Lin arrives with Ji-An at the Black Mansion, the Ragpicker King’s ominous home on Scarlet Square. Though Lin resents being misled, curiosity keeps her from resisting. Ji-An brings Lin through the mansion’s guarded doors, past opulent corridors and an indoor water channel containing crocodiles, then leaves Lin waiting in a solarium.

After waiting too long, Lin wanders into a room of worn furniture and collected antiquities, where Lin notices an Ashkari incantation bowl made for the house of Benjudah. Before Lin can make sense of it, Lin overhears the Ragpicker King speaking with Ciprian, a red-haired man who wants two long tons of black powder to destroy several ships. When the men discover Lin, Ciprian insults Lin, and the Ragpicker King sharply dismisses him.

The Ragpicker King, whose name is revealed as Andreyen, explains that Lin was brought not as a physician but because of the stone hidden in Lin’s brooch. He reveals that the market jeweler works for him, recognized the stone, and alerted the Black Mansion. The stone is not quartz but a Source-Stone, also called Arkhe: a forbidden remnant of High Magic, connected to the world before the Sundering and opposed to Ashkari teachings.

Lin admits that Anton Petrov, a former patient who likely knew he was going to die, secretly placed the stone in Lin’s bag. The Ragpicker King believes the Source-Stone helped Lin heal Kel Saren, even though Lin insists Lin did not consciously use it. Rather than take the stone, the Ragpicker King leads Lin to a laboratory and introduces Merren Asper, a young scientist and poisoner working with dangerous substances.

In the laboratory, the Ragpicker King shows Lin copied pages from the writings of Qasmuna, an old scholar and physician who believed Source-Stones might restore limited magic for healing. He asks Lin to learn to wield the stone in his service and tempts Lin with access to the laboratory and the possibility of magical healing. Lin resists at first, wary of serving a criminal, but agrees to search the Shulamat library in the Sault for more of Qasmuna’s work.

Ji-An escorts Lin out and warns that the mansion’s confusing corridors are deliberate. When Lin asks whether Andreyen is good or bad, Ji-An answers that he does what he promises: if he says he will kill, he kills; if he says he will protect, he protects. The chapter closes with a tale of Adassa visiting Suleman’s kingdom, discovering he means to drug her, and sending Judah Makabi to spy on him in the guise of a raven.