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Shallan stares back at Iyatil across the crouch, the masked woman's eyes oddly human behind the carved beast that has swallowed her face. Iyatil repeats her order in her own language; Shallan, who learned no Aleen and no offworld tongue, almost trips the spanreed at her arm. *You can do this*, Veil whispers. The body language is simple: a curt nod toward the third masked Ghostblood. Shallan returns the curt nod and follows Iyatil back to the doorway in the eastern wall, where the three of them huddle. Now the conversation is in two foreign languages; she cannot even fake an answer for long.

She fakes distraction instead. The doorknob is silvery and polished, and at their crouched eye-level it is the only mirror in reach. Shallan fixes on it until Iyatil notices — and on a guess, breathes the one word a Ghostblood cannot ignore in any language: *Sja-anat*. Iyatil hisses, hunts the reflection, finds nothing, and stalks off toward Mraize, the third assassin following. Shallan calms her breath. Then a shadow does move across the doorknob, and the Unmade is there: the black female silhouette with white holes for eyes who has known her since the case-glass earlier. *I wondered how you would manage without speaking her tongue. That was clever.* Shallan presses: *Whose side are you on?* Sja-anat answers in a voice between threat and offer — Odium will use any of them up to get what he wants; Honor hated her children and destroyed them; Cultivation only watches. She fights for a world her children can live in, and if there is room for them, there will be room for Shallan's.

Iyatil returns with Mraize, and Sja-anat does not hide — she persists as a small bright shape in the polished knob and lets Iyatil see her. Iyatil dismisses the offworlder she calls *Lieke* back to the others, opens the door, and leads them into a darker alcove lit only by directional-painted spheres. The cases here are unlabelled, the prize ones. Iyatil wheels out a private mirror — *my trophy case*, she says, casually correcting Shallan's assumption that any of this was Mraize's — and demands Sja-anat explain why she has come away from her watch on the Bondsmiths. The Unmade's reply is small and tinny: the Sibling is awake, her own presence would draw the Sibling's attention, her *children* watch instead. Dalinar is close. Their timing into the perpendicularity will be tight, but they will not miss it. *Our spren can guide us*, Mraize presses, *as you said.*

*Our spren.* The phrase lands like a stone. Shallan backs against the cold wall: Mraize and Iyatil have bonded spren — children of Sja-anat — and that is why they have been so urgent to meet her in person; that is what the bargain was always for. She herself helped facilitate the meeting. Radiant tells her not to be too hard on herself — she had thought Jasnah dead and needed to belong somewhere — but the cost is laid out in front of her now. She also marks the quiver at Mraize's hip: one bolt has a gemstone affixed whose white-blue light warps the air around it. Wit described anti-Light to her, and only a sealed sliver of it should exist in Urithiru. Mraize has already taken some.

Sja-anat gives a parting warning that her sister Mishram is no humans' ally; Iyatil answers that they are not seeking an ally, only her prison. Mraize asks whether Shallan hunts them. *She does*, Sja-anat says — and does not look toward the impostor standing behind them. The Unmade vanishes; Mraize is dismissed by Iyatil like a junior. He bows and goes, and Shallan tries to follow rather than be cornered.

Iyatil, in Alethi now, holds her back to share a doubt: something is *wrong* with Mraize — he is not a duplicate, but his loyalty is no longer to the cause, only to his own advancement. Shallan risks the only word that might force a real answer: *Thaidakar's purpose*. Iyatil's reply lays out the Ghostbloods' fracture in one sentence: Master Thaidakar only wants to protect his homeworld; she intends to *control* the Shards through Mishram herself, and trusts he will eventually agree. She waits for Shallan's answer. Shallan nods again. *You've been so* — Iyatil's eyes widen behind the mask, shockspren burst around her — *that was it*. She lunges, not at Shallan's throat but at her hood, and the deflection knocks the disguise's wig loose. *Radiants! We are discovered!*