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Rain has graduated to actual rain by the time Radiant's team takes position at the Ghostblood safehouse in Narak Four — past rainspren standing along the road like eyed candles. The team drops its Lightweavings under hooded cloaks in case the black sand in jars and along the windowsills can register them, and they prop up a small work pavilion. Radiant hangs back at the tools while Red handles the Ghostblood who comes to investigate them — not the masked door guard she wants, but Shade, a Horneater-blooded Alethi-looking sergeant with a forked beard, fetched by the masked woman in the porch shadow. Shade tells them in plain words to take their work somewhere else for a couple of hours; Pattern catches an exchange between him and the masked guard that names two more arrivals coming soon. The mask is not coming out for Red; Shallan decides to fetch her.

Gaz runs the cover — loud foreman demands to know who countermanded the orders — and angerspren pool around him on cue. Radiant steps out of the rain onto the porch, lets the masked guard take her arm, and brings up a stiletto at the woman's throat in the same motion. The woman catches it and shoves; a year of Adolin's drills holds Radiant in stance. She orders her armour — *now* — and it forms around the *guard*, not herself, freezing the woman in place and clamping the helmet down to silence her cry. The creationspren cheer the design in chorus. Gaz notices the woman's hidden knife caught inside the gauntlet, a beat Radiant had missed.

The sand jar by the door is still black — the Plate spren did not trip it. They tip the guard into the cart, throw a tarp over her, and roll her into the pavilion. Gaz chokes her unconscious in a hold he holds beyond the polite moment, then explains the trick of pretending to faint early as the cleanest way to escape a chokehold; Shallan does not ask how he knows. They strip the guard down — Red unnerved by this part rather than by the violence — and learn that the mask is not skin-grown like Iyatil's but tied on with two cords and removed often, with imprints worn into the wood. The guard's hair turns out to be short-cropped; Shallan keeps the hood up. Shallan dresses in the woman's brown leathers and many strapped knives, ties on the red-orange mask, and falls into the woman's stance — dangerous, casually graceful — until even Gaz grudgingly concedes the imitation.

Shallan returns to the porch alone, slips a spanreed into her sleeve, leaves Pattern humming nervously in the cart. Two Thaylen traders arrive — late, because they had to invent reasons to leave Queen Fen's retinue. Shallan checks their features and holds the sand jar to them, knocks, Shade opens, and she follows them in. Shade holds the door for her. She has walked confidently straight into the den; now she is either a predator herself or she is eaten.

Three floors below the garden room, Navani steps out into the spinning machine of a kingdom dealing with another crisis. She delegates the running list to her staff — Venan on meals and a quiet ledger of which messages go where, Makal on rehousing — and then takes the queue. Sebarial and Palona worry about supply if the Shattered Plains Oathgate goes; gemstone reserves are still scarce, and Soulcasters break gemstones as they work. *Bring me proposals*, she tells them. Aladar brings the simmering lighteyed grievance: Jasnah's gradual abolition is gutting tradition, the elevation of Stormblessed to third dahn has unsettled the hierarchies, and three-quarters of Radiants coming up dark-eyed turned light is making lighteyes ask what being lighteyed even means. *After the contest*, she tells him; she will not run another fire today. Aladar bows. The darkeyes, she reflects, have been boiling much longer and now have advocates who can bend reality.

The Sibling tells her quietly that someone will eventually need to Ascend to Honor — a power of a Shard cannot be left without a Vessel forever; without one, the power will wake up dangerous. The fact that Honor's power has slept this long is a kindness, not normal. Then Navani goes to Rushu's fabrial workshop, where a small Soulcast-coal oven is hooded by an attractor fabrial that swallows the smoke; the ardents have spent a day chasing the writings of Geranid and Ashir and made a working proof. They unscrew the aluminum stopper on a heating fabrial, let the trapped flamespren scramble out toward the Cognitive Realm, and persuade it to step onto a calm coal in the oven using a tuning-fork tone. They bring out a fresh flamespren on a coal in turn and let it diffuse into the fabrial, which they recharge and turn on.

The Sibling calls it abomination in Navani's head — *enslaving spren in torment and captivity*. Navani points out which spren was supposedly the tormented one, and asks whether she can see any lasting damage. Rushu then introduces the second discovery: flamespren stay longer if named and complimented. Bippy — a small flame-shape with a tuft on its head — runs to follow Rushu's finger across the glass and brightens when she compliments its trick. A *flare* of domesticated flamespren, one of the ardents proposes; trained to take willing shifts in fabrials instead of being imprisoned. Navani tells the Sibling it is not natural, no — neither is climate-controlled towers, neither is anything they do — and that this is the better way she can think of: cultivate, not capture. *See my heart*, she sends. *See that I am trying.*

The Sibling answers — audibly enough that Rushu and the other ardents hear it too — that all spren being free would be preferable, but if this works they may yet see a compromise. *Thank you for listening and changing. I had forgotten that people are capable of that.* Rushu's eyes go wide. Navani opens the door for her to ask the Sibling questions of her own; she takes out a notepad and, to Navani's surprise, the first question is not about fabrials. *Tell me about being neither male nor female.* The Sibling worries that it must sound strange. *Actually*, Rushu says quietly, *not in the slightest. But talk, please. I want to know how it feels to be you.* Navani leaves them to it and goes to deal with a spren of a different kind — and a husband who has decided to become a god.