Weeks after arriving at Calagah, Hadrian lives among the excavation party in the countryside, where Sir Elomas Redgrave’s comfortable prefabricated quarters contrast with the rough terrain and flooded tunnels. Elomas hosts regular dinners with Hadrian, Valka, and Tor Ada, treating Hadrian as an honored guest despite Hadrian’s modest claim that he is only a tourist and day laborer.

During dinner, Elomas praises Hadrian’s usefulness at the site and alludes approvingly to Hadrian’s killing of Gilliam, then warns that priests favor poison and that Ligeia has a long memory. Elomas digresses into stories of his travels and old duels, while Hadrian reflects on the knight’s wide experience across human space.

Hadrian asks why there is anything left to discover on a planet settled for nearly a millennium. Ada explains that Calagah belonged to the Norman United Fellowship before Imperial control, and Valka says Quiet sites have no secondary artifacts. Ada cautions that the Chantry controls all knowledge about extinct xenobites and will likely sequester anything the expedition finds, though Calagah’s apparent unimportance has kept the Chantry from stationing wardens there.

The conversation turns to the Chantry’s political power and the expected arrival of Jaddians, prompting Hadrian to consider how the Chantry’s influence has grown beyond the Imperium. Karthik then returns from the kitchen visibly shaken and reports that a planetary broadcast says there has been an attack and battle at the edge of the Emesh system.

The hut’s speakers announce that the Emesh Defense Force and the 437th Centaurine Legion under Knight-Tribune Raine Smythe have annihilated a Cielcin incursion force in the heliopause. Hadrian hears the state propaganda in the report, imagines the coming triumphal displays in Borosevo, and feels the unsettling distance between the vast war and the quiet hut at Calagah. Elomas finally orders the broadcast shut off, leaving the dinner party in silence.