Scriber keeps his disastrous meeting with Johanna secret, though he knows Vendacious’s guard overheard. He mopes for several days, trying to redraw his burned diagrams. Born into a wealthy merchant family, he had abandoned business for intellectual work, and Johanna’s rejection deepens his self-doubt.

Peregrine visits and persuades Scriber to go into town, reassuring him that Woodcarver values his ideas. In the crowded marketplace, observing the choir phenomenon—where many packs in close proximity briefly merge into a larger group mind—Scriber has a sudden insight: the Flenserists want Johanna alive to operate the starship, and the city must be full of enemy spies planning a kidnapping. Peregrine reveals a secret in response: Vendacious has agents high in the Flenserist command at Hidden Island, close to Lord Steel himself. The intentionally weak-looking local security is meant to encourage espionage over direct assault.

Impressed, Scriber decides to offer his own surveillance services to Vendacious. After 10 days of investigation, he meets Vendacious privately at a foggy turret to present his findings. Vendacious seems to agree to his proposal, but first asks if Scriber has told anyone else. When Scriber confirms he has kept it secret, Vendacious signals a hidden assassin pack that attacks and kills most of Scriber’s members. The last surviving fragment, Ja, leaps from the turret to escape and, though badly injured, crawls away, determined to reach Johanna.

The narrative briefly shifts to Ravna on the descending OOB, where the crew debates whether an expensive video featuring a seemingly hollowed-out former Straumli hero is bait or a message for already-placed agents.

Johanna, suffering from a cold, meets with Woodcarver in her bungalow. She has decided to get along with Woodcarver, partly out of shame over her treatment of Scriber, whom she now considers her first Tine friend. They discuss Scrupilo’s difficulty making functional cannons and Vendacious’s discovery of secret trails for a sneak attack on Hidden Island, when a scratching at the door interrupts them.

Johanna opens the door to find a lone, bleeding Tine fragment. Woodcarver identifies it as part of Scriber Jaqueramaphan and says the rest of the pack has likely been murdered. Peregrine arrives and is allowed to approach the fragment, called Ja, but cannot get coherent thoughts from him to identify the killer. He explains that Ja’s broken spine means he will likely die, or, if he survives, would face great difficulty being adopted into another pack.

Woodcarver explains that if Ja lives, they can identify the murderers by marching every pack in the castle past him and watching for his reaction. She orders Vendacious’s men to confine the staff to quarters. The rest of Scriber’s murdered pack is found on a turret of the old castle wall; Vendacious’s official theory is that Scriber surprised intruders from the forest.

Ja dies during the night from internal injuries. Johanna is furious at the Tines’ primitive medicine and feels hatred for everyone, including herself for how she treated Scriber. About a week later, she decides to trust the Tines for his sake.

Pham Nuwen, revived from his injuries, spends his days catatonic on the OOB’s bridge, staring at the stars. Ravna feels growing panic as their voyage slows and Pham remains withdrawn. She reads the news and is horrified by a popular theory that humanity itself is the mechanism for spreading the Blight—a claim promoted by a group called the Alliance for the Defense, which calls for military action against all human colonies.

Ravna’s only solace is her slow, low-bandwidth communication with Jefri on the Tines World. She learns about his life with Mr. Steel and his friend Amdi, and receives a request from Steel: Can Ravna teach them how to make guns to defend against Woodcarver’s raiders? She fears she will arrive too late and wonders what Pham would advise.

Ravna presses the Skroderiders for an arrival estimate. They explain their progress is slowed by a massive Zone storm unprecedented in 1,000 years and by ultradrive spines damaged during their escape from Relay, putting the journey at one 120-200 days.

Realizing they may not arrive in time to save Jefri, Ravna proposes using the ship’s library to send instructions that guide the Tines along the most efficient path to specific inventions, avoiding the dead ends that slow natural development. As they discuss the plan, Pham turns from the window and, in his first coherent words since Relay, says their priorities should be guns and radios, adding that the approach worked on Canberra. When Ravna asks why those in particular, he gives no further explanation and lapses back into silence.

Ravna finds Pham alone, speaking of feeling dead and like an automaton. She tells him the story of Gods’ Doom, where a Zone surge killed Powers and reduced some to human-level minds, suggesting his experience is not unique. Pham breaks down, grieving for Old One and fearing his memories of the Qeng Ho are an implanted lie. Ravna comforts him, insisting he is human now, and they embrace. They make love on the bridge.

Afterward, Pham explains that Old One was frantically forcing vast amounts of information into his mind at the moment of death. Ravna identifies this as godshatter—a phenomenon from Applied Theology where a dying Power downloads knowledge into a lesser being. Pham reveals the purpose of their mission: The Straumer ship on the Tines World contains a countermeasure that can hurt the Blight. He fears that as the godshatter activates, he will become less human and more of Old One’s tool.

