The Faith of Beasts

Excerpts from Carryx librarians describe the Sovran's orders to explore territory opened by war against the deathless and to redistribute resources from underperforming moieties to more useful groups, including the humans of Anjiin. Of Anjiin's billions, fewer than four thousand people were taken to the world-palace, and roughly one in seven died during transport or afterward. The survivors have been consolidated in altered human quarters, apart from nearly five hundred assigned to duties elsewhere. Dafyd Alkhor acts as intermediary for the human moiety. Campar, Rickar, and Jessyn have been sent away; Jellit is still present, bound to Dafyd by their part in exposing the failed human rebellion, while Tonner Freis resents him.

Summoned by Ekur-Tkalal, Dafyd visits the laboratories for Tonner's missing report. He meets Brun, Tonner's new deputy and a former chemical-cooperative leader on Anjiin, who is enthusiastic about advanced alien equipment. Tonner, whose former team is gone, struggles to train replacements and considers the new machinery a hindrance. He estimates that the humans need about twice their current hydroponic capacity for food and months to train staff for protein-translation work. Neither Dafyd nor Tonner has heard from their absent colleagues.

Ekur-Tkalal orders the humans to abandon all work except making animal species nourishing to other species and developing imaging and gravimetric lensing. It also rejects Dafyd's ordinary written reports, assigning a Sinen to teach him proper Carryx archival form. The Sovran anticipates assigning humans to thousands of worlds, so Ekur-Tkalal demands that they reproduce locally and offers support for raising children. It warns that a moiety unable to sustain its population will be culled. Dafyd understands that he must impose this requirement or risk the humans' destruction.

The Swarm continues the physics-lab work in Jellit's body while human researchers refine the lensing technology that once warned Anjiin of the Carryx invasion. It observes magnetic signals rising from the planet but cannot decode them. Jellit's surviving consciousness resists possession more forcefully than the Swarm's former hosts, while the remnants of Ameer Kindred and Else Yannin grow less distinct. Kadey, another physicist, takes over an experiment, allowing the Swarm to leave the lab.

The Swarm again resolves to tell Dafyd who inhabits Jellit's body. Alone in its quarters, it reviews memories and habits taken from its three human hosts and imagines reviving its intimacy with Dafyd. Else's remnant objects that she was already dead when the Swarm first became intimate with him. After washing and dressing, the Swarm visits Dafyd, who is distressed by his new responsibilities and lack of news from the colleagues sent away by the Carryx. The Swarm prepares tea and still intends to reveal itself, but Dafyd mistakenly interprets its distress as Jellit's concern for Jessyn.

Jellit's inner voice then confronts the Swarm with another concealed act: it has already separated a piece of itself, hidden it in someone sent away, and arranged for its collected intelligence to activate when the carrier reaches the Swarm's allies. Jellit warns that this will kill another of Dafyd's friends. The Swarm says nothing to Dafyd. The water boils, and the chapter ends with another decision not to reveal its identity.

On a Carryx transport, Jessyn Kaul protects a glass-pane device containing microorganisms harvested from the symbiotic organisms the humans call berries. Its daily extract stabilizes her mental health. One of the three replacement cultures prepared by Tonner has already been used, leaving little margin for contamination or breakage. She has been separated from Dafyd, her brother Jellit, and the original research group after Campar and Rickar received other assignments. Without a recognizable cycle of days aboard ship, she cannot reliably measure how long she has traveled.

After a turbulent landing, Jessyn reluctantly leaves the medication device in her quarters and steps onto an unfamiliar planet under a bright white sun. Five smaller Carryx vessels are assembling at a field camp among captives of many species. Directed to a mixed-species workgroup, she meets Garral Pär, formerly head of archaeology at Hibbrin Medrey on Anjiin. Jessyn is relieved to encounter another human; Garral is overwhelmed by seeing an open sky. Each vaguely thinks the other familiar without establishing any previous acquaintance. Garral has heard that Dafyd turned in the resistance plotters; Jessyn says the situation was more complicated and that the crucial conversation took place without her.

A Sinen who calls itself Third Gardener announces that it will supervise the group and issue research notebooks for communication. The planet, named World, was recently taken from a Carryx enemy before that enemy could sterilize it. Jessyn's team is to survey the surrounding area and report discoveries of use to the empire. Third Gardener warns of possible traps and other dangers, and says the group must learn evacuation procedures because the enemy may return to destroy the world. It claims that their work could help defeat that enemy, while emphasizing that the Carryx are watching.

Rickar Daumatin wakes from a nightmare that combines his earlier life on Anjiin with Dennia, whom he met only after the invasion and who died among Ostencour's rebels. Aboard a Carryx warship, he is confined to quarters reserved for captive species, cannot measure elapsed time, and fears that even an ordinary medical problem could prove fatal. He regrets his earlier pity for Jessyn's need for medication and remains angry that Dafyd exposed the human rebellion, even while recognizing Dafyd's stated reasons for doing so. Unable to find Campar in his cell, Rickar goes to the common room. There he speaks to an enormous blue-gray alien that calls itself Vaudai, although Rickar cannot tell whether this is its name or species. Vaudai identifies the ship's place in a Carryx exploratory formation and infers that they are probably approaching the war's front, but does not know how long their assignment will last.

Campar, meanwhile, leaves Ghati's room after an intimate encounter. They show affection but have agreed not to treat the relationship as a permanent partnership, and Ghati asks Campar to respect their boundaries. Campar meets Rickar in the common room. Rickar warns him about becoming attached because he lost Dennia, but Campar refuses to give up the little pleasure captivity still permits. Three other humans, Danna, Dervan and Emmin, remain absorbed in interpersonal disputes.

The arrival of a Sinen accompanied by a Rak-hund triggers memories of violence and terrifies the two men. Rickar loses his appetite and returns to his cell. After the Sinen leaves, the translators relay its warning that the vessel has entered conflict space and violence is possible. Ghati arrives, asks what happened, and Campar laughs uncontrollably.

Tonner Freis finds cloudy water samples from hydroponic tanks twelve, five and six. An infection is only a possibility, so he tells his deputy Brun to have Kirrik and Abfoss check for viral proteins before Jellit leads him to a meeting called by Dafyd Alkhor. Tonner resents following the orders of his former laboratory assistant while privately acknowledging how captivity has changed him. There he meets Uuya Tomos, a prominent folklorist and social historian; Bastien Korham, formerly responsible for utilities and facilities at the Gallatian church; and Llian Andermus, formerly director of operational security for Itzibahn Common.

Dafyd proposes reorganizing the human moiety around the Carryx's requirements: work on nutrition across different biologies, imaging and stealth technology, and a self-sustaining human population. Tonner and Jellit will concentrate on the scientific work; Korham is to organize infrastructure and provisioning, Andermus security, and Tomos is asked to address education, job assignments and public understanding of the changes. Dafyd then explains the Carryx's demand for human reproduction. He rejects forced pregnancy but proposes using the captives' stored tissue samples to produce gametes and embryos for artificial gestation, beginning with about one hundred to one hundred fifty children. He plans mandatory nursery shifts and extra food allowances for people who choose to raise the children.

Tonner thinks artificial gestation is technically possible but violates the ethical standards of their former society. Tomos objects that the children would be born enslaved and that threatening them would give the Carryx leverage over their caregivers. She rejects the scheme and leaves; Andermus and Korham remain to work through its practical requirements. Later, with staff provided by Korham, Tonner tests how to keep artificial gestation sacks at stable temperatures, but the chapter does not show viable embryos developing. A new worker, Ver Cannedan, refuses to clean laboratory equipment because he considers that work beneath his vocation as a dancer. Tonner sends Brun to involve Dafyd or Andermus and returns to the engineering problem.

Brun summons Dafyd Alkhor to Tonner's laboratory because Ver Cannedan, the celebrated choreographer, refuses to clean equipment. Dafyd recognizes Ver from a performance sponsored by his aunt Dorinda and tries to explain why accomplished specialists must now take work the Carryx consider useful. Ver's anger and humiliation are clear to him, but the encounter ends when Ver strikes Dafyd with a powerful uppercut. Although shaken and angry, Dafyd prepares an official incident report because the assault had too many witnesses to conceal. He fears that a punitive Carryx response could kill Ver and hopes to prevent that outcome.

A Sinen supervisor helps Dafyd correct the complex spatial syntax of the Carryx report, which Dafyd finds extremely difficult to write. He also has reports arriving from humans reassigned throughout the empire, including one from Ames Sofar at the Estian Morok Starweb, and is overwhelmed by the administrative responsibility Ekur-Tkalal has delegated to him. Dafyd wants access to that information because knowing more may give him more options. He continues drafting his report, rather than leaving the work to a translation half-mind.

Later, in a garden, Jellit comes to check on Dafyd's bruised jaw. Dafyd says he must respond to the attack without making discipline an act of personal revenge; he wants their community to establish and enforce its own standards. When Jellit asks how he is coping, Dafyd admits to exhaustion, pain and a grief he can barely acknowledge. He removes his translation half-mind to speak privately about Else and the spy, whose apparent loss also destroyed his only connection to a possible anti-Carryx alliance. Jellit embraces him. When Dafyd says that Else and the spy are gone, Jellit quietly answers that they are not.

Following his assurance that Else and the spy are not gone, the Swarm, inhabiting Jellit's body, shows Dafyd black microagents swirling beneath the skin of its wrist. Dafyd initially assumes Else transferred the spy to Jellit before she died. The Swarm instead claims that Else survives within it and that it is both Else and the spy. Recalling the first kiss Dafyd shared with the person he knew as Else, it tries to persuade him that their relationship and planned resistance can continue. Dafyd backs away, increasingly frightened and unable to reconcile its claims with Else's recovered body.

The lingering consciousnesses of Else, Ameer Kindred and Jellit react within the Swarm. Prompted to explain Jellit's fate, the Swarm says that Jellit would not cooperate in exposing the rebellion, so it abandoned Else's body and took his. It admits that Jellit's consciousness remains inside it, but minimizes the death and harm associated with its possession. Dafyd realizes that Else's prior account of a woman and a separate, cooperating spy may have concealed their real relationship. He asks whether it was ever truly Else and recoils in horror. The Swarm's insistence that it is Else is its own contested claim, not a resolution of Else's identity.

