Navani con­tin­ues her efforts to uncov­er the iden­ti­ty of the mys­te­ri­ous spren that con­tact­ed her, but her tri­an­gu­la­tion attempts yield only vague results near a monastery on the tow­er’s fourth floor. Despite this unre­solved mys­tery, her atten­tion is divid­ed by the demand­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties of gov­ern­ing Urithiru. Amidst the con­stant needs of mer­chants, lighteyes, and ardents, she finds rare moments to retreat to the tow­er’s base­ment, where she over­sees her schol­ars’ work. Dur­ing one such vis­it, she is inter­cept­ed by Tomor, an ardent work­ing on a lift­ing fab­r­i­al project she had com­mis­sioned.

Tomor presents Navani with an uncon­ven­tion­al glove-like fab­r­i­al, a devi­a­tion from her orig­i­nal vision of a portable lift mech­a­nism. The device, designed to be worn on the hand, allows the user to be pulled upward by con­joined weights in the tow­er’s cen­tral shaft. While Navani admires Tomor’s cre­ativ­i­ty, she ques­tions the prac­ti­cal­i­ty and safe­ty of the design, imag­in­ing the absur­di­ty of some­one like Dali­nar dan­gling midair. Tomor, how­ev­er, is enthu­si­as­tic about the glove’s flex­i­bil­i­ty, argu­ing it elim­i­nates the need for tra­di­tion­al lifts.

Despite her reser­va­tions, Navani agrees to test the device under Tomor’s guid­ance. After don­ning the glove and acti­vat­ing it, she is lift­ed sev­er­al feet into the air, much to the amuse­ment of the observ­ing schol­ars. How­ev­er, the demon­stra­tion reveals a crit­i­cal flaw: the glove lacks a straight­for­ward method for descent, requir­ing a step­stool to safe­ly return to the ground. Navani acknowl­edges Tomor’s inge­nu­ity but remains skep­ti­cal about the design’s via­bil­i­ty for wide­spread use.

The chap­ter high­lights Navani’s dual role as a leader and inno­va­tor, bal­anc­ing admin­is­tra­tive duties with sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty. While she appre­ci­ates Tomor’s youth­ful cre­ativ­i­ty, she rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of prac­ti­cal­i­ty in engi­neer­ing solu­tions. The inter­ac­tion under­scores the ten­sion between imag­i­na­tive exper­i­men­ta­tion and func­tion­al design, a recur­ring theme in Navani’s work. Her patience and encour­age­ment of Tomor’s efforts reflect her lead­er­ship style, even as she sub­tly steers him toward more prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of his ideas.