Two days later, the crew meets to finalize the technology-jumpstarting plan. Pham again suggests guns and radios as priorities. Blueshell confirms radio is possible using quantum torsion antennas but notes the difficulty of conveying the needed materials and processes to a primitive culture. The library generates experimental search trees to guide the Tines. Ravna translates the best plan they can devise into Samnorsk and transmits it to Jefri.

On the Tines World, Lord Steel inspects construction of his new fortress on Starship Hill, designed to protect and contain the crashed starship. He has executed attendants who grew too friendly with Jefri and Amdi. When a violent riot breaks out among a digger work-team near the ship and the two emerge from the compound, Steel orders his guards to kill the rioters and rushes to shield Jefri. He struggles to hide his revulsion at the boy’s embrace, then invents a story blaming the riot on disguised Woodcarver agents.

In the meeting hall, Steel lays out his grand strategy to a watching Tyrathect: He is using Ravna’s technological help to defeat Woodcarver while building a trap for the rescuers. He plans to envault the refugee ship in stone and lure Ravna’s vessel into an enclosed courtyard where it can be trapped, theorizing that humans’ strong attachment to individual children gives him leverage.

In their private sanctuary in the ship’s control cabin, Jefri and Amdi receive Ravna’s new technical tables for the radio design. Amdi has a sudden insight: Since Tine thought is sound-based, they can modify the radio design to transmit thoughts directly. He believes he can extrapolate from the provided tables to create a much higher-bandwidth device and excitedly imagines a pack spread across mountaintops, thinking as one and achieving a world-spanning consciousness.

In the weeks after Scriber’s death, Johanna allows Woodcarver to move into her cabin, and the two become friends. Johanna attends her first meeting of Woodcarver’s High Council, with Peregrine acting as translator and providing private, mocking commentary. Vendacious reports that Lord Steel is accelerating fortification of Starship Hill, with a new completion deadline of 8 to 11 tendays. Woodcarver orders Scrupilo to conduct a full-scale cannon test immediately.

Two days later, Johanna attends the test. The cannon fires successfully, blowing a large hole in the old castle wall without exploding. The Tines erupt in celebration, but Johanna notices Woodcarver has collapsed, shivering and spasming. She screams for help, and Woodcarver is rushed back to the cabin—where Johanna discovers she is giving birth. Woodcarver explains that this ends her 600-year-old soul, as for the first time she is not both mother and father of her own pups. Peregrine reveals he is the father of Woodcarver’s pups, and that he is also pregnant with hers. Their banter reminds Johanna of her parents bringing baby Jefri home, and she feels a sense of peace and belonging.

The voyage settles into a routine. Ravna manages the ship’s library, coaxing out plans to help Steel and Jefri. Pham undertakes various projects and learns Samnorsk. Each evening the crew gathers on the command deck, where Pham has set the display to show castle walls and a fireplace, and he and the Riders trade stories. Ravna participates but finds it difficult, privately believing Pham’s heroic past is a fabrication by Old One and noticing he sometimes stumbles on his memories with barely concealed panic. Despite this, she feels more content than she has been in years.

Pham theorizes that the godshatter contains Old One’s knowledge and that the countermeasure to the Blight may be the mysterious rot on the walls of Jefri’s ship—something the boy’s parents kept him away from. He believes it will strike when activated, at the moment the Blight is searching most desperately.

When Jefri sends a vastly improved radio design based on Amdi’s insight, Pham finds it unbelievable that an eight-year-old could solve a complex, multi-variable mathematical problem without computer support. He suspects Steel has hidden technology and is planning to use it for blackmail on their arrival, and warns the crew to hide their interest in the countermeasure while planting their own deceptions. Despite all the dangers, Ravna reflects that she might look back on these months as goldenly happy.

Almost five months into the voyage, the OOB’s failing ultradrive spines force a stop for repairs at the nearest depot, a system named Harmonious Repose. En route, they receive another message from the Alliance for the Defense calling for action against human-inhabited worlds. Ravna worries for her home, Sjandra Kei, but Blueshell reassures her it is too powerful to be an easy target. They disguise the ship’s exterior programs and prepare a fake hold to hide the two humans in case of boarding. Pham reviews the work and catches several mistakes.

The OOB arrives at a spectacular ring system around a 3-billion-year-old star and docks at Saint Rihndell’s Repair Harbor. Blueshell and Greenstalk go ashore to negotiate repairs while Pham and Ravna observe via hidden cameras. Greenstalk notes that the ancient, stagnant civilization has produced no transcendences in 1,000 years. The negotiations are interrupted by the arrival of three beautiful, giant-winged humanoid creatures who speak fluent Triskweline and aggressively demand that Saint Rihndell prioritize repairs for their fleet, then order the Skroderiders dismissed, declaring there are no other customers until their fleet is serviced. Pham makes a sardonic comment about their graceful appearance paired with bullying behavior.