Dinios Kol brings Ana back to her lodgings and finds three large Apoth packages waiting for her. Inside are shipping manifests for every missing Yarrow barge from the last two years and a separate envelope containing Immunis Rava Ghrelin’s service record. Ghrelin’s record confirms that he really did serve on the Shroud for three years, but it does not explain his strange finger tapping, so Ana turns her attention to the pattern itself.

Ana explains that Din’s imitation of Ghrelin’s tapping made her realize it was not random noise but a language: the finger-tapped code of the nearly extinct Adherents of the Sallow Fields, a silent monastic order. Because Ana quickly works out the system, she translates Ghrelin’s repeated messages as cries of sorrow, doom, and guilt, including the line, “Who has done this to me?” She also translates the earlier tapping Din heard from Ghrelin as panicked denial. From this, Ana concludes that Ghrelin is not calmly protecting a conspiracy from a position of control; instead, he seems frightened and harmed, which suggests that the Apoths are hiding something secret and dangerous while still genuinely wanting the culprit found.

Ana and Din connect Ghrelin’s service on the Shroud, the impostor’s equally unusual tapping, the Apoths’ guarded reaction to questions about marrow, and the fact that the thief did not steal healing grafts. Ana reasons that the stolen contents may be tied to the Shroud, to marrow, or to some other hidden Apoth project. Even so, she decides they cannot solve the larger mystery yet and must instead keep pressure on the immediate case by identifying the impostor.

After reading through the new records, Ana says the investigation has entered its tedious phase and gives Din a list of forty-three Apothetikal officers who had permission to access the chest in the vault. She orders Din to track each one’s whereabouts over the past several weeks, hoping that this broad canvassing will create the first useful break in the case. The conversation then shifts when Ana confronts Din about slipping out at night and, more importantly, about his deeper dissatisfaction with Iudex work. Din admits that he struggles with always arriving after the harm is done and dreams of joining the Legion so he might save lives rather than merely punish crimes after the fact.

Ana answers by invoking the imperial teaching that all service matters and argues that the Iudex preserves an Empire worth defending. She even promises to recommend Din for transfer when he becomes eligible, though she predicts he may eventually choose to stay. When Din asks why justice matters so much to her, Ana gives only a cryptic answer that she came to the Iudex already convinced of its value. A delivery then brings her a second lyre from the music workshop, which delights her; while playing a haunting duet and musing on Yarrow’s violent dynastic history, she again refuses to explain her augmentations and finally sends Din away to get real rest before the laborious search begins.