As Ana and Dinios Kol ride back from their meeting, Ana immediately says the encounter was strange and orders Din to reconstruct everything he noticed, down to each movement and twitch. Din carefully reports what he observed and, from the tells he read, concludes that Immunis Ghrelin seemed intensely passionate. Ana agrees that Ghrelin has the zeal of a fanatic, and she finds it implausible that someone who once worked in the slaughter of leviathans would now simply be focused on treating ordinary illnesses.

Din then reports another detail: Thelenai's eyes and lips were stained green, like many long-term residents of Yarrowdale and Pithia. Ana explains that the color comes from a local algae that behaves like a beneficial parasite, increasing a person's resistance to illness. Because the stain usually appears only after years in the region, Ana infers that Thelenai has been in Yarrowdale for quite some time, and she is intrigued that Thelenai has not removed the discoloration even though a graft can reverse it.

Ana next asks how Ghrelin and the others reacted when she mentioned the marrow. Din says they did not react at all, which struck him as unnatural, and he says their calm felt rehearsed. Ana seizes on that point and concludes that they expected the question. To Ana, that means Ghrelin and the local Apoths are engaged in deliberate, conventional obstruction rather than being caught off guard.

Ana then reveals that she had briefly considered a darker possibility: that Ghrelin might literally be unable to speak about certain matters because of rare Imperial methods that make specific secrets physically unmentionable. She explains that such alterations exist, though they are uncommon and require the subject's consent. Ana dismisses the theory because people altered that way show obvious pain when they approach the forbidden subject, and Ghrelin showed no such distress. She tells Din to ignore the idea for now but remember it, leaving Din unsettled and reminded again of how unpredictably Ana thinks.