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Sunlight comes back into Lirin's clinic on a full day's sleeplessness; the family have spent twenty hours stitching the frightened of Hearthstone's sixth-floor block. The messenger Alili sits down at their table with cold tea — disheveled uniform, premature white-and-grey hair, master-servant gloves tucked in her belt — and confirms what they have heard pieced through hour after hour without spanreeds: the queen attempted a final push to wake the Radiants, her soldiers died, and she has surrendered. They are to live under singer law. They are not to resist.

Lirin says quietly that it could be worse. Hesina points out that without fabrials the pumps will halt and the rooms will not heat for long. Lirin wonders aloud whether Voidlight might infuse them; Alili says quietly that *that feels wrong for many reasons*. *Brightlord* she calls Lirin in the same breath — rank is becoming a jumbled mess these days. Hesina tells Kaladin to lie down. *You've been prowling about like a caged animal.* He realises his brow is cold with sweat. He looks at them and tries to make them hear it. *They control the Oathgates. The war is over.* Alili suggests, almost shyly, that maybe he could help the other Radiants do whatever he did. *What did I do?* he asks. *That's what I'm asking,* she says. *You're the sole Radiant I've seen in this tower who is still standing.*

Syl zips in to flag a singer patrol; the warform looks in, lingers, and goes — there aren't enough singers yet to post each home. Hesina kisses Lirin's cheek and leaves to make rounds with Laral. In the hall Kaladin asks his father what if he can't live like this. *What if I'm one of those hotheads?* Lirin turns him back to the long argument: head over heart; the years of fighting that broke him; the last few weeks of helping; the nightmares. *Trust my thoughts,* he asks. Kaladin grimaces, but agrees. They check on the unconscious patients — the Stoneward limp, Teft taking broth more eagerly than the rest and twitching. *He's a Windrunner, of the same oath as me*, Kaladin thinks. *I'm awake when the others fell.*

Then Syl is back, no time. A different Regal, leading five warforms, is searching house to house. Lirin tells Kaladin to flee out the back if it is him they want and goes to the door. Kaladin cracks the hallway door from the family room and listens to the queen's sealed writ being read out: *all Radiants are to be taken into custody.* The warforms carry off the Stoneward and her two squires. *I can care for these better than you can,* Lirin argues. *Why would we care?* the Regal answers, amused. Two soldiers move into the second exam room and lift Teft onto a man's shoulders.

A hundred reasons hold Kaladin against the wall. *But one reason to move.* He opens the door. *You will put him down,* he says, *and leave quietly.* Lirin tries to push him out; Kaladin pivots and tumbles his father into the hall, then stands in the doorway and breathes in Stormlight. The warform shies away — *that's him, Brightlord! The one the Pursuer is searching for!* — and the Regal grins and unhooks his axe. *You're going to make me very rich, human.* What follows is brutal and small. The two slam into counters in the tight room. Kaladin takes a barbed cuff to the cheek and an axe-bite to the shoulder; he cracks the Regal's carapace hand against the corner of the exam table; he takes a flash-and-thunder lightning strike against the floor and his Stormlight burns to keep his eardrums. With the last of his Light he opens the Regal's knee with the scalpel from his boot, then the carotid above the gorget. Orange blood. Syl sits with her face turned away. He looks across the room at the second singer, in warform, horrified and frozen. *Haven't been in many fights, have you?* he asks. He waves the boy out — *go!* — and the warform leaves a trail of wet orange footprints out the door.

Lirin kneels by the dying singer and tries to staunch the blood. *How dare you kill in this place,* he shouts. *They were going to take Teft,* Kaladin answers. *They were going to kill him.* *You don't know that.* They go round on it: the Fused gathering the Radiants to watch them; the queen's surrender; the brands under Kaladin's hair. Lirin is weeping. *They really did kill my boy, didn't they?* *I've tried to tell you,* Kaladin says. *Your boy died years ago.* Lirin refuses to leave the clinic with him — he will work within whatever confines, take responsibility for what he has done, and the singer who saw him try to stop Kaladin will speak for him. *Storms*, he whispers as Kaladin heaves Teft onto his back, *my son has become a monster.* Kaladin grabs a spare sphere pouch and tells his father he has taken oaths too — *but if I were a monster, I would never have let that other soldier go* — and runs for the uninhabited centre of the sixth floor as singer shouts begin behind him. END OF PART TWO.