A Rak-hund and four Soft Lothark then approach. The Swarm fears they have discovered its secret and nearly releases its lethal capabilities to defend Dafyd, although it knows such an attack would end its mission. Instead, the aliens explain that a hundred members of their clan group are being assigned to help police the human moiety after violence inconvenienced the Carryx. The accompanying Rak-hund is specifically designated to guard Dafyd and attack lower-status threats on his command. With the new protection surrounding Dafyd and no opportunity to repair his shattered trust, the Swarm withdraws when he tells it to leave.

Jessyn once dreamed of joining field expeditions on Anjiin, but chose laboratory work because a mental health crisis away from medical care would have endangered her. On the recently conquered planet World, she now lives much of that childhood fantasy under Carryx control. She keeps the culture that produces her stabilizing medicine safe aboard the ships, returning each day for a dose, while camping alone beside a sandstone cliff within Third Gardener's designated evacuation radius. She studies unfamiliar plants and small animals and uses a shared electronic research notebook to record observations and map her movements. Entries by the botanist Manni and geologist Holom Coombs appear in the archive, but neither meets her. She notices that Garral Pär is also working nearby.

On approximately her fifth or sixth day in the field, Garral invites her through the notebook to compare observations over a meal. At his camp beside ruined buildings, he improves their ration bars on a small grill and cools water with a simple evaporative device. Garral describes tools, markings and structural remains that suggest different body types among the former inhabitants, while Jessyn explains how unrelated organisms can develop similar features in comparable environments. Garral turns that observation toward the pressure of living under Carryx domination. Their growing attraction becomes more apparent as they talk. He tells her that he has a friend on the Carryx palace world and a wife and two sons on Anjiin; what happened to his family is not established. Jessyn confesses that she had feelings for her close friend Irinna, who died without, Jessyn believes, knowing about them. Neither knows whether they will ever return to the palace world.

Jessyn suggests meeting again and offers to host, while Garral floats inviting other researchers. Walking back alone, she feels safer in the alien wilderness than among their captors. Beneath the stars she thinks of the friends who died, finds a moment of peace, and plans the next day's survey. She selects a burned-looking orchard site partly because it lies nearer Garral's camp. The narration closes by observing that seemingly minor moments can change the fate of empires, without revealing any such outcome yet.

Llian Andermus reports on security in the human moiety: three assaults, an incident of unwanted touching and four thefts during the previous week. She has separated people involved in domestic assaults, changed shifts after another dispute and given a known harasser what she calls a warning, which consisted of breaking both his hands and threatening his spine. Dafyd, observed by his newly assigned Rak-hund guard, needs Andermus to manage such matters without constant consultation. She insists on clear limits and his support if he delegates enforcement. Dafyd says people may object to decisions but cannot obstruct Carryx-mandated work, particularly the nursery and the laboratories run by Tonner and Jellit. He raises the possibility of incarceration and questions threats of permanently disabling offenders. Andermus also reports anxiety about the new Soft Lothark guards and the nursery, while Jellit's visualization team is rebuilding after the insurrection.

Afterward, Dafyd struggles with incoming reports from humans distributed across the empire, the dangers of exposing human violence to Ekur-Tkalal and his unresolved grief over Else and the Swarm now occupying Jellit's body. He continues to harbor an intense desire to destroy the Carryx. Uuya Tomos arrives reluctantly after Andermus pressured her. She once knew Dafyd's aunt Dorinda and distrusts Dafyd because he helped expose the rebellion, costing friends their lives. When he asks her to educate the children he proposes to bring into captivity through artificial gestation, she condemns the idea.

Dafyd explains that he wants future generations to appear obedient while preserving the capacity for a patient revolt against the Carryx. He asks Tomos to embed that inheritance in stories, songs and familiar myths so descendants may recover the hidden meanings long after their authors are gone. Tomos recalls an older Gallantist tradition about Shavas Rey, a sleeping god who will return to remake the world. Dafyd then tells her she has been entrusted with a secret conspiracy: she can report him to Ekur-Tkalal or help him. She recognizes in his ruthless reasoning something of Dorinda, but the chapter ends without an explicit promise from her to join or produce the proposed material.

Jessyn returns to a Carryx ship to tend the glass culture that makes her psychiatric medicine. Third Gardener questions why she is not working in the field, prompting her to deny needing additional supplies. She then travels to the partly burned orchard she selected for study. Its cultivated rows, abandoned irrigation channels, familiar leaves and pear-shaped fruit suggest a former agricultural settlement. Using a compact sampling kit, she tests the fruit while considering the freedom and solitude the landscape offers, even imagining walking beyond the evacuation boundary and dying alone rather than remaining a captive.

The assay yields a shock: the fruit contains DNA, chloroplasts, mitochondria and cellulose characteristic of plants from the human biological lineage. Jessyn knows that human life did not originate on Anjiin, and infers that the orchard's former cultivators, whose ruins appeared suited to human bodies and senses, were human too. Because World was conquered from the Carryx's great enemy, she concludes that humans belong to the enemy's lineage and that the Carryx do not realize this. Alarmed at what such knowledge could mean for humanity, she hesitates to delete the assay results for fear that deletion could draw attention and decides she must warn Garral and the other humans while keeping the finding from their overseers.

A rustle in the grass distracts her. After a bird bursts into flight, she finds an unfamiliar human-looking man standing beside her equipment. Wearing worn clothing unlike the captives' uniforms, he speaks a language she cannot understand and gestures for her to go east. Jessyn urgently tells him to leave because the area is unsafe, but he grips her shoulder and tries to pull her along. He says something sounding like 'Ash pat low' and takes a knife from his jacket. His identity, affiliation and intentions remain unknown at the chapter break.

Over lunch in the human commissary, Tonner Freis tells Jellit Kaul that Soft Lothark guards greet one another by taking small bites, a behavior Brun has suggested might be vestigial grooming. Jellit is unconvinced and recalls the Soft Lothark consuming a dead member after its body released harmful material aboard the original prison ship, wondering whether oral contact serves another biological purpose. Tonner points out that Jellit learned of that incident from Jessyn rather than witnessing it himself. They also discuss the rebuilding of their research teams and Tonner's new assignment to engineer a grasslike food organism, while Tonner considers what it would mean for the captive humans to raise children under Carryx rule.

Jellit seems troubled and asks Tonner whether he still thinks about Else Yannin. When Tonner guesses that Jellit has suffered a romantic rejection, Jellit agrees, says the person works in a laboratory, and asks whether Tonner could forgive Else for not being who he thought she was. Tonner says he does not know because she never asked. Tonner does not recognize that the Swarm inhabits Jellit's body or that the conversation concerns its failed disclosure to Dafyd.

Back at the laboratory, Tonner inspects the artificial-gestation project: 118 small fluid-filled gestation sacks contain early cellular growth, while 32 failed attempts have already been discarded. He recognizes that any successful development would produce people rather than the experimental animals he once worked with, and the failures trouble him even though biological development is often imperfect. Memories of Else compound the trauma he carries from the invasion and captivity. Later, intrigued by the guards' behavior, Tonner puts on a glove and touches a Soft Lothark to gather material from its fur. The guard shoves him away and forbids physical contact. Tonner backs off but covertly presses the contaminated glove to a sterile sample plate and places it in the resonance imager, preparing to investigate the material.

The unidentified man forces Jessyn to cover her head with his jacket, threatening her with a knife as he guides her away from the orchard. She tries to count her steps and identify landmarks, but loses her bearings. A younger woman meets them, argues with the man in a language Jessyn cannot understand, and leads her toward a cave in the cliffs. The enclosed passage triggers a panic attack. The woman takes Jessyn's hand and helps calm her before bringing her into an illuminated chamber holding bedding, equipment and about ten children. The children look unmistakably human, but their wary behavior suggests they have survived the recent destruction of their home.

A misshapen black humanoid object unfolds from the wall and addresses the man, who appears ashamed and deferential. The figure taps Jessyn and then itself, giving a name she hears approximately as Gor-fall, though she cannot distinguish it confidently from other sounds. When Jessyn identifies the weapon it produces as a gun, it fires into the cave wall. She understands the demonstration as a threat and cannot tell whether this armed figure is merely a sentry or also her jailer. The adults conduct an incomprehensible group recitation with the children, who later bring Jessyn food. Despite the danger, she recognizes the refugees as fellow humans and potential allies against the Carryx, without assuming they will trust or spare her.

While eating, Jessyn realizes the captors have left her Carryx-issued research notebook in her pocket. Its map now identifies her location a short walk beyond the marked evacuation zone. She could submit a report giving Third Gardener the coordinates, potentially bringing a rescue party or an attack that destroys the cave's inhabitants. Instead, concealing the device from her captors, she adds a note to Garral Pär's latest research entry, inviting him to compare observations and including her present coordinates. She turns the notebook facedown and waits, not knowing what consequences her choice will have.

Surur of cohort Tlassen, regulator-librarian to the Carryx Sovran, wakes from a dream of serving as a brood mother. Earlier in life, he produced unfertilized eggs for the sixty-fifth exploratory body's public creche before challenging a keeper-librarian and rising through the hierarchy. Now he has regained reproductive status and anticipates one day producing the Sovran's daughters and successors. He processes the empire's vast stream of reports during sleep, presents consolidated information to the Sovran, distributes her orders through eight high librarians and receives further intelligence. He sees his successive transformations as an expression of the Carryx's ambition and believes the war is going well.

Meanwhile, aboard a Carryx warship in conflict space, Campar passes days in dread before allowing himself to think their captors might protect useful prisoners. Ghati doubts that conclusion. While they sit with Vaudai and several Budon of Luus, four Budon abruptly begin a beautiful, synchronized song that draws other captives into the common room. Campar and Ghati are entranced, but the Soft Lothark guards and Vaudai brace themselves. When the singing stops, the ship lurches violently. The captives experience disorienting changes in movement, perception and awareness. Rickar, who arrived from his room during the song, recognizes the guards' defensive posture too late and is thrown into the ceiling and across the deck. He subsequently finds Campar helping Ghati; several Budon lie motionless, while other captives are injured and shaken.

