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Navani reaches the map room to find guards in place at every corridor checkpoint, anticipationspren streaming overhead, and a knot of Kholin-blue officers around tables of lower-floor maps weighted down at the corners. Most of them are captains in for leave from the front; the one battalionlord present is Roion's men's, though the youngest highprince himself has gathered them all. The Tower Guard commander, she is told, picked up a Radiant spren last month and is now unconscious with the rest. Every Radiant in the tower is down. Enemy troops on every floor — mostly stormform Regals boiling up out of the basement, with shanay-im landing on balconies up and down the lower levels — already through the library rooms, already at the pillar room, already running the Oathgates somehow.

Navani looks at the youngest of her officers shaking as he says they cannot fight Fused, and pulls the room back to her: plug the stairwells; the shanay-im's wings stop being an advantage in tight quarters; with garrison stores they could hold for weeks until her husband comes back. She notices, mid-sentence, that the battalionlord she has been deferring to is darkeyes. Dalinar's promotion-on-merit, in the field for once. *Your name, Battalionlord?* *Teofil.* Ninth Kholin Division, infantry, just off the southern Alethkar lines. He plugged the stairwell here. But, he says, holding would be a mistake — the tower is too porous, stormforms will electrocute men in batches, and there are Fused who can walk through stone. They can't even use the Soulcasters — also dead, like every other fabrial. He gives her the bluntness she needs: there is one chance worth taking, and it is to take the pillar back.

Navani makes the call. *Do it.* Throw everything they have into recovering the pillar room in the basement. *In for all,* one of the soldiers names it. The room is silent until Teofil barks the order to his peers — pull the men from the upper floors, leave a harrying force under Radathavian to bleed the descending shanay-im for every step, muster at the foot of the grand staircase, push down to the basement, carve a hole to the pillar. The officers move at his voice — not hers. He apologises for them, softly, as the room empties: *they don't much like following a woman's orders. Masculine arts.* He adds, in the same breath, that he figures the Blackthorn has read every military text in print and could do worse for a general than the person who likely read them to him. He tells her the truth too: their best regular troops are out on the fronts; Roion's men, who fill these benches, will baulk. The single non-Radiant Shardbearer left in the tower — Tshadr, the Thaylen man — was killed in the first minutes; the shanay-im went straight to his fourth-floor rooms because they knew exactly where to find him. Navani reads Taravangian's hand in it. Teofil then asks her, quietly, what their actual chances are. *Bad,* she says. *Take the chance,* he answers, *and if it doesn't work, find out fast whether they're treating their captives well, because surrender is on the table.*

She tells him to take command and bring her anything that matters. She notes Dabbid slinking in by the wall — eyes down, almost invisible — and is glad he came. The vein of garnet here is stark, a clean red line down the strata of the wall, and she lays her hand on it. *I know you can hear, Sibling,* she says. *Dabbid told me you could.* A small twinkle of light moves up the line of crystal and touches her skin. *I can hear you,* answers a voice — small, pitched between male and female, not entirely sure they want to be here. They resent that Dabbid told her about the veins at all. *You are a slaver,* the voice tells her. *Am I better than a Fused?* she asks. The pause hurts. *I'm not sure.*

The Sibling confirms what she has feared: they really were asleep, and they cannot restart the tower without Light they do not have. The Lady of Pains has corrupted only the section of them that suppresses Surgebinding — reversing it, so it works against Radiants now instead of Fused — but means to take more, and may soon change the Sibling's mind so that they do not care. Highly Invested beings, they note in passing, can push through the suppression — Unmade have, in the past — as can Radiants of the high oaths and, oddly, Honor's Truest Surge, the Surge of Binding and Oaths. Navani presses: she is already mounting an assault on the pillar; is there something else she can try? *I think she's going to change me,* the Sibling says, voice smaller still. *I might not care.* *Do you care now?* Navani asks. *Yes.* *Tell me what to do.*

The Sibling tells her that their last Bondsmith — before they banished men from these halls — built them something. A defence. A method of trusting again. It did not, at the time, do its work. It might now stop the Fused corrupting them further. *Please,* Navani says. *Let me help. Please.* *You cannot be trusted,* the Sibling answers. *Let me show you that I can.* The voice is quiet now, very quiet, but it answers. *You will need Stormlight, Navani Kholin. A great deal of Stormlight.*