Din Kol endures thirteen slow, humid days as the wet season begins in Daretana, with little progress on Commander Taqtasa Blas’s murder and no relief from the oppressive rains.

At last, Din receives a reply from Blas’s secretary, Rona Aristan, delivered via Stephinos at the post station. Din reports to Investigator Ana Dolabra that Rona expresses shock at Blas’s death, claims ignorance of the purpose of his trip to Daretana, and explains she cannot travel to testify because Engineering personnel are ordered to remain in place during the wet season.

Rona includes a transcription of Blas’s schedule for the last four months. Reading it alongside Gennadios’s shorthand notebook, Ana realizes the new information makes the case harder: Blas had been based in Talagray for the past three months, and his visits to the Haza estate were irregular, with the last visit dated the thirteenth through fifteenth of Egin.

Ana concludes that because Blas’s Haza trips were unpredictable, the assassin likely could not have planned the attack without close observation of Blas in Talagray, a larger city south of Daretana. Ana believes the killer timed the murder before the wet season to keep roads passable and then began drafting letters to the Iudex office of the Tala canton, requesting permission to interview witnesses and sending it by costly scribe-hawk to force attention—though Ana expects months of delay amid leviathan-related chaos.

When Din expresses disappointment that “solving a murder” has not changed anything, Ana bluntly reminds Din they have not solved it yet, then orders Din to post the letter, leaving them to wait again.