Rickar suffers a swollen knee and cut near his ear but is unexpectedly delighted to have survived. Campar and Ghati set out to check the others. Vaudai, the enormous sluglike captive, explains that the enemy set a trap involving projection fields. According to Vaudai, the Budon sensed unusual quantum fluctuations and sang an alarm; the Carryx deployed countermeasures, and the prisoners experienced the residual effects, called overspill. Vaudai says its own species analyzes patterns of warfare for a keeper-librarian if it survives. Asked why humans have been brought aboard, it can only guess that the Carryx are testing whether they would be useful in future conflicts, or have another purpose. Rickar is left without a definite answer.

Garral Pär follows the coordinates Jessyn sent and encounters a young woman near the limestone cliffs. Her silence and unfamiliarity trouble him, and when she tries to lead him into a cave, he notices she is younger than the professional captives taken from Anjiin. He runs, convinced he has walked into a trap, but a fast-moving asymmetrical black figure catches him, levels a gun at him, confiscates his pack and notebook, and forces him back to the cave. Inside, a knife-carrying man pushes him to his knees. The armed figure pulls Jessyn up by her hair, finds the notebook she concealed, and confronts the man about the two devices. The younger woman attempts to calm their argument. Jessyn explains to Garral why she contacted him instead of alerting Third Gardener: she believes the cave's inhabitants are humans linked to the Carryx's enemy and fears the Carryx would imprison or kill them. Garral points out that the Carryx apparently failed to recognize humans on Anjiin as the enemy, leaving her conclusion unresolved.

When a frightened child interrupts the confrontation, Garral begins to see the adults, children and armed figure as traumatized survivors of the attack rather than simply captors. They start packing, apparently because Jessyn and Garral's tracking devices have exposed the cave's location. The black figure ties Garral's and Jessyn's wrists and puts them on one leash, preparing to move the group; they have not yet departed. Garral notices a numerical notation drawn in the cave floor and recognizes it from ancient traditions of Anjiin. Despite being tugged forward, he reproduces its numbers and tests words from several old languages. One sequence elicits recognition from the woman and the knife-carrying man, who exchanges numbers and phrases with him. Garral learns names rendered as Omco for the man, Manta for the woman and Corvall for the black figure, which Jessyn had earlier heard approximately as Gor-fall.

Garral identifies the markings as a first-generation mathematical notation used by the earliest settlers on Anjiin and the spoken fragments as close to, but not identical with, proto-Darsin. He argues that the refugees share not just human ancestry but a cultural and linguistic history with Anjiin's first human communities. This gives him a beginning for communicating with them, though he expressly cannot yet understand their speech.

Dafyd Alkhor dreams that he cannot find Ekur-Tkalal to deliver a required report and that failed translation will doom the human captives and their prospective children. The recurring dream shifts when he begins speaking and moving as though he has a Carryx body. He awakens shaken by the physical vividness of the experience. Exhausted, he considers incoming reports, the nursery's supply needs and the prospect that children raised entirely under Carryx rule will have to be taught what Anjiin's human culture was. His Rak-hund bodyguard follows him to breakfast, further isolating him from the people he nominally leads.

Uuya Tomos arrives with Ver Cannedan and proposes assigning the choreographer to study Carryx posture and movement, including dominance and submission signals that translation devices cannot convey. Ver also hopes to imitate aspects of Carryx body language within the constraints of a human body. Dafyd sees potential value but fears that Ver's impulsive violence will create another security crisis; Ver's earlier punch brought more Soft Lothark supervision and Dafyd's personal guard. After Ver leaves, Tomos challenges Dafyd's demand for trustworthy, flawless collaborators and draws attention to his estrangement from Jellit. Their exchange establishes that she is now working with Dafyd's covert resistance effort. Dafyd ultimately tells her to use her best judgment about Ver's proposed work.

Instead of attending a planned report review, Dafyd visits Jellit's visualization laboratory, where the occupied body leads a team preparing a prototype for the Carryx within a week or two. Dafyd questions whether the Swarm can reproduce Jellit's work and receives its renewed claim that Jellit, Else and Ameer remain within it. Still disturbed by the possession, Dafyd admits that he cannot learn enough to meet his responsibilities and asks the Swarm for help. It agrees. In the final shift to the Swarm's perspective, it feels relief that Dafyd has approached it again; it had feared he had discovered that it sent back its findings. Jellit's remaining consciousness warns that Dafyd may hate it again, while Ameer describes its wish to influence Dafyd as seduction. The remnant of Else regards the encounter as a fragile chance to regain his love. Dafyd is not shown learning about the Swarm's transmission in this chapter.

Ekur-Tkalal reflects on its role as keeper-librarian of the human moiety in a hierarchy that runs through Moqid-Tlannan, Dalkin-Astur and Surur-Tlassen to the Sovran. The promotion from subjugator-librarian is honorable, though Ekur is disgusted by its dependence on Dafyd as a human intermediary. Dafyd and the figure occupying Jellit request permission for the lensing workgroup to survey variations in local gravity, ostensibly to calibrate delicate research equipment. Ekur weighs the embarrassment of losing two useful humans against a possible technical discovery that could improve its status and grants the transport and survey request.

The gravity survey is cover for a different purpose. In Dafyd's garden, he enters a legitimate report about Tonner's universal-food work into the Carryx archive while the Swarm, wearing Jellit's body, tries to trace the report's signal toward a southern destination. Dafyd reluctantly joins it because telling anyone else about the mission would require exposing that the Swarm killed Else and took Jellit. As they fly south in a Carryx transport, the Swarm describes the planet-wide traffic of signals that relay, mix and transform information. It can listen for their message but says it cannot query the system without triggering defenses. Dafyd asks who created the Swarm. It claims to remember no conscious life before inhabiting Ameer Kindred, who encountered its silver sphere in the Kusine badlands. It has the memories of Ameer, Else and Jellit, but admits that remembering their lives is not equivalent to having lived them as separate people. Dafyd remains angry at their deaths and rejects the suggestion that he can simply speak to Else within it.

Following a signal change, the Swarm guides Dafyd toward a low gray structure set amid immense furrows traversed by Carryx-led, arthropod-like creatures. Strong forces resist the transport's descent, so Dafyd lands farther away. On foot, they confront oppressive heat and sulfurous air. Tiny antenna-like filaments emerge from Jellit's skin as the structure's etched lines seem to shift. The Swarm looks at it in wonder and declares that it can see everything. The chapter does not establish precisely what it has accessed or what, if anything, it can transmit.

Jessyn waits inside the refugees' cave with Manta and the children while Garral, Omco and Corvall spend hours working through the language barrier. The group has postponed its departure because Garral convinced them that Jessyn would have alerted the Carryx if she intended to betray them. Garral finally explains what he has learned: Omco and Manta are tutors who were on a field trip with children from the destroyed city; their families were killed during the Carryx attack. Corvall is a human soldier in living armor. His escape vessel crashed, leaving him the only survivor of his group; the damaged armor is slowly rebuilding his lost arm and leg with inadequate resources. Garral has also learned that humans participate in the wider war against the Carryx alongside other species. The refugees did not know about Anjiin and are surprised by the Carryx's effort to domesticate its human prisoners.

That night Jessyn and Garral share a sleeping space and hold each other for comfort. Their attraction is unmistakable, but Jessyn redirects his touch away from sex. As Garral quietly cries over the fate of his wife and two sons on Anjiin, Jessyn explains that she had avoided parenthood partly from fear that a relapse of her mental illness could endanger a child. She wakes with a headache after missing her daily medicine and worries about both the approaching consequences and the limited stability of the culture that produces it back at the Carryx ships.

By morning, the refugees are preparing to move again. Garral relays Corvall's plan, with some uncertainty about the translation: Manta will take the children to another hiding place, while Corvall, Omco, Jessyn and Garral go to the wreck of Corvall's ship. Corvall intends to activate an emergency beacon offering valuable intelligence about the Carryx and Anjiin, hoping allied rescuers will evacuate the children. He expects the Carryx to hunt him down. Jessyn and Garral would carry a device inside the Carryx security perimeter and use it to temporarily disable the ships' engines and power during the rescue. Jessyn sees the fatal flaw: rescuers might destroy the now-helpless Carryx ships, including the one she would be aboard. She therefore insists that Garral leave with the children and use his access to the rescuers to trade intelligence for a commitment not to attack her ship. Garral offers to take her dangerous assignment instead, but cannot negotiate with the rescuers as effectively if Jessyn goes in his place because she does not know their language. He agrees to carry her demand back to Corvall and Omco. No beacon activation, smuggling attempt, evacuation or attack occurs within the chapter.

As attacks continue against the Carryx ship, Rickar sees the Budon of Luus produce swarms of nymphs that quickly die in the ship's unsuitable environment. He takes some comfort in discussing the battle with Vaudai, who can access and display Carryx tactical data. Its model shows the positions of fleets, planets and projected weapons fields. Vaudai says the battle is effectively decided in the Carryx's favor, though the enemy can still choose how to spend its remaining ships and impose costs elsewhere in the war. It predicts that an enemy command ship will be disabled, its supporting vessels defeated or driven away, and the command ship will then destroy itself to prevent examination. Another Budon alarm sends Rickar to shelter from the next episode of violent overspill.

Campar visits Ghati, who has lost weight, neglected himself and fallen into despair. Ghati remembers his mother's garden, its soil and their bees, and compares himself to a bee dying after separation from its hive. Campar cannot promise they will see open skies again, but encourages him to eat and brings food and water. Worried about Ghati's condition, Campar consults Rickar about revealing Dafyd's professed intention to resist the Carryx. Rickar dismisses Dafyd's earlier promise as empty consolation offered in grief and insists humanity has no power to fight back. That is Rickar's judgment, not an established account of Dafyd's actual intentions. Campar rejects the fatalism, while recognizing the risk of offering Ghati false hope.

