Brother Lhan, a comfortable and complacent ardent in Kholinar, greets a new assignation, Pai, to the queen’s retinue. He emphasizes refined appearances and agreeable counsel for Queen Aesudan, framing service as easy if one tells the queen what she wants to hear. Pai immediately challenges this, calling the retinue sycophants and decrying the queen’s nightly excess while the kingdom languishes.

Seeking to avert open conflict, Lhan tries to coax Pai with the privileges of service, but learns she is of the Devotary of Denial and lives austerely. He pivots, showing her piles of wasted food in the palace service yard and arguing she could do real good quietly from within, warning that open defiance would only get her removed and change nothing. Pai agrees to stay and “be a good example,” but offers no promise of restraint.

That night, Pai secretly works in the locked People’s Hall, inscribing ten great glyphs of the Ten Fools across the floor, each accompanied by an explanation of how Queen Aesudan exemplifies the corresponding foolish attribute. Lhan and a crowd of ardents discover her at dawn, horrified at the open condemnation not just of the queen but of the entire Alethi leadership.

Pai is executed the following morning, a swift and brutal response to her dissent. By evening, riots break out in Kholinar, her act and death igniting simmering public anger and revealing the capital’s moral decay and political volatility.