POV: venli
Summary
Venli finishes her long-deferred confession to Timbre on the climb up to the sixth floor of Urithiru — the day she took Axindweth's gemstone, hid it from her mother and sister, and stepped onto the path she has walked ever since. She is honest with herself: her motives were not noble. She kept the gem secret because she could not bear the thought of Eshonai discovering a new form before she did. Instead the reverse came to pass — she lived her sister's destiny, ended up with Timbre, became a Radiant, lived. Proof, in her reading, that the cosmere makes mistakes. Timbre is uncharacteristically silent.
On the sixth-floor balcony scouting post she gathers reports for Raboniel. Singers hum to her in deference; relayform Regals defer to a Voice. The seventh floor and above are empty; the singers are setting up stairwell checkpoints in case panicked humans flee upward once confinement to quarters is lifted. Many unconscious Radiants have been recovered, mostly from homes that tried to hide them. Raboniel's policy on that — surrender freely and live, get caught hiding one and die for it along with one of your household — has been working. Venli reflects that Raboniel wants the surrendered Radiants for something of her own.
Then a Regal mentions a stray report: a human surgeon killed one of theirs the other night and fled into the upper floors with an unconscious Windrunner — tall, wavy hair, slave brands, supposedly glowing with Stormlight, dismissed as a frightened soldier's exaggeration. The Pursuer took charge of the case and has not been able to locate the fugitive. Timbre pulses worry. Venli realises Stormblessed is in the tower, still conscious somehow, and still using his powers — and that Leshwi needs to know. She asks calmly after the soldier who saw it and is told the Regal's true news: by this evening the Pursuer will have interrogated the man's family, captured and locked in a clinic nearby — *a surgeon, his wife, one child* — and have *at least a little blood tonight.*
Out in the corridor the rhythms go silent under her feet. Timbre pulses morosely. Venli tries to talk past it — these people are mixed up with a soldier's death — and Timbre rebukes her sharply. The Reachers no longer bond humans, but they do not hate them; killing a family because they resisted is monstrous, and the Pursuer's troops were openly hungry for it. Venli remembers the Blackthorn in the Bondsmith vision, and a moment of kindness given to her there. *Eshonai would have done something,* she thinks; and to Timbre, *I'm a fraud. A fake Radiant. I don't know what I'm doing.* Timbre's pulse is clear. *I do.*
Venli turns back to the stairs and goes up to the grand atrium — circular, more than a hundred feet across, the eastern wall a single window of glass — where the shanay-im now hover instead of soaring outdoors against Windrunner scouts. She commandeers a lift on her authority as Leshwi's Voice and ascends to the fifteenth floor, where Leshwi meditates with her long robes drifting beneath her. She has broken the protocol her mistress set down for clandestine reports, and Leshwi notes the breach — and then hears why.
Leshwi hums to Exultation at the news of a Windrunner still on his feet in the tower, then bitterly: Raboniel will permit the Pursuer to override her standing claim on him as long as he is technically a fugitive, and *honour propels him even now, even after his god's death.* When Venli dares ask whether her mistress truly intends to fight Stormblessed only to kill him, Leshwi hums something she cannot read, and warns her never to raise the subject again — but Timbre pushes her to say more. Venli tells her about Stormblessed's captive family in the clinic on the sixth floor, and suggests carefully that having them — out of the Pursuer's hands — would give Leshwi a way to find him first.
Leshwi tells her she is being merciful and to never reveal that Passion to others — and goes. An hour passes; she returns from the direction of the lower market. She has taken the family into her own custody, used her seniority to push the Pursuer off them, placed them somewhere safe with orders to stay hidden, and means to spread the rumour that she had them disposed of. *You must not let others see your compassion for humans. It will be misconstrued, particularly with you being the child of traitors.* She warns Venli to remember today's favour. Venli hums to Subservience and goes; Timbre pulses encouragement. *A step in the right direction.*