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Kaladin lies fevered on the rock floor of the Bridge Four barrack, where the crew has carried him after Gaz's spearmen finished kicking him. He is shaking with cold sweats; his open eyes see only the rafters and the storm-stained ceiling, and his ears keep hearing corridors he is not in. Teft sits beside him with the half-pouch of spheres the crew has scraped together for whatever surgeon will come — and reaches, after a long minute, to take a few coins back. No army surgeon is going to come for a bridgeman.

Then Kaladin draws in a short, powerful breath. The sphere in his curled hand goes dun in the same moment. Faint wisps of luminous fog rise off the bare skin of his arms and his chest like steam off a kettle, knit themselves into the deeper of the cuts the boots opened, shrink the redness around the bruises by visible degrees, and seep into the swollen joints of his shoulder. His eyes leak amber light, briefly, between half-closed lids. Then it is all gone, the chip in his hand spent, his breathing easier than it should be.

Teft bows his head to the rock floor and weeps. He knows what he has just seen because long before the bridge crews he was an Envisager — a member of a long-secret cult that believed the Knights Radiant would one day return — and he himself, in a single act of cowardice the rest of his life has been about not thinking of, betrayed the cult to the authorities and let them all die. The Envisagers were right. There is no one left from his life to tell. He decides on the spot what he is going to do. He will trade in dun spheres from the camp money-houses for fresh-infused ones a few at a time and let Kaladin drain them quietly each night, so that the healing leaves no mark on any ledger. The boy himself, Teft thinks, watching him sleep, probably has no idea what he is doing or that he is doing it.