Ana demands every available fact about Sunus Pyktis. Thelenai and Rava Ghrelin say that Pyktis was one of the Shroud's augurs and was believed to have died two years earlier in a blood-handling disaster that also killed two others. When Ana presses for what augurs are like, Ghrelin explains that augury makes ordinary conversation nearly unusable, because augurs overread every inflection and pause, so they communicate through an old tapping code; Thelenai recalls them silently drumming on boards and then producing astonishing calculations together.

Ghrelin explains that a normal dose of augury lasts three to four months and is carefully cycled to limit brain damage. Ana immediately infers that Pyktis must have been stealing doses for years, and Ghrelin admits there were small discrepancies in the records. Ghrelin further warns that if Pyktis has kept himself at a low level of augury for five years, then Sunus Pyktis is likely paranoid, volatile, sleepless, violent, and nearing permanent disablement, which makes Ana conclude that waiting for him to collapse is too dangerous because Pyktis knows his own time is running out.

Ana then returns to the original motive for the safe theft. Under pressure, Ghrelin and Thelenai reveal that the stolen item was a Shroud report explaining how to transport successfully extracted leviathan marrow and embed it in a nutrient brewery to begin producing kani. Ana realizes that their secret project has in fact succeeded, that the unstable marrow is currently stored inside the Shroud near Yarrowdale, and that Pyktis's sign in the warped clearing was a taunt showing he had worked this out. Thelenai confirms the marrow was extracted last wet season and is hidden behind heavy defenses.

Ana forces the two Apoth officials to admit the scale of the danger. If Pyktis used his titan's-blood weapon to breach the stored marrow, the marrow could keep releasing corruption across leagues of land, destroy most of Yarrowdale, and possibly choke the canals badly enough to jolt the Empire itself. When Ghrelin estimates that only a small amount of fertilizer caused the jungle warping that Din and Malo saw, Ana reveals that Pyktis has stolen six crates totaling nearly fifty stone's worth, proving that he can mount a vastly larger attack. Because the jungle is too large to search blindly for the hidden reagents, Ana concludes that they must find Pyktis himself.

Looking for a way to understand Pyktis, Ana asks whether any augurs who knew him are still in the Shroud. Ghrelin says some are, and also admits that he was once an augur and can still translate their tapping speech. Ana therefore proposes sending Din to the Shroud on the next restocking ship in twenty days so Din can question Pyktis's former colleagues if all other efforts fail. Thelenai agrees only as a last resort, Din is privately horrified by the prospect, and Ana ends the meeting by asking for time back at her quarters to question Din properly and think over the case while securing a substantial meal.