Chapter 11

Din and Ana ride east to the Armenta lands, noting colossal, engineered urhosi herds and roadside statues of the Daljen alongside mixed offertories meant to court various spirits. Ana cautions Din to speak carefully: they seek patterns in the Armenta heirs’ deaths and a way to identify those infected by the guiding web.

At Aimafall, Trikao confronts them for defying his wishes, but Ana asserts imperial authority and forces entry. Inside, the house proves dim and funereal, lined with preserved urhosi heads and trophies. Fotia greets them, having secured the audience despite Trikao’s anger, and warns Velona’s health allows only brief conversation. A portrait of the four Armenta children underscores the scope of the family’s losses.

On an upper balcony, Fotia wrangles Velona’s drokha-cat, Coral, as medikker Osumlik arrives, revealing his tenuous control. Ana aggressively questions Osumlik about the late-age fertility regimen, citing grave maternal risks and accusing him of enabling Velona’s self-destructive demands amid a cascade of family misfortunes.

They are summoned to Velona’s chamber, dense with cleansing mosses yet cluttered with mixed-religion offertories. Velona, terribly altered and sustained by a crustacean-fed infusion, receives them with Coral on her lap. She chastises Din for abandoning his family and exalts Daljen doctrine about land and lineage, but then acknowledges the “other misdeeds” at issue.

The meeting ends with Velona’s firm, if reluctant, agreement to address the unnatural aspects surrounding her children’s deaths, positioning her testimony—and the household’s strange rites and treatments—as crucial to Ana’s search for a pattern behind the tragedies.