner in town gets warned. The same orders go out twice, with her two fastest soldiers running different routes; the last man gets sent to the Windrunners over his own objection that she would be unguarded. *I'll manage,* she says. She walks back to Dabbid in the cell. He stands and presses his hand to the wall. A fine line of garnet runs through the strata. *The spren of the tower,* she says. *She talked to you through these veins of garnet?* He nods. She tosses him the keys to his chains and tells him the map room is on the second floor; he can come or not.

In his family's clinic Lirin is already examining the downed Stoneward a panicked group of relatives have hauled up the stairs. Kaladin sets Teft gently on the floor and feels, at last, the new tug. Syl — *I went to warn the queen, but I couldn't get too far away from you* — explodes back into sight as a small woman on the floor, sleepy and growling that she hates being sleepy. Rlain catches up: people in the hall shouting that there are Fused in the tower; not a raid. Hesina confirms the spanreeds simply will not function. Kaladin crosses to a window in the family quarters and sees the sky filling with the long-trailing forms of the shanay-im descending on Urithiru by the hundreds. Not a raid. An invasion.

He walks back to the surgery room and stares at his row of surgeon's knives. Syl cannot form a Blade right now. He reaches out and his hand doesn't shake. A surgeon's knife is meant to harm as little as possible; it can also kill efficiently. *A delicate contradiction. Like me.* Outside the door, screams. Fearspren like wisps writhe in the corridors as the shanay-im land on the balconies. He has sent Rlain to hide in the family quarters; he should hide too. *Life before death.* He turns toward the door and finds his feet have gone to lead. He gets as far as the doorway, slides down the wall, and curls there with the knife. *Cold sweats. Emotional detachment. Insensibility, accompanied by hyper-recall of traumatic moments. Severe anxiety.* Syl tries to reach him. Lirin arrives with a bloodred sphere for light and the over-deliberate calm of a surgeon — *put down the knife, son; you're not needed.* They argue down the corridor about it. Lirin uses the only knife he has left: *you go out there and you get your mother killed; you get the baby killed.* Kaladin stops. Lirin takes the knife from his unresisting hand and leads him into the back room, where Oroden is being kept quiet with toys. Hesina comes in a moment later, hair escaping its bun, blood on her skirt that is not hers — Jam's, probably; the only one who tried to fight. She hugs Lirin. Kaladin sits and stares at the floor. The tower may still be fighting. He already knows it has lost. Like himself.