On a Friday in Borosevo’s White District, Hadrian and Cat beg outside the massive Chantry while the weekly High Litany draws a crowd too large for the sanctum. Grand Prior Ligeia Vas conducts the service inside, and screens outside allow the overflow of worshipers to watch.

The plaza fills with beggars hoping the religious occasion will make worshipers more charitable. Many of them show signs of Gray Rot or Chantry punishment: missing body parts, whip scars, burns, and tattooed crimes across their foreheads. Hadrian kneels beside Cat near a street corner, accepting whatever coins or scraps of money passersby offer.

A naked vate on a scaffold shouts that Earth has forsaken humanity and that the Pale devils are divine punishment for human vanity. The vate predicts a cleansing fire and calls for repentance, turning the gathering’s religious atmosphere into a scene of public terror and judgment.

Cat proves much better at begging than Hadrian, collecting far more money. Hadrian teases Cat about sharing, and Cat playfully refuses, giving Hadrian a rare moment of laughter and warmth after his long suffering on the streets.

A woman in a violet suit and paper parasol places a full silver kaspum in Cat’s bowl, moving Cat nearly to tears and leaving Hadrian with a lasting memory of simple kindness. Meanwhile, the vate continues railing against the nobility for rejecting nature and altering their blood, but no prefects or soldiers come to silence him because the mad are believed to be close to Earth.