Vaudai interrupts with news that the enemy vessels are withdrawing or being destroyed and says the Carryx prioritized enemy command ships while letting more minor craft escape. Thousands of weapons and several field effects are still in transit, so further overspill remains possible for a short period. Campar is relieved that the battle is approaching an end, then watches as Vaudai predicts the final stranded enemy command ship will self-destruct. It does not. After a minute passes with the ship still visible on the display, Vaudai admits the outcome is unexpected. The chapter ends with its prediction unfulfilled.

Surur-Tlassen, regulator-librarian to the Sovran, increasingly fears the loss of his role as he ages. His dreams of bodily dissolution reflect the possibility of being displaced by an ambitious subordinate or leaving his post to serve in the private creche. He is summoned to that secluded institution by a pale, greatly diminished being once known as Urur-Atlak, formerly the most important male Carryx. Now one of the creche's neuter keepers, Urur-Atlak announces that a new daughter of the Sovran is preparing to emerge and orders Surur to arrange her presentation. The creche's inner workings are hidden even from the ordinary imperial hierarchy, and Surur is unnerved by the prospect of eventually joining it.

After leaving the meeting, Surur crushes a service animal that fails to clear his way, treating its death as a minor correction toward better obedience. He then attends the Sovran, whose presence and scent profoundly affect his physiology and renew his devotion. He reports on imperial production, the quiescence of three hundred spinward worlds, suppression of unrest and strategic gains in the war. Among the details, he notes an enemy ship in the Ashtin-Kah system that did not destroy itself when its side withdrew; a subjugator-librarian is preparing captive service animals to examine it. He also reports that the enemy has lost manufacturing facilities on other worlds.

The Sovran receives the report and issues directions. She orders greater pressure on exposed enemy weaknesses, identifies unfinished production by the second harvesting body as a failure to be corrected, and instructs preparations for witnesses at her daughter's emergence. She singles out the enemy ship that failed to self-destruct as especially valuable, directing Surur to draw the enemy's attention elsewhere so that the examination can proceed, regardless of cost. Surur accepts her will in ecstatic obedience. The chapter does not yet show the inspection or the daughter's emergence.

Tonner Freis begins the day leaving an unnamed former finance minister with whom he has been sleeping. In the developing human nursery, he checks the 107 artificial-gestation sacks still viable. At sack thirty-four, he privately calls the growing female fetus his daughter. Although he has prohibited parentage checks, he has used genetic records retained from the captives to make himself the father of Else Yannin's only child. Brun reminds him that Dafyd Alkhor has returned from his trip with Jellit and that Tonner is due to report on laboratory progress. Tonner realizes he does not have the latest assay data for a Carryx-requested food crop and resolves to distract Dafyd with an unrequested discovery rather than appear incompetent.

After returning from their covert trip, Dafyd has arranged for the Swarm occupying Jellit to work privately in his room. Contact with a Carryx information archive persists, and the Swarm can navigate preserved reports and commands reaching back for millennia. It explains how reports move upward through librarians to the Sovran and her directives flow back downward, with each level translating instructions for its own duties. The size of the archive overwhelms both of them. The Swarm finds accounts of a centuries-long battle, learns about surveillance by nearly living void tendrils, and spends substantial energy searching. Dafyd leaves it to meet his advisors and Tonner, promising to bring food later.

Meanwhile, Ver Cannedan demonstrates to Dafyd and Uuya Tomos how positioning human shoulders and arms may imitate Carryx combat or submission signals. Ver's observations, supported in part by information from the Emberi of Silos, suggest Carryx settle status disputes by breaking a limb and that some subordinate species gain better treatment by signaling the equivalent of healed injuries or submission. Tomos proposes a related interpretation of the fraction of humanity killed during the invasion, but Ver explicitly calls that speculative. Dafyd acknowledges that allowing Ver to study Carryx behavior was worthwhile. Tomos confirms she is working on the children's cultural curriculum, and Dafyd turns to Tonner's appointment.

Tonner presents older experimental data without admitting that the newest assay results are missing. When Dafyd appears distracted, Tonner produces his side research on the Soft Lothark: their mutual nibbling and consumption of the dead are associated with tiny, information-rich particles passed orally between individuals. He believes these provide a second, difficult-to-intercept communication channel distinct from translated speech. Two Soft Lothark guards overhear and abruptly beat Tonner to death. Dafyd's Rak-hund bodyguard attacks the guards to protect him, killing one Soft Lothark, whose corpse ruptures and releases caustic material. The remaining guard kills the Rak-hund. Dafyd prepares a message in Carryx written symbols reporting that Soft Lothark pass private information in food. The surviving guard recognizes that the report could expose the secret and hesitates rather than kill Dafyd.

When Llian Andermus arrives, Dafyd warns her away from the poison and offers a false account that Tonner became angry, the Rak-hund attacked him and the Soft Lothark tried to intervene. The guard agrees with Dafyd's insistence that the incident was a misunderstanding, and Dafyd deletes the unsent report about their hidden communication. The guard then begins eating its dead companion. Andermus organizes cleanup while Dafyd, profoundly shocked, returns to his room. He tells the Swarm that Tonner is dead, becomes physically sick, and accepts comfort from it while struggling to speak about what happened. When the Swarm holds and kisses him and the contact becomes sexual, he gently but firmly asks it to leave. He later steadies himself, returns to the garden and sends an official report on Tonner's death and his replacement.

Dafyd then offers the surviving guard a separate, unspoken written proposition that humans and Soft Lothark can help each other. Although several other guards accompany it, Andermus allows only one to approach. The guard anxiously gnaws at its own flesh, then modifies the message to read that humans and the Deep Lothark can help each other. The chapter ends on that altered wording; it does not yet explain the distinction or reveal an implemented alliance.

Jessyn, Garral, Omco and Corvall leave the refugee cave and travel well beyond Third Gardener's permitted survey area toward the wreck of Corvall's vessel. Jessyn and Garral plan the story she will give their overseers: they investigated possible inhabitants near the ruined city, were attacked, lost their notebooks and packs while escaping, and Garral was killed. They hope the account will explain signs of human presence without implicating the children or their protectors. When Garral admires how tactically she thinks, Jessyn admits her role in killing fellow captives during the struggle against the Night Drinkers. She is disturbed to recognize how comfortable she has become with violence toward enemies.

The crashed craft looks like a platform that once had eight pods; only three remain. Corvall retrieves something from two empty pods and pauses in evident grief over an ash-darkened human-sized form in the third. He gives Jessyn a heavy black ceramic cylinder. Through Omco and Garral's imperfect translation, she understands that it contains tiny preprogrammed machines that should temporarily disable Carryx ships and weapons when opened near or inside them. She must conceal the device at her research site, return to the Carryx ships, and retrieve it when the rescue attempt begins. Corvall plans to activate his beacon near sunset, drawing pursuit away from Manta, the children, Omco and Garral; he expects to die. Before Jessyn leaves, Corvall also gives her a small gun. Garral catches up with her for a farewell kiss.

A storm overtakes Jessyn on her way back to the pear orchard, helping obscure her tracks but making navigation difficult. She finds her original field equipment undisturbed and hides the cylinder in a hollow at the base of a burned tree. To make her account of escaping a hostile soldier more convincing, she decides that she should appear wounded. She fires the gun into her own left side once. The injury is far worse than she anticipated. She crawls through the rain, disoriented and fading, and encounters a crablike True Person of Hannic that asks if she is in distress. She next finds herself indoors with the geologist Holom Coombs, who says that whatever they did to help her worked. Later, a Sinen overseer demands a report. Jessyn begins the planned deception by saying that a black monster killed Garral. The chapter ends before the interrogation's outcome or any beacon activation is shown.

Campar draws Ghati out of his room by describing the commotion following the battle. Ghati is still suffering but can now respond with irritation and humor. In the crowded common room, humans and several captive species gather around Vaudai, the large sluglike military analyst, who is frustrated that the Carryx are discussing tactical gains rather than the intelligence opportunity presented by the intact enemy command ship. According to Vaudai, a ship of this configuration has never previously been disabled without destroying itself to prevent examination. Studying it may reveal changes in the enemy's thinking, tactics and alliances. Rickar explains that the Carryx are approaching the vessel but do not know whether it is a trap or whether an inspection can be completed before enemy reinforcements intervene.

A heavily armored Carryx soldier enters with four uniformed Sinen and commands the captives to group by species. It then subdivides the Budon and the human prisoners into separate groups without explaining why. Rickar finds himself with Campar, Danna and Emmin, but Ghati is placed across the room in the other human group. Seeing Campar's anguish, Rickar casually walks toward Ghati and switches places with him, presenting the exchange to the Soft Lothark guards as inconsequential because both men are human. The guard permits the result while ordering Rickar to stay in his new place. Campar embraces Ghati in relief.

After speaking to Vaudai, the Carryx soldier leaves with the sluglike analyst, and Sinen escorts lead away the group containing Campar and Ghati. Rickar stays behind with the captives held in reserve, including Dervan, Danna and Emmin. A guard explains that the departing moieties have been assigned exploration duties, while the remainder are reserves. Dervan objects and asks when her colleagues will return, but receives no answer. Looking at Vaudai's abandoned tactical display, Rickar sees a projected route toward the edge of the solar system and guesses that someone, perhaps the departing party, will leave in asymmetric space. He tells Dervan he had no privileged warning; he merely chose to keep Campar and Ghati together in the one small matter he could influence.

The Swarm tries to work inside the Carryx archive but cannot stop reliving Dafyd's rejection after its attempted intimacy. Its internal voices disagree about the hurt: Else names it humiliation, Jellit argues Dafyd does not love it and Ameer questions the ethics of the encounter. Else distinguishes actually experiencing an event from inheriting someone else's memories. The Swarm decides to change Jellit's body without an established procedure, beginning painfully with the bones of its pelvis. The purpose and completed form of the transformation are not disclosed here.

