After consuming Thelenai's grafts, Din is stripped, washed, and confined in an observation chamber to wait the fourteen hours before his departure into the Shroud. Across the glass, Ana sits blindfolded and questions him while the drugs begin to affect him: his body becomes strangely hypersensitive, his head aches, and the blotley welt on his arm itches intensely. When Din says the sting still hurts despite all his treatment, Ana becomes sharply interested and notes that something small may prove important.

The conversation turns to Din's bitterness about leaving Yarrow's wardens and naukari behind after they helped him and Ana. Din says he asked Malo about transferring the wardens to the Iudex, but doubts the Empire would allow such people to serve freely. Ana rejects any easy comparison between Din's frustrations and the wardens' captivity, yet admits that Yarrow's situation is morally ugly and says government often means choosing the least bad option rather than a cleanly just one.

Ana then presses Din on his long-standing desire to join the Legion. Din finally admits that his father's debts and the danger of Legion service make that path impossible, because creditors would use the risk against him. Ana shows that she already knows the debts are held by the Usini Lending Group and infers that one of their representatives has approached Din in Yarrow to push him into a worse arrangement.

When Ana asks whether someone in Talagray is drawing him back, Din confesses there was a man there, though he insists that personal attachment is not his main reason for wanting the Legion. Din explains that he wants to save lives directly instead of being one of the people the Legion protects. Ana answers by contrasting visible professions like engineers, legionnaires, and apoths with the Iudex, whose work can never truly be finished because corruption can only be contained, not eradicated. She argues that this thankless duty is essential, because without it the Empire would become like Yarrow, where the powerful rule without restraint.

To drive the point home, Ana reminds Din that she came to his canton and destroyed one of the Empire's most corrupt gentryclans. She then says that when she first chose Din, his only deficiency was that he had not been hurt enough, because many of the fiercest Iudex officers are driven by wounds and by seeing evil go unpunished. Although others doubted Din would have the conviction for the work, Ana says he has proved them wrong so far and predicts that, in the end, he will prefer the Iudex to the Legion.

When Din asks what he is supposed to learn, Ana gives him a theatrical prophecy: he will soon receive two revelations, one obvious and one secret, and together they will change his life. Apoths then arrive to escort Ana to Thelenai and give Din a sleeping draught. Din drinks it, lies down, and sleeps as the final wait before the Shroud continues.