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Szeth lands at night on the roof of Pozen's monastery above Mokdown — the place where he lived longest as a trainee, the corridor with the window where he used to stand at night holding a contraband wool toy and thinking about his mother. Six weeks have passed since his discovery in the cavern. He has spent them readying his own Windrunner house for war and ignoring the polite invitations to visit the other monasteries. Letters to Sivi and Moss hinting they should join him have gone unanswered. He looks down over the squashed little river-city and wonders how many Honorbearers across the centuries lived and died in the grip of the very thing they were supposed to protect against, how many Tukos there must have been.

Tonight he intends to kill Pozen as the first step in his war. He has begun raising the towns and cities to his cause, but he wants to try the quieter options first. He slips the lock off the roof hatch — a weak point that should never have been allowed to exist; *Stones Unhallowed, they all had grown soft* — and drops into the corridor. He hates the trick of it. He could win any fight openly. He tells himself a blade in the night is a mercy: a surgeon's quick excision of festering flesh. With Pozen's Blade he will have Soulcasting, which means food for his armies; with Pozen dead the other Honorbearers might fold; with Pozen dead he might not have to fight Sivi or Moss at all.

He ducks into a meditation chamber off the hallway. Pozen is known to come down here in the late curfew hours alone. If Szeth is lucky the old man will come to one of these alcoves and never leave. Then he hears a voice in the corridor — not Pozen's. Sivi. *None of us can defeat him, Pozen,* she is saying. *Many of us find the Truth difficult at first,* Pozen answers — give the boy time, six weeks is nothing, Szeth will come around. He tells her her own loyalty is starting to look suspect; she throws back the line that snares him in mid-creep: *you'll do to me what you did to Tuko?* Pozen hisses for her not to be dramatic. He tells her Szeth has been writing to the local garrisons. He tells her the Voice assures him all is under control — *particularly with the specific leverage you made sure to get for us.* Sivi enters the chamber next door rather than Szeth's; Pozen leaves down the corridor.

Stormlight flares around Szeth as he Lashes himself to the ceiling in panic and tries to think. Here is a gift: Sivi is alone the other side of a thin reed-and-frond wall. He could cut through, kill her, take the Willshaper Blade before she knew anyone was here, then deal with Pozen. Three Blades. No more enemies who could pop through Shadesmar uninvited, no more enemies who could sculpt stone. He raises his weapon over the wall.

Then he stops. Sivi. His father loved her — cried, the day they parted on the pilgrimage. She had treated him well. *She serves the Unmade,* he tells himself; *she preaches Truth and violates it.* But what if he is wrong? Three quiet memories slip into the gap — a boy with a bloody rock; ships burning; a holy man dying in his arms with a hand on his shoulder — and he reminds himself that yes, he can kill. They made sure of that. He does not have to.

He dismisses the Blade. He walks out of his chamber, into the next, and faces her openly. He owes his own conscience that much. He is more than what Pozen made him; he is a child of Neturo, and children of Neturo ask questions. Sivi does not summon her weapon. She does not shout. *We've been worried about you, Szeth.* He asks her how — how she could possibly serve one of the Unmade. She sighs. She mentions the *captive spren.* He describes the tortured prisoner he saw in the cavern, and her face changes. *Could I have been deceived? That's the form I'd have chosen for a deception …* She does not finish, because Pozen appears in the doorway behind, fruit-tray in hand.

The trap Szeth sprang on Sivi is now closing on him. He spins, beginning to summon his Blade. Pozen does not run; he knows this is his moment, with Szeth hemmed into a small room with a potential enemy at his back. He reaches for his sword. Szeth lunges into the corridor and grapples him bare-handed to keep him from yanking the pair of them into Shadesmar, then Lashes himself away down the hall. *The ultimate betrayal,* Pozen spits. *You are a disgrace, Szeth.* *I choose Truth,* Szeth answers — and retreats.

Not because he cannot win the fight. Because if he leaves a Pozen corpse on the floor he will never recruit Sivi or any of the other Honorbearers who might still be reachable. He calls back through the corridor what he came to say: he has already told the Windrunner acolytes what he saw. He has begun raising the banner of Truth, since Pozen will not. To any who will hear: it is time, the Voidbringers have returned. He will welcome any who come — and fight any, Sivi included, who do not. Then he flees.