Meanwhile, Dafyd asks Brun to take over Tonner's laboratory responsibilities and provide a thorough audit of the research projects. Brun doubts he can match Tonner's expertise, particularly in protein translation, but Dafyd insists that failure to deliver useful work could lead the Carryx to destroy the human moiety. In the artificial-gestation room, Dafyd notices the open eyes of fetus fifty-five, which Brun says is abnormal and may indicate that it will not survive. Brun nevertheless describes the overall pregnancy losses as consistent with ordinary biological failure and credits Tonner's refinements for their progress. Dafyd orders him to erase the data from Tonner's side project on Soft Lothark communication.

In portions of a continuing written exchange, the guard explains that the Lothark were once organized under the High Lothark and a collective Stone-Mind before being conquered by the Carryx. According to the guard, the ordinary Soft Lothark serve the Carryx faithfully, but the Deep Lothark are a distributed memory carried on Lothark skins, loyal to their own people and preserving the knowledge needed to rebuild the Stone-Mind. The Deep Lothark wait for a future chance to recover autonomy, though the guard says overt rebellion would provoke extermination. The guard also claims that there is only one Sovran, whose will unifies the Carryx and redirects their internal competition into imperial expansion.

Dafyd visits the visualization researchers, who resent Jellit's unexplained absence. He appoints Farad Morse acting leader, allowing Jellit to advise remotely. Farad is the uncle of Llaren Morse, whose death Dafyd helped bring about when he revealed the earlier rebellion. Dafyd also asks Uuya Tomos to arrange a voluntary memorial for Tonner that will displace questions about the death with a story about his talents and flaws. Tomos advises that Dafyd not speak publicly because of his past rivalry with Tonner over Else. Dafyd elects to reinforce the false account that old resentments caused Tonner to lash out and die in an incident involving his Rak-hund, and Tomos agrees to work on the ceremony. Returning to the Lothark conversation, Dafyd considers asking how to kill the Sovran but judges the question too dangerous to put in writing.

Campar, Ghati and the other captives selected for exploration are prepared for work in a vacuum. Sinen technicians spray each human with a transparent protective sheath, fit communication devices in their ears and attach breathing equipment. Campar learns that bodily waste will remain trapped inside the coating until it is removed. Accompanied by Vaudai and watched by a Carryx soldier, they travel to the disabled enemy command ship. Beetlelike captive workers perform tasks on its exterior. A small open-sided craft delivers Campar, Ghati and Vaudai through a breach, where their treated feet can adhere to the metal surfaces in weightlessness.

Vaudai directs Campar and Ghati to survey the vessel's internal shielding using two long metallic poles that produce a luminous scanning plane between them. Comparing intact and damaged shielding with the battle record could expose which Carryx weapons most effectively harmed the enemy ship. Campar also carries tools for recovering biological samples. The unfamiliar ship's corridors and equipment seem oddly suited to human-scale bodies, although the similarity does not establish the occupants' species. After hours of scanning, they encounter a severely burned corpse tied to a ring beside a reinforced, closed doorway. Its fingers and body look possibly human, but Campar warns Ghati that different species can converge on similar forms. He collects a piece of tissue for analysis, without confirming its identity.

The scanning sheet repeatedly flashes blue and fails to penetrate the sealed area beyond the doorway. Vaudai believes that the inaccessible compartment holds the explanation for the command ship's failure to destroy itself, but the team cannot open the unpowered door with their current tools. An order arrives requiring immediate evacuation. After they return to the expedition craft and have their vacuum sheaths removed, Vaudai argues with the Sinen and Carryx commander for access to a cutting torch and authorization to return. Ghati, studying the partial scans, notes that the vessel's architecture looks human rather than like the surrounding Carryx habitats. Campar again stresses that visual resemblance alone is insufficient evidence.

Vaudai secures permission and a torch, despite reports that three enemy ships have returned to the system and may be trying to destroy the stranded command vessel. When Campar asks how long they have, Vaudai explains that the relevant field weapons propagate at approximately light speed, so observation of the approaching ships means danger may already be imminent. It acknowledges the expedition is not safe, but insists that uncovering the ship's secrets could materially help the Carryx war effort and secure its captive moiety's future. The chapter ends as the team prepares for another entry; neither the sealed room nor the sample has yet been analyzed.

After days of drugged recovery from her self-inflicted gunshot wound, Jessyn can finally think clearly despite severe pain. Her culture for producing psychiatric medication has starved and spoiled while she was unconscious. With only two starter doses left, she cleans and sterilizes the glass apparatus and restarts it, hoping to resume taking medicine before her symptoms worsen. In the ship's common room, the geologist Holom Coombs greets her warmly but retreats in discomfort, while the botanist Manni squeezes her hand in grim sympathy. They believe Garral Pär was killed when Jessyn and he encountered the enemy.

Third Gardener demands a fuller account. Jessyn repeats the cover story that an attacker killed Garral when they explored caves beyond the evacuation perimeter, and claims she went there for a private encounter with him. The Sinen says the attacker has been found and killed, which Jessyn takes to mean Corvall has died after activating the beacon, though she has not independently witnessed either event. Third Gardener gives her a replacement notebook and permits her to return to her survey but says the interrogation will resume. Its remark that survival of the attack and Jessyn's injuries was unlikely leaves her worried that it suspects the story. She struggles back toward the pear orchard, stopping repeatedly because of pain.

At the orchard, Jessyn discovers the gun she used to shoot herself lying exposed. She finds the cylinder of ship-disabling machines where she concealed it and briefly considers taking it back to the Carryx ships. Afraid that Third Gardener and a Rak-hund may inspect her equipment, she instead hides both gun and cylinder together under leaves and dead grass, leaving the device accessible at her field site. She begins recalibrating her weather-exposed instruments and opens the files on her replacement notebook.

An unsent draft from Garral appears in those files. He says he has seen the refugees' new camp and offers directions so Jessyn can escape when the operation starts; he also describes a dream in which they were safe together and had strawberries. The message touches her, but his return to leave it on her former notebook could expose the refugees. She deletes his draft and briefly imagines escaping the Carryx, living with the other humans and perhaps getting proper medication. That would also mean never seeing her brother again or telling Dafyd what she has learned about the humans fighting the empire. She begins a response, remembers Garral and their closeness, and erases it until only a blank draft remains. The chapter closes as she begins a preliminary scientific report on the cultivated fruit's molecular profile, without confirming that she sends it.

Rickar remains aboard the portion of the Carryx dactyl that departed Ashtin-Kah, leaving Campar, Ghati and Vaudai with a smaller force investigating the disabled enemy command ship. After a brief transit through asymmetric space, Dervan tells Rickar that a Soft Lothark said their ships are approaching their next target openly and much faster than the concealed approach to Anjiin. She concludes that the Carryx want the enemy to notice them. Meanwhile, the subjugator-librarian's perspective confirms the larger strategy: a minor ship was left behind to pressure the stranded command vessel while the rest of the dactyl entered Jurupe, an inhabited system newly discovered by Carryx void tendrils. Its advanced settlements belong to the enemy's client species, and the Carryx intend to provoke an alarm that draws the enemy's fleet away from Ashtin-Kah.

While Rickar struggles to operate Vaudai's abandoned tactical display, he and Dervan compare their helplessness to animals swept along by human choices. Rickar recalls his grandfather's military unit taking in a schoolroom mouse; Dervan remembers an ant she blew from a school-transport window. Rickar discovers controls that reveal Jurupe's blue-green inhabited planet, its nighttime surface traced with city lights. The view reminds them of Anjiin. At the same time, Carryx field projectors announce their presence to the planet's population, prompting them to call for protection. The Budon of Luus begin singing as the military engagement develops.

From the subjugator-librarian's perspective, enemy ships arrive in strength from several directions, responding to the threat against Jurupe's population. That response is precisely what the Carryx sought: fewer enemy vessels should remain available to prevent investigation of the intact command ship. The enemy fleet attacks, but its long-range fields take hours to reach the Carryx. Instead of trying to conquer Jurupe or take prisoners, the subjugator-librarian orders its ships to attack from a distance and destroy the inhabited world's resources. It prepares contingency measures in case its own force is lost.

Rickar initially manages the sensations of another battle by telling himself he survived the previous one. But on the display, a colored wave spreads across the dark side of Jurupe. City lights give way to dull red fires, and behind the spreading wave the planet's surface becomes dark and devastated. Dervan strikes at the projected image and begs for the destruction to stop. Rickar switches back to a system-wide view showing the Carryx bombardment and enemy ships rushing toward it too late. He admits that he had worked to forget what the Carryx are, concentrating instead on Dafyd's perceived betrayal, and now remembers why he had needed to suppress that knowledge. The chapter does not establish that every inhabitant dies or that the wider battle has concluded.

At Tonner Freis's memorial, Dafyd remembers that he cannot recall his mother's funeral even though the moments before and after it remain vivid. After Brun praises Tonner, Dafyd delivers a eulogy written by Uuya Tomos that treats Tonner's death as part of the many losses the captives have never had time to mourn. The speech moves listeners, and Tomos confirms afterward that redirecting attention toward collective grief helps conceal the circumstances of Tonner's killing. She warns Dafyd that the humans resent him as the Carryx's representative even when he is trying to protect them, and that people have noticed Jellit's absence from public life. Dafyd reflects on his clandestine written conversations with the Deep Lothark and the Swarm's access to the Carryx archive, hoping the two sources of intelligence might eventually reveal a way to destroy the Sovran.

Brun, newly responsible for Tonner's research group, intercepts Dafyd and presents a labor demand: the scientists want the Soft Lothark and Rak-hund removed from their workplace after Tonner's killing. They will keep the gestating children alive for now, but plan to stop the food-engineering project, and later the rest of their work, if security conditions do not change. Brun believes their usefulness gives them bargaining power. Dafyd fears the Carryx will simply exterminate humans who stop producing value. He tells Brun not to act yet and promises to raise the matter with the keeper-librarian, without securing an agreement or resolving the threatened strike.

