Gideon Nav prepares to escape the House of the Ninth before dawn. Calmly and deliberately, Gideon packs a sword, shoes, and magazines, removes a security cuff with a stolen key, visits the empty niche of Gideon's mother, and climbs to the landing field where a shuttle is due to arrive.

At the landing field, Gideon searches carefully for traps, checks the floodlights, and waits in the dim, cold cavern. Morning rituals begin below: skeleton laborers move through the fields, the First Bell calls the Ninth House to prayer, and Castle Drearburh stirs. When the bell rings again as a muster call, Gideon suspects it is a trick meant to lure Gideon away from the shuttle.

Crux, the marshal of Drearburh, confronts Gideon and accuses Gideon of falsifying documents, stealing a key, removing the cuff, and stealing the House's property. Crux claims Gideon belongs to the Ninth and orders Gideon to attend the Lady. Their argument nearly becomes violent, but Gideon warns Crux not to draw a weapon and refuses to obey. Crux withdraws, leaving Gideon briefly convinced escape is still possible.

Aiglamene, Gideon's sword-master and captain of the guard, arrives next. Aiglamene confirms that the muster is real and says Gideon is wanted downstairs for House business. Gideon argues that the Lady has repeatedly sabotaged prior enlistment attempts and will imprison Gideon again if Gideon returns. When Gideon insults the Lady, Aiglamene strikes Gideon and insists that Gideon still owes service to the Ninth. Gideon, torn because of respect for Aiglamene, chooses to disgrace the teacher rather than miss the shuttle.

The chapter then explains Gideon's origins. Eighteen years earlier, Gideon's mother fell into the Ninth's shaft in a failing hazard suit, brain-dead on arrival, with newborn Gideon in a bio-container. Necromancers could not fully recall the mother's ghost, which only screamed Gideon's name three times before fleeing. The Ninth claimed Gideon as a bondswoman, raised Gideon in Drearburh, and later discovered Gideon was neither necromancer nor nun. By age eighteen, Gideon has tried eighty-six times to escape a life and afterlife of servitude.