Din Kol arrives with Fayazi Haza at the Haza estate, noting its beauty and the enclosing fretvine walls. Inside the rambling house, Fayazi keeps a controlled distance while Din studies the structure and its fernpaper construction, wary of how materials and access points might relate to the contagion and the earlier murders.

Fayazi brings Din to the room where Kaygi Haza died. Din finds a massive dappleglass growth rooted into the bedchamber, embedded through floor and ceiling, matching what he has seen in other victims. Fayazi recounts how Kaygi awoke in agony and was consumed as greenery erupted from below his left collarbone; she also admits, shaken, that Kaygi called for servants but not for her. The axiom intervenes to steady Fayazi and shut down the emotional spiral.

Din then inspects Kaygi’s “steam room” bathing house, built from many white fernpaper panels and fed by a brass-and-bronze hot-water apparatus. Fayazi explains Kaygi used it for joint pain and mentions conzulates’ extreme vitality suffusions to contrast with Kaygi’s preference for steam. Din notices staining on the tub’s rim and, more importantly, fresh, soft paste in the seams between panels, suggesting recent panel work that could have vented contaminated air.

Din insists the contagion’s agent would be at the heat source, not in the bathhouse itself, and climbs to the rooftop water tank. Looking inside, Din spots a dark strip on the grate—consistent with the “blade of grass” carrier of the poison—and tells Fayazi not to touch the system, planning to summon the Apoths to dispose of it.

Pressed to explain how the poison entered despite guards and telltales, Din investigates servants’ access. A little-used servants’ door near the water route shows a broken bolt, implying forced entry from within the house. Tracing the unlit passageways down to the party halls yields no obvious tracks, so Din asks to see where the reported party fire began. In the fireplace, Din finds strange scorch patterns and a foul odor, concluding the “ember” was an intentional device meant to draw guards away while the poisoner used the servants’ passages to reach the tank.

Din argues the poison likely arrived before the party and was retrieved on the day, then deliberately suggests a small-animal or scribe-hawk delivery to force access to Ana Dolabra’s target: the estate rookery. Fayazi admits few people are allowed there and that Kaygi’s correspondence was burned after his death, but she agrees to give Din five minutes to inspect the rookery over the axiom’s objections.