Cat leads Hadrian toward Borosevo’s fishery warehouses, where most of the city’s poor refuse to go because they fear Emesh’s native coloni, the Umandh. Hadrian remains skeptical because he has not seen them, but Cat insists they are real and dangerous, calling them demons. The pair travel through a flooded culvert beneath the bazaar as the tide rises.

After reaching the docks, Hadrian hears a deep, directionless droning and hides with Cat near refrigerated crates. Human douleters descend from a trawler with a lash and stun baton, so Hadrian climbs to a fire escape, lowers the ladder for Cat, and brings them onto the warehouse roof. From there, they enter an unlit stair and look down from a catwalk.

Hadrian sees the Umandh for the first time: tall, three-legged, coralline beings with long fleshy cilia, forced to carry crates of fish. Their constant droning is revealed to be their song or speech. Hadrian is struck by how alien they are compared with the Cielcin and notices collars cutting into their bodies, making clear that the Umandh are enslaved.

One overseer, Quintus, lashes and beats an Umandh called Seventeen after it stumbles and spills fish. Another man uses a console to interpret the Umandh’s altered drone and says Seventeen is apologizing. Hadrian is horrified and briefly longs to understand the translation device and the Umandh language, but hunger and fear keep him hidden.

Quintus continues beating Seventeen until the creature cracks and bleeds. The second douleter stops Quintus, not from mercy but because killing the colonus would cost them money. When the wounded Umandh is taken away for treatment, Hadrian waits until the workers leave, drops to the warehouse floor, and steals a sack of fish for himself, Cat, and the orphan boys she helps feed.