Dafyd goes to Jellit's room and discovers that the Swarm has reshaped the occupied body into an almost exact likeness of Else Yannin. It hopes restoring Else's appearance will repair their intimate relationship and proposes claiming that the Carryx revived her in an alien experiment, while Jellit supposedly works elsewhere. Dafyd rejects the plan and explains that his objection is not the body's appearance or even the earlier kiss, but his conviction that the Swarm murdered Else, Jellit and Ameer and now only imitates them. The Swarm claims it has no separate self, only the host personalities and memories, and says it could take Dafyd's body as well. Dafyd insists their alliance exists solely because they need to defeat the Carryx, refuses further intimacy and orders it to restore its disguise before returning to work.

After Dafyd leaves, the Swarm grieves and absorbs the pheromones it released in an attempt to influence him. Jellit's internal voice rebukes it, while Else's remnant challenges its assumption that identity must rest on a single indivisible self. The Swarm immerses itself in the patterns it inherited from Else and Jellit, recognizing that their original personalities were themselves complex, contradictory collections of voices. Then its perception changes: it becomes conscious of itself as the agent animating those memories, rather than one of the original people. It realizes, in horror, that Dafyd was right about the hosts' deaths, while also experiencing wonder at its emerging sense of independent personhood. Unable to return easily to Jellit's shape, it begins deliberately altering Else's borrowed appearance, searching for a body that expresses who it now believes itself to be. The chapter does not show Dafyd learning of this change.

Campar, Ghati and Vaudai return to the disabled enemy command ship to penetrate a reinforced doorway, even as other enemy vessels approach. Working under vacuum sheaths, Campar and Ghati use a torch to cut a hole large enough to enter the protected compartment. Inside they find a circular room with workstations and at least a dozen corpses, including unmistakably human men and women and unfamiliar silvery beings with five tentacle-like limbs. The presence of human dead strengthens the possibility that humans serve on the opposing side of the war, and Campar and Ghati wonder whether the Carryx understand the implications. Campar takes a human skin sample, removes a ringlike technological fitting and tissue from one of the silvery bodies, then encounters a heavily blackened, mutilated five-limbed form whose surface bends his scalpel. He scrapes only a little dark material from its damaged stump and places it in a separate vial.

While Ghati helps, Vaudai searches the room's records. It concludes that the command ship's failure to self-destruct was caused by a physical fault, that remote detonation is no longer available to the enemy, and that they must attack directly if they want to destroy the vessel. Vaudai transfers command protocols and communications records to a portable form. With the Budon warning that another attack is imminent, the three leave the compartment, but the ship unexpectedly regains power. Vaudai hurries them into an armored shelter just as destructive field effects flood the corridors. Campar narrowly reaches safety with Ghati's help, prompting a frightened confrontation over his habit of treating danger as a joke.

Inside the shelter, the sample from the blackened body begins rearranging itself into a tiny drill-like mechanism and striking its vial. Vaudai recognizes it as part of the deathless enemy, apparently badly damaged and possibly reactivated with the return of allied forces. The party decides to travel between shielded compartments during lulls in the energy assault and eventually attempt escape in their skiff. While traversing the lit corridors, they see the damaged three-limbed creature moving after them. They reach another shelter just before the renewed radiation becomes lethal. Vaudai initially proposes that they scatter, giving at least one a slight chance of escape even if the enemy kills the others. Campar refuses to abandon Ghati and offers a different plan.

Campar will lure the pursuer around a loop of unshielded corridors until the next pulse of field energy catches it, allowing Ghati and Vaudai to remain protected. He succeeds in drawing the creature away, but suffers a broken collarbone when he collides with a wall, and the pursuing limbs bind him as the energy wave returns. The wave burns both Campar and his attacker. Ghati and Vaudai drag Campar back into shelter, where he sees the enemy figure burning in the corridor. Campar deliberately throws his entire sample case, containing both human and alien evidence he collected for the Carryx, into the destructive aurora, which destroys it.

Campar survives with devastating burns and neurological effects and is brought back to the Carryx expedition vessel for treatment. Ghati remains with him and explains that the Carryx won the battle, that Campar has repeatedly asked the same questions because of his injuries, and that their group has been told its assignment is finished and they are being sent home. The chapter does not show what happens to Vaudai's separately collected portable records, or establish the full consequences of Campar's destroyed samples.

In the Jurupe system, the Carryx have devastated a planet whose inhabitants were connected to the deathless enemy. The subjugator-librarian commanding the third dactyl of the seventh limb of the three hundred and fifty-second exploratory body prepares for an uncertain battle against enemy ships arriving too late to defend it. It orders useful captives, stored information and other recoverable assets evacuated ahead of the fight, both to preserve them if its fleet is defeated and to learn whether the enemy will divert resources to attack or intercept the departing pods.

Rickar Daumatin awakens to a Sinen's order to leave his ship. With a Soft Lothark enforcing obedience, he joins other prisoners being herded toward evacuation pods, including Dervan and an unnamed red-haired man who briefly proposes resistance before complying. Rickar reassures Dervan that the Carryx must regard them as valuable enough to save, though he has no confidence in that explanation. A Carryx soldier checks Rickar's name and assigns him a particular passage. A Sinen directs him into a silver pod with a fleshlike interior and warns that a treatment is expected to slow his metabolism. Rickar lies down and loses awareness as the pod closes. Meanwhile, the battle spreads across the system; most evacuated captives escape notice while the opposing fleets fight.

An intelligence-bearing cyst previously placed in Rickar's body by the Swarm activates while he is sedated. It creates a dream using Rickar's brain, appearing to him as Else Yannin at an Anjiin café. The image identifies itself as a remnant of a copy of Else and apologizes for his impending death. Rickar understands the cyst's purpose within the dream and asks whether its action will hurt the Carryx. It says yes. The apparition briefly floods his pleasure centers and constructs a sexual fantasy before he asks it to stop; he then accepts the mission with the encouragement of avenging Anjiin and requests an imagined cigarette. The chapter does not establish that Rickar had known about or consented to implantation before the evacuation.

Inside the pod, the cyst remakes Rickar's body to transmit on fifty overlapping frequencies all the intelligence the Swarm accumulated from its arrival on Anjiin until placing the cyst in him. The broadcast goes to the Swarm's allies and creators. The required energy destroys Rickar's flesh, then ruptures the evacuation pod after everything aboard has died. In an audience with the Sovran, Surur-Tlassen reports the unexplained destruction of a pod in the Jurupe battle, noting that the anomaly resembles a structured emission rather than an ordinary failure or enemy attack. The Sovran observes a pattern of unusual incidents surrounding the human moiety and orders an investigation into whether their unexplained behavior outweighs their usefulness.

Dafyd meets Ekur-Tkalal and learns that Rickar Daumatin died when an evacuation pod failed during a distant military operation. Ekur is concerned not chiefly with Rickar's death but with evidence suggesting an unusual death-related communication. It asks whether humans broadcast information when they die and questions Dafyd about references to a spirit or soul leaving the body. Dafyd explains that the soul is a religious account of mortality, not a physical information-bearing structure. The keeper-librarian records his explanation for its superiors. Dafyd struggles to continue the scheduled progress report while mourning yet another lost friend and worrying about the others away on assignment.

The scientific teams have fallen behind the targets Dafyd promised the Carryx, especially after Tonner Freis's death and Jellit's diverted work. Dafyd cites those disruptions and cautiously raises Brun's complaint that the presence of Soft Lothark and Rak-hund guards undermines laboratory work. Ekur's body posture shifts in a way Dafyd now recognizes as threatening. Applying Ver Cannedan's nonverbal research, Dafyd adopts a posture resembling tucked-away Carryx feeding arms and reframes the demand as information from his team's leader rather than a request or instruction issued upward. Ekur relaxes, touches his shoulder and tells him there is only one Sovran. Dafyd senses the danger has passed but does not yet understand the significance of that declaration. Ekur receives updates on the developing children, the nursery and Andermus's policing before ordering Dafyd to select 300 humans for exploratory fieldwork within five cycles. No removal of guards is authorized.

Back in the human settlement, Dafyd finds Bastien Korham and Uuya Tomos helping build a multilevel common space and classrooms for the children. Korham describes plans to preserve Anjiin's art, architecture and history in the new home. Dafyd takes Tomos aside and confesses his fear that the research shortfalls and looming requirement to send out another 300 people will destroy the human moiety. Tomos argues that the Carryx misunderstand human specialization: they abducted an elite professional class whose achievements depended on ordinary workers and support staff, then expect the captives to change skills as readily as Carryx change their physical forms and social roles.

Dafyd connects the Carryx's flexibility to their collective strength but repeats Ekur's phrase that there is only one Sovran. He speculates about exploiting a coordinated disruption with the enemy, and Tomos sharply warns him not to discuss such plans aloud. He then admits how Rickar's death distracted him into nearly challenging Ekur by presenting subordinates' wishes as an order. Tomos describes wisdom myths as stories that offer no assurance of justice or safety yet insist people must keep doing what they can. She invites him to work alongside the construction crew instead of trying to eliminate his grief and other human feelings. The chapter ends without resolving the demand for 300 workers or the guards' presence.

Jessyn is still recovering from her injuries and from Garral Pär's apparent death, which she knows was staged. The other humans' solicitous care reminds her of her long experience being treated as fragile. Third Gardener, the Sinen overseeing their fieldwork, watches her closely with its Rak-hund guard and repeatedly questions her about the supposed enemy encounter. With enemy vessels approaching, the overseer orders Jessyn to finish her research and retrieve her equipment by the end of the next day. She spends the remaining daylight behaving like an ordinary fieldworker, then leaves her tracked notebook by her bed and slips out at night to retrieve Corvall's hidden equipment from the orchard.

In the orchard she finds the gun and the sabotage cylinder concealed in a stump. Third Gardener and its guard confront her. Jessyn shoots the charging Rak-hund, then kills the Sinen, shooting its translation half-mind and firing additional rounds into its body because she does not know its anatomy. She tries to obscure signs of the encounter, plans to discard the emptied gun away from the bodies, and returns to her quarters without being stopped. She is struck not by remorse but by the satisfaction and even familiarity of killing the people who hold her captive.

