Chapter 12

In Velona’s moss-draped chamber, Ana prompts Velona to speak candidly. Velona frames her lineage’s tragedies as an uncanny punishment from the Daljen ancestors, brandishing Master Gaddar’s symbol and citing the land’s sacred bounty. She describes breeding triumphs in urhosi lines, then shifts to loss: her eldest Lyimo was lured nightly to the forest near Daljen shrines before being found drowned.

Velona says Sagma and Gevma died differently but suffered weeks of nightmares, both trapped and frozen in their rooms; Lyimo had no such dreams. She notes Lyimo received lavish suitor gifts, including prized Choros Ayak wine, now discarded. Velona rejects Burilis Burav as culprit, insisting only divine forces could shape such fates. Overwhelmed, she ends the interview, asking for diversion.

Osumlik plays Velona’s fluted pipe; an almost inaudible tone makes the drokha-cat Coral leap, then dance the qu-alm with wide, joyless eyes. Din recognizes the instrument as akin to Ana’s shawm, likely the controller for the guiding web, recalling Zansay and Castus’s forced motions.

In Sagma’s dust-laden dressing room, Fotia confirms Velona’s ongoing rites and Gaddar charms to cleanse ill spirits. She explains Armenta sepulcher preservation in airtight casks and reveals donor-seed services supplying suitable gentry lineage for Velona’s treatments. Fotia portrays Velona’s self-alteration as duty to house and custom, not mere despair.

Returning to Lacanthim, Din relays visuals of Velona and the pipe. Ana, irritated by reliance on luck, identifies a common thread: recurring dreams of being trapped afflicted Sagma, Gevma, and—by Castus’s account—him as well, suggesting a conditioning symptom of the guiding web. She resolves to seek Orbiis guidance and proceed with cutting Zansay’s corpse.