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Kaladin has used Stormlight to map out his hidden chamber on the fourth floor of Urithiru — a little larger than he thought, with a long stone shelf for Teft. He has washed his friend, dressed him in a loose robe, propped a sack of clothes under his head, and is feeding him water through a large metal syringe that Teft sucks at eagerly, as if at any moment he might come awake and start cursing about his missing uniform.

Syl sits on the shelf, unusually quiet, asking what they will do if he dies. Kaladin tells her to find something to distract her from it — the way he does. But she is asking him more than that today. She has been thinking about Relador, her old knight, and the long sleep his death dropped her into — straight through the Recreance — and is afraid the same thing will happen to her again. Kaladin checks gently whether she feels the darkness he knows so well; she does not. It is more like opening a present and remembering, only after, that it has always been empty. He tells her it sounds like grief — a healthy one, now that she is coming fully back to herself and confronting losses she set aside for centuries. She frets that a spren shouldn't feel like this. He answers that he thinks she is her own person now, however she was first shaped — that whatever's in their heads, the choosing is what makes them people. She smiles, and as he watches her havah bleeds from pale to a striking deep blue, the way real cloth would. *You're getting better at that,* he says. She thinks the closer she gets to his world, the more she can be — even, perhaps, taking the shape of tools as easily as she takes the shape of a Blade.

A scrape sounds at the door. Kaladin palms his scalpel and she flits up as a ribbon of light. He presses the door open ready to spring — and finds Dabbid, in street clothes, holding a pot of broth as if all of this is expected. Dabbid is one of the Bridge Four originals who never manifested Windrunner powers, and his old battle shock has always been the heaviest Kaladin has ever treated; he taps wrists together — Bridge Four — and points at the wall's garnet line, glittering faintly. The tower spren guided him here. Kaladin all but breathes out his relief: if anything happens to him on a mission tonight, Teft needs someone else who knows about this room. He shows Dabbid the syringe, sets him to feeding, and asks the Sibling through the garnet whether it can lock the door to anyone but the two of them. The Sibling tells him the gemstone doors were once attunable to specific people — now it can only leave a door open to all or sealed against all. Good enough. He leaves one gemstone for light and slips out.

Navani has asked him to get close enough to the Oathgates during a transfer to learn why those fabrials still work when others in the tower do not. The hallways down are out of the question; Kaladin Stormblessed draws too much attention to walk the populated lower floors. So he means to try the outside of the tower instead. He has Full Lashing, but a Radiant's own skin will not stick — so out of four scrub-brushes from the monastery he has cut the bristles, leaving four flat handholds with curved grips. He tests one on a tenth-floor balcony pillar; it holds his entire weight, then releases when he reclaims the light. He kicks off his socks, replaces his boots, scans the air for Heavenly Ones, and steps over the rail.

He has always liked being up high. Even before he could fly he felt a kinship with the open sky; standing on the lip of the dark drop now, he wants to jump — not out of the old darkness, but for the rushing wind of it. *No,* he tells her when she asks whether he is afraid, *the opposite.* He charges two brushes and swings down between balconies, finding small footholds on weather-worn stone, sticking the toes of his boots through Stormlight. The descent is harder than he expected; he sweats through it on upper-body strength alone, and by the fifth floor he hauls himself onto an empty balcony to recover. Few singers linger out here in the cold; coldspren prowl across the rail like friendly cremlings. A few windspren loop in to peek faces at him as he climbs again, and Syl watches them fondly.

Above the fourth floor, she flashes the *stop* glyph in the air. Voices below — singer femalens, by their conversation in Alethi, with spyglasses on a third-floor balcony watching the sky for Windrunner scouts. They will not run the Oathgate until they are sure nobody is watching. Kaladin hangs in place, Syl feeding him soft impressions of words; he sidles two balconies west and continues down. A dark, violet-tinted flash from the Oathgate plateau tells him he has missed the night's transfer. He pauses, hung against the wall, and tells her to go check the scouts. They are packing up: the gate will not fire again tonight. He has been too slow. He starts back up to feel out the climb in reverse, and finds a fierce private pride in the work: the tower has tried to keep him grounded, and the sky is still his.

Halfway back, he stops mid-handhold, struck by what he should have seen immediately. The watchers on the balcony — how did they intend to wave the Oathgate off if they spotted Windrunners in the sky? No flags. Syl says they were just sitting there writing in the dark. A spanreed. One that *works inside the tower.* Navani is trying to figure out how the enemy keeps their fabrials functioning here — handing her one of theirs would tell her far more than another night spent gawking at the Oathgates. Syl zips back to the balcony and reports the scouts moving off, just ahead. *Follow,* he sends her, and starts after them.