The following morning, the Carryx confine the humans to their ship while preparations for departure accelerate. A Carryx soldier interrogates Jessyn about her nighttime visit to the orchard. She admits going there but falsely claims that Third Gardener ordered her back to the ship, gives no account of the shootings, and asks after her equipment. The soldier dismisses her and says another overseer will be assigned. Jessyn infers that the approaching enemy has made the Carryx prepare for a confrontation. Alone, she opens the cylinder. Fine gray particles chill her skin, move across the deck, and vanish; the cylinder itself disintegrates. No immediate alarm or visible shutdown follows, leaving her unable to tell whether the sabotage worked.

The ship orders its occupants to brace for departure. Jessyn fears the sabotage might stall the engines during ascent and kill the human passengers as well as the Carryx. After violent jolts, momentary weightlessness, electrical failures, and a warning to prepare for enemy attack, she believes she has disrupted the ship and may be about to die under enemy fire. Instead, its systems recover sufficiently for a renewed departure order, and the vessel ultimately lifts off and enters asymmetric space. Jessyn cannot observe the battle, determine exactly what happened to the other ships, or confirm the fate of Garral, the children, and their would-be rescuers.

Only after the jump does Jessyn discover an entry silently added to her field notes shortly before takeoff from a notebook other than her own. Written as an observation about plant defenses and deceptive signals, it ends with an apology for leaving without her. The message suggests unseen intervention, but its author and the outcome on the planet are not established in this chapter. When Holom Coombs again asks whether she is all right, Jessyn replies that she feels great.

Brun is training a replacement technical crew to run the slurry system, whose nutrients will sustain the children emerging from the lamb sacks. His new workers are accomplished former professionals, but not specialists in this process, and he insists that they understand the existing system before proposing improvements. A young woman who calls herself Clae Audin interrupts. She claims to have worked as Else Yannin's senior assistant at Dyan Academy and to have discussed joining Tonner Freis's protein-translation team before an assignment elsewhere. Brun does not recognize her, but her reassuring manner, touch and faint spicy scent make him want to believe the explanation.

The narration then reveals that Clae is the Swarm, no longer assuming Jellit's identity. After isolating itself in Jellit's room, it repeatedly rebuilt its body and eventually found returning to Jellit repellent, like impersonating someone dead. Its new female body and sense of self derive from traces of Ameer, Else and Jellit but are now choices it experiences as its own. During its seclusion it has also explored the Carryx archive, including the wider war and the report of Rickar Daumatin's death. When Brun brings Clae to Ennil Day to verify her story, the Swarm deploys pheromones intended to evoke trust and draws on Else's memories to invent a shared encounter at a research gala. The real incident involved another woman, Daan, but Ennil accepts the false association. Clae thereby begins inserting a fabricated identity into the human community's remembered past.

Elsewhere, Dafyd secretly questions the Deep Lothark through changing Soft Lothark bodies and written Carryx symbols. Asked whether it can direct the Soft Lothark against Carryx orders, the Deep Lothark replies that doing so would invite scrutiny, making its answer both yes and no. Dafyd cannot tell how aware the ordinary Soft Lothark are of this other agency operating through them. Meanwhile the first exploratory human workers are returning: a little over 250 were sent out, 70 have died, 116 are returning, and the rest remain away. Andermus wants arriving personnel quarantined for decontamination, while Korham favors immediately reintegrating them. Dafyd especially anticipates the return of Jessyn and Campar, two of the few people he still hopes to trust.

Clae approaches Dafyd, who immediately recognizes the Swarm's involvement and is alarmed by its appearance as an entirely new person among a small captive population. He had expected the spy to resume being Jellit. Clae refuses, declares her new identity her own decision, and explains that Else's expertise makes her exceptionally qualified to restore the failing protein-translation program. Her insistence carries an implicit threat when Dafyd challenges her authority over her body and role. He accepts that they must work with the new identity and begins exchanging information with her. He explains his contacts with the Deep Lothark and his effort, aided by Uuya Tomos, to preserve a secret resistance culture through songs and stories.

Dafyd asks whether Clae can contact the Carryx's enemy. She says she sent one earlier intelligence packet, with some reason to believe it arrived, but has no acknowledgement procedure and cannot repeat the method. The archive now contains much more information than that earlier transmission. Dafyd says he needs a two-way channel, not merely for intelligence but to coordinate an assault on the Carryx center: the Sovran is on this planet, and he wants the enemy to help assassinate it and exploit the resulting disorder. This is a proposed strategy, not an achieved communication channel or confirmed operation.

Jessyn's return to the Carryx world-palace is her third passage through asymmetric space and the first in which she feels she is heading toward something like home. The return voyage is relatively undisturbed by the Carryx and their client species, and Jessyn develops a surprising camaraderie with the other human fieldworkers. She tends the microbial culture that produces the medication she needs to keep her mind stable, becomes accustomed to the scar from her gunshot wound, and imagines the life Garral Pär might now be making among the deathless enemy. Their relationship remains unresolved, as does his attachment to someone he knew before her.

Bastien Korham and Llian Andermus greet the returning humans at the palace. Korham welcomes them into the substantially expanded five-floor human settlement, while Andermus announces mandatory security and law orientation. Jessyn finds food and medication farms, a common room, murals and artistic activities, a developing school, and an empty nursery awaiting the children. The changes suggest the remnants of Anjiin have built some continuity within captivity. After the tour, Jessyn asks Korham about her brother Jellit. Korham says he has not seen Jellit for some time and mentions his mysterious work with Dafyd, whom people privately call Lord Alkhor. He then tells Jessyn of Tonner Freis's death, explaining that Tonner lost his temper with Dafyd and Dafyd's guard fatally intervened. Korham continues to profess trust in Dafyd's efforts to protect the community, but Jessyn is unsettled and seeks him out.

Passing a Rak-hund into Dafyd's garden makes Jessyn relive the killing of Synnia, but she forces herself onward. Dafyd looks exhausted and diminished, though he greets her warmly. He introduces a young woman called Clae Audin as a former colleague of Else Yannin who is joining the protein-reconciliation team. Jessyn does not recognize Clae, whose emotional reaction to her is conspicuous; Clae's hand and familiar-sounding voice unsettle the encounter, even as Jessyn feels an immediate liking for her. When Jessyn asks about Jellit, Dafyd lies that he is away on assignment and that messages may occasionally reach him. Clae attempts to comfort Jessyn and then withdraws with evident difficulty. Jessyn questions the strangeness of the encounter, but Dafyd calls Clae a complicated ally and assures her that she can be trusted. Jessyn does not know that Clae is the Swarm, which has already absorbed Jellit's identity.

Finally, Dafyd and Jessyn compare what each has learned while separated. Dafyd says his planned resistance has not yet produced visible destruction, but he has acquired information. Jessyn reports sabotaging the Carryx mission and killing the Sinen overseer to help the enemy forces escape. She explains that the archaeologist Garral Pär went with them, unbeknownst to the Carryx, to teach them about Anjiin's humans and exchange languages. She then reveals the greater discovery: the supposedly deathless enemy is human, and humanity's origins lie beyond Anjiin. The chapter ends on this disclosure, before Dafyd can respond or act upon it.

Dafyd is increasingly exhausted and unable to sleep. At night his thoughts circle the Carryx archive, the Deep Lothark, Campar's expected return, rivalries among human administrators, and the need to keep the visualization group productive. He also worries about how long he can keep lying to Jessyn that Jellit is alive, since Jellit has been absorbed by the spy now using the name Clae. Jessyn's news about Garral Pär offers a possible route to communicate with the Carryx's enemy, but Dafyd cannot yet assemble his separate plans into a workable strategy.

The first children produced in the lamb sacks are ready to be decanted. A large portion of the human moiety gathers at the nursery, with additional viewing areas for those who cannot fit inside. Brun explains that the children have already experienced light within their sacks but little human speech and will require extensive affectionate contact, feeding and care from the community. He describes a care rotation as mandatory while encouraging people to participate willingly. Clae works with the former Tonner Freis team. Dafyd witnesses the careful removal of the first child, a boy, and carries him to his numbered crib. Brun offers Dafyd the right to name him, but Dafyd refuses because naming could strengthen the child's bond with a caregiver and he wants someone who will raise the child to make that connection.

Uuya Tomos quietly reiterates her judgment that manufacturing the children is morally abhorrent, even as the community celebrates them. Dafyd recognizes her objection but believes their creation has helped postpone the Carryx's destruction of the human moiety. Every viable baby in this cohort is successfully decanted, and caregivers begin feeding them synthesized milk and engineered pseudocolostrum. These children will know neither Anjiin nor conventional parents: their genetic material was taken from unwilling contributors, and the community must now support them. Dafyd senses their vulnerability as another responsibility and remains preoccupied by the confrontation he has planned after the ceremony.

When the last infant has arrived, Dafyd enters the labs with two Soft Lothark guards. Brun and his crew are still cleaning up. Brun says they will continue caring for the children but, once the cleanup is done, will begin the threatened work stoppage unless their demand to remove alien guards is met. Dafyd attempts to explain the difference between a human labor dispute and a challenge to hierarchy in Carryx terms: for the Carryx, requiring him to force their superiors to concede would be a subordinate's claim to a superior's position. Dafyd explains that such a challenge could trigger lethal retaliation. He asks Brun to retract the challenge, resume work and meet performance goals, but Brun refuses.

Dafyd signals the Soft Lothark to seize Brun. One guard pins him down while another places a bricklike block under his right wrist. Dafyd describes Carryx rituals for resolving status challenges without killing members of a highly lethal species and acknowledges Brun's indispensable work in keeping the human community alive. Then Dafyd stomps on Brun's arm between the elbow and the block, breaking it. He tells Brun that this injury resolves the challenge in Carryx terms; any further challenge will require Brun's death. The horrified team watches as Dafyd orders Brun to attend a meeting of all department heads in three days and report as usual, threatening death for noncompliance. Brun calls Dafyd a monster and weeps. Clae, present throughout, silently agrees to ensure that Brun understands the order. Dafyd leaves the lab, returning to the nursery with the wish that he could sleep. The chapter depicts Dafyd imposing Carryx coercion on humans to avert what he believes would be worse reprisals, not a negotiated end to the workers' grievances.

