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In the basement library under heavy singer guard, Navani organises her scholars around busywork — the wards and younger ardents clearing the room into the corridor, the senior people recalculating and redrawing earlier projects, Rushu unrolling large schematics for measurement. It is a natural-looking thing to order after an interruption, occasionally turns up real errors, and — most importantly — settles the room into the orderly sound of pens and papers and quiet talk. No creationspren, no logicspren, because none of this is real work; she hopes the guards are not perceptive enough to notice.

The singers are always underfoot. One Fused other than Raboniel is stationed in the room — a femalen of Raboniel's type, plainly unhinged, head flopping side to side, staring off and giggling — which makes Navani wonder whether so few sane Fused are left that this is the best Raboniel can spare to guard her.

Leaned against the wall, palms over a faint vein of garnet, Navani talks to the Sibling under her breath. The conversation gives her a working picture of the siege. Raboniel has set workers to test the shield directly. She does not realise Navani raised it; she believes she triggered some unknown ancient fail-safe, and that the Sibling must be dead — *the Midnight Mother told her so.* The Sibling survived the Midnight Mother's occupation for centuries by hiding and never fighting back, and centuries mean nothing to them anyway; they do not age, do not pretend to be male or female like the Radiant spren, do not need to look human.

The shield, the Sibling explains, is an extrapolation of the Surge of Soulcasting — it persuades the air across a region that it is glass. Four nodes — crystals tied directly to the Sibling's heart — power it; Navani destroyed one to activate it, leaving three. *Destroying another weakens the shield, then destroys it. We need to defend them, not break them.* And if Raboniel finds one she can use it to corrupt the Sibling from the outside.

Navani presses on the anti-Radiant suppression. It is, the Sibling says, an aspect of *Ur, the Tower* — a defence built originally to keep the Fused and the Unmade out; Raboniel has inverted it to suppress those who would draw Stormlight instead. Why was it not raised against the attack? Because the Sibling has been *wounded* since the ancient act that *changed the singers* — the binding of an Unmade that stripped them of forms and touched the souls of every spren of Roshar. The Sibling lost the rhythm of their Light that day, the tower stopped working, and their father — who should have helped — was losing his mind and soon died. Now Raboniel's touch is feeding the system with the wrong Light and corrupting it.

The Sibling also reveals how they earlier contacted Navani by spanreed: *through an insane woman locked in a monastery* whose permeable soul accepted the contact after Dabbid brought her a spanreed. The same Sibling still considers Vorin fabrial work a *high crime* — but reluctantly accepts the Oathgates as having been entered into willingly by the spren transformed for them.

The crucial gift comes last. *There are two Radiants in the tower still awake.* One is Lift, who was *created oddly, to use Light differently from others — made by my mother for that purpose*; the Sibling caught glimmers of her until she was caged behind ralkalest and disappeared. The other is a Windrunner of the Fourth Ideal — or near to it — who has lost his uniform: Kaladin.

Cut to Kaladin's morning. His first goal is Stormlight; he knows the sixth-floor corridor lanterns were recently fitted with amethyst gems. He and Syl work down through the dark inner stairwells past unattended floors — the place is too big for the enemy to watch all of it — until they reach the sixth. They spot a small singer patrol speaking Azish to a rhythm; Kaladin forces himself not to jump them. Looking out from a balcony he sees Windrunners still on the roof and figures in blue at the Oathgates — the enemy is dressing the tower from outside to look normal, so the Windrunner scouts Dalinar will surely send find nothing suspicious until they fly close enough to lose their powers.

Syl flits inside a sturdy iron lantern through its keyhole and stands on a latch she cannot push down. *Try a Lashing.* Gravitation does not work — but Syl points out that what Windrunners call Lashings are really two Surges in different combinations: Gravitation and Adhesion. He tries a Reverse Lashing — a Surge he has never been instinctive with — pushing past a blockage that is thinner than the gravitational one until the Light suddenly bursts free; the latch *clicks*. He opens the lantern, takes the gemstone, and goes lantern by lantern down the corridor, then reclaims the Light from each housing as he leaves it dark.

Supplies next. The fourth-floor monastery turns out to be low-priority to guard; Kaladin slips past two singers at the gate, finds the small room of the ardent he met earlier — Kuno — and startles him. *By the grace of god or luck. I haven't decided which.* Kuno supplies him with hospital robe and bedpan for Teft, a feeding syringe, antiseptic, bandages, fathom bark, dried rations, four water jugs strung on a rope, four hard-bristled scrub brushes — *can't fly anymore, so I need these.* Kuno agrees to keep the visit quiet and to refill jugs and broth on a return schedule. *Life before death.* *Life before death, Radiant.*

Back in the sanctuary, Kaladin checks on Teft and inventories the bag. The garnet vein on the floor sparkles; he brushes it. The queen's voice pops into his head. *Highmarshal? Is it true? Are you awake and functioning?*

Cut back to Navani in the library, doing circuits among her scholars to look bored while the Sibling relays each side to the other. She tells Kaladin what she knows of the corruption and the shield, names her first goal — protect the Sibling — and her second — get word to her husband and the other monarchs by recovering working spanreeds. If the enemy is somehow powering the Oathgates with Voidlight, understanding that method might unlock her own communications. *Can you find out how they're operating the Oathgates?* He thinks the enemy will only use them at night — when Windrunner scouts at a distance can be fooled — and agrees to try. She warns him about the three hidden nodes, asks him to tell her if he finds one, and warns him too that the enemy can complete the corruption if they reach one. *Lift is awake somewhere too,* she adds, *worth keeping an eye out.* And: if it proves too dangerous, retreat.

After he signs off — *Yes, sir. Er. Brightness.* — the Sibling reminds Navani to be careful how she asks after fabrials. *I have not forgotten,* Navani says, *but surely you don't oppose the Oathgates.* *I do not. Those spren have gone willingly.* Navani makes another quiet circuit of her room and does not press whether spren can lie — a question, she realises, she has never thought to ask. In Kaladin she has at least a lifeline now. One step forward.