Dinios Kol walks through a still-bustling nighttime Yarrowdale to collect the imperial post. Back at the lodgings, Kol slips the letters under Ana Dolabra’s door and pauses at a black packet that he recognizes as a message from her disturbing superior. In his own room, Kol finally reads Madam Poskit’s new terms and learns that two thirds of his monthly pay will now go toward his father’s debts, leaving him with almost nothing after also sending money home.

Shaken by the financial blow, Kol takes out a transfer petition he has secretly prepared for the Imperial Legion. He dwells on how deeply he admires the Legion’s work against the leviathans and how empty his own work in the Iudex feels by comparison. But Kol also knows the transfer is effectively impossible because Madam Poskit’s contract depends on him staying alive and employed where the risks are more manageable, so the petition becomes another reminder that his future is trapped.

Kol then drifts into memories of Captain Kepheus Strovi from his time in Talagray. The vividness of those memories intensifies Kol’s loneliness rather than easing it, and Ana’s instruction to rest only drives him toward a different kind of escape. Unable to stay alone with his thoughts, Kol leaves the lodgings and goes to a sotbar crowded with Apothetikal soldiers and Yarrow locals, not to drink heavily but to find company.

At the sotbar, Kol deliberately uses the practiced social routine he has developed to attract someone for the night. He chooses an augmented Yarrow woman, and despite their language barrier they flirt successfully with the help of gestures and a medikker’s translation of one crude joke. Kol goes home with her and is attentive in bed, but once the sex is over he reveals his real motive: he wants silence, containment, and temporary relief from debt, grief, and the memory of Kepheus. Even then he cannot fully escape guilt over disobeying Ana, and when the woman quickly signals that she wants another round or for him to leave, Kol realizes the comfort he sought is only another transaction.