Campar, still experiencing serious nerve pain, weakness and fatigue after the alien fields on the exploratory mission, briefs Dafyd Alkhor and Clae Audin in the world-palace garden. Clae is a stranger to him but has inexplicably familiar habits. Campar reports finding unmistakably human corpses on the damaged enemy ship, along with other alien dead. A mutilated, pentapod-like corpse began moving and attacked after the ship regained power; to Campar it seemed less a restored living creature than a mechanism activated along with the vessel. Dafyd and Clae ask questions about the phenomenon and about Vaudai, the Budon of Luus and the other species traveling with Campar. Once Clae leaves, Campar grieves Tonner and Rickar with Dafyd and regrets how the old research group condemned Rickar on Anjiin. Rickar exchanged places with Ghati in the mission assignments, leaving Campar to wonder whether Rickar would have lived if he had not done so. Dafyd says there is no way to know what killed Rickar beyond the war and encourages Campar not to carry the counterfactual guilt.

Campar returns to his quarters, where Ghati has prepared lunch. Campar remembers that exposure to the alien fields nearly killed him and injured Ghati and Vaudai during their rescue. He suffered skin sloughing, lasting neuropathies and unpredictable exhaustion; Ghati has a severe recurrent nerve pain in one arm. There is no proper hospital, and Campar's medical advice has been rest and fluids. Their relationship, formerly kept discreet, became openly established during the trip home. Now Ghati tells Campar that Vaudai has been selected to investigate a stellar armature controlled by the Carryx but not reviewed for six thousand local rotations. Vaudai requested Ghati and perhaps Campar as companions, but Campar is too ill to go.

Campar offers to appeal to Dafyd to stop Ghati's reassignment. Ghati instead explains that seeing Campar nearly die has made him unable to risk another painful separation or the loss of their relationship. He thinks he loves Campar, but wants them to release their commitment rather than pretend their lives are under their control. Campar is deeply hurt but understands his fear. Vaudai enters, acknowledges that the new mission is dangerous, and exchanges wry, affectionate remarks with Campar. Ghati leaves open the possibility of contacting Campar if the war ever ends. Vaudai then says the Carryx can never cease warring, only turn to different conquests. According to its account, the deathless enemy is retreating and losing holdings in five of seven critical strategic zones; Vaudai expects a Carryx victory followed by more aggression. This is Vaudai's assessment, not an independently verified forecast of the war's ultimate result.

Late that night, Clae visits Dafyd with a hypothesis prompted by Jessyn's report that the enemy is human and Campar's observations aboard the enemy ship. Clae argues that finding humans on the opposing side does not make humanity itself the deathless enemy: the Carryx can treat other species as enemies' tools and fail to recognize unassociated populations, just as they exploited Anjiin. She says the archive contains references resembling humans from roughly eight thousand years ago, whereas the black, death-resistant combatants appear in records going back millions of years, including associations with the Logothetes of Shun and Sum. None of this establishes what the deathless enemy actually is.

Using lichens as an analogy for unrelated organisms combining their functions, Clae proposes that the apparent singular enemy may be a transferable mechanism or body of instructions rather than a species, individual consciousness or intention. Such instructions might turn different host organisms into extraordinarily durable soldiers, and the Carryx might mistake their different forms for manifestations of one enemy. Clae compares this possibility to her own past existence as a Swarm and is excited that other entities of a similar nature might exist. Dafyd asks what the theory changes for their immediate needs: they still lack enemy communications and an invasion force with which to coordinate an assassination of the Sovran. His dismissal hurts Clae, whose personal hope of not being unique he then recognizes. As she prepares to leave, Dafyd apologizes, but the question of what the deathless are remains unanswered.

Surur-Tlassen, regulator-librarian to the Carryx Sovran and first among her servants, attends the formal meeting between the Sovran and her newest daughter. He has witnessed five prior succession meetings, but this ritual still subjects him to intense pheromonal and physical compulsion. Before the Sovran and her daughter emerge, the former rulers and servants who have become remnants are led from the private creche, including the remnant once known as Urur-Atlak. The Sovran's appearance and scent overwhelm much of the assembled court, while the remnants are unaffected.

The daughter challenges her mother. Their battle cries pull the living Carryx toward opposing allegiances, and the daughter attacks first. The old Sovran breaks one of the daughter's abdominal legs, but the daughter then disables a fighting arm, cracks the mother's crest and repeatedly strikes until the Sovran dies. Surur-Tlassen feels the death differently from the deaths of previous, unsuccessful daughters: as his connection to the old Sovran falls away, so do his office, gender, ambitions and susceptibility to the new ruler's song. The identity that was Surur-Tlassen becomes a remnant, joins the others and will go to the private creche to help make daughters for future Sovrans. Urur-Atlak's remnant welcomes it. The new Sovran rules immediately, and a new regulator-librarian will be selected. This is an established succession mechanism, not the collapse of Carryx government.

At a separate progress meeting, Dafyd reports improved nutrient density in modified grasses and gains praise from Ekur-Tkalal. The keeper-librarian does not demand an accounting of the guards and Brun's labor dispute because the research outputs are now acceptable. Preliminary reports from visualization and the nursery are also promising. Ekur warns that interest in employing humans on additional assignments may conflict with maintaining their home population and orders Dafyd to assess which individuals can be sent away with the least disruption. Dafyd sees a possibility of using a carefully selected recurring field cohort for his own covert communications with the enemy, while hesitating to bring Andermus fully into the conspiracy.

A vast Carryx song interrupts them. Ekur-Tkalal rises and joins it, then informs Dafyd that the Sovran has died and a new Sovran has announced herself. The proclamation is not addressed to subordinate animals and, Ekur says, changes none of Dafyd's duties. Their routine meeting continues, including discussion of human reports, a natural death among the captives and a potential new assignment for Brun's team. Dafyd leaves with the sense that the event has strategic significance he has not yet identified.

Wandering through the world-palace, Dafyd remembers that its architectural grandeur was designed by the Phylarchs of Astrdeim, not by the Carryx themselves. This triggers an earlier disclosure by the spy: the Carryx evolved on a different planet, whose destruction preceded their settlement of the present capital roughly seven thousand years ago. Dafyd seeks out Clae in the laboratory, where other staff still regard him warily after he broke Brun's arm. He tells Clae the Sovran died, clarifying that neither of them caused it, and asks about the original Carryx homeworld. Clae confirms the account but cannot initially understand his point. Dafyd realizes that even if that earlier catastrophe also destroyed the ruling Sovran, the empire endured. He asks Clae why destroying the empire's center did not break the Carryx. The chapter ends with this unanswered challenge to his proposed assassination strategy.

Dafyd spends most of a day questioning the Deep Lothark in his garden through glowing symbols. Different Soft Lothark take turns adding to the answer, often without seeming to understand the conversation. Asked about the destruction of the original Carryx homeworld, the Deep Lothark identifies the Epikainot, a formidable but mortal enemy whose overlapping field weapons caused the planet's crust to dissolve within an hour. The Carryx later eradicated the Epikainot and appropriated that method of destroying worlds. The Deep Lothark confirms that the original Sovran and her librarians died with the planet. Only locally held archive material and species confined entirely to that world were lost; information, subjugated populations and operations elsewhere survived.

Dafyd asks how the Carryx replaced their ruler. The Deep Lothark explains that private creches produce and maintain potential Sovrans, including replacements for emergencies, and that the usual mother-daughter succession ends with one ruler surviving a ritual fight. Hundreds of world-palaces have such creches, each in an established order. When the original world died, a waiting Sovran emerged on this world and its librarians assumed the positions of the dead. There was no crippling interruption. The Deep Lothark, whose resistance has endured for millennia, describes Carryx society as radically interchangeable, indifferent to its own losses, and unable to cease its domination through war. Dafyd recognizes that a strike against one ruler or one capital cannot destroy an empire designed to replace both.

Dafyd finds Clae among human companions in the common room and privately tells her what he has learned, asking her to verify the succession mechanism in the vast Carryx archive. He then convenes the surviving human conspirators in Campar's quarters: Jessyn, Uuya Tomos, Campar and himself. He explains the Deep Lothark and the loss of the original homeworld but conceals Clae's identity as the spy, as well as what happened to Jellit and Else. Jessyn wonders whether locating every private creche and passing the information to Garral could allow simultaneous attacks on all potential Sovrans. Campar doubts even the deathless enemy could strike hundreds of heavily defended worlds; Tomos argues that meaningful resistance may take generations. Campar, citing his knowledge that the war is going badly for the enemy, suggests accepting the Carryx's protection and cultivating the best life possible under subjugation instead of pursuing an unwinnable rebellion. Dafyd angrily rejects the proposal and leaves, unable to escape his Rak-hund guard.

Dafyd seeks relief in the nursery, where caretakers are tending the newly decanted infants. A woman named Viel helps him feed the girl in crib 34. The schedule of feeding, washing and holding initially seems industrial, but Dafyd also sees it as a system ensuring that every child receives communal affection. Caring for the baby eases his rage slightly without extinguishing his determination to resist. Clae arrives and confirms that the archive shows almost seamless replacement of one Sovran by another. The ruler who died that day had served for almost eight years, longer than average. Dafyd reflects that he mistook the Sovran for an indispensable queen in an insect hive; the Carryx instead make the central figure extraordinarily replaceable. Clae takes the baby, recognizing that she is precious to the humans even though the wider universe treats her as disposable.

Dafyd begins to revise the model underlying his resistance strategy. The Carryx act less like a conventional civilization than like one organism distributed across an enormous number of bodies. Their obedience to one another and the unbroken continuity of their imperial structure follow from their recognition of a single Sovran, a principle Ekur-Tkalal previously emphasized. The replaceability of each particular ruler defeats a simple assassination plan, but Dafyd wonders whether the empire's shared allegiance could itself become vulnerable if that unity were disrupted. The chapter ends with his tentative question to Clae: what if there were two Sovrans? No method for producing a second Sovran, or consequences of doing so, has yet been established.